Re: ISO-9660 image working and ready

[Danny Milosavljevic]

Hi Ludo,

On Wed, 12 Jul 2017 23:20:26 +0200
address@hidden (Ludovic Courtès) wrote:

> > It will work from CD and USB flash drive - that should cover all the 
> > options.  
> 
> Are you saying that the same image could be either dd’d to a USB key or
> burnt on an actual CD?

Yes.

> Are there any downsides to using ISO9660 as the file system for the
> media, like limitations on file names or file name lengths, restrictions
> on the type of files, etc.?  (That doesn’t seem to be the case, but I
> vaguely remember ISO9660 as having annoying limitations.)

It uses the Rock Ridge extension.  That means basenames are limited to 255 
characters at most, allowed are all characters except NUL and "/".

>   ./pre-inst-env guix system disk-image -t iso9660 gnu/system/install.scm
> 
> on v0.13.0-1321-gc96ed0091 (current master), booted it with QEMU,
> worked fine with ‘lsblk’ showing only /dev/{fd0,sr0}.   Woohoo!  \o/

Now try qemu ...  -hda thesamefile.iso :)

> The image has this 2KiB /boot.catalog file; is that expected?

Yeah, that's the El Torito specification for the first-stage bootloader.  It 
contains what system architectures are supported and what kind of weird boot 
emulation the BIOS is supposed to use (look like a floppy drive, look like a 
hard drive, just be yourself etc).

> Otherwise the file names look alright as if Joliet extensions were used,
> but maybe they are?

Rock Ridge :)

UNIX permissions work, too.

>  “guix gc --verify=contents” in the image is happy
> (and surprisingly fast).

> Anyway awesome work, and a great milestone.  Many users who had been
> complaining about the lack of ISOs will thank you!  :-)

Thanks for your help :)