[Mageia-dev] [ANN] unbloated installer stage1

[Thierry Vignaud]

Hi

Over the years, stage1 (both  all.rdz, boot.iso, ...) got bigger & bigger:
10.0-10.1: 8Mo
10.2-2005: 15M      <=======
2006.0: 13M
2007.0: 14M
2007.1: 10M
2008.0-2008.1: 12M
2009.0: 26M      <=======
2009.1: 32M      <=======
2010.0: 33M
2010.1: 36M (37M on 64 bit)
2011   : 44M
mga1  : 39M (40M on 64bit) (NEW: 53M on non-free 64 bit...)

I've reduced this by:
- removing alt1 (x86_64 only for now):
- removing busybox
- compressing initrd with XZ instead of gzip: only good on firmware
- re compressing kernel modules with XZ instead of gzip:

Removing alt1 (x86_64 only for now) saved 20Mb on boot.iso (50%)
and on boot-nonfree.iso (43%).

Removing busybox saved 1B (5.7% of all.rdz, 5% of boot.iso,
3.7% of boot-nonfree.iso)

Compressing initrd with XZ instead of gzip saved 2Mo (7.7%) on
boot-nonfree.iso (better compressed firmwares).

Re-compressing kernel modules with XZ instead of gzip saved -2.4Mb (15.9%)
on all.rdz, -2Mb (10.5%) on boot.iso, -2mb on boot-nonfree.iso (8.3%)

Total gain on boot.iso: -23Mb (57.5%) on x86_64 (less on i586)

This should save space on ISOs too (we could save more by
not including install/images on ISOs btw)

There's a minor drawback: KA install won't work anymore but
it's a niche. Is there someone using that feature?
The proper way to support it would be to either:
- have a stage1.5 for KA with busybox
- include a static mke2fs (compiled against dietlibc)
- disable KA support

See you