3 ms·

The kernel alone on my laptop is larger than 4mb, and that doesn't include the initrd (though the article talks about that) -rw------- 1 root root 7.3M May 17

The kernel alone on my laptop is larger than 4mb, and that doesn't include the initrd (though the article talks about that) -rw------- 1 root root 7.3M May 17 16:13 vmlinuz-4.10.0-22-generic

glandium 9y ago
And that's a compressed image... it is even larger in memory. On my machine: $ stat -c %s /boot/vmlinuz-4.9.0-3-amd64 4204320 $ extract-vmlinux /boot/vmlinuz-4.9.0-3-amd64 > vmlinux $ stat -c %s vmlinux 20110308 The script to uncompress the kernel comes from the kernel source: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/torvalds/linux/master/scripts/extract-vmlinux https://raw.githubusercontent.com/torvalds/linux/master/scri... Arguably, not everything in that vmlinux is actually loaded: $ readelf -Wl vmlinux | awk '$1 == "LOAD" { tot += strtonum($5); } END { print tot }' 13935704 Counting BSS: $ readelf -Wl vmlinux | awk '$1 == "LOAD" { tot += strtonum($6); } END { print tot }' 14824536
- baobrien 9y ago
  I wonder how small a minimal bootable kernel, with all the drivers in modules, would be.
  - voltagex_ 9y ago
    Doesn't directly answer your question but https://tiny.wiki.kernel.org/ https://tiny.wiki.kernel.org/
  - isostatic 9y ago
    Does anyone else remember toms root and boot? Fully functioning Linux machine on a floppy.
    - DanBC 9y ago
      Yes, I was surprised Tomsrtbt hadn't been mentioned yet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomsrtbt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomsrtbt The website is dead now. Here's the wayback machine link: https://web.archive.org/web/20160120122627/http://www.toms.net/rb https://web.archive.org/web/20160120122627/http://www.toms.n...
  - khedoros1 9y ago
    A friend and I used to compete on kernel size. Research the kernel features we actually used, which would be necessary during boot, etc. This was either late 2.4 kernels or early 2.6 ones. I don't remember for sure, but I think we hit about 800KB, and would've had to start adding more modules into the initrd to get smaller.

The kernel alone on my laptop is larger than 4mb, and that doesn't include the initrd (though the article talks about that) -rw------- 1 root root 7.3M May 17 16:13 vmlinuz-4.10.0-22-generic

glandium 9y ago

And that's a compressed image... it is even larger in memory. On my machine: $ stat -c %s /boot/vmlinuz-4.9.0-3-amd64 4204320 $ extract-vmlinux /boot/vmlinuz-4.9.0-3-amd64 > vmlinux $ stat -c %s vmlinux 20110308 The script to uncompress the kernel comes from the kernel source: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/torvalds/linux/master/scripts/extract-vmlinux https://raw.githubusercontent.com/torvalds/linux/master/scri... Arguably, not everything in that vmlinux is actually loaded: $ readelf -Wl vmlinux | awk '$1 == "LOAD" { tot += strtonum($5); } END { print tot }' 13935704 Counting BSS: $ readelf -Wl vmlinux | awk '$1 == "LOAD" { tot += strtonum($6); } END { print tot }' 14824536

baobrien 9y ago
I wonder how small a minimal bootable kernel, with all the drivers in modules, would be.
- voltagex_ 9y ago
  Doesn't directly answer your question but https://tiny.wiki.kernel.org/ https://tiny.wiki.kernel.org/
- isostatic 9y ago
  Does anyone else remember toms root and boot? Fully functioning Linux machine on a floppy.
  - DanBC 9y ago
    Yes, I was surprised Tomsrtbt hadn't been mentioned yet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomsrtbt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomsrtbt The website is dead now. Here's the wayback machine link: https://web.archive.org/web/20160120122627/http://www.toms.net/rb https://web.archive.org/web/20160120122627/http://www.toms.n...
- khedoros1 9y ago
  A friend and I used to compete on kernel size. Research the kernel features we actually used, which would be necessary during boot, etc. This was either late 2.4 kernels or early 2.6 ones. I don't remember for sure, but I think we hit about 800KB, and would've had to start adding more modules into the initrd to get smaller.