[ale] Monolithic vs Modularised Kernels

[hbbs at comcast.net]

Raju -

Wish I had your job!

I'd be interested to see others' views, but it's my understanding that the whole
GNU/Linux operating system has been set up such that, performance-wise, there is
virtually no distinction one way or the other.  There may be other differences,
but their results/symptoms are unlikely to affect you.  

I understand - and please, someone correct me if I'm wrong - that selecting
"module" for any given kernel config option does not have an associated memory
impact if the feature in question is not used but it defintely will if it's
compiled in, whether it's used or not.  This issue might come into play if you
are trying to squeeze every last bit of performance out of a system (i.e., you
plan to have it half beat itself to death as a matter of routine); my take is
that a smaller kernel is better than a larger kernel not so much because of the
percentage of total RAM taken up by the kernel but because you want your
system's L1 and L2 caches to give you as much help as possible; the less there
is to shove into them, the more likely they're going to contain something the
processor(s) need, and, as you probably already know, the whole point of having
L1 and L2 cache in the first place is that they are faster than the system RAM -
a LOT faster.  

- Jeff
> The Client that I am doing for is finally pushing Linux into the
> enterprise. Amazing how chap11 can actually help promote better and much
> more superior technologies ;-). I am feverishly replacing a lot of the
> servers with Linux (Redhat) that use to the run the piece of sh!%$^%$ NT ,
> but using a vanilla kernel with the grsecurity patch. Some examples are,
> Samba for the PDC, WINS, Print Server, and even the  production database
> running Sybase (HP-UX) will soon be on Linux. My question is whether to
> build a Monolithic or Modularised Kernel. Read several arguments on
> google, but wanted to see your views. Thanks.
> 
> -Raju
> mr at securenet.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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