Bug#402499: initramfs-tools: depmod wastes space and time, please replace it with a modules.dep file
On Monday 11 December 2006 08:23, maximilian attems <maks@sternwelten.at>
wrote:
> nice idea, but in initramfs the depmod call is blazingly fast!
> this can be easily timed in a qemu image.
> so nacked.
The execution time is a minor issue. The major issue is that the depmod
program is simply larger than a full modules.dep file when compressed. Given
that most sane configurations will not have the complete set of kernel
modules (I use modules=list for a very small set of modules) the modules.dep
file will often be smaller than depmod when uncompressed.
Using the modules.dep file saves initramfs size in every case, and saves
memory in some common cases.
> i really don't see your antipathy on BUSYBOX=n
> there you can get rid of glibc which is taking a _huge_
> place on initramfs.
I use lvm root over a software RAID-1 on all my important machines (apart from
laptops which use LVM-root but no RAID). Therefore glibc is required in the
initramfs for both LVM and RAID. If I'm going to have glibc there anyway
then I might as well take advantages of the benefits that busybox offers!
If there were klibc versions of mdadm and vgchange then things would be
different.
Given that the quality of support for root on LVM and RAID has increased
significantly for etch (was it even in the installer before etch?) and that
cryptsetup (which is dynamically linked) is now supported for root it seems
likely that a very large portion of etch users will have glibc in their
initramfs, in fact a majority of users might have it.
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