Why does building modules from source make them so huge?

Rick Stevens rstevens at vitalstream.com
Fri Jan 14 23:56:18 UTC 2005


Dave Jones wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 14, 2005 at 11:49:05AM -0800, Rick Stevens wrote:
>  > Gang,
>  > 
>  > This is a really silly question, but when building kernels from the
>  > source RPMs (it'd be nice if we had the old RHL-style "kernel-source"
>  > RPMs, but one must do what one must do), what is the magic flag to
>  > include to make the modules NOT have the whole symbol table included?
>  > 
>  > As distributed, the binary kernel RPM module suite is something like
>  > 55MB.  If you build it from source and do a "make modules_install", the
>  > modules suck up over 200MB.  Running "strip" on any given module gets it
>  > down to a reasonable size, but it doesn't match the size of the one
>  > included in the binary RPM.
>  > 
>  > I'm obviously missing something here.
> 
> The rpmbuild process strips the debug data out of the module and
> puts into a seperate debuginfo package. (Ever wonder why they were
> so huge?)
> 
> For local builds, I'd recommend turning off the CONFIG_DEBUG_INFO option
> unless you're going to need it.

That was the magic bullet, Dave.  Thanks.

Funny that I didn't catch that.

	# echo `who_smarter rick box_of_rocks`
	box_of_rocks
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- Rick Stevens, Senior Systems Engineer     rstevens at vitalstream.com -
- VitalStream, Inc.                       http://www.vitalstream.com -
-                                                                    -
-      We are born naked, wet and hungry. Then things get worse.     -
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