Re: [gentoo-user] Module philosophy: Compile-in or Load

["Mike Huber" <michael.huber@gmail.com>]

Well, all mileage may vary.

Personally, I prefer to not have things loaded into the kernel when
I'm not using them.  It's not really a performance or a memory saving
thing, but more of an OCD thing.  I'm sure that, in the grand scheme
of things, the little time/power/whatever I save by keeping them out
of the kernel is far outweighed by the amount of time it takes to type
"modprobe x" when i remember I need to load the thing.  Afterall, my
time at the command prompt is significantly more valuable than a few
extra cycles, or an extra 70-500K memory footprint.

The thing is, it really depends on how clean you keep your kernel
config.  If you seriously go through the kernel config an make sure
that you only select the things which are appropriate for your system,
then you're fine.  I've known people who just have almost everything
built as a module, and let kernel autoloading take care of figuring
out which one they need for their system (yes, terribly stupid and
inelegant, but it does solve the problem when you don't know how else
to do it).  Also, compiling a whole tree of modules can be a simple
way of figuring out exactly which set of code corresponds to your
chipset, but that is not relevant to the current discussion.

Basically, I'd say that if it doesn't matter how the thing is loaded
into the kernel (I.E., no outside code relies on it being a module),
and if it's going to be loaded more than some threshold percentage of
time, just build it in.  Unless you are facing some weird constraints,
anything resembling modern hardware can handle the slightly larger
kernel, and if you are facing those constraints, you probably already
know what you're doing much better than I'll ever be able to say.

As a side question for the list, when you load a module, you can pass
module options to it (at least, last I checked, this could be done to
specify things like the name of the interface on an internet driver,
debugging level, etc...).  When you build something into the kernel,
is there an easy way to pass such options off to it?  boot time
options? anyone know?

--Mike

On 6/12/06, Steven Susbauer <stupendoussteve@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Mon, 12 Jun 2006, Anthony E. Caudel wrote:
>
> > I was wondering what gentoo-users think and practice about kernel
> > modules.  Do most compile them in the kernel or load them at boot-up.
> >
> > Note that I'm _NOT_ talking about those modules that have to be compiled
> > in such as for your filesystem. This is about the other ones.
> >
> > I generally like to load them at boot-up.  One reason is that I have
> > heard that for suspend or hibernate to work, some modules have to be
> > unloaded.
> >
> > On the other hand, compiling them in results in faster boot times.
> >
> > So, what do gentoo-users think?
> >
> > Tony
> >
>
>
> I have never used any modules that I didn't have to. At this point, I use
> none. They are all compiled into the kernel, because I don't have a point
> to unloading or loading. The only point for modules in any of my
> experience is if you're often changing hardware (possibly a laptop with a
> base station... or something?)
> --
> gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
>
>
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