[Grml-devel] 2013.09 feedback - size of small image

[Michael Prokop]

Hi,

* Christoph Biedl [Tue Nov 19, 2013 at 09:37:30PM +0100]:

> At first, the mandatory though belated "Thank you" for 2013.09 -
> there were no issues where I tested -rc1, and the release looks
> good, too. So, as always, please keep the good work, much appreciated.

Thanks :)

> One thing remains. It might be a bit selfish but it's becoming a
> problem for me.

> Some background, at least four years ago I started placing both
> grml-small images (or grml96 once it was established) in
> /boot to have a rescue system available on every physical host in
> both architectures.

> However, in 2013.09 the grml96-small.iso image file grew by another
> 30 Mbyte[0] to a total of 362 Mbyte. Together with kernel images and
> other stuff that lingers in /boot I now am getting close to the 512
> MByte size limit my /boot partition usually has. Looking at the
> trend, see table below, I can expect the next grml release to bring
> me into trouble.

[...]

> This is an old game, I know it, you know it, I know you know it:
> Applications grow fat, folks want more of them, and so the "small"
> image will eventually even exceed the size of the former "medium"
> flavour.

> So my question is, would you consider paying attention to the small
> image size, and putting a hard limit onto it, like 350 Mbyte? Of
> course I could work around this on my end; but none of the options
> look promising:

[...]

> Mind to share your opinion on that?

IMO: We *try* to keep the ISO small (so we don't easily add stuff),
but at the same time I don't want to promise any hard limits which
would limit usefulness of Grml just because of disk size, especially
since 32bit-only systems are getting fewer and fewer and disk space
is getting cheaper at the same time.

Though, if you notice that the ISOs are getting too large for your
purposes there's always the option to speak up and suggest
ways/patches how to reduce ISO size. So just try it the open source
way and contribute. :)

regards,
-mika-
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