2 easy questions

[under]

There's a way to know the size of the iso file I'll build ?
Can I use a grafical editor to add and remove packages (it would be more fast than using apt-get) ?

[stry_cat]

I would think you should be able to use Kpackage (I haven't actually tried it). You may have to read the how-to, specifically the section on X Session Configuration to get it to work right. Really in this case the command line works well.

[UnderScore]

Can you find out the ISO size before you build it?
Simple answer: No
Complex answer: It can be estimated.
The cloop compression method compresses approximately 1830MB into 695MB which is a 62% reduction in size. You must first exit the chroot and if /proc is mounted to the chroot, then unmount /proc. Then run the command to give you a total file space usage for the build area

du -h --max-depth=1 /path/to/Knoppix/remaster/build/area/

In my opinion, if the size is greater than 1840MB then it will be too big for a standard 700MB CD ISO image.

[tr]

The cloop compression method compresses approximately 1830MB into 695MB which is a 62% reduction in size.

I just made a DVD and Midnight Commander shows it to be 2059MB and KNOPPIX image is 2047MB (if you divide it by 1024, you see that it is very near max. 2 gig limit for one cloop image). 'Making compressed fs' showed this to be 4895MB and 78322 blocks.

As you can easily count, compression ratio is in my case about 42% of uncompressed files. In my CDs compression has been about 38-40 %. So it's not always the same as also Undescore said.

You can try to count what compression would be by checking the size of your remaster:

du -ms remaster/

-tapsa-

[DirkS]

Hi tr,

I'd like to have some more info about the 2gig limit for cloop images - I was completely unaware of it, is it mentioned anywhere?
Is it because the DVD filesystem cannot store files bigger than 2 gig or is this a problem for cloop itself?

Actually, I'm looking for a method to compress partition image files that are much bigger and might come out as 5-8Gig or bigger when compressed. If cloop has a limit of 2Gig, it's out in any case.

Cheers
Dirk

[tr]

Hi tr,

I'd like to have some more info about the 2gig limit for cloop images - I was completely unaware of it, is it mentioned anywhere?
Is it because the DVD filesystem cannot store files bigger than 2 gig or is this a problem for cloop itself?

I think you have misunderstood the whole thing. Klaus Knopper explais it in tread http://lists.debian.org/debian-knopp.../msg00015.html:

Short explanation: The ISO filesystem, which is still used for the DVD
for compatibility reasons, has a maximum file size limitation of 2 GB.
So, in order to use a compressed image of more than 2GB in size, you
have to use TWO (or more) cloop images instead (cloop can handle up to 8
simultaneous images by default), and then just join them with unionfs.
The /linuxrc inside minirt.gz does this.

-tapsa-

[DirkS]

I think you have misunderstood the whole thing. Klaus Knopper explains it in thread http://lists.debian.org/debian-knopp.../msg00015.html:

Short explanation: The ISO filesystem, which is still used for the DVD
for compatibility reasons, has a maximum file size limitation of 2 GB.
So, in order to use a compressed image of more than 2GB in size, you
have to use TWO (or more) cloop images instead (cloop can handle up to 8
simultaneous images by default), and then just join them with unionfs.
The /linuxrc inside minirt.gz does this.

-tapsa-

Thanks for the info. Since my problem is about compressing existing images, the ability to join them with unionfs will not help me.
Anyway, as it is now, the cloop images are "limited" in size by the amount of RAM that I have available. (I wonder why it was built this way... gzip can compress images that are much larger than the available RAM...)

Cheers
Dirk