Per ridurre il kernel il piu' possibile, e suppotare tutto cio' di cui hai bisogno, e' consigliabile
renderlo il piu' modulare possibile. Infatti, hai bisogno di solo cose incluse direttamente
nel kernel: l'accesso IDE/SCSI al disco e il supporto ext2.

cd /usr/src/linux; make xconfig

 

Set Processor family to PPro/6x86MX for Pentium II/III
systems.

Enable MTRR for PentiumPro/II/III and newer AMD K6-2/3 systems.

Only enable Symmetric multiprocessing if you are using a multiprocessor box.

Disable Advanced Power Management if you are running a server configuration.

Disable chipset/bugfix support for all chipsets you DON'T have.

Example: CMD640 and RZ1000

Enable Generic PCI bus-master DMA support and Use DMA by default

Enable any custom support for chipsets you DO have.

Example: VIA82C586 for VIA VP2/3 and MVP3 motherboards.

Enable RAID-0 (striping) if you have multiple identical disks.

Disable Kernel/User netlink socket

Enable only the SCSI device types you actually have.

Example: SCSI disk, but not tape/CD-ROM/generic

Disable Probe all LUNs unless you need it.

Disable Verbose SCSI error reporting

Disable SCSI logging facility

Enable ONLY the specific SCSI controller you have.

Example: Adaptec AIC7xxx

Test and Tune the Maximum number of commands per LUN

Disable ALL Network device support that you don't strictly require.

Set the Maximum number of Unix98 PTYs to 128

Disable Watchdog Timer Support

Disable all Filesystems

EXCEPT: ISO 9660 CDROM, Second extended fs,/dev/pts, and /proc support.

Disable all Network File Systems

If you need NFS server support edit the source and #undef
NFS_PARANOIA

Disable all Console drivers

EXCEPT: VGA text console

Disable Enhanced Real Time Clock Support

Disable all non-essential serial and mouse device support.

Disable all Video for Linux

Disable all non-SCSI/IDE/ATAPI CD-ROMs

Disable all ISDN

Disable all Plug and Play

Disable all Amateur Radio

Disable all Loadable modules

Disable all IrDA subsystem

Disable all Joysticks

Disable all Ftape

Disable all Partition Types

Disable all Native Language Support

Disable all Sound cards

Prova anche:

a modificare il file /usr/src/linux/Makefile

cercare la linea

MAKE =make

e cambiarla in

MAKE =make -j5

Poi cambia

CFLAGS = -Wall -Wstrict-prototypes -O2 -fomit-frame-pointer

in

CFLAGS = -Wall -Wstrict-prototypes -O7 -fomit-frame-pointer -fno-exceptions