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Bug 2036365 - Missing mtools on non-x86 arches in composes
Summary: Missing mtools on non-x86 arches in composes
Keywords:
Status: VERIFIED
Alias: None
Deadline: 2022-01-24
Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9
Classification: Red Hat
Component: mtools
Version: CentOS Stream
Hardware: Unspecified
OS: Unspecified
unspecified
unspecified
Target Milestone: rc
: ---
Assignee: Pavel Cahyna
QA Contact: Evgeny Fedin
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks: 2032235
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2021-12-31 12:49 UTC by Neal Gompa
Modified: 2022-08-30 12:14 UTC (History)
10 users (show)

Fixed In Version:
Doc Type: No Doc Update
Doc Text:
Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed:
Type: Bug
Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Attachments (Terms of Use)


Links
System ID Private Priority Status Summary Last Updated
Gitlab redhat/centos-stream/release-engineering pungi-centos merge_requests 223 0 None None None 2021-12-31 13:00:06 UTC
Red Hat Issue Tracker RHELPLAN-106719 0 None None None 2021-12-31 12:54:58 UTC

Description Neal Gompa 2021-12-31 12:49:49 UTC 
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.
Comment 1 Neal Gompa 2021-12-31 13:00:07 UTC 
MR proposed: https://gitlab.com/redhat/centos-stream/release-engineering/pungi-centos/-/merge_requests/223
Comment 7 Pavel Cahyna 2022-01-06 14:28:30 UTC 
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.
Comment 8 Neal Gompa 2022-01-06 14:38:29 UTC 
The kiwi appliance image builder tool uses it, the BZ for shipping it in EPEL is blocked by this BZ.
Comment 9 Neal Gompa 2022-01-07 12:40:45 UTC 
(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.
Comment 11 Pavel Cahyna 2022-01-17 11:31:08 UTC 
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.
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