From patchwork Mon Apr 4 10:40:50 2011 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Patchwork-Submitter: Artem Bityutskiy X-Patchwork-Id: 684881 Received: from vger.kernel.org (vger.kernel.org [209.132.180.67]) by demeter1.kernel.org (8.14.4/8.14.3) with ESMTP id p34Abent019366 for ; Mon, 4 Apr 2011 10:37:40 GMT Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1754185Ab1DDKhk (ORCPT ); Mon, 4 Apr 2011 06:37:40 -0400 Received: from smtp.nokia.com ([147.243.128.24]:30040 "EHLO mgw-da01.nokia.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1754039Ab1DDKhj (ORCPT ); Mon, 4 Apr 2011 06:37:39 -0400 Received: from eru.research.nokia.com ([172.21.23.202]) by mgw-da01.nokia.com (Switch-3.4.3/Switch-3.4.3) with ESMTP id p34AbSaU014598; Mon, 4 Apr 2011 13:37:28 +0300 From: Artem Bityutskiy To: Michal Marek Cc: linux-kbuild@vger.kernel.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Paulo Marques Subject: [PATCH 1/2] Kconfig: improve KALLSYMS_ALL documentation Date: Mon, 4 Apr 2011 13:40:50 +0300 Message-Id: <1301913651-9055-1-git-send-email-dedekind1@gmail.com> X-Mailer: git-send-email 1.7.2.3 X-Nokia-AV: Clean Sender: linux-kbuild-owner@vger.kernel.org Precedence: bulk List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kbuild@vger.kernel.org X-Greylist: IP, sender and recipient auto-whitelisted, not delayed by milter-greylist-4.2.6 (demeter1.kernel.org [140.211.167.41]); Mon, 04 Apr 2011 10:37:40 +0000 (UTC) From: Artem Bityutskiy Dumb users like myself are not able to grasp from the existing KALLSYMS_ALL documentation that this option is not what they need. Improve the help message and make it clearer that KALLSYMS is enough in the majority of use cases, and KALLSYMS_ALL should really be used very rarely. Signed-off-by: Artem Bityutskiy Cc: Paulo Marques Cc: Michal Marek --- init/Kconfig | 18 ++++++++++++------ 1 files changed, 12 insertions(+), 6 deletions(-) diff --git a/init/Kconfig b/init/Kconfig index 56240e7..dae5297 100644 --- a/init/Kconfig +++ b/init/Kconfig @@ -968,12 +968,18 @@ config KALLSYMS_ALL bool "Include all symbols in kallsyms" depends on DEBUG_KERNEL && KALLSYMS help - Normally kallsyms only contains the symbols of functions, for nicer - OOPS messages. Some debuggers can use kallsyms for other - symbols too: say Y here to include all symbols, if you need them - and you don't care about adding 300k to the size of your kernel. - - Say N. + Normally kallsyms only contains the symbols of functions for nicer + OOPS messages and backtraces(i.e., symbols from the text and inittext + sections). This is sufficient for most cases. And only in very rare + cases (e.g., when a debugger is used) all symbols are required (e.g., + names of variables from the data sections, etc). + + This option makes sure that all symbols are loaded into the kernel + image (i.e., symbols from all sections) in cost of increased kernel + size (depending on the kernel configuration, it may be 300KiB or + something like this). + + Say N unless you really need all symbols. config KALLSYMS_EXTRA_PASS bool "Do an extra kallsyms pass"