Build fails with no useful error message when using iso-bios format on arm64 architecture

[furious-luke]

Description

Building the "getty" example from the examples directory produces an error when specifying iso-bios as the format. I'm running on an Apple M2 Max, Ventura 13.3.1 (a). I've installed the latest version of Linuxkit via the go install command. Querying the version returns:

linuxkit version unknown
commit: unknown

Steps to reproduce the issue:

• go install github.com/linuxkit/linuxkit/src/cmd/linuxkit@latest
• Create a file getty.yml containing the contents of the LinuxKit reporsitory's examples/getty.yml.
• linuxkit build -format iso-bios getty.yml

Describe the results you received:

Extract kernel image: docker.io/linuxkit/kernel:5.10.104
Add init containers:
Process init image: docker.io/linuxkit/init:14df799bb3b9e0eb0491da9fda7f32a108a2e2a5
Process init image: docker.io/linuxkit/runc:436357ce16dd663e24f595bcec26d5ae476c998e
Process init image: docker.io/linuxkit/containerd:eeb3aaf497c0b3f6c67f3a245d61ea5a568ca718
Process init image: docker.io/linuxkit/ca-certificates:4de36e93dc87f7ccebd20db616ed10d381911d32
Add onboot containers:
  Create OCI config for linuxkit/sysctl:e5959517fab7b44692ad63941eecf37486e73799
  Create OCI config for linuxkit/dhcpcd:2a8ed08fea442909ba10f950d458191ed3647115
Add service containers:
  Create OCI config for linuxkit/getty:06f34bce0facea79161566d67345c3ea49965437
  Create OCI config for linuxkit/rngd:331294919ba6d953d261a2694019b659a98535a4
Add files:
  etc/getty.shadow
Create outputs:
  getty.iso
FATA[0010] Error writing outputs: Error writing iso-bios output: docker pull linuxkit/mkimage-iso-bios:583857f93befadcc6d7dadca348bb862185e262b failed: exit status 1 output:

Describe the results you expected:

I would expect the correct ISO image to be produced without error.

Additional information you deem important (e.g. issue happens only occasionally):

This same command works as expected on my Arch Linux machine.

[deitch]

I am guessing you are running on an M1 Mac or other arm64-based machine?

mkimage-iso-bios only works on amd64, restricted here, because of the dependency on syslinux, see here.

I get it; you should be able to target iso bios and cross-build from arm64; the tooling is the issue.

[furious-luke]

Thanks for the reply @deitch, I appreciate it! Yeah, I would have expected to be able to produce an amd64 image regardless of the architecture of my host machine. I can work around for now by building images on a different machine.

[deitch]

If you feel like figuring out how to make it work and open a PR, that would be great.

In the meantime, can you change the topic of this issue to reflect that building iso-bios doesn't work on arm64?