problem with compressing the kernel

[Gabriel Paubert]

On Wed, 28 Jun 2000, Steven Hanley wrote:

> you seem to be confused anyway, yes the kernel is compressed for x86
> machiens (it is however not compressed for other architectures, my ppc
> box uses a normal uncompresased vmlinux image.

Perhaps on a Mac, but _all_ the kernels I have ever built for _all_ my PPC
machines have _always_ been compressed, without a _single_ exception.
Browsing the tree you'll easily find that there the kernel image is
compressed (maybe depending on some CONFIG option) on:

- alpha
- arm
- i386
- m68k
- ppc

so please don't claim that it is x86 specific without checking the facts
first.

> Now of course I wonder why you would need the ability as after all a
> linux box is all you need to compile and make the image, or heck a
> compatible gcc on any unix can in theory compile the kernel, the utility
> to compress and uncompress the kernel is in the source tree so long as
> you can compile the source tree it should work fine. gzip is not listed
> as a requirement in kernel compiling in the file
> /usr/src/linux/Documentation/Changes for this reason, if you can compile
> the kernel on a machine it can create the compressed images if needed.

This looks more like a documentation error. Nowadays you can get your
sources with bzip2, but for very long gzip/gunzip was an implicit
prerequisite to uncompress the kernel tarball (and the patches), otherwise
you could not even have a look at the requirements. Chicken and egg...

>
> And of course remember you dont need otr use compressed images on ppc
> machines.

I do need them. Not all PPC machines are macs, it seems :-)

	Regards,
	Gabriel.


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