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Description of problem:
mtools is missing in CentOS Stream 9 for non-x86 architectures, which makes image building tools in EPEL to not be installable for those architectures (they're used for manipulating EFI filesystem images). The package was available on all architectures in RHEL 8 and it should be made available for RHEL 9.
Quick check on aarch64: after enabling buildroot and installing mtools, they are able to see the ESP, so there should be no technical problem.
# mdir -i /dev/vda1 ::/EFI/redhat
Volume in drive : has no label
Volume Serial Number is 7130-EB82
Directory for ::/EFI/redhat
. <DIR> 2022-01-06 14:05
.. <DIR> 2022-01-06 14:05
SHIMAA~2 EFI 857984 2020-09-22 10:46 shimaa64-redhat.efi
BOOTAA64 CSV 184 2020-09-22 10:46
mmaa64 efi 831656 2020-09-22 10:46
shim efi 855408 2020-09-22 10:46
grub cfg 144 2022-01-06 14:06
shimaa64 efi 857984 2020-09-22 10:46
grubaa64 efi 2724808 2022-01-04 21:21
GRUBCF~1 RPM 6990 2022-01-06 14:05 grub.cfg.rpmsave
10 files 6 135 158 bytes
620 535 808 bytes free
Neal, please, what image building tools on EPEL need this? In the long term (not RHEL 9), it may be better to avoid using mtools.
(In reply to Pavel Cahyna from comment #7)
>
>
> Neal, please, what image building tools on EPEL need this? In the long term
> (not RHEL 9), it may be better to avoid using mtools.
What's the issue with mtools? It lets you manipulate FAT filesystems without mounting them, which is pretty handy.
I see that the MR got merged (thank you Josh), so I suppose the right action is to move to MODIFIED.
(In reply to Neal Gompa from comment #9)
> (In reply to Pavel Cahyna from comment #7)
> >
> >
> > Neal, please, what image building tools on EPEL need this? In the long term
> > (not RHEL 9), it may be better to avoid using mtools.
>
> What's the issue with mtools? It lets you manipulate FAT filesystems without
> mounting them, which is pretty handy.
While it was great to have MS-DOS like commands to manipulate FAT filesystems at the time when many people were familiar with MS-DOS commands (presumably more than with Unix commands) and they had plenty of MS-DOS floppies, nowadays this method of accessing filesystems is very idiosyncratic and out of place. One does not access other filesystems like that (without mounting), so why should FAT FS be special and does it warrant keeping a special package? Especially if one has to learn a different command set for this (MS-DOS - I suspect this knowledge is not as widespread as it used to be when mtools got introduced) and it duplicates the FAT FS support in the kernel.