Re: [PATCH] Compress kernel modules on installation.

Jan Engelhardt
2008-12-26T19:50:37Z

On Friday 2008-12-26 20:48, Sam Ravnborg wrote:
>> >>
>> >> This patch allows kernel modules to be compressed when 'make
>> >> modules_install' is run after being copied to
>> >> the /lib/module/<version>/<...> directory which is useful if you have
>> >> module-init-tools installed with --enable-zlib. This patch adds an
>> >> option (MODULE_COMPRESS) to the kernel configuration file (specifically
>> >> init/Kconfig) so that the kernel modules will compressed if
>> >> MODULE_COMPRESS is set.
>>
>> I recently started compressing my kernel modules and that saved me
>> at least 70 MB of disk space on mostlyallmodconfig.
>> (And no, the argument of disks being cheap is not so true with
>> CF or SSD.)
>> Distro is lazy and wants to wait for upstream to have it,
>> so is there any chance of getting this proposal in?
>
>Steve said he wanted to try to make the solution more
>scalable so I am awaiting a new patch.

Hm, all I needed was this patch. It might fire up some people,
but it's got all the scalability I could think of..

commit b4a3e1c610c99d4e8b543b97fd722076c6f7c5dd
Author: Jan Engelhardt <jengelh@medozas.de>
Date: Wed Dec 10 20:39:21 2008 +0100

build: install modules compressed
---
scripts/Makefile.modinst | 2 +-
1 files changed, 1 insertions(+), 1 deletions(-)

diff --git a/scripts/Makefile.modinst b/scripts/Makefile.modinst
index efa5d94..c3421a1 100644
--- a/scripts/Makefile.modinst
+++ b/scripts/Makefile.modinst
@@ -17,7 +17,7 @@ __modinst: $(modules)
@:

quiet_cmd_modules_install = INSTALL $@
- cmd_modules_install = mkdir -p $(2); cp $@ $(2) ; $(mod_strip_cmd) $(2)/$(notdir $@)
+ cmd_modules_install = mkdir -p $(2); cp $@ $(2) ; $(mod_strip_cmd) $(2)/$(notdir $@); gzip -9f $(2)/$(notdir $@)

# Modules built outside the kernel source tree go into extra by default
INSTALL_MOD_DIR ?= extra