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How does the bookworm amd64 netinst 738MB iso fit into a 700MB cd-r?

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siso

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Jun 18, 2023, 2:40:06 PM6/18/23
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I tried to write the debian-12.0.0-amd64-netinst.iso to cd using
cdrskin and xorriso but they both refused my command.

user@debian:~$ cdrskin -v dev=/dev/sr0 -sao debian-12.0.0-amd64-netinst.iso
cdrskin 1.5.4 : limited cdrecord compatibility wrapper for libburn
cdrskin: verbosity level : 1
cdrskin: NOTE : greying out all drives besides given dev='/dev/sr0'
cdrskin: scanning for devices ...
cdrskin: ... scanning for devices done
cdrskin: beginning to burn disc
cdrskin: status 1 burn_disc_blank "The drive holds a blank disc"
Current: CD-R
Track 01: data 738 MB
Total size: 738 MB (84:00.07) = 377856 sectors
Lout start: 738 MB (84:02/07) = 378006 sectors
cdrskin: FATAL : predicted session size 377856s does not fit on media (359844s)
cdrskin: HINT : This test may be disabled by option -force
cdrskin: burning failed
cdrskin: FATAL : burning failed.

user@debian:~$ xorriso -as cdrecord -v dev=/dev/sr0
debian-12.0.0-amd64-netinst.iso
xorriso 1.5.4 : RockRidge filesystem manipulator, libburnia project.

Drive current: -outdev '/dev/sr0'
Media current: CD-R
Media status : is blank
Media summary: 0 sessions, 0 data blocks, 0 data, 703m free
xorriso : FAILURE : Image size 378006s exceeds free space on media 359844s
xorriso : NOTE : Gave up -outdev ''
xorriso : FAILURE : -as cdrecord: Job could not be performed properly.
xorriso : aborting : -abort_on 'FAILURE' encountered 'FAILURE'

I also tried brasero and it too refused to burn to cd. I don't
remember the exact words brasero threw at me but they were along the
lines of cdrskin's "does not fit on media" and xorriso's "exceeds free
space on media".

"cdrskin: HINT : This test may be disabled by option -force"

I noticed that line in cdrskin. Was desperate so i gave that a try.

user@debian:~$ cdrskin -v -force dev=/dev/sr0 debian-12.0.0-amd64-netinst.iso
cdrskin 1.5.4 : limited cdrecord compatibility wrapper for libburn
cdrskin: verbosity level : 1
cdrskin: NOTE : greying out all drives besides given dev='/dev/sr0'
cdrskin: scanning for devices ...
cdrskin: ... scanning for devices done
cdrskin: beginning to burn disc
cdrskin: status 1 burn_disc_blank "The drive holds a blank disc"
Current: CD-R
Track 01: data 738 MB
Total size: 738 MB (84:00.07) = 377856 sectors
Lout start: 738 MB (84:02/07) = 378006 sectors
Starting to write CD/DVD at speed MAX in real SAO mode for single session.
Last chance to quit, starting real write in 0 seconds. Operation starts.
Waiting for reader process to fill input buffer ... input buffer ready.
Starting new track at sector: 0
Track 01: 702 of 738 MB written (fifo 100%) [buf 99%]
24.2x.cdrskin: FATAL : Exceeding range of permissible write addresses
(359856 >= 359844)
cdrskin: FATAL : CDB= 2a 00 00 05 7d a0 00 00 10 00 : dxfer_len= 32768
cdrskin: FATAL : Burn run failed
cdrskin: NOTE : WRITE command repetition happened 510 times

Track 01: Total bytes read/written: 737017856/736985088 (359856 sectors).
Writing time: 298.965s
Cdrskin: fifo had 361951 puts and 359903 gets.
Cdrskin: fifo was 0 times empty and 35417 times full, min fill was 99%.
Min drive buffer fill was 84%
cdrskin: burning failed
cdrskin: FATAL : burning failed.

And there it went, one good cd. FATAL indeed.

What did i miss?

Thank you.

siso

Thomas Schmitt

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Jun 18, 2023, 3:40:06 PM6/18/23
to
Hi,

siso wrote:
> I tried to write the debian-12.0.0-amd64-netinst.iso to cd using
> cdrskin and xorriso but they both refused my command.

Righteously. The ISO is just too large for "700 MB" CDs.

In
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1038440
i wrote a comparison of old and new storage usage in the ISO:
11.5.0 12.0.0 Growth
/firmware 0 MiB 216 MiB 216 MiB
/install.amd 67 MiB 138 MiB 71 MiB
/pool 301 MiB 360 MiB 59 MiB
Together with the minor file trees of the ISO this sums up to 738 MiB.


> user@debian:~$ cdrskin -v -force dev=/dev/sr0
> ...
> cdrskin: FATAL : Exceeding range of permissible write addresses (359856 >= 359844)
> cdrskin: FATAL : CDB= 2a 00 00 05 7d a0 00 00 10 00 : dxfer_len= 32768
> cdrskin: FATAL : Burn run failed

You ran into a known bug of cdrskin which will be fixed by version 1.5.6.
It did not even try to burn more than the official number of blocks.

