Alien Bob slackware minimalist live version

[francois]

Has anyone tried alien bob`s live cd? What is the cups version?

[Blaze]

The Cinnamon variant (KDE 4 replaced by Cinnamon) contains the latest Cinnamon 3.2 desktop environment created from the repository at http://slackware.uk/csb/14.2/

http://bear.alienbase.nl/mirrors/slackware-live/latest/

[Ed_P]

^ A WHOLE lot bigger than Porteus' Cinnamon 64.

[alienbob]

^ A WHOLE lot bigger than Porteus' Cinnamon 64.

Well yes of course it is bigger. My Slackware Live does not share the goals of Porteus (make the ISO as small as possible). I have no interest in space savers and package rebuilds. With my Live ISO you get a complete unmodified Slackware. In case of the Cinnamon ISO, KDE4 was replaced with Cinnamon.

[fulalas]

Well yes of course it is bigger. My Slackware Live does not share the goals of Porteus (make the ISO as small as possible). I have no interest in space savers and package rebuilds. With my Live ISO you get a complete unmodified Slackware. In case of the Cinnamon ISO, KDE4 was replaced with Cinnamon.

Not to start an OS war here, but just a matter of curiosity: what you can't do with Porteus that you can with a 'pure' Slackware that justifies its size?

[Ed_P]

Ok, after a 3 1/2 hr download I've gotten this far trying to boot the cinnamon iso:

Code: Select all

SLACKWARELIVE: Live media found at /dev/sda5.
SLACKWARELIVE: However, live media not mounted... trouble ahead.

From reading some of the txt & cfg files in the iso I have these grub2 parms:

Code: Select all

    set isopath='/Users/Ed/Downloads/slackware64-live-cinnamon-current.iso'
    set kernelpath='/boot/generic'
    set initrdpath='/boot/initrd.img'
    set bootparms='livemedia=/dev/sda5:'$isopath' load_ramdisk=1 prompt_ramdisk=0 rw printk.time=0 kbd=us tz=localtime locale=us_EN.utf8'

Any idea why the iso didn't mount?

-update-

Defrag'ed the iso, it didn't help solve the mount problem.

[alienbob]

Well yes of course it is bigger. My Slackware Live does not share the goals of Porteus (make the ISO as small as possible). I have no interest in space savers and package rebuilds. With my Live ISO you get a complete unmodified Slackware. In case of the Cinnamon ISO, KDE4 was replaced with Cinnamon.

Not to start an OS war here, but just a matter of curiosity: what you can't do with Porteus that you can with a 'pure' Slackware that justifies its size?

Why would I have to justify my design choices to you? I had no desire to create a second Porteus. Read my reasons for creating liveslak, I documented everything in great detail.
You do not have to use my variant of a live distro anyway. I do not try to seduce people to switch from Porteus to liveslak either.

[alienbob]

Ok, after a 3 1/2 hr download I've gotten this far trying to boot the cinnamon iso:

Code: Select all

SLACKWARELIVE: Live media found at /dev/sda5.
SLACKWARELIVE: However, live media not mounted... trouble ahead.

From reading some of the txt & cfg files in the iso I have these grub2 parms:

Code: Select all

    set isopath='/Users/Ed/Downloads/slackware64-live-cinnamon-current.iso'
    set kernelpath='/boot/generic'
    set initrdpath='/boot/initrd.img'
    set bootparms='livemedia=/dev/sda5:'$isopath' load_ramdisk=1 prompt_ramdisk=0 rw printk.time=0 kbd=us tz=localtime locale=us_EN.utf8'

Any idea why the iso didn't mount?

Could be a bug. I never actually booted an ISO file this way myself, it was implemented at someone's request.
There is a debug option in the live init that you can use to troubleshoot your issue.

[Blaze]

I had no desire to create a second Porteus.

+1

We are know that you are have done a great things for Slackware. Respect for your contribution to Slackware distro!

Regards,
Blaze

[fulalas]

Why would I have to justify my design choices to you? I had no desire to create a second Porteus. Read my reasons for creating liveslak, I documented everything in great detail.
You do not have to use my variant of a live distro anyway. I do not try to seduce people to switch from Porteus to liveslak either.

I understand that you're on a defensive position, but I'm not attacking neither trying to diminish your work or Slackware's value; it's really just a question because I'm new on Linux (less than 3 months using it!). In fact, I respect your work so much that I've downloaded your packages a lot of times and they always work for me

Sorry if I wasn't clear enough before.

[Ed_P]

Could be a bug. I never actually booted an ISO file this way myself, it was implemented at someone's request.
There is a debug option in the live init that you can use to troubleshoot your issue.

You don't happen to know the command to enable that option do you?

Where did you get your initrd file? Is there a newer version that supports booting ISOs that you could use? The one Porteus uses supports booting ISOs could you use that one?

IMO The ability to boot ISOs is a very effective way to get Windows users to try Linux.

[tome]

I think slackware live doesn't support booting from Windows partitions (ntfs), Ed_P.

[Ed_P]

I think slackware live doesn't support booting from Windows partitions (ntfs), Ed_P.

That would be disappointing if the case. Other isos boot ok from ntfs partitions, and have for years, it's not like it is a cutting edge thing.

[alienbob]

Could be a bug. I never actually booted an ISO file this way myself, it was implemented at someone's request.
There is a debug option in the live init that you can use to troubleshoot your issue.

You don't happen to know the command to enable that option do you?

Sure, taken from the init script:

Code: Select all

Set DEBUG to '1' to enable explicit pauses; '2' enables verbose script exec;
and '4' dumps you into a debug shell right before the switch_root

So, passing "debug=4" to the boot commandline should give you a lot of verbosity, and drop you into a shell at the end of init, where you can then examine the state of things (what is mounted, where is it mounted, etc).

Where did you get your initrd file? Is there a newer version that supports booting ISOs that you could use? The one Porteus uses supports booting ISOs could you use that one?

I create the initrd for Slackware Live myself, I do not "get" an initrd from someplace else. If you want to use this feature of booting off the ISO on a filesystem, you can debug the issue and provide me with patches. What's most likely the case (based on later posts in this thread) is that the NTFS filesystem you are using is not supported in the initrd. I only added support for ext2/3/4, and for (v)fat. Trivial to fix that, if you consider that the NTFS partition only needs to be read, it will suffice to add the native "ntfs" kernel module; there would be no need for ntfs-3g.

IMO The ability to boot ISOs is a very effective way to get Windows users to try Linux.

Then let them write the ISO to a USB stick. Or install VMWare Player, works even better.
Again, I did not have the same design in mind as Porteus, it would be a waste of time to create a second Porteus. It's evolved into something sufficiently different from Porteus that we should have a different userbase anyway.

[alienbob]

..and if you are adventurous, you can checkout liveslak from git, and generate an ISO yourself that should have NTFS support, with this commit: http://bear.alienbase.nl/cgit/liveslak/ ... 74ad3f7ec4