Re: Building IPFire without using loop devices

[Michael Tremer <michael.tremer@ipfire.org>]

Hello,

I found the problem. It wasn’t in the image itself, but /tmp where we put the image and the root tree. That partition was mounted as a tmpfs with a 4 GiB limit which we simply exceeded. The fix is to create the image on disk:

  https://git.ipfire.org/?p=people/ms/ipfire-2.x.git;a=commitdiff;h=74a4ec8bc11a43dbda0fbf806914ca3d5c88c7fe

Could you please pull, rebuild and report?

All the best,
-Michael

> On 3 Apr 2026, at 19:56, Adolf Belka <adolf.belka@ipfire.org> wrote:
> 
> Hi Michael,
> 
> Sorry for slow reply, I have been a bit busy.
> 
> On 24/03/2026 18:16, Michael Tremer wrote:
>> Hello everyone,
>> On the last call, some people raised that the distribution no longer builds properly when running a recent version of GNOME or a similar desktop environment. We identified that the problem is udisk2 trying to figure out what the new device is that has just been mounted, not understanding that it is inside a container and that there should be no access.
> 
> That was me but not from the last call but from the following mail thread.
> 
> https://lists.ipfire.org/development/34f64d4b-4008-418b-83b0-e621bee9f999@ipfire.org/T/#t
> 
>> Since loop devices are not namespaces in Linux, there is no way to get around this. However, I have put some code together that generates the image without using any loop devices whatsoever:
>>   https://git.ipfire.org/?p=people/ms/ipfire-2.x.git;a=shortlog;h=refs/heads/no-loop
>> Could the people who have been affected by this and check if this branch builds without any problems and if the generated image is also bootable in either EFI, non-EFI or both modes, please?
> 
> I first tried running thew existing build process but with a usb disk drive mounted and accessed via a File Manager window. However the old build worked without any problems so I was not able to reproduce the previous problem I had.
> 
> So then I thought, okay then I will just try building the new branch and see how it goes. Unfortunately it failed. The failure message was:-
> 
> # Check if any files have been deleted
> [ -s "/tmp/cleanup.log" ]
> # Create the EFI partition
> mformat \
> -F \
> -i /tmp/image.img@@536870912 \
> -N "341A5693" \
> -v "EFI" \
> -h 32 \
> -n 1 \
> -t $(( 65536 / 32 )) \
> ::
> # Copy all files to the partition
> mcopy -s -i /tmp/image.img@@536870912 /tmp/root/boot/efi/* ::
> # Show what has been copied
> mdir -i /tmp/image.img@@536870912 ::
> Volume in drive : is EFI
> Volume Serial Number is 341A-5693
> Directory for ::/
> 
> EFI          <DIR>     2026-04-03  14:11
>        1 file                    0 bytes
>                      2 841 190 400 bytes free
> 
> # Remove any copied content
> rm -rf /tmp/root/boot/efi/*
> # Print how much space we need
> du -csh /tmp/root/boot/*
> 7.0M /tmp/root/boot/System.map-6.18.7-ipfire
> 200K /tmp/root/boot/config-6.18.7-ipfire
> 0 /tmp/root/boot/efi
> 25M /tmp/root/boot/grub
> 73M /tmp/root/boot/initramfs-6.18.7-ipfire.img
> 8.9M /tmp/root/boot/vmlinuz-6.18.7-ipfire
> 114M total
> # Format them
> mkfs.ext2 \
> -F \
> -E offset=4194304 \
> -U "88ce295a-436b-4bad-9509-07ec3a630029" \
> -d /tmp/root/boot \
> /tmp/image.img \
> 520192
> mke2fs 1.47.3 (8-Jul-2025)
> Discarding device blocks:      0/520192\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b             \b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\bdone
> Creating filesystem with 520192 1k blocks and 130048 inodes
> Filesystem UUID: 88ce295a-436b-4bad-9509-07ec3a630029
> Superblock backups stored on blocks:
> 8193, 24577, 40961, 57345, 73729, 204801, 221185, 401409
> 
> Allocating group tables:  0/64\b\b\b\b\b     \b\b\b\b\bdone
> Writing inode tables:  0/64\b\b\b\b\b     \b\b\b\b\bdone
> Copying files into the device: done
> Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information:  0/64\b\b\b\b\b     \b\b\b\b\bdone
> 
> # Remove any copied content
> rm -rf /tmp/root/boot/*
> # Print how much space we need
> du -csh /tmp/root/*
> 9.8M /tmp/root/bin
> 0 /tmp/root/boot
> 0 /tmp/root/dev
> 18M /tmp/root/etc
> 0 /tmp/root/home
> 1.2G /tmp/root/lib
> 0 /tmp/root/lib64
> 0 /tmp/root/media
> 0 /tmp/root/mnt
> 68K /tmp/root/opt
> 0 /tmp/root/proc
> 12K /tmp/root/root
> 0 /tmp/root/run
> 12M /tmp/root/sbin
> 4.3M /tmp/root/srv
> 0 /tmp/root/sys
> 0 /tmp/root/tmp
> 750M /tmp/root/usr
> 73M /tmp/root/var
> 2.0G total
> # Create the root filesystem and input files
> mkfs.ext4 \
> -F \
> -E offset=570425344 \
> -U "e041f3cc-df7e-4a3c-a2f7-8a2457b1a741" \
> -d /tmp/root \
> /tmp/image.img \
> 2621440
> mke2fs 1.47.3 (8-Jul-2025)
> Discarding device blocks:      0/655360\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b             \b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\bdone
> Creating filesystem with 655360 4k blocks and 163840 inodes
> Filesystem UUID: e041f3cc-df7e-4a3c-a2f7-8a2457b1a741
> Superblock backups stored on blocks:
> 32768, 98304, 163840, 229376, 294912
> 
> Allocating group tables:  0/20\b\b\b\b\b     \b\b\b\b\bdone
> Writing inode tables:  0/20\b\b\b\b\b     \b\b\b\b\bdone
> Creating journal (16384 blocks): done
> Copying files into the device: libhs.so.5.4.12: No space left on device while looking up "libhs.so.5.4.12"
> mkfs.ext4: No space left on device while populating file system
> make: *** [flash-images:172: /usr/src/log/flash-image] Error 1
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Adolf.
> 
>> Feel free to hit me up with any problems or questions.
>> Best,
>> -Michael
>