[artix-general] Kernel 6.16.1

[Javier]

On 2025-08-18 00:56 PM, artist wrote:
> Another advantage of booster is that it is a lot faster.
> 
> artist
> 
> On 8/18/25 20:29, Javier wrote:
>> On 2025-08-18 00:13 PM, artist wrote:
>>> To preserve space you might also have a look at switching from mkinitcpio too booster.
>>>  From a test box:
>>> % ls -lh /boot/*.img
>>> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root  24M Aug  8 14:34 /boot/booster-linux-fallback.img
>>> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root  25M Jul 27 17:13 /boot/booster-linux-lts-fallback.img
>>> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4.8M Jul 27 17:13 /boot/booster-linux-lts.img
>>> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 6.0M Aug  8 14:34 /boot/booster-linux.img
>>> -rw------- 1 root root  48M Aug  8 14:34 /boot/initramfs-linux-fallback.img
>>> -rw------- 1 root root  49M Aug  8 14:34 /boot/initramfs-linux-lts-fallback.img
>>> -rw------- 1 root root  16M Aug  8 14:33 /boot/initramfs-linux-lts.img
>>> -rw------- 1 root root  16M Aug  8 14:34 /boot/initramfs-linux.img
>>>
>>> artist
>>
>> Thanks @artist, btw, by changing:
>>
>>> #COMPRESSION_OPTIONS=()
>>
>> to:
>>
>>> COMPRESSION_OPTIONS=(--long --ultra -22)
>>
>> and by changing:
>>
>>> #MODULES_DECOMPRESS="no"
>>
>> to:
>>
>>> MODULES_DECOMPRESS="yes"
>>
>> doesn't really gain much, but at least gets me out of the 90+% usage:
>>
>>> % df -h /boot/
>>> Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
>>> /dev/nvme0n1p2  290M  216M   55M  80% /boot
>>
>> And now:
>>
>>> % du -hs /boot/*
>>> 14M     /boot/grub
>>> 902K    /boot/grub-common
>>> 159M    /boot/initramfs-linux-fallback.img
>>> 14M     /boot/initramfs-linux.img
>>> 13M     /boot/intel-ucode.img
>>> du: cannot read directory '/boot/lost+found': Permission denied
>>> 12K     /boot/lost+found
>>> 154K    /boot/memtest86+
>>> 16M     /boot/vmlinuz-linux
>>
>> The initrd backup is still big...  So perhaps time to look for booster or dracut, whatever gives smaller images, :)  I see the linux image at a reasonable size, 16M Roy, not sure why you mentioned 67M, perhaps you're using something different than the "linux" package?
>>
>>> % uname -a
>>> Linux m1 6.16.1-artix1-1 #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Fri, 15 Aug 2025 23:14:52 +0000 x86_64 GNU/Linux
>>
>>
>> Thanks a lot @artis !

Besides my prior fallback question (no idea how you got it with booster) I can report that it's impressively smaller, and it generates in no time:

> % ls -l /boot/*.img
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 6.2M Aug 18 21:02 /boot/booster-linux.img
> -rw------- 1 root root 159M Aug 18 19:02 /boot/initramfs-linux-fallback.img
> -rw------- 1 root root  14M Aug 18 18:59 /boot/initramfs-linux.img
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root  13M Aug 12 15:24 /boot/intel-ucode.img

I'm a bit hesitant given the lack of fallback.  Actually mkinicpio is bad given the fallback.  Without it (it can be removed from the mkinitcpio presets) the default image more then doubles the booster one (14M vs. 6.2M) but it's still reasonable, the current fallback size is not.

Unfortunately grub-mkconfig pushes the default mkinitcpio preset image as the item not requiring a sub-menu (I guess that can be changed on /etc/grub.d/10_linux).  For now I can just copy the one created under the submenu out of it...

Now I found a problem, as I'm using a "la-latin1" keyboard I need the booster "vconsole" flag set to true to make my life a bit easier given special chars, however I can't include that flag since if I do when loading the image I just get a note to hit "enter" to reboot, :(  I guess I'm hitting this:

https://github.com/anatol/booster/issues/234 (vconsole: true blocks booting w/ booster exit status 71)

I use terminus on console/tty (I used it on terminal emulator before until finding ttf-iosevkaterm-nerd)...  Not that I couldn't live without vconsole, but it's sort of handy to refer to the keyboard on its own layout, :)

But I'm happy to see the size decrease, and also how fast it is...

-- 
Javier