Back in November I had prototyped something like this and even called it nano. Here's the post I made to the list about it and using then current hwpack + then current headless how I was able to chop things down considerably.
http://lists.linaro.org/pipermail/linaro-dev/2010-November/001439.html
There was plenty of low hanging fruit and I was able to get the installed size of the rootfs down to 82M, after installing the hardware pack back then added in another ~40M. I do think the measure of size of the image needs to be the install size, not the download size.
For something extra small shouldn't it aim for some power of 2 that could fit into an board flash? 64M/128M installed with hwpack?
I like the idea of an image that is small, and boots extremely quickly. For those that would take linaro as a starting base for their projects, this seems like a good starting base.
And to build on that concept, add ALIP which should also be small as possible, and boot extremely quickly into a graphical environment that includes a browser.
Regards, Tom
"We want great men who, when fortune frowns will not be discouraged." - Colonel Henry Knox w) tom.gall att linaro.org w) tom_gall att vnet.ibm.com h) tom_gall att mac.com
On Fri, Jan 21, 2011 at 7:17 AM, Jamie Bennett jamie.bennett@linaro.org wrote:
Hi,
Currently we are reassessing whether or not the Headless image meets the requirements for a small, fast, useable image for board verification. Just for information the current stats as of 2011-01-21 are:
* Download Size: 64M * Download size with OMAP3 hwpack: 100M * Package count: 260
The list of package currently on the image can be found at:
https://wiki.linaro.org/Platform/Foundations/Specs/HeadlessImage#Package List
The current thoughts are to cut this image down as much as possible whilst still retaining the ability to boot to a command prompt. The new image would be a 'nano' image and would be useful for verifying that the hardware boots. For a more complete console-only image for developers a full-featured developer image would be created. See my other email entitled "Call for opinion: Linaro 'Developer' Image" for that.
Is anyone *really* against this idea and is satisfied with the Headless image in its current state? Opinions? Thoughts? Criticisms?
Regards, Jamie. -- Linaro Release Manager
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