Re: [Rule-list] Slinky questions

[Ed Blackman]

On Mon, Aug 12, 2002 at 12:44:47AM -0400, Michael Fratoni wrote:
> http://www.tuxfan.homeip.net:8080/rule/slinky/build_scripts/
> 
> They should give you a general idea of the process.

Thanks, I'll take a look later.

I've been playing around with Lua, and like it more the more I work
with it.  The interpreter binary is 122k statically linked, not 77k
like I mistakenly said before.  At that size, it will still fit on
disk1 without having to kick anything else off, though there's
precious little space left.

I do have some ideas on how to save space, some of which can be
implemented even without going to Lua.

- Extract rpm files (the binary and config files) from the rpm package
  file, rather than including them on the disks. (Package files are
  just cpio archives with a non-standard header, so you can extract
  files from them without needing rpm installed.)
  - Advantages: 
    - 40k savings on rootfs, 732k (!) savings on disk2
    - No rpm version incompatibilities: the version in the rpm
      package is always going to be the right one for that version of
      Redhat.
  - Disadvantages: 
    - Could be tricky locating the rpm package, given the differences
      in version between Redhat versions, and the potential that users
      have upgraded it.
- Loopmount RedHat/base/stage2.img from the first RH CD, use rpm from
  there.
  - Advantages:
    - same as above
    - easier to find reliably than the rpm package
  - Disadvantages:
    - Additional memory usage of one extra loopmount
- Load nfs modules (nfs, lockd, sunrpc) from disk2
  - Advantages:
    - Approx. 275k savings on rootfs
  - Disadvantages:
    - Some additional complexity in installer
- Strip parser from Lua binary.  Lua executes a script by parsing it
  to produce bytecode, then executing the bytecode produced.  It's
  designed to be embedded, though, so it's easy to eliminate the
  parser and only use preparsed ("compiled") bytecode.
  - Advantages:
    - Approx. 40k savings on rootfs
    - Approx 50-75% savings on each script
  - Disadvantages:
    - Bytecode isn't human readable or editable.

Thoughts?

Ed

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