From: Ross Biro The driver for /proc/config.gz consumes rather a lot of memory and it is in fact possible to build it as a module. In some ways this is a bit risky, because the .config which is used for compiling kernel/configs.c isn't necessarily the same as the .config which was used to build vmlinux. But OTOH the potential memory savings are decent, and it'd be fairly dumb to build your configs.o with a different .config. Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton Cc: "Randy.Dunlap" Cc: Sam Ravnborg Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton --- init/Kconfig | 2 +- scripts/Makefile | 2 +- 2 files changed, 2 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) diff -puN init/Kconfig~allow-proc-configgz-to-be-built-as-a-module init/Kconfig --- a/init/Kconfig~allow-proc-configgz-to-be-built-as-a-module +++ a/init/Kconfig @@ -202,7 +202,7 @@ config AUDITSYSCALL ensure that INOTIFY is configured. config IKCONFIG - bool "Kernel .config support" + tristate "Kernel .config support" ---help--- This option enables the complete Linux kernel ".config" file contents to be saved in the kernel. It provides documentation diff -puN scripts/Makefile~allow-proc-configgz-to-be-built-as-a-module scripts/Makefile --- a/scripts/Makefile~allow-proc-configgz-to-be-built-as-a-module +++ a/scripts/Makefile @@ -13,7 +13,7 @@ hostprogs-$(CONFIG_VT) += conm hostprogs-$(CONFIG_PROM_CONSOLE) += conmakehash hostprogs-$(CONFIG_IKCONFIG) += bin2c -always := $(hostprogs-y) +always := $(hostprogs-y) $(hostprogs-m) # The following hostprogs-y programs are only build on demand hostprogs-y += unifdef _