Re: tip: bzip2/lzma now in tip:x86/setup-lzma

Alain Knaff
2009-01-05T22:08:17Z

H. Peter Anvin wrote:
> Well, I think the right thing to do at this stage is to simply compress
> the initramfs with the preferred compression method (and if no
> compression method is provided, with none.) This can be relatively
> simply done with a script, I think.

Well, the problem is there is really no "preferred" method for the
ramdisk or initramfs. And picking the one from the kernel might not
work, because the user might have chosen to compress the kernel via
bzip2, but only allowed lzma and gzip for the ramdisk.

> At least that way the whole image is compressed using the preferred
> compression format, and since all the relevant compressors have methods
> of dealing reasonably with uncompressable chunks we should be okay.
>
> Doing the "free as you go" thing is definitely something I would like to
> see, as well as supporting initramfs in high memory. I have looked at
> it a few times, however, it is a nontrivial modification and I haven't
> personally devoted the time to dealing with it. I really don't think we
> want to entangle this issue with the compression patch.
>
> -hpa

Agreed

Alain