kernel presentation at ILUG on Sat.

[Jason Clinton]

Charles Steinkuehler wrote:

> Jason Clinton wrote:
>
>> It depends on what make target you specified when you built your
>> kernel. I always use "make dep && make clean bzImage modules
>> modules_install". This creates a bzip2'd kernel. IIRC, the grub/lilo
>> boot loader does the uncompressing so if you use bzip2, you need a
>> boot loader that supports it.
>
>
> The "b" in bzImage stands for "big", or "bloated", not for bzip
> compression.  See my previous e-mail, with a sample of the kernel
> build output including the gzip -9 (best gzip compression level) used
> to shrink the kernel source.
>
> Also, the boot-loader does not do any decompression on the kernel,
> which is actually capable of boot-strapping itself on the x86 platforms.
>
> !! STUPID KERNEL TRICKS !!
>
> Have fun and amaze your friends with the following example:
>
> fdformat /dev/fd0u1440
> dd if=bzImage of=/dev/fd0u1440
>
Fascinating. :) This is the kind of stuff that makes Linux so much fun.

On the compression subject, I see that post 2.4.18 certain library
operations are built in to the kernel. (Like gzip and fast-sort). How
can I call these library functions from C/C++ and why would I want to?

Is it possible to use BZip2 compression for the kernel?

--
Jason Clinton
I don't believe in witty sigs.