The default is to use the symlinks /vmlinuz and /initrd.img that are normally in the filesystem that's being snapshotted.

Could this have anything to do with anyhting? It boots ok in the device and everything seems to be working as it should there, outside of this refractasnapshot error. The initrd.img-6.12-sunxi64 and vmlinuz-6.12-sunxi64 are present in /boot.

However, now when running it gives:

Warning:   Kernel image is missing.
Warning:   initrd image is missing.

Make sure the kernel_image and/or initrd_image 
set in the config file are correct, and check
that the boot menu is also correct.

I do not know which config file this refers to. So far I've looked in /usr/lib/refractasnapshot/iso/isolinux and at live.cfg in particular with its various

    kernel /live/vmlinuz
    append initrd=/live/initrd.img boot=live ${ifnames_opt} ${netconfig_opt} ${username_opt}

lines, but got stuck there.

https://sourceforge.net/projects/refrac … 64_all.deb

$ sha256sum refractasnapshot-base_10.4.3-arm64_all.deb
 
212b49ff9649001f64c0a5e0ff810479d529772b3385ea9fdd19eb754fb6c3c4  refractasnapshot-base_10.4.3-arm64_all.deb

refractasnapshot-base in arm64 requires syslinux 3:6.03

Wrong: syslinux (>= 3:6.03)

Apt-get complains because syslinux is not available at all for arm64. Until the official package gets updated, you have to recompile the source tarball yourself, having removed the syslinux dependency line in debian/control .. Not difficult. Only syslinux-common (all arches) is actually needed for refractasnapshot to function.

EDIT
There is a bit more to do, need to get efi files to work, read above.

Who packages refractasnapshot for arm64? Isn't it @fsmithred? Can't the dependency requirement in the arm package for refractasnapshot-base just be updated to 3:6.0.4? 3:6.0.3 doesn't exist anywhere, it isn't in debian, devuan, maemo, or mobian repos.

We already have tested that another grub can boot the iso image via "loopback". Now I see that, although this machine seems unable to boot a dd'd isohybrid (pukes on loading the kernel), it can boot a usb with the snapshot live iso files simply copied.

Now I discover that refractainstaller can work on arm64 without modification! A live snapshot here was installed to a dedicated partition (not on the boot drive) and can be booted with, so far, no apparent problems. I chose to not do grub-install, I have grub manually configured elsewhere.

I disabled it on the cmdline. In fact I disabled live-config altogether, for this build, none of it is needed.

Or chmod -x it, dpkg-divert it or delete it.. but.. I noticed in refractasnapshot-base_10.4.2 line 824>:

# Enable or disable password login through ssh for users (not root)
# Remove obsolete live-config file 
if [[ -e "$work_dir"/myfs/lib/live/config/1161-openssh-server ]] ; then
	rm -f "$work_dir"/myfs/lib/live/config/1161-openssh-server
fi

That won't work, it's actually "1160-openssh-server" in Daedalus>!

On topic, I added near the top of the mkefi function a test for arm64

# Detect if arch is arm64
arch=$(dpkg --print-architecture)
if [ "$arch" = "amd64" ]; then

	efi_files="x86_64-efi"
	efi_binary="bootx64.efi"

elif [ "$arch" = "arm64" ]; then
	efi_files="arm64-efi"
	efi_binary="bootaa64.efi"
fi

Then replaced further down all instances of x86_64-efi with ${efi_files} and bootx64.efi with ${efi_binary}.

It works and produces arm64-efi files and bootaa64.efi in the iso.
Not that it's of much use if your hardware can't boot an iso directly..

I'm not sure what's up with ssh. In the excalibur isos I've made recently, live-config keeps turning off password authentication. I resorted to making a live-config script to look for 'SSH-ON' in the boot command.

I recompiled refractasnapshot from source tarball. Far as I can see it doesn't need dependency on syslinux. Most (all?) of the syslinux files to be copied over are actually part of syslinux-common, that's for all arches. For Daedalus at least. Kept isolinux (not arch-specific) dependency.

I also disabled in the script, the part where ssh is modified, by making it a function which doesn't actually run. Not sure if that was actually necessary but first try, I couldn't ssh it and this machine is intended to be headless.

Only other changes were refractasnapshot.conf and snapshot_exclude.list to suit.

This pi has uefi emulation boot (not uboot) therefore I can use grub to boot the snapshot iso. And boot it does, given the right cmdline (note "nocomponents" to disable live-config). It networks automatically and accepts ssh.

Snip from /etc/grub.d/40_custom:

menuentry "Refractasnapshot ARM ISO boot" {
  set isofile="(hd0,2)/home/snapshot/snapshot.iso"
  loopback loop $isofile
  linux    (loop)/live/vmlinuz-6.13.0-rc7 boot=live findiso=/home/snapshot/snapshot.iso nocomponents 
  initrd   (loop)/live/initrd.img-6.13.0-rc7

}

How useful this all is is another matter, the machine itself first needs a working grub (maybe not extlinux) to boot an actual iso. The other snapshot files, outside /live, are probably redundant in this scenario. Anyway it's a good backup and potentially installable.

I don't have any arm hardware to play with this. If anyone figures out how to do it, please let me know. If someone feels competent enough to try, I can help with pointing where to look in the script so they don't have to follow every strand of spaghetti.

Example:

bananapi: ~  $ cat /boot/extlinux/extlinux.conf
label default
	kernel ../Image
	initrd ../uInitrd
	fdtdir ../amlogic/
	fdt ../amlogic/meson-g12b-bananapi-cm4-cm4io.dtb
	fdtoverlays ../amlogic/overlays/meson-g12b-bananapi-cm4-pwm-gpioh-5-fan.dtbo
	append earlyprintk console=tty1 console=ttyAML0,115200n8 rw root=PARTUUID=8e95b500-02 rootwait rootfstype=xfs fsck.repair=yes loglevel=1 net.ifnames=0 no_console_suspend init=/sbin/init