I went over the suggestion of collapsing module files again [1]. For fun and research, instead of combining specific modules, I have set out to combine everything into a single module. [1] http://marc.info/?l=netfilter-devel&m=121148631320895&w=2 All .ko modules together clock in at 1037772 bytes of diskspace, and they are likely to use just as much kernel memory when loaded (strip a few ELF stuff, and then round up to the next PAGE_SIZE again). After the patch, the stats are much different: -rw-r--r-- 1 jengelh 160910 2008-09-06 18:15 xtables_ext.ko -rw-r--r-- 1 jengelh 57967 2008-09-06 18:15 xtables_xct.ko -rw-r--r-- 1 jengelh 27295 2008-09-06 18:15 xtables_xnat.ko -rw-r--r-- 1 jengelh 47550 2008-09-06 18:15 xtables_xv6.ko 293722 bytes, that is approximately a 70% reduction in disk and memory usage. (There are three modules not in this POC xtables_*.ko.) However, as a result, currently *all* extensions are loaded, which might incur extra memory being used. The proof-of-concept patch is not too pretty, but it extrapolates one way to deal with the module flood (which has been inflating compile times and whatnot), and it does so without moving tons of code around. I think the only way to shove off more bytes is to revamp the API a bit and even try to reduce the amount of .o files during build. The four xtables_*.ko files represent (no dependencies), (dependency on conntrack), (dependency on NAT) and (dependency on IPv6). Of course we should be keeping an eye on users who want a tiny system and not pull in unneeded dependencies - hence the split into actually four .ko files. Interested parties are directed to the top commit of the koredux ("reduction of number of .ko files") branch: git://dev.medozas.de/linux koredux http://dev.medozas.de/gitweb.cgi?p=linux;h=koredux;a=shortlog -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe netfilter-devel" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
