linux-kernel - [PATCH 1/2] Kconfig: improve KALLSYMS

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Date:	Mon,  4 Apr 2011 13:40:50 +0300
From:	Artem Bityutskiy <dedekind1@...il.com>
To:	Michal Marek <mmarek@...e.cz>
Cc:	linux-kbuild@...r.kernel.org, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
	Paulo Marques <pmarques@...popie.com>
Subject: [PATCH 1/2] Kconfig: improve KALLSYMS_ALL documentation

From: Artem Bityutskiy <Artem.Bityutskiy@...ia.com>

Dumb users like myself are not able to grasp from the existing KALLSYMS_ALL
documentation that this option is not what they need. Improve the help
message and make it clearer that KALLSYMS is enough in the majority of
use cases, and KALLSYMS_ALL should really be used very rarely.

Signed-off-by: Artem Bityutskiy <Artem.Bityutskiy@...ia.com>
Cc: Paulo Marques <pmarques@...popie.com>
Cc: Michal Marek <mmarek@...e.cz>

---
 init/Kconfig |   18 ++++++++++++------
 1 files changed, 12 insertions(+), 6 deletions(-)

diff --git a/init/Kconfig b/init/Kconfig
index 56240e7..dae5297 100644
--- a/init/Kconfig
+++ b/init/Kconfig
@@ -968,12 +968,18 @@ config KALLSYMS_ALL
 	bool "Include all symbols in kallsyms"
 	depends on DEBUG_KERNEL && KALLSYMS
 	help
-	   Normally kallsyms only contains the symbols of functions, for nicer
-	   OOPS messages.  Some debuggers can use kallsyms for other
-	   symbols too: say Y here to include all symbols, if you need them 
-	   and you don't care about adding 300k to the size of your kernel.
-
-	   Say N.
+	   Normally kallsyms only contains the symbols of functions for nicer
+	   OOPS messages and backtraces(i.e., symbols from the text and inittext
+	   sections). This is sufficient for most cases. And only in very rare
+	   cases (e.g., when a debugger is used) all symbols are required (e.g.,
+	   names of variables from the data sections, etc).
+
+	   This option makes sure that all symbols are loaded into the kernel
+	   image (i.e., symbols from all sections) in cost of increased kernel
+	   size (depending on the kernel configuration, it may be 300KiB or
+	   something like this).
+
+	   Say N unless you really need all symbols.
 
 config KALLSYMS_EXTRA_PASS
 	bool "Do an extra kallsyms pass"
-- 
1.7.2.3

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