Hi, Cyril Brulebois wrote: > - [x] Trick myself into actually looking instead of just giving a few > examples.
Roughly comparing 13.5.0-amd64-netinst to testing-amd64-netinst of 2026-06-29 by executing old_iso=/dvdbuffer/debian-13.5.0-amd64-netinst.iso new_iso=/dvdbuffer/debian-testing-amd64-netinst.iso old_du=/tmp/old_du new_du=/tmp/new_du xorriso -indev "$old_iso" -dus "/*" "/pool/*" "/pool/main/*" -- >"$old_du" xorriso -indev "$new_iso" -dus "/*" "/pool/*" "/pool/main/*" -- >"$new_du" and viewing the resulting /tmp/*_du files side-by-side, i see inflation mostly at firmware and somewhat with /install.amd. Old: New: 167592 '/firmware' 361697 '/firmware' 198849 '/install.amd' 219552 '/install.amd' /pool does not look promising for size reduction. All files in /pool/non-free-firmware share their content with files in /firmware. So the size increase of /pool 584572 '/pool' 768112 '/pool' is only virtual. /pool/main even shrunk: 417892 '/pool/main' 407515 '/pool/main' The ten fattest firmware packages in testing-amd64-netinst are 103221 'firmware-qcom-dsp_0~20260519-1_all.deb' 101724 'firmware-nvidia-graphics_20260519-1_all.deb' 37053 'firmware-atheros_20260519-1_all.deb' 25307 'firmware-mediatek_20260519-1_all.deb' 23169 'firmware-iwlwifi_20260519-1_all.deb' 15177 'firmware-amd-graphics_20260519-1_all.deb' 13289 'intel-microcode_3.20260227.1_amd64.deb' 7791 'firmware-intel-graphics_20260519-1_all.deb' 5260 'firmware-brcm80211_20260519-1_all.deb' 4986 'firmware-misc-nonfree_20260519-1_all.deb' summing up to 336977 of 361697 KiB. > - [ ] Bump the size from 1G to 1.1G or even 1.2G, effectively punting > the investigation to “later”. This is likely easier and quicker > than what I mentioned, but I can't help but worry this could be a > one-way street, and I'd rather try and avoid bumping the limit if > some reasonable amount of work lets us stay below the existing > limit. I don't see much chance to curb the growth of firmware blobs. Even if a big one is thrown out, the others will eat up the free space quickly. Consider to expand generously without giving up the goal to make netinst as small as possible. Some data points from my desk: My smallest USB stick from around 2005 offers 1.9 GiB. The next larger one has ~ 4 GiB. The size of a DVD is 2295104 * 2048 = 4,700,372,992 bytes. (DVD-RAM are smaller. Their size depends on formatting.) Have a nice day :) Thomas
