[RULE] Important: Fedora may offer kernel settings for RULE

[M. Fioretti]

Hello,

As already mentioned in the past, sometimes I subscribe to some
mailing list just to ask support for RULE, or some partnership.  After
the LKML, last week I joined the Fedora developers list (for the full
story, check the thread "Better packaging for older hardware" in the
archives at this URL:
http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list

Summing it up, nobody less than Alan Cox said he's used RULE on some
older PCs and that:

> On Sat, Oct 18, 2003 05:51:05 at 05:51:05AM -0400, Alan Cox  alan at redhat.com  wrote:
> > 386/486 kernel RPMs make sense but you probably also want to think
> > about that as a seperate kernel with less options selected and
> > without the more high end tuning Red Hat has.
> 
I answered:

> Absolutely. [snip] We... just need a very good initial push in the
> right direction. Right .config, proper /proc settings, whatever.

The answer from Michael Johnson, one of the kernel RPMs maintainer,
was:

> It wouldn't be hard for us to provide an appropriately trimmed
> config file in the kernel srpm, automatically maintained to follow
> generic changes to the config files but with specific slimming
> changing, even if we didn't build that kernel by default.  It might
> break without our noticing in that case, but then that could always
> be fixed...

> However, the only "slimming" bits we have expertise of any sort in
> is summed up in the BOOT kernel config file, so we'd need a pretty
> good idea of what kinds of changes we were going to make that would
> really satisfy most everyone...  That's the real hard part.

In other words, we have now the possibility to have help for RULE
users, although unofficially, from straight inside the Red Hat/Fedora
development. If we can provide a list of config options, *they* will
add it to the source RPM as an alternative build option, and keep it
updated and coherent with future patches.

If that happens, it would be possible to rebuild i386 kernels or low
ram kernels for newer CPUs with the lowest patching effort and the
highest degree of confidence that it works nicely with all the other
RH rpms.

What now? I honestly confess that I don't know what to suggest: please
post it any config setting that may be useful, and I'll forward the
final result to the developers.

It would be great if the folks also subscribed to the Linux kernel
mailing list could ask there for contributions. The starting point are
the MakeFile and spec file of the latest Red Hat kernel source
RPMs. If somebody wants them but has no access, let us know here.

Thank you in advance,
			Marco Fioretti

-- 
Marco Fioretti                 mfioretti
Red Hat for low memory         www.rule-project.org

In a hundred years from now it will not matter what my bank account
was, the type of house I lived in, or the kinds of clothes I wore, but
the world may be much different because I was important in the life of
a child                                         Author unknown


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