Re: Can isar Debian armhf image size be controlled?

[JH <jupiter.hce@gmail.com>]

On 3/5/19, Henning Schild <henning.schild@siemens.com> wrote:

> If you have a closer look with i.e "ncdu" you will find that kernel and
> modules might require a lot. One way to safe space is using a custom
> kernel and not use too many modules, also not use an initrd.
>
> Other consumers are locales/zoneinfo/docs. These things can be cleaned
> up i.e. with a postrm script in a transient package. Or a few "rm"s in
> a do_rootfs_append or a custom task.
>
> I just manually removed some files and got down to 65MB (kernel and
> modules not included).

That is an excellent news, I'll remove /locales /docs and other
desktop resources which are  useless in a specific purpose embedded
system.

> Yes you can even remove apt and other "essential" packages, that would
> probably be a last resort and give you another 5-7MB.
> Note that manual removal of files and removing the package manager
> might significantly decrease the value of the rootfs. Depends on
> whether you care about updates and how you plan to ship/install them.

Yes, I am not going to use desktop style apt update and install from
Debian repository, our firmware and software will be downloaded from a
controlled remote server and installed with dependencies locally.
Obviously, it needs be well tested before starting remote software /
firmware update.

>> In general, you have to be in a very high volume market so that the
>> additional engineering and maintenance costs (when using a
>> non-commodity distro) pay off via saved hardware budget.
>
> True! But in this case we are probably talking about an old device that
> should receive new firmware.

Agreed, thanks Henning and all responses.

- jupiter