Hello list, I'm using arch on an old laptop with only 128MB RAM. I had problems compressing the initcpio image with lzma, it always failed allocating memory. The following one-line patch allowed me to set my own compression level in mkinitcpio.conf, with COMPRESSION="lzma -4" --- /sbin/mkinitcpio.orig 2010-10-06 03:23:00.966415649 +0300 +++ /sbin/mkinitcpio 2011-02-26 19:11:36.309682053 +0200 @@ -277,7 +277,7 @@ status=0 if [ -n "${GENIMG}" ]; then echo -n ":: Generating image '${GENIMG}'..." - if ! /sbin/gen_init_cpio ${FILELIST} | ${COMPRESSION} -9 > "${GENIMG}"; then + if ! /sbin/gen_init_cpio ${FILELIST} | ${COMPRESSION} > "${GENIMG}"; then echo "FAILED" status=1 else What do you think? Should this make it to the distro? Also I actually think that *not* forcing -9 compression level, and letting the tool use its default is a good thing. Thanks, Dimitris