Re: boot loaders got fatter in the last few days

From: Guido Falsi <mad_at_madpilot.net>
Date: Fri, 18 Mar 2016 23:35:04 +0100
On 03/18/16 22:41, Freddie Cash wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 18, 2016 at 10:39 AM, Conrad Meyer <cem_at_freebsd.org> wrote:
> 
>> 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.
>>
> 
> ​The boot partition doesn't necessarily need ​
> 
> ​to be 1 MB (and can't due to some issues with the assembler used right
> now, or something like that).  We just need to make sure people have slack
> space in their partition table to expand into in the future.

My strategy, which helped me in this case, is having swap space just
after the boot partition, in this way I can just resize the swap space
and boot partition and reorganize the system.

The OS will not comply about a few hundred Kilobytes swap less :)

-- 
Guido Falsi <mad_at_madpilot.net>
Received on Fri Mar 18 2016 - 21:35:12 UTC

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