[nmglug] Minimalistic Kernel

[Ravi Kumar]

Hello Andres,

On 10/5/05, Andres Paglayan <andres at paglayan.com> wrote:
> Hi folks,
>
> I have couple of questions, just because your answers are much better
> than google's
>
> I already know the basics of re-compiling a kernel, load the right
> modules, and so on,
> but my kernels look as a big 14MB monkey, is there any how-to, or
> documentation to read (besides kernel code), on how to compile a
> minimalistic kernel for your system? so it has all it needs to run but
> nothing more.

I have written two posts on steps to compile a kernel. Hope they are
useful for you. They are at
http://linuxhelp.blogspot.com/2004/08/steps-to-compile-kernel.html
and
http://linuxhelp.blogspot.com/2005/04/compiling-linux-kernel-from-source.html

> The other,
> I have little project involving a mini-itx via epia booting from a
> compact flash card.
> I am trying to minimize the read write cycles on the card.
> for doing so I am enabling laptop-mode, doing logs in a ram disk (cp
> them at boot and back at shutdown, still trying to figure this out), and
> I'd like to adjust the commit interval in the ext3 from 5 seconds to
> something higher, but: I don't know which file system will be
> recommended for a CF card; I checked man tune2fs and I don't see an
> explanation about how to do it.

By commiting, do you mean flushing to disk ? I think there is a
parameter for that . Look in the /proc directory or its
subdirectories. I forget what that parameter is. :(

Regards
Ravi