Porteus-v1.1rc1-i486 ready for testing

[justwantin]

To get the workspace selector click right on the KDE panel in some space where there is no application. A menu should pop. Select applets. You will find it there in the first third of the list

Got it, been there before but never read the fine print

[wread]

@brokenman
Nice to have you around again, brokenman. I see kernel 3.0.1 manages now ext4 file system; is it convenient to switch to ext4 now? I read somewhere the kernel translates ext3 to ext4 automatically, but does it consume additional time by doing so?
I am testing v1.1rc1 32-bits now. I read your complains already. The community will help with it.

ConsoleKit is now in one place (1 file is still in 001-core, but I moved it already to 002-xorg).

My beloved Google Earth had again no extra fonts (ñ, á, etc). I added them in 002-xorg in /usr/share/fonts. Three folders are to be added: 75dpi, cyrilic and misc. I am uploading the changed modules to http://wread.4shared.com right now (their "pipe" is rather "thin" = heavy traffic!).

I will see what is the matter with the guest account, and report back to you.

Nice work!

Regards,


Edit: I tried to use the cheatcodes from_dir= , from_dev= and from_iso= and they don't work.
Where is the decoding procedure for the cheatcodes located? I guess somewhere in /boot/initrd.xz.
Tell me where, maybe I can fix that. The contents of the command line is ok at /proc/cmdline at startup.

Startx after xconf in text mode works ok for me (as root). The guest user is not supposed to start the X-server.
Shutting down from text mode shows weird messages; there must be some junk somewhere there...

[francois]

@wread:
Concerning cheatcodes from_dir= , from_dev= there is some examples in:
http://www.porteus.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=48&t=806

Look at the two last posts of the thread, there has been some change between v 1.0 and rc1 ov v 1.1.

[brokenman]

Thanks Wread. I'll replace the modules ... i must admit i forgot about the extra files for GE but will extract them and add to the 32bit tree. As for the from= cheatcodes ... fanthom has added from UID cheats and slightly changed the from= code so that you should specify the path of the porteus folder in the string.

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from_dev=/dev/sda5 from_dir=/os/porteus

I see kernel 3.0.1 manages now ext4 file system; is it convenient to switch to ext4 now? I read somewhere the kernel translates ext3 to ext4 automatically, but does it consume additional time by doing so?

Yes i believe ext4 is good now although i havn't thoroughly tested. I think Fanthom implemented it into boot time aswell. Not sure about the kernel translation to ext4 ... but i wouldn't think so.

ConsoleKit is now in one place (1 file is still in 001-core, but I moved it already to 002-xorg)

Which file? (so i can update my tree).

[wread]

@brokenman
001-core/usr/lib/ConsoleKit/run-seat.d/udev-acl.ck
In my repo at 4shared it is changed to 002-xorg/usr/lib/ConsoleKit/run-seat.d/udev-acl.ck; both xzm-files have *-1 postfix. The three font files are also included in 002-xorg-1. I took the three files from my v1.0 version.

I will test the new form of the cheat codes.

Regards

Edit: I have from_dir= working now.
I couldn't find how from_iso= works; maybe fanthom give us advice.
I found another issue: you must add a link in /opt/porteus-scripts; tgz2xzm as link to txz2xzm. I am changing 001-core-1 now 2011-11-13 in wread.4shared.com, the newer file is 001-core-1_2 in the repo.

[brokenman]

Thanks. I have the files now. Will also add tgz2xzm slink.

from_iso should work as usual:

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from_iso=/mnt/sda4/os/porteus-v1.1-rc1-x86_64/Porteus-v1.1-rc1-x86_64.iso

Works for me.

[fanthom]

@wread

I see kernel 3.0.1 manages now ext4 file system; is it convenient to switch to ext4 now?

ext4 is in the kernel for a long time and i'm using it since 2 yesrs or so. rock stable and very fast.

I read somewhere the kernel translates ext3 to ext4 automatically

only if you set proper option in the kernel. i have disabled ext2 and ext3 completely in 64bit kernel and using ext4 for supporting 2 and 3. this is experiment and i'm not sure if brokenman should do this for stable 32 bit release (i'm still considering 64bit edition as a playground - 32bit is the main Porteus edition)

does it consume additional time by doing so?

not sure as i dont have any ext2 and ext3 paritions to test.

Shutting down from text mode shows weird messages; there must be some junk somewhere there...

could you double check this for me please. does it come from rc.6 or initrd's cleanup script?

I couldn't find how from_iso= works; maybe fanthom give us advice.

just looked at /boot/cheatcodes.txt and found that it doesn't give proper explanation how to use it indeed.
requirements:
a) external bootloader: grub4dos, grub, lilo, syslinux/extlinux, etc...
b) vmlinuz and initrd.xz from the ISO you want to boot from
procedure:
a) unpack vmlinuz and initrd.xz from the Porteus ISO and place somewhere on your hd (usually in /boot)
b) create menu for porteus (kde, lxde, copy2ram, etc..) in your bootloader config and point it to unpacked vmlinuz/initrd.xz files
c) add 'from_iso=/path/to_the_iso' cheatcode to each booting option
how it works:
a) external bootloader loads kernel and initrd from the hd
b) once initrd is unpacked in the memory (/dev/ram0) linuxrc searches for the ISO and mounts it
c) booting continues using xzm modules from the mounted ISO.
iportant:
when you are updating Porteus ISO then you also must update unpacked vmlinuz/initrx.xz
Porteus can boot even without drivers from 000-kernel but hw support wil be very limited (you may end up with non working kbd/mouse, wifi, etc). that's why version of unpacked kernel should match drivers included in ISO/000-kernel.xzm

