[BusyBox] kernel base gunzip

Mark Whitley markw at lineo.com
Thu Nov 16 00:28:23 UTC 2000


On Wed, Nov 15, 2000 at 04:55:02PM -0700, Erik Andersen wrote:
> On Thu Nov 16, 2000 at 10:36:22AM +1100, Glenn McGrath wrote:
> > This may be slightly offtopic, but anyway..
> > 
> > The linux kernel has internal code to do gunzip, if there was a kernel
> > module that could provide access to the internal gunzip code from
> > userland then it would provide an almost free gunzip as far as space
> > goes.
> > 
> > Is this a good/bad idea ?
> 
> Not too bad an idea.  However, Linus would never accept it.  First, the kernel
> gunzip code is usually init code, and it thrown away at boot, so you would have
> to de-init it.  The cleanest way to do it would be similar to how sendfile(2)
> works, where you feed an open file descriptor to the kernel.  I'm not sure it
> would be a huge win -- right now gunzip adds 9.5k, and gzip adds 10.56k.  Not
> enough cost to be worth fighting the kernel gunziping battle, IMHO,

Something else to keep in mind: Busybox could (potentially?) be used with
kernels other than Linux. We have some rudimentary support for HURD and there
has been some passive interest in testing Busybox with a FreeBSD or Minix
kernel.

Bearing that in mind, I don't think Busybox should be getting into bed too
tight with the Linux kernel.

Mark Whitley
markw at lineo.com





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