debian:system-image

# Category `debian:system-image`

This artifact contains a disk image of a Debian system. The disk has a GPT partition table and is EFI bootable (for architectures that support EFI). The disk image should usually contain an EFI partition and a partition for the root filesystem. The root partition should use a partition type UUID respecting the discoverable partitions specification.

- Data:

  - Same as debian:system-tarball with some extra fields. The `filename` field points to the disk image.

  - image_format: indicates the format of the image (e.g. `raw`, `qcow2`)

  - filesystem: indicates the filesystem used on the root filesystem (e.g. `ext4`, `btrfs`, `iso9660`)

  - size: indicates the size of the filesystem on the root filesystem (in bytes)

  - boot_mechanism: a list of all the ways that the image can be booted. Valid values are `efi` and `bios`.

- Files:

  - `$filename` (e.g. `image.tar.xz`, `image.qcow2`, `image.iso`): the nature of the file depends on the `image_format` field.

- Relationships:

  - None.

Note

At this point, we expect official Debusine tasks to only generate and use images that are bootable with EFI. But the artifact specification has the `boot_mechanism` key to be future-proof and for the benefit of custom tasks that would make different choices.

## `raw` image format

The image itself is wrapped in a xz-compressed tarball to be able to properly support sparse filesystem images (i.e. files with holes without any data) and to save some space with compression.

The `filename` field points to the tarball that should contain a `root.img` file which is the raw disk image.

## `qcow2` image format

The `filename` field points directly to the `qcow2` image.