Nevertheless it most probably would not have worked, because 36 MiB of
overburning is just too much for a "700 MB" CD.


> And there it went, one good cd. FATAL indeed.

Sorry for that.
After fixing option -force i added quite some warning to the man page
of cdrskin:

-force
Assume that the user knows better in situations when cdrskin or
libburn are refusing because of concerns about drive or media
state.
Caution: Use option -force only when in urgent need.
[...]
It enables a burn run where cdrskin expects to exceed the avail‐
able media capacity. This is known as "overburn" and might suc‐
ceed on CD media with write type SAO. Too much overburning
might be harmful to the medium and might make the drive unusable
(hopefully only until it gets powered off and on). The man page
of cdrecord mentions 88 seconds = 6600 blocks as halfways safe
amount over the official medium capacity. The assessment of
track sizes by libburn will be wrong if the written size reaches
or exceeds 90 minutes = 405000 sectors. The overall medium size
assessment by the Linux kernel is supposed to yield roughly the
written size, but you should test this yourself with every over‐
burnt medium.
First consider to use a medium with more capacity rather than
trying to overburn a CD.

There are "800 MB"/"90 minutes" CD-R which could take the ISO.

One reason for being able to overburn at all are "900 MB"/"100 minutes"
CD-R media. They cannot announce their full capacity to the drive,
because together with the wasteful lead-in and lead-out areas they exceed
the addressing limit of 100 minutes.


Have a nice day :)

Thomas

siso

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Jun 18, 2023, 6:00:07 PM6/18/23
to
Hi,

On Mon, Jun 19, 2023 at 3:32 AM Thomas Schmitt <scdb...@gmx.net> wrote:
>
> You ran into a known bug of cdrskin which will be fixed by version 1.5.6.
> It did not even try to burn more than the official number of blocks.
>
> Nevertheless it most probably would not have worked, because 36 MiB of
> overburning is just too much for a "700 MB" CD.

The bug saved my drive fortunately. Yay for that.

> > And there it went, one good cd. FATAL indeed.
>
> Sorry for that.

Don't worry about it. It was my poor attempt at tongue-in-cheek humour
:). Just lost one CD-R. The drive is still working fine, i think.

> After fixing option -force i added quite some warning to the man page
> of cdrskin:
>
> -force
> Assume that the user knows better in situations when cdrskin or
> libburn are refusing because of concerns about drive or media
> state.
> Caution: Use option -force only when in urgent need.
> ...
> First consider to use a medium with more capacity rather than
> trying to overburn a CD.
>
> There are "800 MB"/"90 minutes" CD-R which could take the ISO.
>
> One reason for being able to overburn at all are "900 MB"/"100 minutes"
> CD-R media. They cannot announce their full capacity to the drive,
> because together with the wasteful lead-in and lead-out areas they exceed
> the addressing limit of 100 minutes.

I see what i missed. I had no idea that 800MB or even 900MB CD-R
existed. Have only seen 700MB CD-R. Which explains my disbelief that
Debian would make a cd iso that couldn't fit into a standard cd. My
bad. But still it is a surprise to me that nobody thought this
deserved a mention in the release notes. I wonder if we are seeing the
last of CD-R as a Debian install medium. Wait, there is still the mini
iso. Ha, CD-R will live on. :)

> Have a nice day :)

I appreciate the detailed reply very much. Thank you for taking the
time. You have a nice day too.


siso

Thomas Schmitt

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Jun 18, 2023, 6:50:05 PM6/18/23
to
Hi,

siso wrote:
> The bug saved my drive fortunately. Yay for that.

I have no report of persistent damage. But drives can take offense from
overburning and then need a power cycle.


> I wonder if we are seeing the last of CD-R as a Debian install medium.

It seems not to be intented for now.

Bug 1038440 meanwhile has a comment by Cyril Brulebois:
> https://salsa.debian.org/installer-team/debian-installer/-/issues/3 has:
> Revisit firmware packages included in the netinst (amd64 is 738M for
> 12.0.0): at least nvidia stuff wasn't planned in the beginning, and
> could be removed.

But in the end there will be no way around switching netinst from CD to
DVD, if firmware shall stay. The list will grow. Decisions about removing
old hardware's firmware will be difficult.


> Wait, there is still the mini iso. Ha, CD-R will live on. :)

I rather hope for a netinst-CD ISO without firmware as companion of the
netinst DVD ISO with firmware.
Once there was the "businesscard CD" ISO with less than 50 MiB. Very handy
for xorriso regression tests.


Have a nice day :)

Thomas

Joe

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Jun 19, 2023, 3:20:07 AM6/19/23
to
Just a thought: Knoppix has never considered 700MB much of a limit.

"Because of its transparent decompression, up to 2 gigabyes of
executable software can be present on a CD, and up to 10GB on a
single-layered DVD."
https://www.knopper.net/knoppix-info/index-en.html

--
Joe

Thomas Schmitt

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Jun 19, 2023, 4:10:05 AM6/19/23
to
Hi,

Joe wrote:
> Just a thought: Knoppix has never considered 700MB much of a limit.
> "Because of its transparent decompression, up to 2 gigabyes of
> executable software can be present on a CD, and up to 10GB on a
> single-layered DVD."

Debian ISOs have all their big data files compressed: kernels, initrds,
packages.

There's not much potential for compression gains:

$ cat <debian-12.0.0-amd64-netinst.iso | wc -c
773849088

$ gzip -9 <debian-12.0.0-amd64-netinst.iso | wc -c
756547037

$ bzip2 -9 <debian-12.0.0-amd64-netinst.iso | wc -c
759482932

$ xz <debian-12.0.0-amd64-netinst.iso | wc -c
743924568

This potential can only partly be exploited. ISO 9660 metadata cannot be
compressed or else the bootloaders and Linux could not read the filesystem
content.
One could use zisofs compression for the few uncompressed files outside
of what the bootloaders need to read. The Linux kernel would transparently
decompress them.


Have a nice day :)

Thomas

Pierre Tomon

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Jun 19, 2023, 5:40:06 AM6/19/23
to

Steve McIntyre

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Jun 19, 2023, 7:00:07 AM6/19/23
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ssmcmlxx+...@gmail.com wrote:
>I tried to write the debian-12.0.0-amd64-netinst.iso to cd using
>cdrskin and xorriso but they both refused my command.

Apologies, it's just too large at this point. Adding all the firmware
made things grow too much. We have some ideas on how to fix this, and
I hope that the 12.1 images will work better.

--
Steve McIntyre, Cambridge, UK. st...@einval.com
< sladen> I actually stayed in a hotel and arrived to find a post-it
note stuck to the mini-bar saying "Paul: This fridge and
fittings are the correct way around and do not need altering"

Joe

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Jun 19, 2023, 9:20:06 AM6/19/23
to
On Mon, 19 Jun 2023 11:30:04 +0100
Steve McIntyre <st...@einval.com> wrote:

> ssmcmlxx+...@gmail.com wrote:
> >I tried to write the debian-12.0.0-amd64-netinst.iso to cd using
> >cdrskin and xorriso but they both refused my command.
>
> Apologies, it's just too large at this point. Adding all the firmware
> made things grow too much. We have some ideas on how to fix this, and
> I hope that the 12.1 images will work better.
>

Is compression practical in this case? Tom used to get 1.7MB on a 1.44MB
floppy, and Knoppix claims to put 2GB on a live CD.

--
Joe

Charles Curley

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Jun 19, 2023, 9:30:06 AM6/19/23
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On Mon, 19 Jun 2023 14:10:48 +0100
Joe <j...@jretrading.com> wrote:

> Tom used to get 1.7MB on a 1.44MB
> floppy,

If you mean Tom's rootboot, tomsrtbt: he got some of that "compression"
by adding extra tracks beyond the 1.44MB. It is also possible to add an
extra sector per track. (But not all floppy drives supported those extra
tracks and sectors gracefully or at all.) That got 1.7 MB out of a
1.44MB diskette. I don't know if he did compression on top of that.

--
Does anybody read signatures any more?

https://charlescurley.com
https://charlescurley.com/blog/

Steve McIntyre

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Jun 19, 2023, 11:20:05 AM6/19/23
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Just about everything on the media is already heavily compressed,
e.g. xz for data inside the .deb packages.

siso

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Jun 20, 2023, 2:00:07 AM6/20/23
to
Hi,

On Mon, Jun 19, 2023 at 6:49 AM Thomas Schmitt <scdb...@gmx.net> wrote:
>
> I have no report of persistent damage. But drives can take offense from
> overburning and then need a power cycle.

Thumbs up for cdrskin. I use it almost exclusively to burn CDs.
Definitely my first go-to.

> I rather hope for a netinst-CD ISO without firmware as companion of the
> netinst DVD ISO with firmware.
> Once there was the "businesscard CD" ISO with less than 50 MiB. Very handy
> for xorriso regression tests.

Yes, I hope so too. The 300+MB netinst CD isos of previous releases
were a joy to work with. Quick to burn. And it was easy to get to the
non-free firmware page by following the links from the netinst page.
At least for me it wasn't a problem.

siso

siso

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Jun 20, 2023, 2:20:05 AM6/20/23
to
On Mon, Jun 19, 2023 at 6:30 PM Steve McIntyre <st...@einval.com> wrote:
>
> Apologies, it's just too large at this point. Adding all the firmware
> made things grow too much. We have some ideas on how to fix this, and
> I hope that the 12.1 images will work better.

Glad to hear this. Looking forward to debian-12.1.0-amd64-netinst.iso.
My stack of blank CD-Rs can serve their purpose again.
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