Demi Marie Obenour writes: > systemd-sysupdate will fail if the OS image does not fit in the > partitions that the installer created. Therefor, the partitions need to > be very large so that there is plenty of room for the OS to grow. > Furthermore, systemd-sysupdate requires both A and B copies of both the > root and verity partitions. > > mkfs.ext4 is not able to produce images with files large enough to hold > both the primary and backup copy of the root partition [1]. Reducing > the sizes of partitions to be little greater than the size of the root > filesystem image does not help. The produced file is still too large. > Therefore, compress the image, which causes it to be small enough that > mkfs.ext4 can handle it. > > This breaks the option to use the installer as a live image. Therefore, > remove it. This option will return once Spectrum switches to the GNOME > OS installer [2]. However, it is still possible to build a live image > that is separate from the installer. Document how to build and use it. > > GRUB2 does support compressed loopback images, but these presumably > buffer the whole image in memory. Since the entire installer will be > replaced, making it work is not considered worthwhile. > > [1]: https://github.com/tytso/e2fsprogs/issues/254 > [2]: https://spectrum-os.org/lists/archives/spectrum-devel/87wm4dlkhz.fsf@alyssa.is/ > > Signed-off-by: Demi Marie Obenour > --- > Changes since v4: > - Replace a mention of "Try Spectrum" with a mention of the live image. > - Combine instructions for building an installer and a live image. > - Drop the config option for the compression level. > - Drop unnecessary quoting changes. > - Drop unnecessary 'set -euo pipefail'. > > Changes since v3: > - Make the compression level configurable. The default is 1 so that > development builds finish in a reasonable amount of time. Release > builds should use compression level 9. > > Changes since v2: > - Remove live image test instead of skipping it. > - Document the change. > - Document that there is still a live image available, though it is > separate from the installer. > - Document how to build the live image. > > Signed-off-by: Demi Marie Obenour > --- > Documentation/installation/getting-spectrum.adoc | 44 ++++++++++++++++-------- > host/initramfs/Makefile | 8 ----- > host/initramfs/etc/probe | 20 ----------- > release/checks/integration/meson.build | 2 +- > release/checks/integration/try.c | 29 ---------------- > release/combined/eosimages.nix | 8 ++--- > release/combined/grub.cfg.in | 5 --- > 7 files changed, 35 insertions(+), 81 deletions(-) Reviewed-by: Alyssa Ross But I'd still like to get to the bottom of whether release/installer works.