Porteus-v1.0-alpha-x86_64 calls for testing

[fanthom]

Hi all,

good news to everyone - i have finally isolated a driver which was causing random kernel hangups during boot time with 2.6.38-rc* kernels.
The unfortunate driver is 'rt2860sta' and i have blacklisted it in:

Code: Select all

/porteus/rootcopy/etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-rt2860sta.conf

if anybody need this driver for wifi and is not afraid of hangups (around 2 kernel panics on 10 boots) then please just remove this file. Maybe there is a workaround like blacklisting and then loading it through /etc/rc.d/rc.local, or .kde/Autostart but i had no time to test it.hopefully someone from community will do it.

Today i'll try to merge last changes to the ISO image and alpha will be released tomorrow at 8.00pm Greenwich time.
Be prepared for plenty of changes and goodies

Full changelog will be posted tomorrow and thread will be unlocked then and i'm expecting a nice feedback from the community

Cheers

[brokenman]

Excellent. Will test this out immediately.

-------- Edit
Unfortunately it does not fix my problem. I still have around 4/10 boots fail with just after udev with:
udev-work[1980]: '/sbin/modprobe -bv pci: v00001002d000068c1sv0000103csd0000144Abc03sc00100' unexpected exit with status 0x0009

This error is mentioned in changelog for 2.6.38-rc3
http://kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6 ... 2.6.38-rc3 (just search the page for 'x0009')

dmesg shows early in screen:
1.911651] pci 0000:01:00.0: no compatible bridge window for [mem 0xfffe0000-0xffffffff pref]

The lspci output seems to correspond with:
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Device 68c1

So the only difference (for me) after blacklisting rt2860sta is that no wlan0 interface exists after boot. I have to manually load the module, bring the wlan0 interface up, then start the network. This is a problem for guest user. Back to the drawing board for me. I am starting to think that my oops is not related to the problem you were having.

Any help would be appreciated on this matter. It's driving me nuts having to reboot a number of times to get a desktop. Booting into text mode is not a problem and booting via virtualbox always works fine. I will try hunting down a video driver for my system and see if that gets me any further.

Posted after 5 hours 52 minutes 16 seconds:
Re: Porteus-v1.0-alpha-x86_64 calls for testing (since tomorrow)
OK my problem seems related to the SWITCHEROO function which is enabled in the kernel.

As of AMD Catalyst™ 10.12, there is no support for switchable graphics chips in Linux. This means you cannot switch between the low power consumption of the integrated graphics chip and the high performance of the discrete graphics chip. Some manufacturers allow the IGP to be turned off in the BIOS and use the discrete card only (but this is not good for battery life). Otherwise, you are stuck with both GPU's turned on and draining the battery while only being able to use the IGP. Carefully research before purchasing a laptop, or you may not be able to fully use the hardware you pay for.

So i am lef tint he shit. The open source driver does not support switcheroo and the proprietary ATI driver will not compile on my machine. I may have to do a switcheroo with the older laptop i gave to the mrs when i bought this one.

[fanthom]

Finally - here it is!

