Greg MATTHEWS <G.Matthews@cs.ucl.ac.uk> writes:

>thanks to all that replied to this thread. i was actually talking about using 
>the command strip i.e.
>
># strip /netbsd
>
>to strip out unneeded symbols etc from the compiled kernel.
>
>Matthias said that ps would stop working (and hinted that other things would 
>too). i wouldnt want to live without tools like this.

It might actually fallback to /proc, if mounted, and still work, if
the kernel executable doesn't have a symbol table.
It would not work if /proc was not mounted, or not compiled into
the kernel (which is the case on my machines, for example.)
Not having a symbol table also makes a kernel crashdump rather useless.
Since the symbol table only occupies disk space and not memory, I don't
see any reason for stripping the kernel, however (except on, say, a
standalone boot floppy or something embedded like that.)

--mkb