Re: [PATCH v2] arm64: Allow packing uncompressed images into distro packages

Bjorn Andersson
2024-11-10T16:47:16Z

On Wed, Oct 16, 2024 at 05:44:54PM +0100, Marc Zyngier wrote:
> Hi Bjorn,
>
> On Wed, 11 Sep 2024 03:53:16 +0100,
> Bjorn Andersson <andersson@kernel.org> wrote:
> >
> > From: Bjorn Andersson <quic_bjorande@quicinc.com>
> >
> > The distro packages (deb-pkg, pacman-pkg, rpm-pkg) are generated using
> > the compressed kernel image, which means that the kernel once installed
> > can not be booted with systemd-boot.
>
> Are you sure? I just installed a guest with systemd-boot
> (252.30-1~deb12u, as shipped in Debian), and it is perfectly able to
> boot a compressed kernel.
>

Sorry for the late response, to verify I did "make defconfig bindeb-pkg"
and crafted a disk image using mkosi. It contains:

# apt info systemd-boot
Package: systemd-boot
Version: 257~rc1-4

It fails to load my the compressed image:
../src/boot/efi/boot.c:2557@image_start: Error loading \debian\6.12.0-rc6-next-20241108-00003-ga216563e3174-dirty\vmlinuz: Unsupported

Which is expected per per this discussion:
https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/23788

> >
> > This differs from the packages generated by the distros themselves,
> > which uses the uncompressed image.
> >
> > Use the newly introduced CONFIG_COMPRESSED_INSTALL option to allow
> > selection of which version of the kernel image should be packaged into
> > the distro packages.
>
> I'm normally building kernels as Debian packages, without any of
> CONFIG_EFI_ZBOOT or CONFIG_COMPRESSED_INSTALL.
>

My goal is to make "make defconfig bindeb-pkg" (and the other -pkg
targets) boot out of the box in a "standard system".

> As a result, the installed kernel image of a Debian package shoots up
> from ~8M to an impressive 25M, since we're not picking the compressed
> image anymore. Storage may be cheap, but still.
>

No argument about this.

> I really don't think CONFIG_COMPRESSED_INSTALL should change the
> existing behaviours, and a new option would be better suited to enable
> this new setup if deemed necessary.
>

My main concern is that the "make *-pkg" targets create packages with
the compressed image, while at least Arch Linux Arm, Debian, and Fedora
are packaging uncompressed images in their official packages.

Regards,
Bjorn

> Thanks,
>
> M.
>
> --
> Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible.