On 2024-07-19 16:43:47 +0200, Diederik de Haas wrote: > [ not including debian-release for this ] > > On Friday, 19 July 2024 15:54:57 CEST Vincent Lefevre wrote: > > On 2024-07-19 14:32:28 +0200, Diederik de Haas wrote: > > > On Friday, 19 July 2024 13:08:50 CEST Vincent Lefevre wrote: > > > > When upgrading the firmware: > > > > > > > > [...] > > > > Setting up firmware-intel-graphics (20240610-1) ... > > > > Setting up firmware-iwlwifi (20240610-1) ... > > > > Setting up firmware-misc-nonfree (20240610-1) ... > > > > Setting up firmware-nvidia-graphics (20240610-1) ... > > > > Setting up firmware-intel-misc (20240610-1) ... > > > > Setting up firmware-mediatek (20240610-1) ... > > > > Processing triggers for initramfs-tools (0.142) ... > > > > update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-6.9.9-amd64 > > > > zstd: error 70 : Write error : cannot write block : No space left on > > > > device > > > > > > If you do not need all that firmware, try removing the ones you > > > don't need. Especially if you don't need nvidia-graphics firmware, > > > remove that because that is BIG (and the reason it got split out > > > from misc-nonfree). It's a RECOMMENDS, so you can remove it (if you > > > don't need it). > > > > The graphics card is a Nvidia one, so I probably need this firmware. > > Agreed, you should have that firmware package installed. > I learned something new today: Are you using plymouth? > Because plymouth does include GPU kernel modules and the firmware for it.
The plymouth package is installed because of this: qaa:~> aptitude why plymouth i desktop-base Recommends plymouth-label i A plymouth-label Depends plymouth (= 24.004.60-2) (so I suspect like on most non-virtual machine). The Recommends was added due to https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=927077 I can see that it is started by systemd: Jul 19 13:45:10 qaa systemd[1]: Starting plymouth-start.service - Show Plymouth Boot Screen... [...] Jul 19 13:45:10 qaa systemd[1]: Started plymouth-start.service - Show Plymouth Boot Screen. [...] FYI, I've never asked for Plymouth. It just seems to be the default. In any case, it seems to be needed: from the package description: However, in event-driven boot systems Plymouth can also usefully handle user interaction such as password prompts for encrypted file systems. But I've never seen "graphical animation" as also mentioned by the package description: Plymouth provides a boot-time I/O multiplexing framework - the most obvious use for which is to provide an attractive graphical animation in place of the text messages that normally get shown during boot. I see the text messages instead (which is what I want anyway). > > In any case, the upgrade should work for any user, including when > > all these packages are needed. > > The real problem seems to be the size of /boot/ ... I recall that it has never been a problem until now. > A 512 MB /boot/ partition *can* work nowadays, but it gets problematic when > you use plymouth which then includes firmware for GPU modules ... and those > have exploded in size ... mainly nvidia though. The problem is that this is new. Something smarter should be done, like installing in the boot partition only what is needed. > See f.e. > https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/firmware/linux-firmware.git/commit/?id=f4a3c72e5c413a601d1e21f9606f1c94a610d05d > > But IIUC, the default size for /boot/ partition by d-i is 512 MB and > I think that's problematic, especially since enlarging the /boot > partition is not easy to do for 'average' users. This is probably why my boot partition has this size (I tend not to change any default, unless I know a change is needed or useful). > The kernels themselves have got bigger over time which was > previously already reported as (being/becoming) problematic, > especially if you have several kernels installed. On my machines, I normally have 2 or 3 kernels permanently: stable (optionally), the latest unstable, and some previous one (known to work well, in case of issue with the latest unstable). When a new kernel is available, this gives 3 or 4 kernels temporarily. On the present machine, I have only 2 kernels permanently, and 3 temporarily (during the regeneration of the initrd.img-* file, one also needs the space for the backup, e.g. in case of crash during the copy). Until now, there was the space for 4, and perhaps 5. > But it seems the initrd file sizes increase now really causes problems. > Especially if GPU firmware files get included in them. > > I don't use plymouth and (therefor) I don't have GPU modules nor GPU firmware > files in them ... and my initrd is 37M in size (for 6.9.9). This is what I can see on some other machine where I don't have plymouth installed (just because I had removed it to avoid the old bug 927153). BTW, the error message doesn't even give the needed space and doesn't say that the failure comes from the /boot partition size. -- Vincent Lefèvre <vinc...@vinc17.net> - Web: <https://www.vinc17.net/> 100% accessible validated (X)HTML - Blog: <https://www.vinc17.net/blog/> Work: CR INRIA - computer arithmetic / AriC project (LIP, ENS-Lyon)
