Hi all, I'm the maintainer of Finnix, which recently released a new version after 5 years[0]. A user asked if I was planning on updating grub-finnix, a functional equivalent of grml-rescueboot.
I'm going to cut out most of a conversation I had with Paul Wise since it was a bunch of embarrassing half-remembered history[1], but in a nutshell, grml-rescueboot is actually perfectly capable of setting up ISOs in grub via the loopback.cfg standard, which means that many distros (Debian, Ubuntu, Grml, Finnix, etc) can utilize it, but it's not immediately apparent, and it calls the generated menu entries Grml, but are otherwise functional.
What I'd like to propose is to genericize grml-rescueboot as grub-loopback-iso. This package could be aware of distros (e.g. continue to say "Grml Rescue System" for grml-*.iso). I also have a few additional wanted updates, namely fixing the grub dependencies so it can be used on arm64 UEFI (which it also would otherwise work fine on). The grml-rescueboot package could remain and depend on grub-loopback-iso, as it has the update-grml-rescueboot script which *is* Grml-specific.
If this is something we agree can be pursued, I'm willing to do the work (conceptually, https://github.com/finnix/grub-loopback-iso-pkg is about 80% of the work done already, but would need more work to be a proper transitional from grml-rescueboot). I just wanted to make sure this is something Grml is not opposed to.
Thanks, Ryan Finnie
[0] https://blog.finnix.org/2020/05/14/finnix-120-released/ [1] In 2014 I had apparently forked grml-rescueboot as grub-loopback-iso, but never got it into Debian. And at some point it was added as a grml-rescueboot git branch? (http://git.grml.org/?p=grml-rescueboot.git;a=shortlog;h=refs/heads/grub-loop...) So it was known about and maybe was discussed at some point, but I honestly don't remember. I had updated my grub-loopback-iso and was looking for sponsors when Paul reminded me of grml-rescueboot again.
Hi Ryan,
sorry for the delay in getting to your mail
* Ryan Finnie [Wed Jun 03, 2020 at 08:49:36PM -0700]:
Hi all, I'm the maintainer of Finnix, which recently released a new version after 5 years[0]. A user asked if I was planning on updating grub-finnix, a functional equivalent of grml-rescueboot.
I'm going to cut out most of a conversation I had with Paul Wise since it was a bunch of embarrassing half-remembered history[1], but in a nutshell, grml-rescueboot is actually perfectly capable of setting up ISOs in grub via the loopback.cfg standard, which means that many distros (Debian, Ubuntu, Grml, Finnix, etc) can utilize it, but it's not immediately apparent, and it calls the generated menu entries Grml, but are otherwise functional.
What I'd like to propose is to genericize grml-rescueboot as grub-loopback-iso. This package could be aware of distros (e.g. continue to say "Grml Rescue System" for grml-*.iso). I also have a few additional wanted updates, namely fixing the grub dependencies so it can be used on arm64 UEFI (which it also would otherwise work fine on). The grml-rescueboot package could remain and depend on grub-loopback-iso, as it has the update-grml-rescueboot script which *is* Grml-specific.
If this is something we agree can be pursued, I'm willing to do the work (conceptually, https://github.com/finnix/grub-loopback-iso-pkg is about 80% of the work done already, but would need more work to be a proper transitional from grml-rescueboot). I just wanted to make sure this is something Grml is not opposed to.
I very much appreciate your efforts, thanks for reaching out to us!
I'm absolutely not opposed to it, I'm just wondering how the bugreports against grub-loopback-iso are supposed to be handled then. Should a team be formed and bug reports are forwarded to the according teams (Finnix, Grml, Ubuntu,...)? Bugreports against Grml ISOs e.g. could be reported against grml-rescueboot then, but what about other distributions though? Which distributions should be "supported" then?
Do you have an overview which distributions support loopback boot nowadays and could/would be supported within grub-loopback-iso?
[1] In 2014 I had apparently forked grml-rescueboot as grub-loopback-iso, but never got it into Debian. And at some point it was added as a grml-rescueboot git branch? (http://git.grml.org/?p=grml-rescueboot.git;a=shortlog;h=refs/heads/grub-loop...) So it was known about and maybe was discussed at some point, but I honestly don't remember. I had updated my grub-loopback-iso and was looking for sponsors when Paul reminded me of grml-rescueboot again.
I think this dates back to the work around https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=750072 :)
regards -mika-
On 6/16/20 12:18 AM, Michael Prokop wrote:
What I'd like to propose is to genericize grml-rescueboot as grub-loopback-iso. This package could be aware of distros (e.g. continue to say "Grml Rescue System" for grml-*.iso). I also have a few additional wanted updates, namely fixing the grub dependencies so it can be used on arm64 UEFI (which it also would otherwise work fine on). The grml-rescueboot package could remain and depend on grub-loopback-iso, as it has the update-grml-rescueboot script which *is* Grml-specific.
If this is something we agree can be pursued, I'm willing to do the work (conceptually, https://github.com/finnix/grub-loopback-iso-pkg is about 80% of the work done already, but would need more work to be a proper transitional from grml-rescueboot). I just wanted to make sure this is something Grml is not opposed to.
I very much appreciate your efforts, thanks for reaching out to us!
I'm absolutely not opposed to it, I'm just wondering how the bugreports against grub-loopback-iso are supposed to be handled then. Should a team be formed and bug reports are forwarded to the according teams (Finnix, Grml, Ubuntu,...)? Bugreports against Grml ISOs e.g. could be reported against grml-rescueboot then, but what about other distributions though? Which distributions should be "supported" then?
Do you have an overview which distributions support loopback boot nowadays and could/would be supported within grub-loopback-iso?
I think the proposed grub-loopback-iso should be treated as a generic tool, "supporting" any loopback.cfg-compatible distro ISO. I proposed having Grml-specific detection basically as acknowledgement for Grml being first to do it :), but otherwise there doesn't need to be any distro-specific code in the package itself (i.e. the Grub submenu for a Finnix iso would just be something like "Loopback ISO (finnix-120.iso)".
As for which distros currently support loopback.cfg, it appears to be "just" Debian and their derivatives, and Ubuntu and their derivatives (yes Ubuntu is a derivative of Debian, but their image build system has diverged from Debian so much that it's essentially entirely different, but still builds compatible loopback.cfg files). I thought Fedora had it, and I've found various discussions about it, but apparently it was never implemented.
As for package maintenance in Debian, it could be something like a Salsa team, or you could add me to Uploaders, or I could just go through you for updates (I don't anticipate regular maintenance being that much).
Let me get something together in the next few days based on the grub-loopback-iso work from a few weeks ago, so we can have a specific proposal to discuss.
[1] In 2014 I had apparently forked grml-rescueboot as grub-loopback-iso, but never got it into Debian. And at some point it was added as a grml-rescueboot git branch? (http://git.grml.org/?p=grml-rescueboot.git;a=shortlog;h=refs/heads/grub-loop...) So it was known about and maybe was discussed at some point, but I honestly don't remember. I had updated my grub-loopback-iso and was looking for sponsors when Paul reminded me of grml-rescueboot again.
I think this dates back to the work around https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=750072 :)
Oh wow, I literally don't even remember that bug! That puts a lot of stuff in perspective now, thanks.
Teilnehmer (2)
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Michael Prokop -
Ryan Finnie