Hi Pete, On Thu, Mar 09, 2023 at 08:24:08PM +0000, Pete Batard wrote: >Please note that, since bookworm has started to include firmware files, this >issue is also starting to affect bookworm users [1] and I can only advise >Debian maintainers to raise its priority, rather than dismiss it as something >that will only affect folks who don't use DD mode to write the ISOHybrid, as >this is going to affect people who are used to simply extracting the ISO >content onto FAT32 media to install Debian on a UEFI system. > >In short, if this issue is left unaddressed, bookworm will be introducing a >*regression* compared to bullseye, in that it will no longer be possible to >perform a Debian installation on a UEFI system through file system >transposition, and everyone will be forced to either use DD or use a utility >(like Rufus 3.22) that includes a *custom workaround* for Debian, in order to >duplicate the symbolically linked firmware files.
It looks like James (with some help from Thomas) has worked out a quick way to change things to make things better for you, which is good! (Thanks, guys! I'm about to test the change locally.) *However* you're the *only* person I've seen complaining about this problem with "file system transposition". I genuinely have not seen issues raised by people doing this, except where (it seems) Rufus is working this way. Let's be clear: "transposition" == "copying things onto a less capable filesystem". I'm normally really impressed by your skills and knowledge, but I don't understand why you seem to be so obsessed by this. With some tweaks like this MR, simply copying files onto FAT32 can clearly be made to work for UEFI-only media. That's fine. But it still breaks other useful features, at least: * BIOS boot * image checksums and those are important for me and a lot our users. Seriously, just using DD or similar gives people a verifiable, known-good copy of our installer image that will boot on as many machines as possible and work well in the debian-installer environment. That's my primary goal here. -- Steve McIntyre, Cambridge, UK. st...@einval.com "Because heaters aren't purple!" -- Catherine Pitt
