----- Original Message -----
From: "Josh Boyer" jwboyer@fedoraproject.org To: "Fedora Cloud SIG" cloud@lists.fedoraproject.org Cc: "Kernel Fedora" kernel@lists.fedoraproject.org Sent: Wednesday, October 30, 2013 7:07:46 AM Subject: Cloud product kernel requirements
Hi All,
I realize the WG is just forming up and you have a lot of other items to cover for now, but I wanted to get this sent out and have people start thinking about it sooner rather than later.
The kernel team has heard in the past that the Cloud group would like to see something of a more minimal kernel for usage in cloud images. We'd like to hear the requirements for what this smaller image would need to cover.
Right now, a default x86_64 kernel package on f20 is ~134MB installed. Most of that is device drivers installed in /lib/modules/`uname -r`/. The vmlinux binary is about 5MB and the initramfs (which is created at install time and can actually vary quite widely depending on various things) is about 11MB. Drivers can be trimmed to a degree, but please keep in mind that the kernel is already relatively small for the functionality it provides. For example, it is not much bigger than glibc-common (119MB).
So, some caveats to keep in mind while you're thinking about this:
- We're mostly talking about packaging here, not building a separate
cloud kernel package or vmlinux. The kernel team really wants to have a single vmlinux across the 3 products if at all possible. We can't scale to much else.
- What usecases is the cloud image going to cover? E.g. is it just
virtio stuff, or will it also fit PCI passthru (which then requires drivers for those PCI devices)?
I may be totally ... well.. uneducated here, but this sort of sounds a bit like it may be related to spice (someone, by all means, tell me if i'm just grasping at thin air on this one....)
Anyway - in my googling I saw this mail - http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/spice-devel/2012-November/011353.html - i don't know if that is going to help anyone, or not. It's almost making me wonder if that's an interesting overlap with the desktop team?
- What are the common provisioning requirements that are driving the
size reduction? (See comment about glibc-common. I would think change is needed in multiple packages, not just the kernel.)
- Other "cloudy" stuff that I'm entirely unaware of that might be
relevant. Explain it to me like I'm a child.
I have nothing else useful here coming to mind, but I did note this on the PRD just so it's something for us to kep track of - i made a "bucket list" in the detailed requirements section with a link to this mail.
Thanks!
josh _______________________________________________ cloud mailing list cloud@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/cloud Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct