In Rocky Linux 8, genisoimage/mkisofs/other utilities are used by pungi (an older version) when being constructed. With the new build system, we had to make a choice: A) Use methods that are being superseded by xorriso in Fedora ELN or B) future proof on xorriso for all releases beyond version 8 and avoid using the mkisofs personality. We went with option B to be prepared for a possible deprecation/removal of the aforementioned tools in the coming years. Fedora recently has added xorriso support to pungi for example:
https://pagure.io/pungi/blob/master/f/pungi/createiso.py#_121 and their Fedora ELN ISO's report "SORRY" severity when using as_mkisofs, just as ours do. This does not affect how the images operate, as far as we can tell. (As an aside, you are the first to report an issue with "report_system_area")
The process essentially works like this:
1) lorax is used to make the initial boot.iso images
2a) Pungi creates new extra images using the data generated by lorax and graft points (RL8)
2b) Empanadas (our toolkit) reuses the boot.iso generated by lorax to make the extra images (RL9+)
Pungi typically uses genisoimage/mkisofs alongside graft points that were generated elsewhere. Our toolkit also generates graft points, but we use a much smaller dialog and attempt to reuse how the boot.iso was initially made in lorax. With this, it is possible something may get "missed" in translation.
The method is a bit unconventional, sure.
-L