Source: initramfs-tools Severity: minor Currently, when installing other packages together with a new kernel, initramfs image for the new kernel is generated two times: once it is kernel-activated from /etc/kernel/postinst.d/initramfs-tools, and next it is dpkg-trigger-activated by updating certain paths (eg installing or upgrading busybox, mdadm, etc, which triggers initramfs rebuilds).
This is especially annoying when building images for virtual machines (like debvm-create etc), - there, initramfs is especially slow (it is already very slow as it is, but makes several times slower when run in emulated environment). The whole thing needs to be generated only once, dpkg trigger should be enough, but it is actually generated twice. For that I suggest to check in /etc/kernel/postinst.d/initramfs-tools if dpkg trigger for it is pending already, and if yes, do not generate the whole thing but create just a stub, an empty /boot/initrd.img-$kver, to be updated later when dpkg trigger is fired. That will save a lot of time in various situations, including regular user machines where initrd is often regenerated multiple times during upgrades. Thanks, /mjt
