xorriso is the bomb

 So, I wanted to remaster the SystemRescue iso. A trivial (20 character addition) was needed. I could not for the life of me figure out how to do this.

The answer (after 3-4 different multi-hour sessions trying to figure this out) was to use a tool called: xorriso. And to bear in mind that the iso itself needs to be bootable via an ISO or burnt CD/DVD as well as via UEFI and possible even via USB. This means it needs to be an everything bagel (so to speak). I found the "howto" for another distro and used that technique with the slight differences for the system rescue iso (which buries the efiboot.img under archiso since it is arch linux based.)

There was also this handy little guide re: xorriso. That was part of figuring this out. (I've always used genisoimage and friends prior to needing to remaster this.)

ugly code that works

 I had the thought, "ugly code that works", as I finished a PR today. Project isn't technically open sourced (YET!) so I can't say much more but man, I worked sooooo long and hard on this trivial problem that I needed to vent.

The solution to the problem was to do something in cloud-init. Do the same thing in a systemd unit. And all of that was just to work around a sysctl issue. The solution is ugly code that works (in particular as it has a sleep 180 embedded in a script.) There is no reason in the world that I should be writing a systemd unit that calls a two line script where one line is sleep 180. But, there was no way to get the sysctl working with a systemd.path unit. (I tried, repeatedly.)

And the code works. I also then (after getting a merge) googled, "ugly code that works", and saw someone has already written this blog (though thankfully it wasn't me this time). See: https://dev.to/tonetheman/ugly-code-that-works-4i7l

"Do not be afraid to write ugly code that works." Also, don't be too surprised if it does break. Ugly code can be fragile also.