Hi there,

At first, the mandatory though belated "Thank you" for 2013.09 - there were no issues where I tested -rc1, and the release looks good, too. So, as always, please keep the good work, much appreciated.

One thing remains. It might be a bit selfish but it's becoming a problem for me.

Some background, at least four years ago I started placing both grml-small images (or grml96 once it was established) in /boot to have a rescue system available on every physical host in both architectures.

However, in 2013.09 the grml96-small.iso image file grew by another 30 Mbyte[0] to a total of 362 Mbyte. Together with kernel images and other stuff that lingers in /boot I now am getting close to the 512 MByte size limit my /boot partition usually has. Looking at the trend, see table below, I can expect the next grml release to bring me into trouble.

Here is how the sizes developed over time, I also added the older {32,64} sizes for an increased history:

size of grml96-small iso image combined size of grml{32,64}-small iso images

2009.10: n/a 217579520

2010.04: n/a 227803136

2010.12: n/a 243269632

2011.05: n/a 240910336

2012.05: 295698432 307494912

2013.02: 331350016 344981504

2013.09: 361758720 374341632

This is an old game, I know it, you know it, I know you know it: Applications grow fat, folks want more of them, and so the "small" image will eventually even exceed the size of the former "medium" flavour.

So my question is, would you consider paying attention to the small image size, and putting a hard limit onto it, like 350 Mbyte? Of course I could work around this on my end; but none of the options look promising:

* resize /boot on all systems: A lot of work, especially if operating systems with an inferior boot loader are installed, * install 32 or 64 bit flavour only: Huge drawback in usability, * re-master grml for a smaller-than-small flavour (obviously, "grml-footnotesize" was the right name for this) with a reduced package set: Continuous work, and nobody else will benefit.

Mind to share your opinion on that?

Christoph

[0] stating the obvious, that's SI units.