Shrink INITRD?

[harryw]

I wanted smaller boofiles on my USB stick so I cleverly did the following:
--copied INITRD.GZ to a workspace
--ungzipped it
--mounted the uncompressed INITRD as a loop device
--deleted some driver files I was sure I did not need
--made an image of the modified loop device [[dd if- loop device of=new image file]]
--compressed the new image with GZIP.

The new gzipped INITRD.GZ came out LARGER?? Why?

--Harry Wertmuller

[Themer]

Depending on what settings you used to re-create the initrd file, it may not have compressed it with the same intensity that the original was created with. In other words, although it has less data in it now, if it was not compressed as much as the original was, the file could potentially end up larger.

[harryw]

I used:
gzip -9 initrd

[Themer]

I don't know anything about how or why any method may or may not compress it to a certain extent, but it was just my gues that if it wasn't compressed as much, that it could possibly be larger, even with less data.