[OpenWrt-Devel] [PATCH v3] kernel: revert bad module stripping patch

[Daniel Santos]

I would like to take this opportunity to mention that the best way to
save space here is to not build modules -- make them built-ins.  I did a
quick experiment of this and instead of saving 4k, my *image* is a full
256k smaller.  I haven't analysed the specifics, but also this means
less RAM consumed because squashfs uses the page cache for uncompressed
files.  Further, modules inherently have greater overhead, even after
__init sections have been discarded.

sed -i 's/=m/=y/g;'
build_dir/target-mipsel_24kc_musl/linux-ramips_mt7620/linux-4.14.63/.config
make

The only downside is that built-ins cannot be unloaded and will always
occupy a portion of RAM.  But having them built into the kernel is far
more efficient.

Daniel

On 10/29/2018 05:54 PM, Daniel Santos wrote:
> Never EVER do this!  Decades of computer science has taught us "best
> practices" -- ways of doing things that provide an optimal outcome for
> all parties involved.  While this type of hack is fine if you're working
> alone, it is not a "best practice" and is completely unacceptable for a
> large FOSS project.  This is especially insidious because it goes behind
> the back of the programmer / user / hacker and makes a change without
> their consent or direction -- this is the type of behaviour we've come
> to expect from Google, m$, Apple and the like, not from FOSS.
>
> Doing --strip-all is not appropriate default behaviour as this includes
> relocation data and breaks things like kmemleak.  The presence of debug
> information in modules is already controlled by CONFIG_DEBUG_INFO,
> CONFIG_DEBUG_INFO_REDUCED, etc.  Force-stripping just makes life crappy
> for anybody who needs to debug the a kernel built in OpenWRT.  (Some of
> us do run gdb on the kernel.)
>
> If --strip-all really is desired, it should probably be added to the
> CONFIG_MODULE_STRIPPED patch, and should be done at install time
> (probably via objcopy), not at link time.  This leaves the in-tree
> modules useful for debugging, decompiling, diagnostics, profiling, etc.
>
> Signed-off-by: Daniel Santos <daniel.santos at pobox.com>
> ---
>  .../generic/hack-4.14/202-reduce_module_size.patch | 24 ----------------------
>  .../generic/hack-4.9/202-reduce_module_size.patch  | 24 ----------------------
>  2 files changed, 48 deletions(-)
>  delete mode 100644 target/linux/generic/hack-4.14/202-reduce_module_size.patch
>  delete mode 100644 target/linux/generic/hack-4.9/202-reduce_module_size.patch
>
> diff --git a/target/linux/generic/hack-4.14/202-reduce_module_size.patch b/target/linux/generic/hack-4.14/202-reduce_module_size.patch
> deleted file mode 100644
> index 2cbb6add9a..0000000000
> --- a/target/linux/generic/hack-4.14/202-reduce_module_size.patch
> +++ /dev/null
> @@ -1,24 +0,0 @@
> -From fd66884da2f96d2a7ea73f58b1b86251b959a913 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
> -From: Felix Fietkau <nbd at nbd.name>
> -Date: Fri, 7 Jul 2017 16:56:19 +0200
> -Subject: kernel: strip unnecessary symbol table information from kernel modules
> -
> -reduces default squashfs size on ar71xx by about 4k
> -
> -lede-commit: 058d331a39077f159ca8922f1f422a1346d6aa67
> -Signed-off-by: Felix Fietkau <nbd at nbd.name>
> ----
> - Makefile | 2 +-
> - 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)
> -
> ---- a/Makefile
> -+++ b/Makefile
> -@@ -425,7 +425,7 @@ KBUILD_AFLAGS_KERNEL :=
> - KBUILD_CFLAGS_KERNEL :=
> - KBUILD_AFLAGS_MODULE  := -DMODULE
> - KBUILD_CFLAGS_MODULE  := -DMODULE
> --KBUILD_LDFLAGS_MODULE := -T $(srctree)/scripts/module-common.lds
> -+KBUILD_LDFLAGS_MODULE = -T $(srctree)/scripts/module-common.lds $(if $(CONFIG_PROFILING),,-s)
> - GCC_PLUGINS_CFLAGS :=
> - 
> - export ARCH SRCARCH SUBARCH CONFIG_SHELL HOSTCC HOSTCFLAGS CROSS_COMPILE AS LD
> diff --git a/target/linux/generic/hack-4.9/202-reduce_module_size.patch b/target/linux/generic/hack-4.9/202-reduce_module_size.patch
> deleted file mode 100644
> index f744b945fe..0000000000
> --- a/target/linux/generic/hack-4.9/202-reduce_module_size.patch
> +++ /dev/null
> @@ -1,24 +0,0 @@
> -From fd66884da2f96d2a7ea73f58b1b86251b959a913 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
> -From: Felix Fietkau <nbd at nbd.name>
> -Date: Fri, 7 Jul 2017 16:56:19 +0200
> -Subject: kernel: strip unnecessary symbol table information from kernel modules
> -
> -reduces default squashfs size on ar71xx by about 4k
> -
> -lede-commit: 058d331a39077f159ca8922f1f422a1346d6aa67
> -Signed-off-by: Felix Fietkau <nbd at nbd.name>
> ----
> - Makefile | 2 +-
> - 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)
> -
> ---- a/Makefile
> -+++ b/Makefile
> -@@ -403,7 +403,7 @@ KBUILD_AFLAGS_KERNEL :=
> - KBUILD_CFLAGS_KERNEL :=
> - KBUILD_AFLAGS_MODULE  := -DMODULE
> - KBUILD_CFLAGS_MODULE  := -DMODULE
> --KBUILD_LDFLAGS_MODULE := -T $(srctree)/scripts/module-common.lds
> -+KBUILD_LDFLAGS_MODULE = -T $(srctree)/scripts/module-common.lds $(if $(CONFIG_PROFILING),,-s)
> - GCC_PLUGINS_CFLAGS :=
> - 
> - # Read KERNELRELEASE from include/config/kernel.release (if it exists)


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