[4822] in Athena Bugs
vax kernel dependancies
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Mark Rosenstein)
Wed Apr 25 18:38:30 1990
Date: Wed, 25 Apr 90 18:38:15 -0400
From: Mark Rosenstein <mar@MIT.EDU>
To: bugs@MIT.EDU
I've been trying to build a BOOT kernel for the VS3100 for a couple of
days now without much success. Since the work was done to combine the
vax kernels, it is impossible to build a kernel that is not combined,
hence I can't make a smaller-than-700K kernel. Not only must I have
each CPU type defined (MVAX, 630, 420, and 650), but it won't compile
unless I also include some of the qbus disks and controllers that
can't possibly exist on a 3100.
I'm not convinced that the combined kernel wasn't a big step
backwards. I think that the size and performance of a kernel is much
more important, and we can no longer build small kernels. And a
significant part of the time to boot is loading the kernel off disk
(smaller kernel would help), and configuring hardware (punting
extraneous devices would help).
-Mark
