Re: [PATCH] Compress kernel modules on installation.

From: Arjan van de Ven <arjan@infradead.org>
To: Sam Ravnborg <sam@ravnborg.org>
Cc: Jan Engelhardt <jengelh@medozas.de>,
	Steve Brokenshire <sbrokenshire@xestia.co.uk>,
	linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-kbuild@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH] Compress kernel modules on installation.
Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2009 13:09:08 -0800	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20090118130908.390eb07b@infradead.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20090118210416.GE2978@uranus.ravnborg.org>

On Sun, 18 Jan 2009 22:04:16 +0100
Sam Ravnborg <sam@ravnborg.org> wrote:

> On Fri, Dec 26, 2008 at 08:50:34PM +0100, Jan Engelhardt wrote:
> > 
> > On Friday 2008-12-26 20:48, Sam Ravnborg wrote:
> > >> >> 
> > >> >> This patch allows kernel modules to be compressed when 'make
> > >> >> modules_install' is run after being copied to
> > >> >> the /lib/module/<version>/<...> directory which is useful if
> > >> >> you have module-init-tools installed with --enable-zlib. This
> > >> >> patch adds an option (MODULE_COMPRESS) to the kernel
> > >> >> configuration file (specifically init/Kconfig) so that the
> > >> >> kernel modules will compressed if MODULE_COMPRESS is set.
> > >> 
> > >> I recently started compressing my kernel modules and that saved
> > >> me at least 70 MB of disk space on mostlyallmodconfig.
> > >> (And no, the argument of disks being cheap is not so true with
> > >> CF or SSD.)
> > >> Distro is lazy and wants to wait for upstream to have it,
> > >> so is there any chance of getting this proposal in?
> > >
> > >Steve said he wanted to try to make the solution more
> > >scalable so I am awaiting a new patch.
> > 
> > Hm, all I needed was this patch. It might fire up some people,
> > but it's got all the scalability I could think of..
>  
> Can I ask you to redo this patch.
> I want a way to swith off compression, but it should default be
> enable. So if KBUILD_MODULE_NOCOMPRESS is undefined we will compress
> the modules when we install them.
> 

especially since the decompression is an option for the module tools,
it should be an option for the kernel... 
since it does add a dependency for the module tools (and one that you
might not need; for example I disabled it just to remove a build
requires)

-- 
Arjan van de Ven 	Intel Open Source Technology Centre
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