Debian Installer Bullseye Alpha 3 Switches To Linux 5.9, Larger /boot

[Danielsan]

5.10 is not released yet

Nvidia proprietary Drivers aren't supported by 5.9 kernel in Debian...

I also don't understand this: "Stop making XFCE single CD images..."

It is one of my favorite resource of Debian.

[Sonadow]

I'm more concerned if Debian will package Plasma 5.20.x for Debian 11 or not.

If they don't I will skip Debian 11 and wait for something better with Debian 12.

[kreijack]

larger /boot is needed because users will often have have multiple kernel eventually installed in /boot. 128M will fit only 1 kernel+initrd. 256M would only fit 2, 3 if you are lucky.

In my system vmlinuz is about 5-6MB

$ ls -lh /boot/vmlinuz-5.*
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 5.4M Sep 20 16:16 /boot/vmlinuz-5.8.10
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 5.4M Oct 12 10:31 /boot/vmlinuz-5.8.14
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 5.4M Nov 24 20:52 /boot/vmlinuz-5.9.11
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 5.4M Dec 5 10:18 /boot/vmlinuz-5.9.12
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 5.4M Nov 6 17:07 /boot/vmlinuz-5.9.6
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 5.4M Nov 19 21:33 /boot/vmlinuz-5.9.9

and the initrd file size is in the range 30-40MB

$ ls -lh /boot/initrd.img-5.*
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 36M Sep 26 12:27 /boot/initrd.img-5.8.10
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 36M Oct 24 17:44 /boot/initrd.img-5.8.14
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 37M Dec 1 21:22 /boot/initrd.img-5.9.11
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 37M Dec 5 15:21 /boot/initrd.img-5.9.12
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 36M Nov 18 21:12 /boot/initrd.img-5.9.6
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 36M Nov 20 20:30 /boot/initrd.img-5.9.9

So, a 128MB partition can host around 3 images, and a 256MB up to 6. Said that, I agree that a /boot partition smaller than 1GB is not enough for the current standard; also this is more true considering that the cost of storage now is quite low.

[baryluk]

In my system vmlinuz is about 5-6MB


and the initrd file size is in the range 30-40MB



So, a 128MB partition can host around 3 images, and a 256MB up to 6. Said that, I agree that a /boot partition smaller than 1GB is not enough for the current standard; also this is more true considering that the cost of storage now is quite low.

This doesn't look like Debian to me. Debian uses different naming scheme. It looks to me you are using some other distro or custom built kernels.

Your 35MB initrd is 35MB, because it probably only includes required drivers and modules. Full initrd.img with all drivers is 78MB for kernel 5.9.0-3 from Debian testing. Debian will try to include only the required drivers, but it is not always the case (i.e. if you want to build a system that boots from USB on different machines, you will include most drivers just in case, especially for storage and filesystem modules, but probably also network hardware modules for things like NFS and iSCSI, etc, various keyboard drivers, etc, there is a lot of that. There is a nice tool /usr/bin/lsinitramfs to display content of the initrd images easily, without dealing with cpio, xz, microcode prepend image, etc.).

[barti_ddu]

Nvidia proprietary Drivers aren't supported by 5.9 kernel in Debian...

Why so? Or do You mean the proprietary installer, actually? Or do You need something newer than 455.45 (experimental) or 450.80 (testing/unstable)?

[baryluk]

Nvidia proprietary Drivers aren't supported by 5.9 kernel in Debian...

I also don't understand this: "Stop making XFCE single CD images..."

It is one of my favorite resource of Debian.

It simply doesn't fit properly anymore into 1 CD to make it work and also have access to other reasonable packages that are expected to be on 1st CD. xfce 1st CD was 694MB for Debian 10.7. XFCE images will only be available as DVD and BD now. I think, I don't see them tho in usual locations.

PS. I just use netinst images, select DE during install in the installer, and install stuff later. 8GB USB sticks are crazy cheap, so even if you are offline, you can fit DVD images on them easily. If you care about the bandwidth usage (on mobile or some 3rd world country), then use netinst images to do minimal install, or download DVD image somewhere else, then reuse them to install on many machines. A DVD image with xfce is 3.7GB.

Or you can download the debian live images, there are many flavors with different DEs. Xfce one is 2.3GB.

[archkde]

In my system vmlinuz is about 5-6MB


and the initrd file size is in the range 30-40MB



So, a 128MB partition can host around 3 images, and a 256MB up to 6. Said that, I agree that a /boot partition smaller than 1GB is not enough for the current standard; also this is more true considering that the cost of storage now is quite low.

I have two kernels installed and 142MB of my boot partition are in use. Still, 3 kernels would fit in 256MB, but I guess the sizes vary by machine and as you said, there is pretty much no reason to not just make /boot a little bit bigger.

[baryluk]

Why so? Or do You mean the proprietary installer, actually? Or do You need something newer than 455.45 (experimental) or 450.80 (testing/unstable)?

I don't own NVIDIA GPU, but I just tested and apt installed nvidia-kernel-dkms 450.80.02-1 , and other stuff all installed, and compiled on 5.9.0-3 (Linux 5.9.9) and for 5.9.0-4 on amd64.

So looks fine for me.

[barti_ddu]

I don't own NVIDIA GPU, but I just tested and apt installed nvidia-kernel-dkms 450.80.02-1 , and other stuff all installed, and compiled on 5.9.0-3 (Linux 5.9.9) and for 5.9.0-4 on amd64.

So looks fine for me.

I've been using 5.9 with 1050TI (proprietary drivers) on testing/unstable/experimental mix for quite some time...

[zxy_thf]

I have two kernels installed and 142MB of my boot partition are in use. Still, 3 kernels would fit in 256MB, but I guess the sizes vary by machine and as you said, there is pretty much no reason to not just make /boot a little bit bigger.

There is one potential problem of small /boot. Sometimes the older kernels were not removed from /boot, and eventually newer kernel cannot be installed without manual cleaning up.
I'm not sure where the bug is, or if this happens to Debian as well, but I did have to clean up /boot on more than one Ubuntu machines.

Nowadays I'm always using 1GB /boot to ease my mind.