[LEDE-DEV] [RFC 3/3] config: ext4: use 1K blocks by default to support online resize2fs

[Alberto Bursi]

On 10/17/2016 11:25 PM, Michael Heimpold wrote:
> In general, I'm fine with larger default partition size. However, this results
> in large images available for download at downloads.lede-project.org...
>
> mhei

Not necessarily, if the disk image filesystem's free space is zeroed (a 
guide here)
http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/44234/clear-unused-space-with-zeros-ext3-ext4
any half-decent compression algorithm (like gzip but also 7z) will 
shrink it down to the actual used size.

Zeroing free space is needed also to shrink Virtualbox VMs virtual disks 
and similar.

-Alberto