Hey, the i386 iso is hitting a 700MB limit again in -current.
This means it does not fit on a CD-ROM.
An install iso consists of two things, an uncompressed copy of base
used to run the installer and provide a shell, along with compressed
set tarballs containing the full OS that get installed on the target
disk. On i386 these have to be compressed with gzip, otherwise
extraction is too slow (or uses too much RAM) on embedded/low-end
machines.
There are quite a few large things in base.tgz ("large things" defined
as "dynamic binaries taking up a few megabytes") that are uncompressed
on the install ISO.
Please note that this list was obtained by doing a quick ls of
various directories and is not supposed to be definitive.
- named, in the (long) process of being replaced with unbound
- dhcpd
- racoon and ipsec tools
- atf
- iasl
- ioctlprint
There are several options to proceed:
1. accelerate the replacement of BIND with unbound
2. create a new 'servers' set containing BIND, dhcpd, etc
(sshd and postfix remaining in base)
3. move atf to the 'comp' or 'tests' set
4. move iasl, ioctlprint to the 'comp' set
5. grow support for compressed ramdisks (volunteers?)
Of these, 2), 3), 4) seem to be the ones that will cause the least
friction.
Please let me know how to proceed.
