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Sindi wrote
> I compiled and posted four kernels with built-in scsi support (for hard
> drive) and no IDE support. PII processor.

> Then I added SMP support (dual processor), which made it much larger. Then
> PPP would not work (though the modules would insert - same problem with
> 2.2.16 kernel) so I had to compile that into the kernel too, which brought
> it up to about 800K.

There is an SMP HOWTO. 2.4 does it better than 2.2, and scsi drives are 
good for use with dual cpus.

If you compile an SMP kernel you need to recompile ALL your other modules 
(or build them into the kernel) because the old ones will not work.

If you switch back to non-SMP, you need to replace the modules with the 
older ones.  Rather a nuisance.  When I recompiled mdacon.o to work with 
fb, the new module worked without fb too.

Apparently scsi kernels have similar problems (my original sr_mod.o would 
not insert, had to be built-on).. I have gotten several drivers to work 
built in (including for PDA and IDE controllers) that would not work as 
modules but in most cases this was just a bug.

> The only use I found mentioned for SMP is to compile more kernels, editing
> linux/Makefile to change MAKE=make to MAKE=make -jN, where N is number of
> cpus plus 1.  The example they gave was for compiling something other than
> a kernel (make config).

This IS kernel compilation (I goofed).

The HOWTO says:
make bzImage MAKE="make -j3"
to compile kernels faster with SMP system.
Dual 450 is not as fast as 900 for compiling kernels.

Sindi