create-boot-image.sh fails on Linux: macOS-only tools + invalid dd usage

[hemanthshashidhar]

create-boot-image.sh fails on Linux due to invalid dd usage and macOS-only tooling

I attempted to build Vib-OS on Parrot OS (Linux) and found that the image creation step fails.

Environment:

• OS: Parrot OS (Linux)
• Target: ARM64
• Kernel builds successfully
• Failure occurs during: make image

Observed issues:

1. Invalid dd block size on Linux

The script uses:
dd if=/dev/zero of="$IMAGE_PATH" bs=1m count=1024

On my system:
dd if=/dev/zero of=test2.img bs=1m count=10
→ dd: invalid number: '1m'

But:
dd if=/dev/zero of=big.img bs=1M count=1024

works correctly and creates a 1GB file.

So bs=1m is invalid on my system, while bs=1M works as expected.
Because the script uses set -e and suppresses output, it exits silently at this step.

2. macOS-only tools in image script

The script uses macOS-specific tools and paths:

• hdiutil
• diskutil
• /Volumes/EFI
• /dev/diskX

These are not available on Linux, so the script cannot proceed after the image is created.

3. Silent failure during image creation

• Errors from dd are redirected to /dev/null
• The Makefile hides the underlying error
• This makes it difficult to understand why make image fails on Linux

What works:

The kernel builds successfully and boots in QEMU using:
qemu-system-aarch64 -M virt -cpu cortex-a57 -kernel build/kernel/unixos.elf -nographic

Suggestions:

• Replace bs=1m with bs=1M
• Improve error visibility in the image creation script
• Clarify OS support for image creation (Linux/macOS)
• Optionally add Linux-compatible image creation logic

I’m happy to help improve Linux compatibility if needed.