Chris G Demetriou said something not totally unlike...
  |
  |>   |Wow.  And I thought the 820K kernel I run with was porky.  :-)
  |> 
  |> Has anyone put any thought into a compressed kernel similiar to what
  |> linux does?  It's not a bad setup especially if you like to boot your
  |> test kernels from floppy.
  |
  |(1) no one should ever be running a kernel that large "in real life."
  |(2) compressing your kernel makes a lot of other things harder.
  |
  |
  |getting a machine installed is a very special case, and should be
  |handled accordingly.

True, but in real life you have to expect the unexpected.  SunOS kernels
I deal with can range from 1 to 2.5 Meg, IRIX 5 kernels from 1.8 to 3
Meg, my Linux at home can easily be 1 meg uncompressed.  My point is that
it's be nice.

Compressing the kernel can't be that difficult.
1 - boots
2 - loads a mini-root with compression utils instead of true kernel
3 - mini-root loads appropriate kernel from disk and uncompresses on the fly.

It might prolong the initial portion of the bootup sequence but it could
be worth it.  I rarely deal with "vanilla" systems and don't believe in
such beasties.  Here's my home system as an example...

486dx2-66 VLB overclocked to ~81MHz, 1 1522 SCSI controller with 2 drives,
1 IDE controller w/ 2 drives, a 4 floppy controller and 4 floppy drives
(why? I had the card :), sound blaster, 4 com ports, 2 parallel, 2 game,
diamond stealth pro, and so on.  And I'd still like to upgrade my video,
get a scsi tape drive, possibily a different scsi controller and, again,
so on.

Vanilla is boring.  I'd be happy to give the boot routine w/ compression
a try when I get back from vacation (next tuesday) and with a little
support.  Ought to get BSD back on the system too... oops, thinking out-
load again...

-- 
Greg "TwoTone" Spiegelberg                I'm not mental... 
SAIC UNIX/Netware Computer Type Guy       I'm just on higher philosophical 
gspiegel@ridgecrest.ca.us                 plane, so GET OFF MY BACK! 
#include <linux/std_disclaimer.h>