Is there a program that can look at my hardware and aid selecting some kernel build options? It's a real pain trying to recall what I need to build. It was okay a few years ago when there were less drivers and options but the kernel is only getting bigger and each release take a bit longer. As a result I tend to build lots of modules I probably don't need because it can take up to 1/2 and hour to go through the whole kernel selecting stuff by hand. I have to hold in my head the menu tree (i.e. Device Drivers -> character devices), what hardware I have or may use, and whether to build as a module or not; is it stable enough to build in or will Alsa have a later module I might want to use etc. It's a lot to remember, though not as impressive as some Windows Registry monkeys can recall. My stream of thought might go like this: "hmm, coda network filesystem... I was thinking of trying that.... what's this, security models.. probably don't need that. SCSI device drivers oh god there's hundereds which one do I need!? USB storage... now I seem to remember that the module I need isn't named what my hardware is; not because it uses the same chipset but because it just works, o god, time for google" - and so forth. It's ok when you're used to your system but when new hardware comes in or new features (i.e. udev) come in it can take too long to find out what's going on. What would be handy would be a way to identify the kernel options required by present hardware and even software. For example, if a ReiserFS filesystem is mounted it would be nice to be reminded to build support for that... and even more handy if it explained that Reiser4 is not ReiserFS ;) Anyone aware of such a project cataloging hardware identifiers or so forth? Or just anything to speed the process? Even if it's just something that looks at the present /proc/config.gz and sees what modules are actually being used, or what device drivers will be needed. -- Kernelnewbies: Help each other learn about the Linux kernel. Archive: http://mail.nl.linux.org/kernelnewbies/ FAQ: http://kernelnewbies.org/faq/
