Bug#402499: initramfs-tools: depmod wastes space and time, please replace it with a modules.dep file
On Mon, 11 Dec 2006, Russell Coker wrote:
> 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.
it was brought forward multiple times and showed to be false.
> 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.
first of all MODULES=most is the default, so that is the common case!
the case you brought up had a small 1k difference,
so that's not the place to optimize.
> > 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.
hmm ok, i thought you were squeezing for some embedded board.
there i would consider also aboves possibility
othere than that i don't see an improvement.
> 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.
sure by default any etch user will have glibc on initramfs due to
busysbox, udev and module-init-tools.
--
maks
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