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Why ISO was retired (2021)

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Re: Why ISO was retired (2021)

#51

Post by yellowapple »

astrodust wrote: post #26
donatj wrote: post #25

I've always wondered, why are CDs a specific ISO file system and not just whatever the intended target can read (FAT32 / HFS(+)) like other media? Is it just that the write once nature of the media makes pre-composing the file system a pain?

You're lucky it's standardized at all. Before the ISO specification each and every CD-ROM released had its own format, drivers, and headaches.

How many people would've owned CD-ROM drives between 1984 (when CD-ROMs first hit the market) and 1988 (when ISO 9660 was finalized), though?

The bigger pain point for me was around booting from CDs; even though El Torito was around by the time I was potty trained, there were still plenty of PCs out there from before - and it's those PCs on which I cut my teeth as a kid :)

Re: Why ISO was retired (2021)

#53

Post by TylerE »

somat wrote: post #43
donatj wrote: post #25

I've always wondered, why are CDs a specific ISO file system and not just whatever the intended target can read (FAT32 / HFS(+)) like other media? Is it just that the write once nature of the media makes pre-composing the file system a pain?

The sgi irix cd's were in their EFS filesystem. It made reading sgi disks on other systems a bit of a challenge. At one time I was tempted into putting a UFS(the dvd filesystem) format on a flash drive, the theory was it would be a better filesystem than FAT and be readable in any OS. The problem was nobody ever implamented write routines for their UFS implementation, they were all read only. Sort of understandable a…

Makes me wonder what format DVDRs will see. (yes, I vaguely remember the hell of +R and -R)

Re: Why ISO was retired (2021)

#54

Post by TylerE »

babarock wrote: post #29
zgluck wrote: post #20

The original https://www.iso.org/ is still here, btw. "Why ISO[-9660 format] images relases were retired from EasyOS" would have have been a more suitable headline. I kind of miss the times when hackers were sticklers for details.

Different ISO ;)

Actually no. ISO-9660 is one of ma t standards issued by THE ISO.

Re: Why ISO was retired (2021)

#55

Post by smaudet »

bastawhiz wrote: post #41
gregw2 wrote: post #40

I dunno, I used to use ISO linux images because they were write-once and assuming I had a trusted source of the ISO or system writing the ISO, I didn't have to worry about the Linux system getting compromised and I could just run Linux off a CD/DVD. I'm surprised that didn't come up in the original article or comments here on HN. (I am aware of course of non-persistent in-memory worms, and the fact things can persist…

If you write an ISO to a flash drive is it read only? Obviously optical media is inherently read only, but I haven't owned a machine with an optical drive in almost fifteen years and I don't have confidence any way of running an image (aside from a hypervisor) would preserve that property.

Hmm I don't think they are cryptographically protected, it's a security by difficulty thing (obscurity?) - iso is not a "simple" format so corrupting is not simple, either.

On the other hand as you said, physical media can have a strong(er) security guarantee (write once at the physical layer), and iso's are easier to burn than disk images...

Optical media can still be bought and drives still work fine...and there are other advantages to optical media (such as longevity) that as of yet drives can't replicate.

Re: Why ISO was retired (2021)

#56

Post by brazzy »

theamk wrote: post #44
marcosdumay wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the article is correct that there is nothing unique to ISO on your comment. You can achieve all of that with an EXT-4 or NTFS filesystem too. Our tooling evolves in some strange ways. The only reason you want an ISO is because some software insists that it can't use a simpler FS the same way. It's like the software that insisted on saving things into floppy drivers even after no computer had them anymore. Of co…

ISO is great at keeping things immutable - most OSes auto-mount inserted USB sticks r/w by default, so your ext4 USB rescue stick cam be broken by one accidental mouse drag, or by a typo in "rm" command. And even if you fix one OS to not mount it r/w, it will still happen if you insert into your friend's PC. On the other hand, ISO is guaranteed to be immutable, you need some real effort to break it.

Immutability is not a property of the ISO file (system) format, it's a property of having it live on an optical disc.

But most computers these days don't have drives for optical discs, and if your ISO is merely a file on a USB stick, then it can be broken just as easily.

Re: Why ISO was retired (2021)

#57

Post by toastal »

I wouldn’t care so much if I could get a USB 3.2 or 4 device that’s only 2–4 GiB for like $2. I would actually buy a handful for each system I need, label it, and update that dedicated drive. However, fast, new drives don’t come at sizes appropriate just an ISO.

Re: Why ISO was retired (2021)

#58

Post by autumn-antlers »

cvccvroomvroom wrote: post #33
kn100 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ventoy is a magic tool that does exactly this, if you weren't aware.

I recall there's another one also. They replace the iOdd virtual CD USB device in all virtualized cases. For physical servers, the iOdd virtual ISO USB drive is very handy.

> there's another one

You're probably thinking of Easy2Boot.

Re: Why ISO was retired (2021)

#59

Post by winternewt »

brazzy wrote: post #56
theamk wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ISO is great at keeping things immutable - most OSes auto-mount inserted USB sticks r/w by default, so your ext4 USB rescue stick cam be broken by one accidental mouse drag, or by a typo in "rm" command. And even if you fix one OS to not mount it r/w, it will still happen if you insert into your friend's PC. On the other hand, ISO is guaranteed to be immutable, you need some real effort to break it.

Immutability is not a property of the ISO file (system) format, it's a property of having it live on an optical disc. But most computers these days don't have drives for optical discs, and if your ISO is merely a file on a USB stick, then it can be broken just as easily.

Maybe in theory, but not in practice. Because no ISO fs implementation has support for writing to a mounted image.

I'd argue that even in theory the immutability is kind of a property of the image format, since it doesn't have file or free space fragmentation. So whenever a file grows or shrinks you have to regenerate the entire image.

Re: Why ISO was retired (2021)

#60

Post by pezezin »

kn100 wrote: post #27
Aloha wrote: post #23

I often feel we missed a chance to make booting from removable media real easy. If we had built ISO support into EFI, you could just copy an ISO (like a container) to a MBR or GPT partitioned thumb drive and boot it - no magic tools required, no bits to set. Yes FAT32 has a 4gb limitation, but there is nothing saying that couldn't be fixed with future versions of EFI, or by using multiple partitions on thumb drive. E…

Ventoy is a magic tool that does exactly this, if you weren't aware.

Ventoy is absolutely magical, I can't recommend it enough.
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