boot loaders got fatter in the last few days

[Conrad Meyer]

On Fri, Mar 18, 2016 at 10:03 AM, Allan Jude <allanjude at freebsd.org> wrote:
> On 2016-03-18 12:33, Guido Falsi wrote:
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I have just update one of my machines and noticed the booloaders files
>> got quite fat in the last few days, some by a big margin.
>>
>> on an updated machine(r296993):
>>
>> -r--r--r--  1 root  wheel   85794 Mar 18 16:47 /boot/gptboot
>>
>> from a machine I still have not updated(r296719):
>>
>> -r--r--r--  1 root  wheel   16059 Mar 13 21:01 /boot/gptboot

So the loader grew 70 kB.  How big are your disks?

>> I noticed because mu gpt boot partition is 64K and gptzfsboot just
>> passed 100K.
>
> This is a side effect of the loader gaining the ability to boot from GELI
> encrypted partitions.
>
> ...
>
> Maybe we should be putting the GELI enabled boot blocks in a different
> filename? I generally wanted to avoid creating a new version of each
> bootcode with GELI support.


I think we should just suggest that boot partitions be much larger
than 64kB (1MB is still <0.1% of any disk sold today) and not worry
about it too much.  Embedded applications can disable GELI loader
support to save a few bytes.

Best,
Conrad