linux-kernel - Size of kernel modules

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Date:	Wed, 6 Jun 2007 17:05:34 +0200
From:	Christoph Pleger <Christoph.Pleger@...uni-dortmund.de>
To:	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Size of kernel modules

Hello,

I have a machine here which I installed with Ubuntu 7.04. Immediately
after the installation had been finished, I installed the Ubuntu package
which contains the Ubuntu-modified sources of the linux kernel. I
extracted the resulting tar.bz2-file, copied the configuration of the
currently running kernel to .config and created a file localversion-irb
which contains the line "-irb" and then called "make menuconfig". In the
menu, I changed the CPU type from 586 to Pentium Pro and entered "-686"
as the localversion. Finally, I used the Ubuntu tool make-kpkg with
option "--initrd" to create a new kernel. The option "--initrd" causes
the installation scripts of the kernel package to automatically create
an initial ramdisk for the kernel.

After the new kernel package had been created, I installed it. After
that, I looked into the directory /boot and was very surprised: The
initial ramdisk of the new kernel was much larger than the initrd of the
old kernel. To find out the cause for this, I investigated how
directories /lib/modules/$old and /lib/modules/$new differ. I found out
that the filenames are the same, but the size of the files differs very
much. I found a module file in the new directory that was almost five
times as large as the file with the same name in the old directory.

So, my question is the follwing: Is it an expected feature that the file
sizes of modules grow so much only because of a different cpu type and a
different localversion, or is there probably a bug in my build tools?

Regards
  Christoph
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