[Fedora-livecd-list] Progress Report: Upping the 4gb filesystem limit

Just a heads up that I'm working on a couple of patches to livecd-iso-to-disk that let you up the filesystem limit. The current setup is: filesystem |_ livecd.iso |_ squashfs.img --read-only? |_ ext3fs.img I have prototyped it, and I had to: * cp --sparse=always ext3fs.img <filesystem with sparse support and 2.5GB free> // If I could mount the squashfs image read-write or do some kind of snapshot/overlay, this would be unneccesary * dd seek=8GB of=ext3fs.img * losetup ext3fs.img * resize2fs /dev/loopX // automatically expands to fill the whole 'partition' == 8GB * mkdir -p tmp/LiveOS/ * mv ext3fs.img tmp/LiveOS/ * mksquashfs tmp squashfs.img // takes ages: has to re-compress 2.5GB Can anyone give any hints on making this more efficient, or should I submit a patch to http://git.fedorahosted.org/git/?p=hosted/livecd;a=blob;f=tools/livecd-is... as it is? Also, I need to do more research into snapshots (had a wild goose chase grepping the kernel source for "overlay") but I think that I might be able to re-compact the overlay file into the squashfs using the above process. Would anyone be interested in seeing a patch of that form? Also, I think that pre-allocating 2GB from /dev/zero on FAT filesystems is pointless and needlessly slow. Doesn't the overlay grow itself anyway? Also, isn't the limit 4GB for FAT32? David.