[SOLVED] Installing kernel.org 3.8.0-rc1, 36MB initrd (big)

[merlin]

I am using Mageia 2 to build myself a new kernel based on the kernel.org 3.8.0-rc1 git repository. I have made some kernel changes to Bluetooth's RFCOMM. I do the following build sequence.

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$ make bzImage && make modules
$ su -
# cd to my build directory
# make modules_install
# make install


This all seems to work. The /boot directory contains the new kernel and /boot/grub/menu.lst is updated with an entry to boot the new kernel. However, it can be seen the initrd image is 6 times as large as a standard initrd image at 36MB. When I attempt to boot the new kernel, there is a long delay perhaps 20 minutes of blank screen before the kernel continues to the end of the boot sequence. I guess that the kernel struggles to extract the initrd image into a tmpfs filesystem.

I have uncompressed the initrd image and compared it to the contents of a Mageia initrd and I determined that my initrd image contains non-compressed kernel modules .ko. In the Mageia initrd image, the kernel modules are .ko.xz.

Does anyone know how the kernel modules become compressed as .ko.xz. Is it something to do with dracut ?

I have successfully built the new kernel using Mandriva 2010.2 and the initrd image is about 6MB as expected. Therefore, I suspect there is an issue in my Mageia 2 environment. Perhaps I have not installed something ?

TIA.

[merlin]

OK, the kernel modules were not stripped so had loads of debug symbols included. Rebuilt the initrd by doing.

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# make INSTALL_MOD_STRIP=1 modules_install
# make install


Now the initrd image is 6MB instead of 36MB. I looked inside the initrd and the kernel modules are .ko so are not compressed. I am still wondering how the Mageia 2 distro initrd images have compressed .ko.xz kernel modules.

Booting gets further, but I think 3.8.0-rc1 has some USB issues because boot fails with EXT4-FS errors on my USB hard drive.

[doktor5000]

I am still wondering how the Mageia 2 distro initrd images have compressed .ko.xz kernel modules.

That is an option that can be selected during kernel build, but in Mageia is probably done during rpm build ...

[doktor5000@Mageia2 ~]$ zgrep MODULE /proc/config.gz
CONFIG_MODULES=y
CONFIG_MODULE_FORCE_LOAD=y
CONFIG_MODULE_UNLOAD=y
CONFIG_MODULE_FORCE_UNLOAD=y
# CONFIG_MODULE_COMPRESS is not set
CONFIG_MODULE_SRCVERSION_ALL=y
CONFIG_DEBUG_SET_MODULE_RONX=y