Maximum initrd.gz image size for netbooting...
Hi-
Not sure if this should be an offline discussion or not... In response
to Mr. Hess' question about netboot image size limits (to which I had no
idea of the answer) I e-mailed HPA, the syslinux guy. He responded
(posted below) that the only restriction is that the uncompressed +
compressed image must fit into system memory.
That said, we could guesstimate what the maximum image size must be for
any given system memory space, approximating the formula:
k + z + u(z) < M
where k is the size of the kernel, z is the size of the compressed
image, u(z) is the size of the uncompressed image, and M is the system
memory.
Taking as an example the compression ratio of the current
netboot-initrd image found thusly:
erik@linuxbox:/var/ftpd/temp$ gunzip -l ../netboot-initrd.gz
compressed uncompressed ratio uncompressed_name
2153194 7462912 71.1% ../netboot-initrd
Or a ratio of about 3.5 to 1 (2.1 * 3.5 = )
If we were to guess that this estimate will hold, the formula becomes:
k + (4.5 * z) < M
The kernel is presently uncompressed (I think???) and weighs in at
730K. By these numbers, systems with the following memory could handle
the following initrd.gz sizes:
Round down (M - .800 / 4.5 )
System RAM : Max initrd size
16 MB : 3 MB
32 MB : 6.5 MB
64 MB : 14 MB
Does this make sense or am I way off somewhere?
Erik
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [syslinux] Pxelinux Image size restriction?
Date: Wed, 04 Feb 2004 12:08:30 -0800
From: H. Peter Anvin <hpa@zytor.com>
The only limit is that if the image is compressed, the compressed *plus*
the uncompressed image needs to fit in system RAM.
That being said, I have successfully downloaded images over 512 MB in size.
-hpa
Erik Dykema wrote:
> Hi-
> Is there any size restriction (maximum?) on the size of kernels or
> initrd.gz images that pxelinux can fetch over the network and load?
> We are currently loading a 730k kernel, and a 2.1 megabyte initrd.gz
> image, and everything is working fine. It would be nice, however, to
> load larger images that have more stuff on them. Is there any inherent
> maximum (other than system ram) to how large of an image we could load?
> For example, we could compile more drivers into the initrd.gz image,
> and it would become 6 megabytes. Is this too large for pxelinux, the
> PXE protocol, or typical hardware to handle?
>
Joey Hess wrote:
Erik Dykema wrote:
OK, I think i get it, thanks! I was attempting to install the
'testing' distribution, that must be why it didn't work.
So the 'fix' for this is to get the 2.4.24 kernel into testing.
OR, to build a 'testing' version of d-i.
Yes, I may see about getting the 2.4.24 kernel into testing eventually.
However, if you want to test unstable d-i -- and there's no reason to
use the unstable netboot images if you don't -- then you should still
pick unstable.
As a side note, I have a question regarding why the netboot images
need not contain all the necessary drivers? At their current size (2.1
megs) they are too small to fit onto a floppy disk, so they are mostly
used by (perhaps here is where I am wrong?) those doing PXE boots (like
me)?
On the sizes that we are working with ( 1 - 10 megabytes ) I don't
think it would necessarily hurt to include more drivers / modules in the
netboot image.
I think there are some netboot image size limits, though I really don't
know.
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