Re: Installer online help
On Sun, Jun 10, 2001 at 09:34:50PM -0800, Ethan Benson wrote:
> On Sun, Jun 10, 2001 at 04:41:59PM -0700, Chris Tillman wrote:
> > >>
> > >> nano-tiny -T15 -v /help.txt
> > >
> > > why not zcat /help.gz | more ?
> >
> > That would work, but I used tabs to make two columns; using the editor lets
> > me choose how much space for a tab so it's more readable and also gives the
> > novice an interface to use to search for keywords, and scroll back and
> > forth.
>
> you can format it without depending on specific editor features. and
> i thought more could scroll backwords, at least some implementations
> can. it just uses control keys and not the arrows iirc (this was back
> in my Digital Unix days).
>
> > > we could save space using the above command. reading files in editors
> > > is bad practice.
> > >
> > Isn't it all compressed by the time it gets into root.bin?
>
> not the point, we don't have much room on the filesystem itself, the
> larger the filesystem gets the larger the disk image gets.
gzipping a gzipped file doesn't make it any smaller, so compressing before
making it part of the filesystem won't save space. The larger filesystem
created by leaving it uncompressed will be matched by the better
compressability of the filesystem.
OTOH, compressing it first would make it take a different number of disk
blocks, unless it was so small it would take only one or two anyway. Extra
filesystem overhead could be smaller, so gzipping it first might make sense.
Anyway, a smaller uncompressed FS needs less RAM when unpacked. Since it's
kernel memory, it's not pageable, so it really hurts to have big initrds on
very low memory systems.
--
#define X(x,y) x##y
Peter Cordes ; e-mail: X(peter@llama.nslug. , ns.ca)
"The gods confound the man who first found out how to distinguish the hours!
Confound him, too, who in this place set up a sundial, to cut and hack
my day so wretchedly into small pieces!" -- Plautus, 200 BCE
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