2.6.23 kernel

John Summerfield debian at herakles.homelinux.org
Sun Oct 14 11:32:59 UTC 2007


Ed Greshko wrote:
> John Summerfield wrote:
> 
>>> bloated kernels increase the probability of exploits
>> If someone gets close enough to use an otherwise-unused kernel module,
>> the battle's already gone to the intruder.
> 
> Funny you should mention that....  I think some folks have no idea what they
> are talking about when they use the word "bloat".  At least they don't
> define what they are calling "bloat".
> 
> For fun...and since it was raining here part of the day....
> 
> I did a default "all" install of the current stable slackware and an "all"
> install of the latest F8-beta on the exact same hardware.  I then started
> them both in run level 3.
> 
> As soon as the systems were up I checked top and lsmod.  Now, this wasn't
> entirely one-to-one since on my F8 install I did use LVM while I didn't on
> the slackware.  Also, slackware is at 2.6.21.5 while F8 is 2.6.23.0.

That should advantage Slack.

> 
> F8 loaded a total of 60 modules
> Slackware loaded     38 modules
> 
> The /lib/modules of F8 was 57MB while slackware is 52MB.
> 
> Now, the really interesting thing was that top showed F8 to be using 147.9MB
> out of 512MB while slackware was consuming 179.4MB.
> 
> I find that interesting.....

You should also include the kernel size. I was amazed when i first used 
debian to find the bare kernel didn't support my IDE hardware: the IDE 
drivers were modules.

If you still have both, find how many modules each has under 
/lib/modules. And, if you still haven't got a life, see if you can pick 
the differences: one might, for example, have madwifi even though the 
HAL is binary-only.

Part of the requirement of any commercial distro is that it must support 
all likely hardware. That's constrained, in part, by attitudes to lack 
of source: Debian hacks stuff out of the kernel because some is not 
DFSG-free.


> 


-- 

Cheers
John

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