thanks to all that replied to this thread. i was actually talking about using 
the command strip i.e.

# strip /netbsd

to strip out unneeded symbols etc from the compiled kernel.

Matthias said that ps would stop working (and hinted that other things would 
too). i wouldnt want to live without tools like this.

i usually run a custom kernel anyway on my sparc classic which has all the 
non-sun4m taken out. it seems that no matter how hard i push this little 
machine (50MHz 48MB) e.g. compiling userland, it never uses swap space. the 
only time i saw it use swap was when i tried to migrate all my mrtg network 
monitoring stuff to it, and it totally swamped the box.

GREG