Main Changes:
- new kernel 2.6.38-rc4 with xz compression for: kernel, initrd (which is named now initrd.xz - bare in mind) and most exciting: squashfs!
- kernel config: all nls compiled as (*) and not (M) - no point for having one copy in initrd and second in 000-kernel; added rt2800usb driver (goyfilm request), enabled 'autogroup scheduler' (famous 200~ lines patch which does wonders), and more...
- userland bumped to slackware-current from 1st of Feb 2011 - latest available at the moment
- KDE-4.6.0
- latest LXDE from git - as usual: credits goes to ponce
- new official package format: xzm. all tools/scripts are rewritten for this purpose (dir2lzm is replaced by dir2xzm, txz2lzm -> txz2xzm, etc).
The only 'lzm' tool which exist in the system is a 'lzm2xzm'. please use it to convert your modules from lzm (lzma) to xzm (lzma2) as lzm's are not supported anymore by the kernel and system in general.
- as per latest poll result: guest account is enabled by default. during boot time you will be prompted for changing passwords ( or you can just press enter to continue with default ones for the current session).
Once you change your passwords then please make sure to store updated /etc/shadow file either in /porteus/rootcopy or in a separated module. I can add another function to rc.M which will do it on user request automatically.
It may be not very safe to keep your passwords in /rootcopy when you are using Porteus on a pendrive/CD thst's why you can use 'Porteus-Encryptor' tool to encrypt whole /porteus folder. All Porteus specific tools tools have 'switch to root' function so you will be prompted for root password when it's necessary ie. activation/deactivation of modules, installation of tgz/txz packages, using 'mloop' and other utilities. If you want to activate multiple modules through dolphin then it's better to run this package manager in a 'super user' mode - available through Kmenu/Lxde menu. In this case you wont have to type root's password for every action which requires super user privileges.
To get back old (slax, slax-remix) behavior you need to use 'toroot' chetcode which skips 'password check' function and brings you straight to the root desktop.
- due to bugs in latest kernel/aufs I have removed possibility of saving changes on FAT/NTFS completely. During boot time you will be asked for creation of save.dat container which should be used for storing of changes. if you refuse do it - 'always fresh' mode will be forced by linuxrc at every boot.
BTW - even if aufs will be fixed in the future, i'm not going to bring back 'FAT/NTFS changes' functionality. issues caused by posixovl should be over now.
- new cheatcode: 'extramod='. This parameter let you load modules stored in a folder different one than original /porteus/base /porteus/modules and /porteus/optional. From now on modules can be placed on different partition or even different media. Full path is not required, although recommended. more info - as usual, in /porteus/cheatcodes.txt file.
- 'from_iso=' cheatcode so wont require full path now. be aware that you still can't use it together with 'from_dev=' parameter. provide a full path to 'from_iso=' parameter instead.
- new tools: 'Porteus-Encryptor' and 'Magic Folders' (thanks to Falcony). run them to find more about their functionality.
- packages added: xhost, librsvg, libcdio, libcddb, polkit related and few more
- also added bluetooth stack: bluez, bluez-firmware, bluedevil, libbluedevil, obexd, obex-data-server, obexftp, openobex
- despite of new packages added to default ISO, it's size is size reduced by 8 MB. xz compression with '-Xbcj' optimization does great job!
- booting speed (and overall desktop responsiveness) raised up to 20%. thanks to xz compression again.

Other changes:
- many small linuxrc fixes - im really happy with this script now
- busybox and all utilities bumped to latest version (including ntfs-3g driver) inside initrd.xz
- fixed nouveau issue by removing modesetting driver. if you spot any 3D apps working improperly - let me know. (credits: Ahau)
- new Kmenu and xzm icons (credits: Blaze)
- fixed LXDE associations by adding 'update-desktop-detabase' function to rc.M and removing kfmclient package (thanks to Ahau)
- unmuted 'speaker' setting in rc.alsa (i'm getting bored: again Ahau)
- added 'md5sum' check function to 'bootinst.sh' and 'liloinst.sh' script installers (thanks to burninbush for suggestion). not available to Windows users unfortunately.
- last slax references are gone: slaxsave.dat removed completely (we have linuxrc to create .dat files on the fly during boot time), mkslaxsave is also not needed anymore, rc.slax merged with rc.M. If you still spot anything slax, slax-remix related - please let me know before Porteus-v1.0 FINAL
- recompiled mplayer and qmmp against libcdio and libcddb which gives us audio CD support. K3b can encode mp3/ogg files from audio tracks.
- new LXDE wallpaper and LXDE icon set - i'm sure you will love it
- new KDE wallpaper (dont really like it so if you have any good 'spring one', let me know)
- new kdm theme (brokenman rocks!). If you want to switch from root to guest or from kde to lxde just logout from current desktop and you will have possibility to change your environment as 'auto relogin' is disabled.
- new color scheme for /etc/issue (you will see it after booting to text mode)
- added update_module script. more info: http://forum.porteus.org/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=252
- updated squashfs-tools: added 'xz' compression. when you use 'mksquashfs' utility directly then you can use '-Xbcj x86' optimization to get smaller module size with the same blocksize
- .bashrc has aliases for color schemes (brokenman job again) and for guest su='su -' which will let you to login to root account with full environment variables (ie you can start dolphin while being logged to GUI as guest)
- almost all scripts written by me were updated with proper english grammar by Ahau. many thanks for that

Countless number of other small changes which i simply dont remember - sorry

Porteus-v1.0_alpha KNOWN BUGS SECTION:
- 'rt2860sta' driver is causing random kernel hangups during boot time with 2.6.38-rc* kernels. More info above. Solution as per today: blacklisting (done by default).
- taskbar in KDE-4.6.0 doesn't resize like it did in 4.5.x series. known upstream bug:
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=265051
hopefully will be resolved in KDE-4.6.1 or later.
Soluton as per today: resize your taskbar manually and then store /home/guest/.kde4/share/config/plasma-desktop-appletsrc and /home/guest/.kde4/share/config/plasma-desktop-appletsrc in /porteus/rootcopy directory.
- ndiswrapped doesn't compile with 2.6.38-rc* kernels yet.

