Baslinux mailing list

[baslinux AT lists.ibiblio.org]

On Tue, 23 Oct 2007, baslinux AT lists.ibiblio.org wrote:

> > As I've said before, I will not be using upx for BL3.
> Decide which advantage/disadvantage is more important:
>
> Advantages of UPX:
>
> UPX does not use any additional RAM during decompression.
> Total loading time is a bit smaller if UPX-ed program is loaded from
> hard disk
> More space available on hard/ram disk for other programs
>
> Disadvantages of UPX:
>
> Total loading time is  bigger if if UPX-ed program is loaded from RAM disk
> Command ldd does not show libraries linked with upx-ed program
> Ramdisk compressed with gzip results in slightly bigger gz file if upx
> is used.


ftp - 53,696  (53672 stripped)
ftp.gz - 26,704 (26,702 stripped)

ftp upx'ed - 26,785 (not stripped)
ftp upx'ed and gzipped - 26,146

This is slightly smaller, not slightly bigger.  It might vary for 
different programs.

So upx'ing ftp before compressing to put on the floppy disk makes it .979 
times as large.  If BL is half executables, it could gain 1% more space on 
the floppy disks using upx.  About 30K.  Enough to add ftp upxed.

The advantage of upx over gzip is a program can be stored smaller on hard 
disk (or in ramdisk?) without needing to use gzip before you run it.  So I 
think Samir is suggesting that the 4-8MB of ramdisk could hold more 
programs if they were upx'ed, though they would still need as much memory 
to operate in.  It would also hold more programs if they were gzipped but 
you would need to gunzip before use.  You can run programs from a third 
floppy disk.

Samir, do you know how to modify the BL3 floppy disks?  You could try 
upx'ing all the executables yourself and make a BL3-upx with ftp, and see 
if it works properly, and offer it at your site.  If there is space, could 
you also include vfat.o?  I have been using BL3 floppy to clone 
partitions.


> I did not verify, but somewhere it is written that UPX-ed programs do
> not work on 386 computers.

Does BL3 default kernel still support 386?  I find config only for
'big' kernel.


Sindi
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keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org
SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org