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The forge · Stage of the build

Stage 3

Cast into the shell and wrought to hold. The rootfs becomes a bootable QCOW2 image through stage3/image.sh, and the shape holds on its own.

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From tree to disk image

Stage 3 copies the finished Stage 2 rootfs onto a disk image, installs the bootloader and writes the boot configuration. The image format is QCOW2, ready for KVM, QEMU and other hypervisors.

Even here the build keeps its discipline: GRUB is installed with the one inside the Stage 2 tree, not whatever the host happens to have, so the bootloader matches the system it will start. Image assembly is excluded from anything that could pull host paths into the result.

When this stage completes, the filesystem can boot without either builder. What it does not yet contain is a package universe: that is what Stage 4 adds, package by package.

Continue the chain

Next: Stage 4, back to Stage 2, or the forge overview.