Re: bzip2 compression of kernel or initial ramdisk?

Dave Cinege (dcinege@psychosis.com)
Tue, 02 Jun 1998 02:35:38 -0400

I wrote a kernel feature called initrd-archive (One day it will hopefully be
implemented into the official tree), that will allow you to use tar.gz archives
instead of raw images, and will dynamically create a minix fs on /dev/ram0 at
boot. Not only are .tgz's a good shot smaller then a compressed raw image, but
the total cost to the zImage is only +~2K. The 2.1 version I wrote also is
optimized to cut memory usage down during all this gunziping and untaring.

That said, bzip2 might not be a bad addition for initrd images, and the above
tar's, but I doubt it is worth the cost for the kernel. The question is, how
much K will the unbzip2 itself takeup....that could be the killer.

If someone gets me a unbzip2 library, I know the rd code well enought to help
implement it.

-- 
http://www.psychosis.com/emc/		Elite MicroComputers   732-541-4214 
http://www.psychosis.com/linux-router/	Linux Router Project 
 
"The only way to remain cutting edge, is to design for things that do not yet 
exist."  --  Me   : )


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