requires `/sbin` in user's path

[jamincollins]

INFO: vfat(boot.vfat): cmd: "mkdosfs -S 512 -i 2D96C164 -n 'BOOT' '/home/jamin/rpi-image-gen/work/image-deb12-arm64-min/boot.vfat'" (stderr):
/bin/sh: 1: mkdosfs: not found

mkdosfs resides in /sbin:

 dpkg -L dosfstools | grep 'bin.*mkdosfs'
/sbin/mkdosfs

Once I added /sbin to my user's path the command completed successfully.

Might be better in general to fully scope/path binary calls.

[learmj]

Please try to search for issues similar to your own before creating new ones...
https://github.com/raspberrypi/rpi-image-gen/issues/73#issuecomment-3082579520

[learmj]

Might be better in general to fully scope/path binary calls.

Absolutely not.

[learmj]

Also, see #100
To help avoid issues where the host distribution unhelpfully installs utilities in a location not present in a regular user's PATH (eg like Debian does with /sbin/mkdosfs), I can look at enhancing the dependency installer to probe for the pkg/cmd after it has been installed. That way, rpi-image-gen can at least say "hey, I've installed the pkg that provides X, but I still can't run X".

As I've said in other tickets, it's not rpi-image-gen's responsibility to hard-wire paths to host distribution installed utilities. If utilities were installed as part of its build (eg like Buildroot and Yocto do) then yes - it would be 100% responsible for making sure they were present and executable. At the moment, the only utility that is handled that way is syft.

[jamincollins]

I do get your point, but isn't Debian a supported build platform, if not the supported build platform? So, shouldn't the scripts work on a bog standard minimal Debian install?

[learmj]

The project readme states:

rpi-image-gen has been developed on Raspberry Pi OS which, at the time of writing, is Debian Bookworm arm64. It heavily favours Debian-based systems and will run on non-arm64 platforms (such as x86_64) via QEMU emulation or inside container environments. However, there is currently no formal support for these non-native environments.

Raspberry Pi OS uses vanilla Debian packages, but it's not a vanilla Debian distribution install.

I'm sympathetic to your issue raised here, and I think I will tweak the dependency installer as mentioned to highlight that PATH may need manual fix up, but while the tool can run on x86 build hosts, I deliberately refrained from claiming support of such environments simply because it can be fraught with pitfalls and corner cases.

I know some users run rpi-image-gen on their x86 boxes (me included). It's not a great experience if installing non-native arch deb pkgs, particularly if you rebuild any initramfs, simply because the execution path through emulation is slow. It's very fast to build an arm64 image if running on a Raspberry Pi 5 class device.

User @jonnymacs has done some good work on rpi-image-gen containerisation and build env set up, eg for use with Docker. I recommend checking out his github page.