From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id ; Thu, 14 Jun 2001 03:37:53 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id ; Thu, 14 Jun 2001 03:37:43 -0400 Received: from mailhost.idcomm.com ([207.40.196.14]:20667 "EHLO mailhost.idcomm.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id ; Thu, 14 Jun 2001 03:37:28 -0400 Message-ID: <3B2869F9.D0AE17CB@idcomm.com> Date: Thu, 14 Jun 2001 01:38:33 -0600 From: "D. Stimits" Reply-To: stimits@idcomm.com X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.77 [en] (X11; U; Linux 2.4.6-pre1-xfs-2 i686) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 CC: kernel-list Subject: Re: bzDisk compression Q; boot debug Q In-Reply-To: <6B1DF6EEBA51D31182F200902740436802678F59@mail-in.comverse-in.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: unlisted-recipients:; (no To-header on input)@localhost.localdomain Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org "Khachaturov, Vassilii" wrote: > > > Question 2, apparently ramdisk uses gzip compression; the name of the > > kernel from make bzImage seems to maybe refer to bzip2 compression. Is > > the kernel image using gzip or bzip2 compression for bzImage? Would > bzImage stands for "big zImage" - this is a format invented for kernels that > don't fit into zImage. bzip2 has nothing to do with it :) Compression is one of those areas someone is always claiming to own a part of, so it is a pain to deal with. But I still curious, how effective is the compression that "big zImage" uses, compared to something like bzip2? If the algorithm is the same as what gzip uses, I'd imagine that some of my current 1.6 MB boot images could be brought down to 1.44 MB. But then it would also have to be self-extracting, which complicates it, so I'm wondering how effective this current compression is, and if a more bzip2-like system would be beneficial as kernels get larger? D. Stimits, stimits@idcomm.com