iso: the live ISO grew from 7.7G to 8.6G between the last passing run and now

[hanthor]

docs/verification/README.md records the last fully passing LUKS end-to-end run on 2026-09-06 with a 7.7G live ISO. Run 35326466386 (2026-09-18) built an 8.6G ISO for the same flavor (ISO ready: .../utah-live.iso (8.6G) in the gaming job; the others are similar).

Nearly a gigabyte in twelve days is more than the package churn explains, and #105 is about to add linux-firmware and thirty parity packages on top. The ISO embeds the full container store for offline install, so every layer counts twice (image plus ISO).

To find out

• Compare podman image inspect layer sizes for the testing images of 2026-09-06 and now; the rechunk annotation lists per-layer package sets.
• Check whether the kernel cache or the NVIDIA payload leaked into main's image (it should not, main uses the pristine base).
• Check iso/scripts/build-iso.sh for a second copy of the store or an uncompressed squashfs after the payload-digest changes in fix(iso): repair CI handoff, payload digests, and live kernel support #86.

A budget assertion in the ISO job (fail above N GB, with N recorded next to the reason) would stop this drifting silently again.

[hanthor]

Breakdown from today's ISO run (35326466386, utah flavor: squashfs 7.92 GB compressed from 21.8 GB, 37%). The squashfs holds the live rootfs plus an unpacked copy of the same image as the offline payload store; mksquashfs deduplicates identical files, so the image costs about its compressed size once, not twice.

contributor	approx.	source
factory RPM repository at /etc/utah-packages inside the image	4.0 GB	image layer 34, #130
the rest of the image (Hummingbird base + GNOME transaction + scripts)	1.9 GB	remaining 44 layers, 5.94 GiB total minus layer 34
Bluefin flatpak set baked into the live session: ~40 apps, GNOME Platform 49 + 50 + 51, freedesktop 25.08, GL and codec extensions	~1.7 GB	iso/live/src/install-flatpaks.sh, by subtraction
kernel + initramfs + ESP	~0.1 GB

The gaming flavors add the OGC kernel and modules on top, hence 8.6 GB there.

So the growth since 2026-09-06 is mostly the factory repository growing (it now carries every package for the full GNOME closure plus the runtime rebuilds), not the image's installed content. #130 removes it from the image, which should bring the ISO to roughly 3.7 GB; after that the flatpak set is the largest remaining lever.

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