Re: [gentoo-user] Re: kernel config hell

[kashani]

Hung Dang wrote:
> I would suggest to follow the Gentoo handbook first.
> Leave all options you are not sure as default, using lspci to find out
> more about your hardware specifications.
> From my experiences I will make sure that the kernel is bootable first
> then adapt it to hardware later. Use modules or not is your choice, both
> ways work fine.
>
> If you want to make sure that thing is stable, you can back up your old
> config later then have a bunch of test kernels to test. The help from
> kernel config interface does help you to get a general idea about what
> is the purpose of the option.
>
> Not everyone can get the kernel work for the first try, do not panic.
> Once you get through the first time, thing will go more smoothly than
> you thought. It happened to me one year before but now it take me about
> less than 10 minutes to have the new kernel configured in my computer.
>
> Good luck,

I'll second what Hung said, getting your kernel right takes a bit of time.

	However I'll add a few points. Back in the day I used to build super 
stripped down kernels, but eventually realized it was kinda ridiculous. 
Why spend almost thirty hours for almost no real world gain other than 
driving yourself insane? It was almost worth my time on a Sparc5 with 
64MB, but today you're better off spending your time cooking dinner and 
spending the $20 you saved vs the restaurant on RAM. Well maybe you'd 
need to do that twice. :-)
	On the other hand I learned a fair amount about what not to screw with 
by ripping everything out. If you want to go that route, it'll take you 
around a week to make almost all the mistakes. Realize this will happen 
and then enjoy the process. I also recommend taking notes or you'll keep 
repeating your mistakes.
	The other thing is don't get carried away in stripping things out of 
your kernel. Need to mount and ISO, oops you removed loopback support. 
Need to make your machine into a DHCP server, oops your removed (gah I 
should remember this) sockets (i think). Need to use OpenVPN, oops you 
removed tap/tun interfaces. The list goes on and on. Yeah you can 
install those as modules once you figure out that they are missing which 
can be frustrating when the errors aren't very clear.

	My advice is take the middle path. Cut the complete crap out like 
parallel ports, ISDN, and SCSI cards that aren't actually in your 
system. Leave most of the rest alone for the most part unless you're 
pretty sure you know what it is. As you get a bit more comfortable and 
have a history of working kernels you can experiment more.

kashani