[Fedora-livecd-list] [PATCH] cleanupDeleted and container_size - saves 5.5% output size on f7livecd-i686

[Douglas McClendon]

Attached is a patch.

It could be broken into two patches for clarity.  Please review and apply if 
appropriate.

patch#1: add --container-size flag

Using this flag, one can cause the os.img that sits in the squashfs.img, to be a 
larger sparse file than the filesystem contained in it.  By default, the old 
behavior happens.  One somewhat unrealistic, but real justification for this, 
would be booting a livecd on a system with 16G of ram.  Without this flag, you 
would be limited to only writing 2G of data (given the existing f7-livecd-i686 
choice of a 4G uncompressed-size, and about 2.1G of data).  With this flag and a 
container of say 1T or 100G, there would be no negative consequences, but the 
livecd user would be able to online resize2fs their root filesystem upward if 
they liked.

The more realistic usefulness comes if through a persistence implementation, the 
overlay file is not a 512M file stored in tmpfs, but an 8G file stored on an 
ipod.  Everything mentioned above applies.

patch#2: add --cleanup-deleted flag

Using this flag, about 25% is added to the build time, but any files that were 
created and deleted in the install_root during installation, will not result in 
wasted space on the resulting iso.  This happens because of the nature of the 
filesystem living on a sparse file.  Anecdotally, this could be used to respin 
the fedora7-livecd-i686, from its existing 700MB, to 664MB.  Or more likely, add 
another 100MB or so of uncompressed software onto it.

This is of even greater importance as people spin their own livecds, and do 
intensive things during the installation, that might cause even more wasted space.

Also, this somewhat lays the foundation for a 'turboinstaller' that improves 
current liveinst efficiency by 10-25% (for cdrom vs usbflash respectively), as 
mentioned in bug 248082 (pending efficiency tests with extra device mapper layers)

Please review.  Any comments, suggestions, or criticisms are welcome.  I still 
consider myself a relative novice when it comes to python.

peace...

-dmc

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: livecd-creator.cleanupDeleted_and_containersize.patch
Type: text/x-patch
Size: 10693 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://listman.redhat.com/archives/fedora-livecd-list/attachments/20070718/b8074b19/attachment.bin>