Package: initramfs-tools-core Version: 0.132 Severity: normal Dear Maintainer,
mkinitramfs defaults to -9 (maximum compression) for lzop but this setting makes lzop a very poor choice. I've did some benchmarks with the compressors listed in initramfs.conf and lzop -9 takes the longest. One normally would select lzop though for very fast compression with minimal compression and lzop -9 clearly isn't doing that very well. Could the -9 please be removed from lzop? If someone wants better compression then they should use a different compressor like gzip or xz. Thanks, Michael Schaller Benchmark results from a Lenovo ThinkStation P520: $ sudo mkinitramfs -c cat -o initrd.uncompressed $ ls -sh initrd.uncompressed 152M initrd.uncompressed $ for comp in gzip bzip2 lzma lzop 'lzop -9' xz; do echo "$comp:"; cat initrd.uncompressed | time $comp > "initrd.$comp"; ls -sh "initrd.$comp"; echo; done gzip: 4.78user 0.04system 0:04.84elapsed 99%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 1496maxresident)k 0inputs+99920outputs (0major+145minor)pagefaults 0swaps 49M initrd.gzip bzip2: 9.31user 0.13system 0:09.45elapsed 99%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 8300maxresident)k 72inputs+92152outputs (1major+888minor)pagefaults 0swaps 45M initrd.bzip2 lzma: 46.41user 0.13system 0:46.55elapsed 99%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 97480maxresident)k 144inputs+63384outputs (2major+2518minor)pagefaults 0swaps 31M initrd.lzma lzop: (what mkinitramfs should use) 0.37user 0.09system 0:00.52elapsed 89%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 1744maxresident)k 416inputs+139912outputs (0major+246minor)pagefaults 0swaps 69M initrd.lzop lzop -9: (what mkinitramfs actually uses) 47.60user 0.14system 0:47.82elapsed 99%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 2152maxresident)k 0inputs+111760outputs (0major+325minor)pagefaults 0swaps 55M 'initrd.lzop -9' xz: 46.77user 0.10system 0:46.88elapsed 99%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 97472maxresident)k 0inputs+63344outputs (0major+2535minor)pagefaults 0swaps 31M initrd.xz Sorted by initrd size (lowest first): 31M/46.55s lzma 31M/46.88s xz 45M/9.45s bzip2 49M/4.84s gzip 55M/47.82s lzop -9 (what mkinitramfs actually uses) 69M/0.52s lzop (what mkinitramfs should use) Sorted by time (lowest first): 0.52s/69M lzop (what mkinitramfs should use) 4.84s/49M gzip 9.45s/45M bzip2 46.55s/31M lzma 46.88s/31M xz 47.82s/55M lzop -9 (what mkinitramfs actually uses)
