[arch-releng] archiso

[Gerardo Exequiel Pozzi]

  On 07/02/2010 04:09 AM, Thomas Bächler wrote:
> Am 02.07.2010 02:54, schrieb Gerardo Exequiel Pozzi:
>>   On 07/01/2010 06:57 PM, Pascal wrote:
>>> So in my makefile there's a
>>> chroot $(WORKDIR)/root-image /usr/bin/mandb -qc
>>>
>>> May be directly in archiso...
>>>
> Careful! Doing that once the ISO has already booted will fail on systems
> with few memory. Currently, we generate the locales in the live system,
> and that also fails with less than 128MB memory - and takes quite a long
> time.
>
With less than 128MB of RAM (for example 96MB) => kernel panic while 
unpacking initramfs.
>> That is true.
>> But there is one issue with iso images sizes (core-dual.iso)
>>
>> 1) current (2010.05) official media is 659MB, so addding
>> "1.7MB+compression" is not an issue.
>> 2) current (today generated images 2010.07.01) is 702MB!. Size is over
>> 2MB of the allowed limit for a CD-ROM, adding more data become a problem++.
> Hmm, weird, can you find out what's so big? 702MB is okay for a CD (I
> think the limit without overburning is 703), but that growth has to come
> from somwhere.
2010.07/2010.05: 166/160 175/169 336/324: +6 +6 +12
2010.07/2010.05: 345/324 362/340 702/659: +21 +22 +43

Some packages has grow for example kernel-lts, new kernel26-docs...
>> Anyway if big size is a problem for next iso, I think that dual images
>> need to be generated with archiso2dual "-T split" instead of (like now)
>> "-T basic"
> A few things we could/should do:
> 1) Create separate core-pkgs for i686, x86_64 and any. It's a bit
> complex to do that, but it'll save some duplication.
Yup, a the gain is small (~12MB) but will help in future. (this 
currently not implemented in archiso2dual)
> 2) Add more architecture-independent files from the squashfs to a common
> squashfs. Also very complex though.
Yes and this is implemented in archiso2dual (using -T split) /usr/share 
is removed of both root-images.sqfs
and a separate usrshare.sqfs is created.

Only doing will be again below 700MB barrier: 645M 
archlinux-2010.07.01-core-dual.iso (-T split)


> 3) Clean the squashfs from files we don't need in the live environment -
> not sure which, but there might be some.
I think when -T split option does not satisfy 700M removing files can be 
and option.
(currently archiso2dual -T full, read a file called removefiles.lst that 
by default removes: boot usr/include usr/share/doc usr/share/info 
usr/share/man usr/src)

> 4) Use lzma for squashing. It is a problem, because that won't be in
> 2.6.35 and likely neither 2.6.36. However, small and working patches do
> exist, Linus just rejected them for maintainability and quality reasons.
> We could have a separate kernel26-archiso which differs from kernel26
> just by having squashfs-lzma capability - just until the new lzma
> compression code is finished.
Yes :(
The gain is about ~40MB is root-image.sqfs

-- 
Gerardo Exequiel Pozzi
\cos^2\alpha + \sin^2\alpha = 1