xorriso and EFI boot images

[Thomas Schmitt]

Hi,

i took a look at grub-mkrescue.in with EFI and
implemented the EFI-only case in xorriso-0.5.5
timestamp 2010.04.20.103448:

  --efi-boot FILE        Set El Torito EFI boot image name and type

Currently -b and --efi-boot override each other.
Who comes last will win.
--efi-boot is not yet immune against subsequent
-boot-info-table. It disables eventual previous
-boot-info-table, though.

Due to an allergic reaction in libisofs, older
versions of xorriso are not be able to load
ISO images with boot catalog signature other than
0 ("80x86").

------------------------------------------------


Next i will have to extend the libisofs model of
a single boot image to a model that can represent
an El Torito Multiple Boot-Image configuration.


But i have scruples about the semantics of
Platform ID which is global to the whole boot
catalog. Is platform 0xef meant to be a superset
of platform 0x00 ?

If not, then it might violate the El Torito model
if we mix PC BIOS and EFI boot images.

If yes: how do platforms 0x01 (Power PC) and
0x02 (Mac) fit in there ?

-------------------------------------------------


Development of grub-mkrescue and xorriso:

Since we develop and fulfill new demands of
grub-mkrescue towards xorriso, we will need a
way to detect whether the locally installed
xorriso is able to fulfill them.

I can offer two ways for that:

- xorriso -version
  reports lines
    xorriso version   :  0.5.4
    Version timestamp :  2010.04.19.080001
  by which one can determine the development
  state.

- xorriso -as mkisofs -help 2>&1
  reports available commands.
  My own test version of grub-mkrescue 1.98 uses
  this to handle genisoimage, grub-mkisofs and
  xorriso.
  This method is also used by my tool scdbackup
  for using a mkisofs range of 10 years, and a
  xorriso range of 2 years.


Have a nice day :)

Thomas