Reducing the size of kexec util

[Neil Horman]

On Wed, May 07, 2008 at 10:58:29AM -0700, Lombard, David N wrote:
> On Wed, May 07, 2008 at 01:28:36PM -0400, Neil Horman wrote:
> > On Wed, May 07, 2008 at 10:11:30AM -0700, Lombard, David N wrote:
> > > The current (20080324) kexec binary on x86 is 135KiB.  While not a
> > > problem on a normal distro or runtime environment, it's a chubster
> > > in an embedded role.
> > > 
> > > Has any thought been given to reducing its 'on-disk' footprint?
> > > The rather obvious, non-default build-time options to only support
> > > specific kernel types and capabilities, jumps to mind.
> > > 
> > > Beyond build-time options, a Busybox applet would further minimize
> > > size, but maintenance would be painful...
> > > 
> > Busybox is precisely what I use to implement kdump in RHEL at the moment.  Its
> > still a bit bloated, since it is meant for enterprise servers, but it makes it
> > very easy to customize very small initramfs files for specific purposes.
> 
> Hmmm... Don't see a kexec or kdump in busybox-1.10.1.  Is this in git?
> 
> What did you do to reduce binary size?  I don't really care about process
> size, as I'm not working with memory-constrained systems.
> 
You misunderstand me.  I didn't add a kexec applet to busybox, I used busybox to
outfit the initrd I build for use by kdump (it saves lots of space over having
to go through the normal initscripts).

Although, now that Iread it again, that doesn't help you too much.  Sorry.

If your goal is to simply reduce the size of the kexec binary, I think an old
fashioned audit is in order.  Theres plenty of space to be saved too, I think.
In particular there are lots of error checks that are re-created that could be
made common.

Neil


> -- 
> David N. Lombard, Intel, Irvine, CA
> I do not speak for Intel Corporation; all comments are strictly my own.

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