pie-executable and sharedlib fixed again

I thought this was fixed, see blog post:

https://bkhome.org/news/202010/file-utility-confuses-executable-and-shared-library.html

However, I see in latest build of EasyOS that binary executables are still showing as mime type "application/x-sharedlib" in package 'shared-mime-info', though 'file' executable shows them as "ELF 64-bit LSB pie executable".

Chased the cause down to the build using an older /usr/share/mime/packages/freedesktop.org.xml, instead of the one that comes with the 'shared-mime-info' package.

Also fixed a couple of other things...

A change rather than a fix... the keyboard layout and password entry in the initrd are now gtk GUI apps. That is, nice GUI apps before the switch_root to the main filesystem. Previously, was only doing that for non-English builds, then not at all as Xorg was not working with the /dev/fb0 framebuffer -- solved by rolling back to  xserver 1.19.7, from 1.20.8.

Note, in the EasyOS Buster-series had this problem, and compiled a very cutdown xserver 1.19.6 and made it into a PET. Used that to run GUI apps in the initrd.

Remember another change... I have posted about changing to a "save-file" instead of a "save-folder", however, testing on a slow USB-stick, found there is a noticeable performance hit. Very noticeable. Somehow, creating an ext4 filesystem in a sparse file, then mounting it as top layer in aufs, is causing extra translations/processing, that is slowing everything down.

I didn't notice the speed degradation at first, when testing on a fast USB-stick.

So, the 'init' script in the initrd will now only use a sparse-file save-file if the working-partition is ntfs. A non-Linux working-partition means that there is no alternative, a save-file has to be used. It does leave that option open, that someone can install EasyOS to an ntfs partition, instead of needing to have a ext4, f2fs, or reiserfs partition.

Perhaps on a fast drive, such as SSD, the speed degradation won't be noticed.

Of course, could go to the Puppy way of doing things, create a save-file of fixed size, then will have to choose an initial size, then increase it as required. Don't want to go back to that.    

Tags: easy