Hi Andrew

Am 02.04.2015 um 12:35 schrieb Andrew:
> 02.04.2015 13:16, Erich Titl пишет:
>> Hi Andrew
...

>>> Single tarball is easier for update than hundreds of small files.
>> No it is not, if you have insufficient space. It is just a bloody pain
>> in the butt. And then what is IT for if we cannot automate tasks.
>>
>> Maybe you have unlimited memory and storage on your target system, but
>> this is not the 'normal' case.
>>
> LEAF isn't targetted just for small systems. I use it on multicore 
> servers - border/internal routers, BRAS servers...
> Also, hundreds of small files on local storage will consume more space 
> than single tarball.

Correct, but you have enough storage. I am not oposed to keep the
tarballs, but automatic granular upgrades with little storage require
granular file access.

>>> Another point of .tar.gz usage (or even just .tar - modules are
>>> compressed, so tarball compression is unnecessary) - fs cluster size.
>>> Bunch of files will use more space than single file (approx by
>>> cluster_size/2 * files_count).
>> On the server this is pretty irrelevant and you have to unpack the files
>> on the target systems. So all you do is save a little space centrally
>> and put the load on the users.
>>
>>> Even we can mount tarball via fuse or use http://avf.sourceforge.net/
>> AFAIK there is neither on LEAF and that is where it would be needed. And
>> it adds unnecessary complexity. This is for enthusiasts, not end users.
>> Please start thinking like an end user.
>>
>> ..
> End user may change NIC for some enough rare that isn't in base moddb 
> support. And he'll need to use module autoprobing feature in that case - 

There are systems where autoprobing fails, rare but true :-(

> so end user should have all modules on local storage. In compressed or 
> in uncompressed form.

Believe me, there are systems which don't have enough storage and for
these we need a more granular aproach.

> 
>  From other side, we may do other trick: we may store modules in 
> squashfs instead of tgz, and mount it instead of unpacking. And even we 
> may remove moddb.lrp - just mount this squashfs at boot, probe modules, 
> copy list of iptables-related modules + loaded modules into ram, and 
> unmount module storage. This will save RAM on small systems, and 
> simplify update handling :)

How much more do you think you can compress the data? Let's assume you
have about 20MB of storage available, can you meet that? I believe
leaving away some of the modules depending on the target hardware might
do the trick, but it leads us more individual target architectures. I
for once believe that our geode package, geared most of the time towards
ALIX systems (I looked in the geode config patch)  has a heavy overload
of modules which will never be used. On the other hand I am opposed to
the idea of keeping unneeded, redundant code on a system for the rare
case of a NIC change. Redundant for me are modules kept in more than
_one_ of the following.

-initmod.lrp
-moddb.lrp
-modules.tgz

cheers

ET

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