8.0-RELEASE -> -STABLE and size of /

[Ruben de Groot]

On Sat, Jan 23, 2010 at 10:43:49PM +1030, Daniel O'Connor typed:
> On Sat, 23 Jan 2010, Ruben de Groot wrote:
> > On Sat, Jan 23, 2010 at 01:23:28AM +0000, Adrian Wontroba typed:
> > > I concur that the 235 MB size of an amd64 8.0 kernel is a bit of a
> > > surprise. An i386 kernel is a mere 135 MB.  IMO increasing the
> > > sysinstall default root slice size for at least amd64 would be a
> > > good thing.
> >
> > To be a little more precise: it's not the >kernel< that is so big.
> > It's all the (mostly not needed) modules and symbol files that fill
> > up /
> 
> Maybe they could be put somewhere else..
> 
> I don't think you need them unless remote debugging and in that case you 
> are multiuser (I would have thought anyway).
> 
> If they went into /usr then /boot could remain slim.

But what if you have /usr on a gmirror, glabel, zfs filesystem or any other 
device that is not compiled in your kernel? Sure you can build a custom kernel,
but I would expect a lot of questions, frustrations and footshooting from
such a change.

I think increasing / (again) would be the least painfull.

Ruben