linuxboot / linuxboot/heads

exfat kernel support missing under Heads

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Makefile
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Merged PRs (30d)
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Description

extfat support would ease initial OS installation and boot media preparation.

Since fat32 is limiting files <4gb, formatting into NTFS would be wrong, and formatting into ext3/ext4 is not necessarily easy for some users/from some OSes, that thumb drives and sdcards normally come per-formatted with exfat, it would be animprovement if newcomers could simply drop ISOs+iso.asc/iso.sig and boot directly to already preformatted exfat bought external removable devices.

Let's remember that on a fresh externally flashed Heads firmware, Heads on initial boot picks up and detects that no OS is installed on internal hard drive and now propose to boot from USB. It would be nice to ease things a little further and permit users to just drop iso and iso.asc/iso.sig files (distribution provided detached signatures) on an already formatted exfat drive from a second computer, not trusting it, knowing that Heads will prevent booting from a corrupted/tampered with ISO.

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Research direction

The issue requests exFAT support for Heads boot media so users can place ISOs and detached signatures on existing removable drives. Begin by locating Heads' USB boot and filesystem support entry points; done means a preformatted exFAT drive can be detected and the ISO plus signature files can be processed without weakening verification.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
linux
Domain
operating-systems
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
25/100

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