On 11/2/25 07:05, Alyssa Ross wrote: > Demi Marie Obenour writes: > >> On 11/1/25 18:15, Demi Marie Obenour wrote: >>> On 10/29/25 12:51, Alyssa Ross wrote: >>>> Alyssa Ross writes: >>>> >>>>> Demi Marie Obenour writes: >>>>> >>>>>> This will be needed once the B partitions are added. Otherwise, >>>>>> tar2ext4's size limit is exceeded. >>>>>> >>>>>> The timeout is increased to account for the very slow compression >>>>>> process. >>>>>> >>>>>> Signed-off-by: Demi Marie Obenour >>>>>> --- >>>>>> release/checks/integration/meson.build | 2 +- >>>>>> release/combined/eosimages.nix | 14 +++++++++----- >>>>>> 2 files changed, 10 insertions(+), 6 deletions(-) >>>>> >>>>> I haven't built this yet, so maybe I'm wrong somehow, but doesn't this >>>>> break "Try Spectrum"? GRUB isn't going to be able to loopback mount a >>>>> compressed image, I assume. That's why I keep asking what GNOME OS >>>>> does. We currently produce an image that lets you install Spectrum, or >>>>> try it out in a live image. Do they do that too? If so, how do they >>>>> make it so that live image is bootable without being huge? Does their >>>>> installer resize partitions, perhaps? >>>>> >>>>> (I reviewed the rest of the patch anyway, but I think we're going to >>>>> need a different approach here.) >>>> >>>> Okay, I've finally got the answers I wanted about the GNOME OS installer >>>> on Matrix. It sounds like it doesn't copy a whole disk image like >>>> eos-installer does; rather it copies individual partition images using >>>> systemd-repart. This means they can distribute small partition images, >>>> and install them into partitions with room to grow, which would solve >>>> this problem. >>>> >>>> Reusing GNOME OS's installer sounds like it would be good then, but I >>>> don't know how much work it would be, and don't want to block this work >>>> on that, so I suggest we go ahead with uncompressed, small partitions >>>> for now — either sized to content or slightly bigger than content — and >>>> then later on we switch to GNOME OS's installer, and then increase the >>>> sizes of the installed partitions. Only at that point would we consider >>>> Spectrum installs "stable". >>> >>> I agree in the long term, but I found a short-term workaround: use >>> erofs instead of ext4. That compresses the giant runs of zeros down >>> to almost nothing, and its mkfs tool doesn't have the same file size >>> limitations. The only difficulty is that if we should have dm-verity >>> protection in the installer for ext4, we _really_ ought to have it >>> for erofs. That's a separate change, though. >> >> Actually, that doesn't work either. The installer doesn't find the >> erofs image. I suspect this is a udisks bug but am not particularly >> interested in fixing it, especially as this installer is going to >> be replaced. >> >> Using small installation images also doesn't work. Even with very >> little room to grow, the image is too big for mkfs.ext4 and tar2ext4 >> to handle. > > You mean that adding the B partitions makes the image too big? This is correct. I tried for a day to find workarounds but without success. -- Sincerely, Demi Marie Obenour (she/her/hers)