From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1751467Ab2GSPo1 (ORCPT ); Thu, 19 Jul 2012 11:44:27 -0400 Received: from mail-wg0-f44.google.com ([74.125.82.44]:58254 "EHLO mail-wg0-f44.google.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1750854Ab2GSPoV (ORCPT ); Thu, 19 Jul 2012 11:44:21 -0400 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: <20120719152618.GD16873@home.goodmis.org> References: <20120713210240.GG1707@redhat.com> <20120719152618.GD16873@home.goodmis.org> From: Linus Torvalds Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2012 08:43:58 -0700 X-Google-Sender-Auth: hTKFHifvr5KM7J1BHPs7IJAgF-0 Message-ID: Subject: Re: [RFC] Simplifying kernel configuration for distro issues To: Steven Rostedt Cc: Dave Jones , Greg Kroah-Hartman , Ubuntu Kernel Team , Debian Kernel Team , OpenSUSE Kernel Team , Linux Kernel Mailing List , Fedora Kernel Team Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Thu, Jul 19, 2012 at 8:26 AM, Steven Rostedt wrote: > > Side note, and this is for the 1%. If you want a true minconfig for your > system, ktest can do that for you. Try it, it's actually much harder than it seems. Like allmodconfig, it handles the minimum hardware well, but it tends to handle the subtle issues really badly. Many config options cause *very* subtle failures that are almost impossible to see. Like firewalls not loading correctly (and leaving the machine completely open), or just stuff that you didn't happen to test (USB sticks, printers, certain programs) not working. Not having the right audit options will make things still "work", but you'll get warnings at bootup, and who knows what that causes etc etc. These kinds of things are exactly why I'd like to have a distro config. Linus