[ale] Monolithic vs Modularised Kernels

[Raju]

Jeff,

"Wish I had your job!". I hated this assignment/job so much, until this
moment ;-). Maybe I need to do some benchmarking.  Yup, need the L's more
than the memory. Thanks for your comments.

--Raju


> Raju -
>
> Wish I had your job!
>
> I'd be interested to see others' views, but it's my understanding that
> the whole GNU/Linux operating system has been set up such that,
> performance-wise, there is virtually no distinction one way or the
> other.  There may be other differences, but their results/symptoms are
> unlikely to affect you.
>
> I understand - and please, someone correct me if I'm wrong - that
> selecting "module" for any given kernel config option does not have an
> associated memory impact if the feature in question is not used but it
> defintely will if it's compiled in, whether it's used or not.  This
> issue might come into play if you are trying to squeeze every last bit
> of performance out of a system (i.e., you plan to have it half beat
> itself to death as a matter of routine); my take is that a smaller
> kernel is better than a larger kernel not so much because of the
> percentage of total RAM taken up by the kernel but because you want your
> system's L1 and L2 caches to give you as much help as possible; the less
> there is to shove into them, the more likely they're going to contain
> something the processor(s) need, and, as you probably already know, the
> whole point of having L1 and L2 cache in the first place is that they
> are faster than the system RAM - a LOT faster.
>
> - Jeff
>> The Client that I am doing for is finally pushing Linux into the
>> enterprise. Amazing how chap11 can actually help promote better and
>> much more superior technologies ;-). I am feverishly replacing a lot
>> of the servers with Linux (Redhat) that use to the run the piece of
>> sh!%$^%$ NT , but using a vanilla kernel with the grsecurity patch.
>> Some examples are, Samba for the PDC, WINS, Print Server, and even the
>>  production database running Sybase (HP-UX) will soon be on Linux. My
>> question is whether to build a Monolithic or Modularised Kernel. Read
>> several arguments on google, but wanted to see your views. Thanks.
>>
>> -Raju
>> mr at securenet.com
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Ale mailing list
>> Ale at ale.org
>> http://www.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
>
> _______________________________________________



_______________________________________________
Ale mailing list
Ale at ale.org
http://www.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale