Re: "Too much files to mangle" error

[Thomas Schmitt]

Hi,

> We are already using grub-mkrescue-sed.sh script.

A triumph of my preaching towards Guix a while ago ?
Looks like i need to download a new ISO sample ...
  https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/guix/guix-system-install-1.1.0.x86_64-linux.iso.xz
(still with HFS+).

Ahum. My next sermon will be about using option
  -partition_offset 16
when running grub-mkrescue (it will get forwarded to xorriso).

Above image and the new one have the problem that the superblock of the
ISO at LBA offset 0 does not claim the appended EFI partition as part
of its size range.

  $ xorriso -hfsplus on \
            -indev guix-system-install-1.1.0.x86_64-linux.iso \
            -report_system_area plain
  ...
  ISO image size/512 : 1144940
  ...
  MBR partition table:   N Status  Type        Start       Blocks
  MBR partition      :   1   0x80  0x00            0      1144940
  MBR partition      :   2   0x00  0xef      1144940         5760

There is software which reads the ISO filesystem size for e.g. checksumming
when the ISO is already on a storage device and the image file size is
not available any more.
This image file will not tell its full size.

With xorrisofs option -partition_offset 16 the ISO superblock at offset
would claim both, a mountable ISO partition and the EFI partition.
The mountable partition gets its own superblock and directory tree.

Like (made up with the assumption of 100 MB of directory tree size):

  ISO image size/512 : 1200700
  ...
  MBR partition table:   N Status  Type        Start       Blocks
  MBR partition      :   1   0x80  0x00           16      1194940
  MBR partition      :   2   0x00  0xef      1194940         5760


> -                             '(("MKRESCUE_SED_MODE" . "mbr_hfs")))))))
> +                             '(("MKRESCUE_SED_MODE" . "mbr_only")))))))
> I get rid of HFS+ tree generation, and can now generated my ISO without
> any issue.

Could you identify the directory with lots of files ?
If not, i would be interested in inspecting the new ISO without HFS+.
Just give a URL for downloading.

Obviously your new image contains much more files than the one i downloaded
which has about 73,000 files.
Its largest directories are:

  $ find /mnt/iso -type d -exec $HOME/ls_wc_l '{}' ';' | sort -rn | head -3
  2272   
/mnt/iso/gnu/store/wlpk6qxv479njqbxanhk6c4ism0jb5qk-libxcb-1.13/share/man/man3
  841   
/mnt/iso/gnu/store/j3ivan7r8ix4k320s0a08l4k1ga42dlw-guix-1.1.0-1.33ff35d/share/guile/site/2.2/gnu/packages/patches
  653   
/mnt/iso/gnu/store/lz85vm2aln5979nii64iacj1g6wm39ai-profile/share/bash-completion/completions

with $HOME/ls_wc_l having
  #!/bin/sh
  echo $(ls "$1" | wc -l) " " "$1"


> > I will ask at grub-devel mailing list

> Ok, please let me know if you have any answer.

For now it is posted as
  https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/grub-devel/2020-06/msg00048.html


Have a nice day :)

Thomas