Hi from a Slax user, some storytelling

[[IDC]Dragon]

Hi,

I just registered here. Last weekend I found about Porteus, the afterlife of Slax. I'v heared about the previous name Slax Remix, but didn't follow the discussion.

Anyway, I'm a Slax user since about 5 years. I'm using it for my home server, came across it in search for a distro that runs from a CF card, or in my case a DOM, and normally won't write to it, to save wear.
I made a number of modules for Slax, the bigger ones being Squeezebox+Twonky Server. Meanwhile there's a lot of stuff, the details and dependencies would make it hard to migrate to something else. All was running well through the years, no need to change.

The purchase of a 3TB data disk pressed me to do some updating, since I needed GPT support. I made a kernel update following fanthom's instructions (many thanks!):
http://www.slax.org/forum.php?action=vi ... ntID=53917
and converted all my modules to squash4. Works pretty well, all feels normal.

I was torn whether I should leap to Porteus, am worried if the Slax userland tools can keep up with GPT, ext4 and a >2TB disk. For testing, I prepared a DOM with Porteus v0.9. After learning howto set it up with grub (I could write a howto now) it boots up fine and me Slax user feels pretty much at home, all looks familiar. However, Porteus refuses to mount my ext4-formatted disk, which Slax meanwhile can. So for now, I'm back to Slax.

cu later,
Jörg

PS: There is a typo in the lilo.conf file of Porteus. IIRC, "changes" is misspelled in one of the entries, so persistence for that one won't work.

[brokenman]

Thanks for your information and story. Hopefully you will try the Porteus V1 when it comes out. The betas have already been released and may suit you for your needs.

For mounting your ext4 could you try:
tune2fs -E test_fs /dev/sdXX

Then try to mount your drive.

[fanthom]

Hello [IDC]Dragon,
Welcome on board

"However, Porteus refuses to mount my ext4-formatted disk, which Slax meanwhile can."
could you tell me more about this? how do you attach your HD (SATA,SCSI, usb, etc..).? did you try to mount it manually - any error message?
i'm very curious what's actually causing this.

[[IDC]Dragon]

could you tell me more about this? how do you attach your HD (SATA,SCSI, usb, etc..).? did you try to mount it manually - any error message?
i'm very curious what's actually causing this.

This is a VIA Nano board, VX800 chipset, the disk is connected via SATA. I have partitioned and formatted the disk using Ubuntu 10.10, because I was not trusting Slax to do this necessarily correct.

Since it's you asking, I shut the the server down, pulled it out, openend it and put the Porteus 0.9 disk-on-module back in, to give some details.
The disk does not show up in /etc/fstab. It is not mentioned during boot, e.g. where it says something like "mounting all non-root filesystems". I don't know what generates /etc/fstab, in Slax it was /sbin/udev-fstab-update, which doesn't exist under Porteus.

When I do "parted /dev/sda" and "print", it says "unrecognised disk label". So the GPT partitioning is not even recognized, perhaps this is missing? I can probably stop the experiments here. Anyway:

When I do "mount /dev/sda1 /somewhere" it says "you must specify the file system type". This generates some dmesg output, indicating it tried UDF and XFS.

When I do it the favour and try "mount -t ext4 /dev/sda1 /somewhere" it says:
"wrong fs type, bad otion, bad superblock on /dev/sda1".
dmesg output says "EXT4-fs (sda1): VFS: Can't find ext4 filesystem"

Next I'm gonna try your Porteus 1.0 beta.

cu,
Jörg

Verfasst after 34 minutes 5 seconds:
OK, Porteus v1.0beta has booted. Looks quite different, user, login, not so bold console font, etc...

The behaviour with my gpt/ext4 disk has changed a bit, too:
It still doesn't show up in /etc/fstab, but parted now correctly displays the partitioning and file system. Mounting it manually still fails.
When I force it to ext4, I see the same dmesg line as above. Without -t I see in dmesg that it tried many more filesystems, including ext4 with that error line.

