isomount/sqmount in antiX

[Member tamix]

The set of isomount programs supplied by antiX distros is very handy and very useful in many contexts. It helps searching for global and/or refined features of all sorts on iso images – and much more provided those ISOs that are shipped with a squashfs filesystem, more precisely linuxfs. I happen to use these tools intensively by these days.

In the antiX environment, isomount/sqmount can mount any kind of antiX ISO files and squashfs filesystems, whatever the version, the init system, the architecture or the flavour. It does so with some MX ISO images but not all. The whole MX-19.4 series gets through, but neither the MX-21 or MX-21.1 series can be processed completely: it seems the sqmount command catches an issue whereas the respective iso has been mounted properly.

In the MX environment, everything goes smoothly. There the local isomount set works in all cases using either MX or antiX ISO images.

When transplanted to antiX, the MX isomount command fails too regarding the MX cases described above or below. I guess – but i did not check – there is practically no discrepancy between the antiX and MX script’s releases – except may be on scarce and small features.

antiX:

sudo isomount /media/demo/USB-TMP/MX-19.4_x64.iso

isomount: Mounted /media/demo/USB-TMP/MX-19.4_x64.iso at /mnt/iso/iso1
isomount: Mounted /mnt/iso/iso1/antiX/linuxfs at /mnt/iso/sq1

isomount mount-points
File                                 Type      Size  Mounted at   
/media/demo/USB-TMP/MX-19.4_x64.iso  iso9660   1.6G  /mnt/iso/iso1
/mnt/iso/iso1/antiX/linuxfs          squashfs  1.6G  /mnt/iso/sq1 

sudo isomount /media/demo/USB-TMP/MX-21_x64.iso

isomount: Mounted /media/demo/USB-TMP/MX-21_x64.iso at /mnt/iso/iso1
mount: /mnt/iso/sq1: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/loop2, missing codepage or helper program, or other error.
isomount: Was unable to mount -o loop,user,ro,exec -t squashfs /mnt/iso/iso1/antiX/linuxfs /mnt/iso/sq1

sudo sqmount /media/demo/USB-TMP/MX-21_x64.iso

mount: /mnt/iso/sq1: /dev/loop1 already mounted on /mnt/iso/iso1.
sqmount: Was unable to mount -o loop,user,ro,exec -t squashfs /media/demo/USB-TMP/MX-21_x64.iso /mnt/iso/sq1

Anyway, for the MX isos that can only be mounted by isomount but no more, a workaround comes with the unsquashfs command. This is no part of the isomount set but it is included with mksquashfs in any antiX full version. It allows to completely or partly uncompress trees/subtrees from a squashfs filesystem. It is imho much less convenient than isomount for what I need but it really helps from time to time.

Btw, a short note about the use of GUI mode and the –gui option. The script controlling isomount, dfh, etc. mistakenly outputs an error message about yad not being available then exits.

After editing the shell script version 00.30.05 and commenting out the line
#408, everything went fine using that pretty nice program – selecting or not the GUI mode.

I also had a look at https://github.com/BitJam/isomount for a complete description of the tool in the same version.

[Author]

Posts