The on-disk kernel modules take up a significant amount of the package
installation size, and most modules aren't actively used on any given
system. In debian-installer, the "on-disk" modules take up space in ram
during the installation.

From the linux Makefile:

  # CONFIG_MODULE_COMPRESS, if defined, will cause module to be compressed
  # after they are installed in agreement with CONFIG_MODULE_COMPRESS_GZIP
  # or CONFIG_MODULE_COMPRESS_XZ.

I'm not sure how to enable it; I don't see it mentioned in any Kconfig
files. It does appear possible to manually compress the individual .ko
files as an alternative method, if that is somehow more flexible.


The kmod utility supports xz compressed modules since version 25-1 (26-1
is present in buster, the current debian stable release). Unfortunately,
gzip isn't supported in kmod yet (patch submitted in #960149).

What other software needs support enabled in order to support on-disk
compressed modules in the linux kernel packages?


live well,
  vagrant

Note that this is not true for the kmod udeb. For that a liblzma5-udeb
package has to be created first.

Aurelien

close 960152 6.12.5-1
thanks