compiling an openbsd kernel 50% faster
reddit / BSD

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Mcnst · 2022-05-02 17:27

There's been a popular tool called dmassage that's useful for
disabling the useless drivers.

The reason it's not recommended is because the probing procedure of
every enabled driver must be capable of not having any adverse effects
on the general hardware, so in OpenBSD, a single kernel config is
considered to be the optimal practice.

Also, you may not want to disable stuff like USB devices, in order for
USB audio and storage devices to continue working. Things like
softraid, too. Probably other pseudo device drivers as well.

But I never understood why it's to my advantage to have the old ISA,
RAID and other ancient drivers in my kernel — they hardly add any
value, and the likelihood of those devices being added to an existing
system is basically slim to none. Some of them do the timeout-based
probing procedure, so they are capable of slowing the boot time as
well.

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Dadrophenia · 2022-05-02 23:53

> dmassage

What an unfortunate name

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KnowWhatsFuckingDumb · 2022-05-03 00:06

ccache

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Mcnst · 2022-05-03 01:27

Why? Just add BSD dmesg to your search query, and you'll find it
easily.

P.S. Also, it's way better than Go!

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Mcnst · 2022-05-03 01:30

[`sysutils/dmassage` in ports](http://ports.su/sysutils/dmassage)

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kyleW_ne · 2022-05-03 05:13

22MB does sound rather large for a kernel but all the advice I've ever
gotten concerning custom kernels on OpenBSD is just don't do it!
Absolute OpenBSD 2nd edition is hilarious at the lengths it goes to to
tell the reader that it is a no good very bad idea.  Unlike in linux
there is no make menu config with a nice ncurses gui to select
individual drivers.  You mess up and leave something out that is
needed by something else and you are stuck with the broken pieces!

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daemonpenguin · 2022-05-03 16:39

You might not be an primarily English speaker, but the name of the
utility would be considered quite rude in some settings.

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Mcnst · 2022-05-03 23:45

I mean, it works by parsing the `dmesg` output, and massaging the
config of the kernel. It's a play on words one way or the other. (-: