Re: Upx to compress bzimages?

[Glenn McGrath <bug1@optushome.com.au>]

On Wed, 29 Jan 2003 13:51:12 -0700
Erik Andersen <andersen@codepoet.org> wrote:

> The kernel compresses itself using gzip, so upx isn't likely to
> be useful there.  It would be much more useful when used on the
> rest of userspace.  Though I suspect you would get better results
> by simply switching the initrd filesystem from ext2 to cramfs.


Turns out that cramfs uses more space than ext2 which surprises me,
but i think cramfs's advantage is that it could reduce memory
requirements, a boot-root floppy not needing an ramfs at all.

(bytes)
757889 net-initrd.romfs.gz
765815 net-initrd.ext2.gz
874360 net-initrd.cramfs.gz
880640 net-initrd.cramfs

romfs is the winner as far as initrd size goes, its also the smallest of
the three filesystem in terms of okernel size.


So i still say romfs is a better choice, but cramfs is worth thinking
about for lowmem installs if we need such a thing.

Now if only we could have romfs built into the kernel.....



Glenn