config DEBUG_KERNEL bool "Kernel debugging" depends on (ALPHA || ARM || CRIS || H8300 || X86 || IA64 || M68K || M68KNOMMU || MIPS || PARISC || PPC32 || PPC64 || ARCH_S390 || SUPERH || SUPERH64 || SPARC32 || SPARC64 || USERMODE || V850 || X86_64) help Say Y here if you are developing drivers or trying to debug and identify kernel problems. config MAGIC_SYSRQ bool "Magic SysRq key" depends on DEBUG_KERNEL && (ALPHA || ARM || X86 || IA64 || M68K || MIPS || PARISC || PPC32 || PPC64 || ARCH_S390 || SUPERH || SUPERH64 || SPARC32 || SPARC64 || X86_64) help If you say Y here, you will have some control over the system even if the system crashes for example during kernel debugging (e.g., you will be able to flush the buffer cache to disk, reboot the system immediately or dump some status information). This is accomplished by pressing various keys while holding SysRq (Alt+PrintScreen). It also works on a serial console (on PC hardware at least), if you send a BREAK and then within 5 seconds a command keypress. The keys are documented in . Don't say Y unless you really know what this hack does. config MAGIC_SYSRQ bool "Magic SysRq key" depends on DEBUG_KERNEL && (H8300 || M68KNOMMU || V850) depends (USERMODE && MCONSOLE) help Enables console device to interpret special characters as commands to dump state information. config DEBUG_SLAB bool "Debug memory allocations" depends on DEBUG_KERNEL && (ALPHA || ARM || X86 || IA64 || M68K || MIPS || PARISC || PPC32 || PPC64 || ARCH_S390 || SPARC32 || SPARC64 || USERMODE || X86_64) help Say Y here to have the kernel do limited verification on memory allocation as well as poisoning memory on free to catch use of freed memory. config DEBUG_SPINLOCK bool "Spinlock debugging" depends on DEBUG_KERNEL && (ALPHA || ARM || X86 || IA64 || MIPS || PPC32 || (SUPERH && !SUPERH64) || SPARC32 || SPARC64 || USERMODE || X86_64) help Say Y here and build SMP to catch missing spinlock initialization and certain other kinds of spinlock errors commonly made. This is best used in conjunction with the NMI watchdog so that spinlock deadlocks are also debuggable. config DEBUG_SPINLOCK_SLEEP bool "Sleep-inside-spinlock checking" depends on DEBUG_KERNEL && (X86 || IA64 || MIPS || PPC32 || PPC64 || ARCH_S390 || SPARC32 || SPARC64) help If you say Y here, various routines which may sleep will become very noisy if they are called with a spinlock held. config DEBUG_HIGHMEM bool "Highmem debugging" depends on DEBUG_KERNEL && HIGHMEM && (X86 || PPC32 || MIPS || SPARC32) help This options enables addition error checking for high memory systems. Disable for production systems. config DEBUG_BUGVERBOSE bool "Verbose BUG() reporting (adds 70K)" depends on DEBUG_KERNEL && (ARM || ARM26 || M68K || SPARC32 || SPARC64) help Say Y here to make BUG() panics output the file name and line number of the BUG call as well as the EIP and oops trace. This aids debugging but costs about 70-100K of memory. config DEBUG_INFO bool "Compile the kernel with debug info" depends on DEBUG_KERNEL && (ALPHA || CRIS || X86 || IA64 || M68K || MIPS || PARISC || PPC32 || PPC64 || ARCH_S390 || (SUPERH && !SUPERH64) || SPARC64 || V850 || X86_64) help If you say Y here the resulting kernel image will include debugging info resulting in a larger kernel image. Say Y here only if you plan to use gdb to debug the kernel. If you don't debug the kernel, you can say N. config DEBUG_INFO bool "Enable kernel debugging symbols" depends on DEBUG_KERNEL && USERMODE help When this is enabled, the User-Mode Linux binary will include debugging symbols. This enlarges the binary by a few megabytes, but aids in tracking down kernel problems in UML. It is required if you intend to do any kernel development. If you're truly short on disk space or don't expect to report any bugs back to the UML developers, say N, otherwise say Y. if !X86_64 config FRAME_POINTER bool "Compile the kernel with frame pointers" depends on X86 || CRIS || M68KNOMMU || PARISC help If you say Y here the resulting kernel image will be slightly larger and slower, but it will give very useful debugging information. If you don't debug the kernel, you can say N, but we may not be able to solve problems without frame pointers. endif