Now back to Slax, no offense.

cu
Jörg

[fanthom]

must be porteus kernel config fault. will try to dig into it.
Thanks.

EDIT:\\
ok i found it EFI support for partitions was not set in kernel config:
CONFIG_EFI_PARTITION=y
will be added to Porteus-1.0 FINAL.

Thanks a lot for pointing this out.

[[IDC]Dragon]

Thanks for taking care about it!

I came across this setting, too, while googling what I need for GPT. For the Zen kernel, it was already set, so I didn't need to change anything.
Do you want me to try your new kernel, or is there enough confidence?
BTW, is it public what it needs to build Porteus?

Jörg

[fanthom]

"Do you want me to try your new kernel, or is there enough confidence?"
if you have some spare time then yes
i'll be releasing 64bit porteus 1.0-rc1 after 10th of April (to check if kde-4.6.2 bugs were fixed) so new kernel will be ready for testing after this date.
not sure about brokenman plans regarding 32 bits...

"BTW, is it public what it needs to build Porteus?"
if you mean the kernel then just need 2.6.38.xx (xz comparison is there by default) + latest aufs patch from git.
if you mean userland then it's more complicated as we use up to 50% of self-compiled, non standard slackware packages here (LXDE, KDE-3.5.12, KDE-4).
i'm thinking about writing a basic tool for switching Porteus userland (to Fedora, Mandrive, Centos, whatever...) similar to linux-live scripts by Tomas M.
need to write and test it first (maybe after 1.0 release)

[brokenman]

Code: Select all

not sure about brokenman plans regarding 32 bits

I will do my best to follow but may be delayed as this is the time i am moving to Brazil. Shouldn't be far behind though.

i'm thinking about writing a basic tool for switching Porteus userland (to Fedora, Mandrive, Centos, whatever...) similar to linux-live scripts by Tomas M.
need to write and test it first (maybe after 1.0 release)

Well this will make a WHOLE load of people very happy. Many more users would come i think. I'll give you a hand if needed ... for sure. Imagine that ....... (stroking chine, staring at the sky)

User: please choose you userland:
Fedora
Suse
Debian
Slackware
Windows

[fanthom]

@brokenman
thanks, but it's really really basic task
user must have existing fedora/ubuntu/arch installation in /mnt/sdxy (same as in linux-live scripts). so everything what script needs to do is:
copy /boot and /porteus to /tmp folder -> delete all porteus modules except 000-kernel -> then do
for x in `ls /mnt/sdxy`; do
dir2xzm $x /tpm/porteus/base/$x.xzm
done
and final step:
/tmp/porteus/makeiso.sh

need to test it but i recon that should work for most of distros
one condition: porteus kernel must stay in place.
some cheatcodes (from rc scripts) will be also gone - so new cheatcodes.txt would be necessary.

this project has lower priority at the moment.

[Ahau]

Imagine that ....... (stroking chine, staring at the sky)

brokenman, who is chine, and do you have her permission?

[brokenman]

thanks, but it's really really basic task

I would love to think it is that simple. Let me know how testing goes. It will be a great asset.

Imagine that ....... (stroking chine, staring at the sky)

brokenman, who is chine, and do you have her permission?

Sheesh ... one letter completely changes the visual image. Having a mind that works in the gutter probably helps too.

[82issa]

Thanks for your information and story. Hopefully you will try the Porteus V1 when it comes out. The betas have already been released and may suit you for your needs.

For mounting your ext4 could you try:
tune2fs -E test_fs /dev/sdXX

Then try to mount your drive.

Great Great Great. Needed that code.

[Tonio]

@Folks

Tomas from Slax has gotten some hunch to work on new Slax.

http://www.tomas-m.com/blog/

He also likes Gnome 3, check this page out

http://www.tomas-m.com/blog/18140-I-abs ... -Slax.html

Life is good. Porteus with KDE and New Slax with Gnome 3* now slackers(portable) users can have the best of both worlds

[fanthom]

Great news Tonio!

I think it will be a big win for everyone wish to try it out even now...