On Tue, Feb 01, 2022 at 03:54:03PM +0100, Tobias Powalowski via arch-dev-public wrote: > Hi guys, > did some initcpio optimizing lately and implemented correct symlink > handling. This saves already some space. > https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/73439 > > Now one major problem left in recent initcpio, uncompressed modules: > https://github.com/archlinux/mkinitcpio/pull/25 > https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/72882 > At the moment modules are uncompressed during initcpio creation. This leads > to bigger RAM usage during boot, makes it a bit smaller on storage, due to > not recompress compressed modules. On small initrds for normal boot this is > not a big matter. > > My measurement with all patches added: > Ramdisk size uncompressed modules: 13261677 > Ramdisk size compressed modules: 13112083 > (Note the compressed one is smaller due to the symlink patches added) > Unpacked initramfs uncompressed modules: 35 MB > Unpacked initramfs compressed modules: 26 MB > Using this on the biggest "initramfs testsuite" archboot shows the most > advantages. > > If you like to test it on your own initramfs setup you can use: > https://gitlab.archlinux.org/tpowa/archboot/-/blob/master/usr/share/archboot/patches/31-initcpio.functions.fixed > for /usr/lib/initcpio/functions and recreate your initramdisk. > > Now my question to the list, what should be the default how arch handles > modules in initramfs? > - Shall we leave the modules at compression level used during kernel build? > --> This means the uncompression should be optional. > - Shall we still uncompress the modules always? (Status now) > --> Then using modules as is needs to be optional.
I think we should leave it as-is and much rather have a flag if someone want to compress kernel modules or not. The space increase vs RAM increase vs mkinitcpio build time is something that it's generally a bit hard to make call on and I reckon there are arguments on both of these sides. I wouldn't mind rewriting the patch submitted to mkinitcpio and fix up the issues it had. -- Morten Linderud PGP: 9C02FF419FECBE16
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