Reading from ISO9660 in U-Boot

[Heinrich Schuchardt]

Am 23. September 2023 16:36:32 MESZ schrieb Simon Glass <sjg at chromium.org>:
>Hi Heinrich,
>
>On Fri, 22 Sept 2023 at 19:38, Heinrich Schuchardt <xypron.glpk at gmx.de> wrote:
>>
>> On 9/23/23 00:13, Simon Glass wrote:
>> > Hi Heinrich & Bin,
>> >
>> > I'd like to be able to figure out in U-Boot what OS is on a USB stick.
>> > For example, with the Ubuntu installer, I can boot it (through grub),
>> > but I cannot see how to read anything useful from the USB stick that
>> > would indicate that it is Ubuntu, what version it is, etc.
>> >
>> > Does U-Boot need an ISO9660-filesystem driver for that? Is there any other way?
>> >
>> > With Debian I can see the actual files (linux and initrd) , so it is a
>> > bit easier.
>> >
>> > Regards,
>> > SImon
>>
>> U-Boot only needs to support reading the ESP to boot. GRUB comes with a
>> 9660 driver.
>
>Yes, but this is not about booting, it is about visibility into what
>is being booted. Perhaps Ubuntu could put some information in
>partition 2?
>
>>
>> On Ubuntu server installer images linux and initrd are in directory
>> casper/ in the ISO9660 file-system.
>>
>> There is also a file dists/mantic/Release
>>
>> $ cat dists/mantic/Release
>> Origin: Ubuntu
>> Label: Ubuntu
>> Suite: mantic
>> Version: 23.10
>> Codename: mantic
>> Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2023 23:07:01 UTC
>> Architectures: amd64 i386
>> Components: main restricted
>> Description: Ubuntu Mantic 23.10
>> Acquire-By-Hash: yes
>>
>
>That would be useful info. Ideally we would have a standard format for
>this file across all distros, perhaps something that VBE can help
>with.

What problem do you want to solve? During installation you should know what you have downloaded.

Afterwards UEFI boot options should receive reasonable labels.

Best regards

Heinrich


>
>Regards,
>Simon