KatolaZ <katolaz@???> writes:

[...]

> Steve, I cannot (and I don't want to) make any assumption on behalf of
> potential users of a minimal live system :) The initramfs contains all
> the modules shipped with the standard Devuan kernel, that's why it is
> so fat. In fact, "du -ch /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel" says that
> those sum up to 159 MB, which account for most of the space required
> by the initramfs.
>
> Now, it is obviously possible to strip it down to the bare minimum,
> removing most of those modules, but then the corresponding live
> images, which should run, by definition, on a relatively wide number
> of machines, with heterogeneous hw configurations, will be mostly
> useless.
>
> Imagine a case in which you, the user, would like to boot from a live
> image, e.g. for rescue purposes, only to find out that your live CD
> does not recognise your disk controller, or your graphic adapter, or
> your ethernet card.

[I already strongly suspected the below but didn't want to write about
it until I had a chance to test]

THe initramfs doesn't need to include all the modules belonging to the
kernel, just those which are needed to mount the real root filesystem
(containing the remaining driver modules). This would mean all
filesystems and storage device drivers you want to support but, eg, no
networking modules (nfsroot sounds like an implausible feature for a
live image).

NB: Please CC me when replying. For some reason, I'm "reverse moderated"
--- I can still send message to the list but don't get them anymore.