Final Note:
I'm really happy with this release as in last 6 weeks we have done tremendous job with getting all these features in.
plese remember that it's still an early alpha (with rc* kernel) so there is probably a huge room for improvements.
Let us know about things which need to be fixed or implemented before Porteus-v1.0 FINAL which should be released in next 6 weeks. Earlier is better
As usual: before you make a bug report - please try to recreate it in always fresh mode with /porteus/base modules only.

Pay attention to kernel oopses and in case of being affected please geve us the info about your hardware. please use 'psinfo' script for this purpose.

Link to Porteus-v1.0_alpha repo:
http://ponce.cc/porteus/x86_64/testing/ ... 1.0_alpha/

Enjoy!
Porteus Team

[Ahau]

Great work, fanthom! Way to go!

I only had time to boot in to the .iso, but I'll get it extracted and installed asap to play with users and saved changes, etc.

RE: modesetting driver--if possible, could you please put together a module for me, containing the modesetting driver you removed? I'd like to insert it back into my system to see if the issue persists in the latest versions of mesa and xorg.

RE: KDE panel (aka taskbar)--I was able to set mine to full width by right clicking on the panel, selecting to configure it, then "more settings", and finally, checking "maximize panel". May not be the exact wording, I'm going from memory . It stayed the appropriate width while changing screen resolutions, so this may not be the same bug as the link above. I'll play with this some more, and poke around the config files to see what it looks like there.

[brokenman]

I can confirm i was able to to do the same as Ahau. Unlock the widgets, Panel settings/more settings and then maximize panel. Had a quick look but couldn't find ~/.kde4/share/config file with setting.

edit: looks like plasma-desktoprc but you can't set a maximize as such as it records the pixels width. I found a javascript workaround that can be used as an update script, but this is not the best way.

Ahau the rt2860sta driver was blacklisted but not removed. You can remove the blacklist file from /etc/modprobe.d which should load the driver during boot. I would say it only affects some machines ... mine it isn't a problem.

BTW: KDE4.6 look shit hot!

[fanthom]

@Ahau
"modesetting driver--if possible, could you please put together a module for me, containing the modesetting driver you removed?"
please get it from mesa-7.10 package:
http://ftp.heanet.ie/mirrors/ftp.slackw ... 6_64-1.txz

"KDE panel (aka taskbar)--I was able to set mine to full width by right clicking on the panel,... ..."
could you save /home/guest/.kde4/share/config/plasma-desktop-appletsrc and /home/guest/.kde4/share/config/plasma-desktop-appletsrc in /porteus/rootcopy directory and then check if it does resize correctly on different PC's as well?

@brokenman
"looks like plasma-desktoprc but you can't set a maximize as such as it records the pixels width."
exactly - and that's most annoying thing as KDE-4 save position in pixels for every widget, etc... which makes adoption for livecd distro a lot harder

"Ahau the rt2860sta driver was blacklisted but not removed."
Ahau was actually referring to 'modesetting' driver responsible for nouveau bug.

"I would say it only affects some machines ... mine it isn't a problem. "
does it mean that 64bit alpha works without an oopses on your PC after blacklistiong rt2860sta? if yest then i could try to load this driver later in the boot process and wifi would be up at the end. Bug would be partially resolved then.
##########################################################################
updated Porteus-v1.0_alpha repo with kernel dependent packages:
nVidia-260.19.36-porteus-v1.0_alpha-x86_64.xzm (thanks to beny)
ati-fglrx-11.1-porteus-v1.0_alpha-x86_64.xzm
VirtualBox-4.0.2-porteus-v1.0_alpha-x86_64.xzm
vbox-guest-402-porteus-v1.0_alpha-x86_64.xzm

Enjoy!

[Hool de Nord]

Error when installed on FAT32 formatted pendrive:
http://img827.imageshack.us/img827/3984/error1o.jpg
When I press "y" or "n" nothing happens.
Also I get some "softreset failed" warning, but it
appeared also in previous version of Porteus and
didn't cause any problems.

Error when installed on EXT3 formatted pendrive:
http://img690.imageshack.us/img690/2122/error2z.jpg

No luck for alpha version, at least for me.

EDIT:

Ok, I've managed to install Porteus using liloinst.sh...
But lilo doesn't have boot menu...

