Release Engineering

Tasklist

FS#36582 - Installation media size requirements growing.

Attached to Project: Release Engineering
Opened by Kyle Sanderson (KyleS) - Sunday, 18 August 2013, 02:13 GMT
Last edited by Gerardo Exequiel Pozzi (djgera) - Thursday, 22 August 2013, 02:39 GMT
Task Type General Gripe
Category System
Status Closed
Assigned To No-one
Architecture All
Severity Medium
Priority Normal
Reported Version
Due in Version Undecided
Due Date Undecided
Percent Complete 100%
Votes 1
Private No

Details

Description: I used to be able to throw Arch Linux onto a my trusty 512MB USB key with ease; now unfortunately the installation image has grown beyond 480MB, rendering it unfeasible to use a small drive to install Arch Linux.

Additional info: Something has added 100MB to the installation size recently, I used to be able to dd multilib Arch to my key. I realize the size of data is ever growing, but honestly I could do without zsh and the like on my installation medium. This is preventing me from installing Arch; I'm sure others have the same problem.

Steps to reproduce: Download Arch; use dd to copy the ISO to a smaller USB key. Realize the installation medium requirements have been raising for years, from 240MB~ to 520MB. Unable to install Arch; cry a little.
This task depends upon

Closed by  Gerardo Exequiel Pozzi (djgera)
Thursday, 22 August 2013, 02:39 GMT
Reason for closing:  Not a bug
Additional comments about closing:  Please use arch-releng mailing list for discuss this. Thanks.
Comment by Kyle Keen (keenerd) - Sunday, 18 August 2013, 03:09 GMT
If you are curious what software is in the installer, check these files:
https://projects.archlinux.org/archiso.git/tree/configs/releng/packages.both
https://projects.archlinux.org/archiso.git/tree/configs/releng/packages.x86_64

Dig around the git logs and figure what was added.

Some of the packages do seem a little silly. Wireless and PPP drivers are good, people need those to get online. But once you are online, you can pacman -S whatever crazy software you want. I can't even begin to guess why nmap, tcpdump, darkhttpd, lftp and netcat are there.

edit: Did some more digging. I tweaked Pacgraph to use CSIZE instead of ISIZE (compressed better reflects the live cd image). The total size of the packages is 102MB. Plus another 100MB for i686. Leaves 150MB (for each arch) for the rest of [core] and bootable parts. Here is the breakdown by cumulative CSIZE or the top 10 items:

Total size: 102MB
5045kB grub
4356kB nmap
1576kB refind-efi
1550kB mc
784kB elinks
652kB sudo
576kB dhclient
569kB openssh
520kB irssi
499kB lftp

And here is the pacgraph of it: http://kmkeen.com/tmp/arch-iso-2013-08.png

Perl is required by rsync (but should be optional), openssh (not used at all) and texinfo (actually uses perl). ICU is needed by gptfdisk, not sure why but seems a little odd.

Comment by Gerardo Exequiel Pozzi (djgera) - Wednesday, 21 August 2013, 22:15 GMT
Do not use isohybrid method. Instead, do a manual copy of files, in your case, just only for your needed architecture (skip uneeded arch/${arch}/root-image.fs.sfs)
Comment by Kyle Sanderson (KyleS) - Thursday, 22 August 2013, 02:38 GMT
This is a regression with Arch Linux releases. Why this was closed is completely beyond me.
Comment by Gerardo Exequiel Pozzi (djgera) - Thursday, 22 August 2013, 02:38 GMT
Please use arch-releng mailing list for discuss this. Thanks.

Loading...