Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id ; Fri, 7 Mar 2003 20:56:55 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id ; Fri, 7 Mar 2003 20:56:54 -0500 Received: from ebiederm.dsl.xmission.com ([166.70.28.69]:4149 "EHLO frodo.biederman.org") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id ; Fri, 7 Mar 2003 20:56:53 -0500 To: Russell King Cc: Linus Torvalds , Roman Zippel , "H. Peter Anvin" , Greg KH , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: [BK PATCH] klibc for 2.5.64 - try 2 References:

<20030307233916.Q17492@flint.arm.linux.org.uk> From: ebiederm@xmission.com (Eric W. Biederman) Date: 07 Mar 2003 19:06:42 -0700 In-Reply-To: <20030307233916.Q17492@flint.arm.linux.org.uk> Message-ID: User-Agent: Gnus/5.09 (Gnus v5.9.0) Emacs/21.1 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 2335 Lines: 42 Russell King writes: > On Fri, Mar 07, 2003 at 03:05:32PM -0800, Linus Torvalds wrote: > > However, I also have to say that klibc is pretty late in the game, and as > > long as it doesn't add any direct value to the kernel build the whole > > thing ends up being pretty moot right now. It might be different if we > > actually had code that needed it (ie ACPI in user space or whatever). > > Alan was recently trying to convince people that ipconfig.c should be > deleted from the 2.5 kernel today. That was until I pointed out that > people do download kernels via xmodem to embedded boards (because that's > what the boot loader supports) and they want to be able to use root-NFS. > I think Alan is reasonably happy for it to stay now, although I haven't > had any hard positive confirmation of that fact. There is another reason ipconfig.c should die. Except in simple setups it does the wrong thing. I have had it get a DHCP reply off of the wrong NIC. Having the wrong policy in the kernel is a problem. Especially when people think about fixing it... > As long as we don't have equivalent functionality present which replaces > ipconfig.c and nfsroot.c without adding stupidly sized initrd images to > the kernel, I will continue to resist the removal of both of these > features. I agree ipconfig.c works well for development. Last time I played with something like this it should not be hard to get the entire initrd binary down to 30K-40K. I think you can probably do it in 16K but... As far as equivalent functionality there is already a dhcp client and a mount client in busybox. So in the worst case someone it will take just a bit of glue to put these things together. > klibc provided a way, but if that isn't going to be merged and this stuff > made to work for 2.6, then I think we must keep ipconfig.c and > nfsroot.c. Either klibc or alternative user space implementation. There is no reason that magic has to happen in the kernel. The only thing has to be implemented is a way to smush a kernel and an initrd together. Eric - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/