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paul_zm
n00b
Joined: 01 Jan 2004
Posts: 13
Location: Woudenberg
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 Posted: Sat Jan 10, 2009 2:00 pm Post subject: Size of initramfs |
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Recently I build a new kernel using genkernel. I hadn't done it for a while so I thought it
would be good to get a new one. So I did and all looks like it works but there is one thing
that I find is most strange. The size of the initramfs file of my previous kernel was roughly 2Mb.
But the new one is around 24Mb. How can that be? As far as I know I did not do anything different
then before.
| Code: |
drwx------ 2 root root 12288 Nov 22 2004 lost+found
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 1 Nov 22 2004 boot -> .
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Jul 23 2005 .keep
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1539384 Jan 23 2008 kernel-genkernel-x86-2.6.23-gentoo-r6
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 869128 Jan 23 2008 System.map-genkernel-x86-2.6.23-gentoo-r6
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1994296 Jan 23 2008 initramfs-genkernel-x86-2.6.23-gentoo-r6
drwxr-xr-x 24 root root 600 Apr 19 2008 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2400128 Dec 25 16:08 kernel-genkernel-x86-2.6.26-gentoo-r4
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1142796 Dec 25 16:08 System.map-genkernel-x86-2.6.26-gentoo-r4
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 24422417 Dec 25 18:07 initramfs-genkernel-x86-2.6.26-gentoo-r4
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 1024 Dec 27 11:00 grub
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 2048 Dec 27 21:26 .
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Is there something I can do to reduce the size of this file? I want that because my boot partition
is only 50Mb. |
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NeddySeagoon
Administrator
Joined: 05 Jul 2003
Posts: 54847
Location: 56N 3W
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| Posted: Sat Jan 10, 2009 2:37 pm Post subject: |
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paul_zm,
genkernel must be doing something different then.
Time to give up genkernel and roll your own kernel maybe ?
_________________
Regards,
NeddySeagoon
Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail. |
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paul_zm
n00b
Joined: 01 Jan 2004
Posts: 13
Location: Woudenberg
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| Posted: Sun Jan 11, 2009 9:10 am Post subject: |
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| I rather keep using Genkernel and there must be a way to fix this in another way. I am wondering if other people have comparable sizes? |
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d2_racing
Bodhisattva
Joined: 25 Apr 2005
Posts: 13047
Location: Ste-Foy,Canada
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| Posted: Sun Jan 11, 2009 1:17 pm Post subject: |
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| NeddySeagoon wrote: | | Time to give up genkernel and roll your own kernel maybe ? |
Each time that there's a new kernel version, there a lot of new stuffs, so it's normal that his InitramFs is bigger and bigger. |
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NeddySeagoon
Administrator
Joined: 05 Jul 2003
Posts: 54847
Location: 56N 3W
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| Posted: Sun Jan 11, 2009 1:24 pm Post subject: |
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paul_zm,
The initrd is a real root filesystem in a file. Its either a gzipped ext2 filesystem in a file or a cpio archive of other cpio archives.
Either way, the kernel can unpick it and mount it as its root to do the things it needs to do to mount your real root.
So what huge libraries are in it ?
You can unpick it and look around.
As d2_racing says, all the kernel modules are in there too ... thats almost every module known to Linus. you will use very few of them.
This list keeps growing too but I doubt it accounts for a 20 fold increase in initrd size over a few kernel versions.
_________________
Regards,
NeddySeagoon
Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail. |
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paul_zm
n00b
Joined: 01 Jan 2004
Posts: 13
Location: Woudenberg
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| Posted: Sun Jan 11, 2009 5:05 pm Post subject: |
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Thanks for the answers, I found the problem.
When I ran genkernel with the --menuconfig option I saved my configuration under
a different file name instead of the standard .config. So it probably did a kernel build
with the standard .config that comes with the distribution instead of using mine. I thought
it would always save it under the name .config anyway, apparently not. |
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