Re: [Fwd: What do people think about not installing a stripped /kernel ?]

At 1:47 PM -0600 10/20/04, Scott Long wrote:
>Ruslan Ermilov wrote:
>>On Wed, Oct 20, 2004 at 07:13:35PM +0200, Max Laier wrote:
>>
>>>Why is this discussion ongoing? The consensus seems pretty
>>>clear: "Implement it, but have a make.conf option to turn
>>>it off." If there is concern with this, make it default to
>>>off and have an option to turn it on.
>>
>>Implementing this is very easy, since it's already implemented,
>>just not by default.
>>
>>What everyone seem to have forgotten is that we also have modules,
>>and in the "config -g" case, we also build debug versions of the
>>modules.  And if we're also going to install modules with debug
>>symbols, I think this puts the requirement for the root file
>>system way beyond the rational limits.
>
>I tend to agree.  What do you think of my proposal to have
>installkernel (optionally or whatever) put unstriped binaries
>somewhere outside of the root partition?

A long time ago I had an update which allowed the person to set
where the debug version of kernels and modules would go, based on
some environment variable in make.conf.  I am pretty sure I even
posted it.  But it was for 4-STABLE, and the feedback was that it
should first go into 5-current.  This made a lot of sense, of
course, but *I* only needed it on my 4.x-stable system...  There
were also major changes in the build process between 4-stable and
5-current, so I never reworked that change.  It was much easier
to just create a larger root partition on my 5.x test system...

Hmm.  I might even have that disk still spinning around somewhere.
Yes, I seem to have it.  Frightening!   What I seem to have is a
patch to 4.x (as of Nov 20  2001), which adds support for a
KERNSAVDBGDIR= environment variable.  It modifies sys/conf/kmod.mk
and sys/conf/Makefile.i386 .  I am not sure how useful it would be,
seeing that it's for the wrong branch and it is from so long ago.
But if people are interested, I could look into that.

In any case, we could also change this so that the kernel is not
stripped by default, but still leave modules stripped by default.
What I think is important is that the default, generic install
will set up users with a kernel that has SOME symbols in it.  As
I say, right now we're in the situation where we install one
thing (stripped kernel & modules), but as soon as anyone reports
a problem we tell them to build a non-stripped kernel or we can
not help them.

If the "rational" root partition is too small for a non-stripped
kernel, then users are screwed when we given them that advice.  So
we need to change our definition of a rational root partition, or
we simply admit that we (as developers) are not rational.  Changing
the *default* kernel that we install does not effect the actual size
of a kernel which is USEFUL for debugging.  The only thing we are
changing is whether users START OUT with a useful debugging kernel.

-- 
Garance Alistair Drosehn            =   gad_at_gilead.netel.rpi.edu
Senior Systems Programmer           or  gad_at_freebsd.org
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute    or  drosih_at_rpi.edu