> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ian C. Blenke [mailto:icblenke@nks.net]
> Sent: Thursday, September 12, 2002 09:37 AM
> To: slug@nks.net
> Subject: Re: [SLUG] Kernel and RPMs
>
>
> Most distro's are built as "i386", meaning they are not optimized for
> anything more than a base i386 and should run on most PC hardware
> without incident.
>
> You typically need to select architecture specific packages built with
> "i686" optimizations by hand.
>
> > Is it better to download, build and install from source
> RPMS rather than
> > binary RPMS or does it matter?
>
> Is it better? No. Unless you change the .spec file from the SRPM to
> compile with "i686" optimizations, you're usually only going to build
> "i386" friendly binaries.
>
> > Also is it worth while to recompile the kernel?
>
> Always. The more hardware specific you can build a kernel to be toward
> your hardware, the faster your system will be. This is really the best
> thing you can do to improve the performance of your box.
>
> As for building packages from source: it will speed things
> up, but it's
> a general PITA to maintain. The best bet is to find a
> distribution tuned
> to your hardware, or use a source based distribution like Gentoo that
> builds everything from source anyway.
>
All of this brings more questions to my head. I am building up
a firewall at work to do some testing, this firewall is going to
be running on a little ast bravo, I think it is a 75mhz pentium,
it is a pentium just barely...
Now when you compile a kernel is it done on the machine you are
going to install it on or do you do it on another machine, I have
tried to install as little as possible on that machine so I am not
even sure I have all that I need to do a kernel.
When you build a kernel directed at a particular hardware set,
does the building process try to probe the hardware to determine
what is there or is it a manual process in which you supply that
hardware data?
In reading over the iptables documentation, it was pointed out
that a kernel compile for such machines was a very good thing,
and a list of reasons given. This will be my first jump into
this area (gotta learn sometime) and I figure that this one
should not be so complex as it is not going to have anything
but the firewall stuff on it. No X no nothing (well I do have
WebMin on it but that is about it) it is a RH install, and of
course it does appear that RH has loaded in a load of stuff I
probably do not need. We shall find out.
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