Opened 3 days ago
#898 new enhancement
Initial RAM disk minimization
| Reported by: | Jiri Svoboda | Owned by: | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Priority: | major | Milestone: | |
| Component: | helenos/unspecified | Version: | mainline |
| Keywords: | Cc: | ||
| Blocker for: | Depends on: | ||
| See also: |
Description
Currently the entire OS resides on the initial RAM disk, both in case of live CD and in case of hard disk install.
This can give speed advantage in case of booting from a real CD-ROM. On the other hand, it increases RAM usage (the entire RAM disk is loaded in memory), and creates a long delay in boot where we wait for the large RAM disk to uncompress/load.
On platforms where the size of the initial image is limited, this limits what can be built into the system.
RAM disk minimization means it will only contain a smaller subset of files sufficient to mount the system volume (e.g. drivers, file systems). The rest will be stored directly on the system volume (e.g. ISO file system on the CD, ext4 on the disk).
This can make boot faster and reduce RAM usage. It might be useful to have the option of either falling to the old behavior or providing the system volume in a single file for CD-ROM image for speed advantage on a real CD-ROM (keep doing that by default?)
