Re: OFFTOPIC: Re: bzip2 for kernel dists?

H. Peter Anvin (hpa@transmeta.com)
16 Dec 1997 05:14:31 GMT

Followup to: <Pine.LNX.3.95.971215233858.343c-100000@inorganic5.fdt.net>
By author: Jon Lewis <jlewis@inorganic5.fdt.net>
In newsgroup: linux.dev.kernel
>
> > I like booting durning my lifetime!
> > I also like booting on a computer with 4megs of ram..
> > Bzip needs termendous amount of ram to decompress in...
>
> Speaking of tremendous amounts of RAM, I don't mean to sound like a
> whiner, but this bzip2 kick has really begun to put a strain on my kernel
> mirror. I noticed the mirror drive was down to about 50mb free, and so I
> just modified the mirror script telling it to ignore .bz2 files. That
> freed about 340mb. It might save a lot of space (space=money for most
> people) if a single format were picked and used.
>
> If bzip is so great, why not start distributing kernels and patches as
> bzip only (starting at the current 2.1.x) and force everyone who wants
> >2.1.7x or 2.2.x, to get bzip first?
>

This is silly. As it is now, people have a choice. You also have a
choice -- you don't have to mirror both formats if you don't want to.

I consider .gz to be the standard format for Linux for the forseeable
future. In fact, this discussion reminds me a lot of what went on
when Linux gradually switched from .Z to .gz format, except this time
the "conservative" faction has a much stronger argument.

The .bz2 files on ftp.kernel.org are automatically generated from the
.gz files. If you don't want to, don't mirror them. In fact, the
.bz2 files are liable to go away if we run short on disk space.

-hpa

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