Steve Gehlbach steve@nexpath.com writes:
Thanks for the info. I will give it a try. I actually had linux-tiny in my list of links to get to and read, and hadn't got there yet. A few months ago I just took a straight forward approach of clicking the same things I had in 2.4 for 2.6, and it built out at about 1300K. It was so far from 900K that I didn't look any further. Things that I need that add a lot are for example usb mass storage and also ext3 but I am not sure how much that adds.
I might also mention that I have always left out module support, and linked in 5-10 most popular network drivers. There seems to be no savings in space since you would need all the modules on the disk anyway. Never had any problems in the drivers finding their card or conflicting. The idea is that it can be used on a wide variety of hardware without configuration. Maybe others have a better approach I am open for ideas.
The two interesting pieces for your style of configuration are: 1) The -Os work that has been going on recently, I think I have heard 10% reduction for that. 2) Careful selection of which compiler you are using as that makes a noticeable difference. 3) Look under CONFIG_EMBEDDED and possibly elsewhere for options you don't need and can turn off. CONFIG_EMBEDDED also has some smaller alternatives for some of the common features.
You might also grab ext2 instead of ext3. When clean either will work.
Eric