- due to bugs in latest kernel/aufs I have removed possibility of saving changes on FAT/NTFS completely. During boot time you will be asked for creation of save.dat container which should be used for storing of changes. if you refuse do it - 'always fresh' mode will be forced by linuxrc at every boot.
BTW - even if aufs will be fixed in the future, i'm not going to bring back 'FAT/NTFS changes' functionality. issues caused by posixovl should be over now.

So now it's impossible to install Porteus on pendrive under Windows with option to save changes?
Sounds like a step backwards IMHO...

[beny]

which is the boot loader that you use ext 3 love grub or lilo or extlinux missin operation system mean that you don't have a boot loader working

[fanthom]

@Hool de Nord
"Error when installed on FAT32 formatted pendrive:
http://img827.imageshack.us/img827/3984/error1o.jpg
When I press "y" or "n" nothing happens."
did you press enter after answering "y"?
here is the whole procedure of creating a .dat file on FAT:
http://img593.imageshack.us/img593/9062/snap0000.jpg

"Also I get some "softreset failed" warning"
try to use "delay=2" cheatcode. more info /porteus/cheatcodes.txt

"Error when installed on EXT3 formatted pendrive"
i presume that you have used syslinux which is very limited with features. try LILO (liloinst.sh) instead. (again: wish to have g4d to solve this kind of issues)

"So now it's impossible to install Porteus on pendrive under Windows with option to save changes?
Sounds like a step backwards IMHO..."
it is possible when you use .dat container as mentioned above. And this is actually a step forward as we should get no more bug reports about issues caused by buggy posixovl feature. no more read-only FAT on pendrives which could be sorted out only by reformatting.

Cheers

[Blaze]

1) http://img59.imageshack.us/img59/4672/50134980.jpg

2)
I think need to replace this message on KDM4 Theme with possibility of a choice of users.

[Ahau]

RE: Modesetting Driver-- should be able to test that later today.

RE: Panel size --also didn't have enough time to test this on other computers. Maybe tomorrow, if my wife leaves the house

RE: Hool du Nord, booting on EXT3 -- I agree with others that grub or grub4dos would work for you, but installing EXTLINUX would give you a configuration just like what you had w/syslinux. Or, a simple solution that might also work would be to burn the .iso to CD and run the porteus-2-usb install script. This will give you a FAT partition for booting from SYSLINUX and an EXT partition for saving changes.

RE: Save.dat -- booting into v1.0 alpha w/changes set to FAT device, I was able to successfully create a save.dat container (placed in the root of my flash drive) through the init script. @fanthom, I would suggest adding a line to your script that will echo "Creating image file, this may take a while..." after you prompt for the file size. Otherwise, folks might think their system is hanging.

A couple of minor, aesthetic issues (I'm sure I'll find more):

1) KMIX applet exists on the panel, but the icon is not visible. I can right click on what looks like empty space and adjust my settings, etc., it's just that the icon doesn't show. I'll work on solving this when I have more time.

2) On my first run of KDE (or 'always fresh'), when I open 'dolphin', the window is too narrow, and only allows space enough for two columns of folder icons. Yes, I know I'm trying to put final release polish on an alpha version

3) I think the application menu button (aka "start" button) could use a little more contrast between the light and dark areas, so the porteus wave stands out a little more. Anyone else have a thought about that, or is it just my laptop's monitor?

I really like the new theme for LXDE! The new icons look great I might like a wallpaper with some color, but that is easy to change (I would imagine--never tried before), and that's just personal preference anyway.

[beny]

blaze :panel option:panel setting,and pull the slide in size that you want.

Posted after 2 minutes 20 seconds:
hi, Executable: kwin PID: 3931 Signal: Segmentation fault (11)
so far I have only received this error

Posted after 5 minutes 11 seconds:
when you choose application sofware in the system try:Executable: kwin PID: 4107 Signal: Segmentation fault (11),each pid are different, the desktop resize it self and application start with this, the kde crash handler

[ponce]

first thing I noticed after boot is that there isn't anymore the link to /mnt/live/bin/vi for vi (maybe it happened from the first porteus release )

besides that I'm playing with it a little and looks beautiful: liked very much the new lxde theme

[beny]

when reboot acpid: exiting
init no more process left in this run level,seem a problem with RC6 or reboot script.reboot with the keypower on computer.

[ponce]

prepared a little addon (only links to the oxygen theme icons and some folders, no weight) to the Humanity theme to show kde apps icons correctly under LXDE

shouldn't give any problems if kde module is not active