Re: Emdebian iso problem

On Wed, 2012-03-21 at 08:46 +0000, Neil Williams wrote:
> On Wed, 21 Mar 2012 08:03:30 +0000
> Neil Williams <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> > The issue can be worked around, as described in the bug report, but you
> > will likely find that there isn't a suitable kernel for your device
> > available to the installer for Squeeze.
> 
> The reason for that, btw, is that vanilla Debian kernel packages have
> to be VERY LARGE - the typical Squeeze kernel installs to 100Mb whereas
> the typical customised kernel build will be 2.3Mb installed with 6-12Mb
> of modules.
> 
> It completely defeats the point of installing an Emdebian Grip base
> system if the kernel package consumes *more* space than is saved by
> switching to Emdebian Grip in the first place. 
> 
> Also, Emdebian needs to support systems which put the kernel into a
> separate partition, systems which use a "rescue environment" kernel,
> systems which don't use initramfs and boards which don't have
> bootloader packages.
> 
> Debian kernels have to cope with everything, Emdebian installs are
> much, much more specialised for a specific board.
> 
> Just because we've made some ISO's available as an experiment, it does
> not mean that the ISO's are 'useful' for average installations or for
> more than as a test environment. I've got some plans for fixing the
> immediate problem but how to get Debian Installer to use embedded
> kernels is a harder problem.
> 
A less involved to way to get sort of half way between debian proper and
emdebian is to exlude some files with dpkg's path-include and
path-exclude features.

http://raphaelhertzog.com/2010/11/15/save-disk-space-by-excluding-useless-files-with-dpkg/

a good move would be

path-exclude=/usr/share/doc/*
path-include=/usr/share/doc/*/copyright*

as change-log files can be very big.

Shawn Landden