Re: .disk/info should contain flavour/version of live image
Hello Roland,
On Wed, Jun 21, 2023 at 10:16:44PM +0200, Roland Clobus wrote:
> On 21/06/2023 20:57, Andreas B. Mundt wrote:
> > with the bookworm live images, the format of the .disk/info file on
> > the iso images has been modified, for example:
> >
> > bullseye:
> > # mount -o loop debian-live-11.2.0.amd64-kde+nonfree.iso /mnt
> > $ cat /mnt/.disk/info
> > Official Debian GNU/Linux Live 11.2.0 kde 2021-12-18T13:54
> >
> > bookworm:
> > # mount -o loop debian-live-12.0.0.amd64-gnome.iso /mnt
> > $ cat /mnt/.disk/info
> > Debian GNU/Linux 12 "Bookworm" - Official Snapshot amd64 LIVE/INSTALL Binary 20230610-08:51
> >
> > The problem: There is no way to find the image flavour
> > (gnome/kde/standard) of the image from .disk/info, it's identical for
> > all images.
>
> That kind of information is available during the build, and is available
> after building at another location: in `live/filesystem.packages` there is a
> line with `live-task-kde` for KDE.
> With bookworm the tool to build the live images was changed from
> live-wrapper to live-build, hence the change.
>
> Do you know whether there is some standard for the .disk folder?
>
> I see a few options:
> 1. It would be very easy to add a new file `.disk/variant` which contains
> 'gnome', 'kde', 'standard' (for text-only).
> 2. Changing the content of `.disk/info` globally would affect all
> Debian-derivatives that are currently using live-build already, and unless
> they speak up, I would rather not change that.
> 3. Setting the content only for the official Debian builds would be an
> option, which needs a new commandline option to lb_build.
>
> My personal preference is 3, 1, 2.
> Perhaps the debian-cd team can chime in as well, especially for option 3,
> which will change the content for the live images for 12.1 compared to 12.0.
>
> > Now, di-netboot-assistant uses the information provided in .disk/info
> > to generate live netboot (ipxe/grub) boot menu entries for live images.
>
> Are you interpreting the lower case text into something nicer (e.g.
> Cinnamon, KDE, text-only)? This question is more-or-less a question to see
> how easy changes can be made on the other side :-)
I tried a few minimal modifications on the di-netboot-assistant side
to get it working again and making it more robust against changes in
`.disk/info`. Up to now, the content of `.disk/info` was cleaned up a
bit (remove non-interesting parts) and then used as menu item as well
as tag for the item in the ipxe menu (slightly modified again). This
is of course not a good idea when the titles are identical.
The solution I've implemented so far uses part of the path as tag (the
directory where the ISO image is loop mounted), which must be unique.
Therefore, all menu items should end up with unique tags referencing
the entries, even when the titles are the same.
Identical titles are of course not ideal, but users can add customized
entries if they want to use it on a regular basis, in the worst case.
So if some day `.disk/info` contains more or less the information also
described by Steve:
* Full version number
* image type / desktop
it woud be perfect. Many thanks for your work on Debian Live!
Best regards,
Andi
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