Re: Kernel packages much smaller on trixie?
On Sat, Aug 16, 2025 at 08:53:59AM +0100, Tim Woodall wrote:
> I haven't migrated anything to trixie yet but I do have a test system.
>
> I've just done a kernel upgrade:
>
> The following NEW packages will be installed:
> initramfs-tools-bin linux-image-6.12.41+deb13-amd64
> The following packages will be upgraded:
> initramfs-tools initramfs-tools-core linux-image-amd64
> 3 upgraded, 2 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
> Need to get 107 MB of archives.
> After this operation, 110 MB of additional disk space will be used.
>
> Compare this with a bookworm upgrade:
>
> The following NEW packages will be installed:
> linux-image-6.1.0-38-amd64
> The following packages will be upgraded:
> linux-image-amd64
> 1 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
> Need to get 69.1 MB of archives.
> After this operation, 409 MB of additional disk space will be used.
>
>
> root@trixie17-build:/lib/modules# du -sc *
> 110600 6.12.27-amd64
> 109184 6.12.41+deb13-amd64
> 219784 total
>
> root@mail17:/lib/modules# du -sc *
> 403676 6.1.0-37-amd64
> 403632 6.1.0-38-amd64
> 807308 total
>
> This is a welcome change but how has it been achieved? I can't immediately
> find any "modules" packages where things might have been moved out of the
> default install.
Modules are compressed now, for instance if you look at the ext4 one:
ls -lh /lib/modules/6.1.0-38-amd64/kernel/fs/ext4/ext4.ko
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2.0M Aug 2 15:13 /lib/modules/6.1.0-38-amd64/kernel/fs/ext4/ext4.ko
vs.
ls -lh /lib/modules/6.12.41+deb13-amd64/kernel/fs/ext4/ext4.ko.xz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 383K Aug 12 05:28 /lib/modules/6.12.41+deb13-amd64/kernel/fs/ext4/ext4.ko.xz
This was:
https://salsa.debian.org/kernel-team/linux/-/merge_requests/871
(and followup work)
Regards,
Salvatore
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