@Ahau
please compose something useful from the "wisdom" posted above and update cheatcodes.txt.
i know that i suck on posting enough information about all Porteus fetaures and i'm not surprised that users are confused quite often

Cheers

[wread]

@fanthom
Shutting down from kde to text mode produces weird output just before the shutdown scripts are run; I cannot copy-paste it but the first unusual lines read

rm: cannot remove /root/.kde/share/config/session/kmix_0736c6178000117871092500000072420008_1952087642398674: No such a file or directory
OggS-Seek: at 0 want 91128 got 83520 (diff-requested 91128)
OggS-Seek: ..............
.............
(more weird output)
X Error: Bad window (invalid window parameter) 3
...............
..............
startkde: Shutting down
klauncher: Exiting on Signal 1
startkde: Running shutdown scripts
xinit: connection to server lost
root@porteus#

You can restart it normally by typeing "startx" again.
I hope that gives you a clue where the bad bug is, Tom.

Regards

Edit: I will check if this very long file name starting with kmix is really there before shutting down.
There is a file named kmix_10736c6178000117871092500000072420008_1321224474_803364 in that directory!

[Ahau]

Here's an updated entry for the cheatcode. I haven't fixed the linebreaks to make them short enough to be read in a console, but will do so before including it in cheatcodes.txt. This may be too wordy for cheatcodes.txt -- it may be better to remove the detailed example, make a HOWTO on the main site, and refer to the HOWTO in the cheatcode doc. Let me know your thoughts.

Code: Select all

from_iso=/path/to/image.iso
from_iso=/dev/device/path/image.iso
from_iso=LABEL:YourLabelName/path/to/image.iso
from_iso=UUID:STrING-0F-ChARACtERS/path/to/image.iso

   ... This cheatcode can be used to boot a Porteus ISO image directly from a hard drive or flash drive without extracting the full ISO image.  In order to use this cheatcode, you need to have the kernel and initrd extracted from the ISO and placed in a location that can be seen by your bootloader, and your bootloader's config file must point to this kernel and initrd. 

Here's an example of how to set this up to boot an ISO image from /mnt/sdb2:

Boot into a working Porteus system, open a terminal and execute these commands as root (modify the paths and file names to suit your needs):

	mkdir /mnt/sdb2/linux-images
	cp /path/to/your/iso /mnt/sdb2/linux-images/latest-porteus.iso
	mloop /mnt/sdb2/linux-images/latest-porteus.iso
	cp /mnt/loop/boot /mnt/sdb2/linux-images/

Then, create a new entry in your bootloader config.  In this example, porteus.cfg is used with SYSLINUX:

LABEL xconf
MENU LABEL KDE-Latest Porteus
KERNEL /linux-images/boot/vmlinuz
APPEND initrd=/linux-images/boot/initrd.xz from_iso=/dev/sdb2/linux-images/latest-porteus.iso vga=791
TEXT HELP
    Run Porteus the best way we can.
    Try to autoconfigure graphics
    card and use the maximum
    allowed resolution
ENDTEXT

NOTE: there should not be a line break before the 'from_iso' cheatcode in your config file; all cheatcodes must be on the APPEND line.

Then, reboot using the new 'KDE-Latest Porteus' option.  The bootloader will load the kernel and initrd from the hard drive or flash drive (/dev/sdb2 in the example above) and then linuxrc will mount the ISO and load the xzm modules from it.
 
The full path to the ISO is not required although it is recommended to avoid searching through all devices.

NOTE: If you update your Porteus ISO, you need to update the unpacked kernel and initrd so they match the files inside the ISO image.

WARNING: You can't use 'from_iso=' together with the 'from_dev=' parameter.  
  

[Hamza]

I will check if this very long file name starting with kmix is really there before shutting down.
There is a file named kmix_10736c6178000117871092500000072420008_1321224474_803364 in that directory!

This should be the kmix settings file with your current settings file otherwise if you are find out in extracted module, this should be the famous file where is stored the default settings.

[Kriss]

@wread
Excuse me for interfering.
This console is used for output when KDE is running so all that you see here is just output produced by different programs you run in KDE (errors, warnings and etc). While running KDE (or other DE) you can switch to console it was started from and will see this.
I think kmix_***** is some sort of temporary file (at least I believed it to be one).

[wread]

@Kriss
Welcome on board!
I think you are right, the long kmix file is there ok and is correctly reported.
Still there are other lines following, that are not normal, they didn't happen in v1.0.

Fanthom is investigating it; if it is not ok, he will find the cause.

Regards

[fanthom]

@Ahau

it may be better to remove the detailed example, make a HOWTO on the main site, and refer to the HOWTO in the cheatcode doc. Let me know your thoughts.

agree - please post the HOWTO and make the cheat description shorter.
thanks.

@wread
i wouldn't care too much about KDE or any other app shutting down errors untill 'union' is unmounted properly when changes/magic_folders are used (nobody cares about always fresh as data are lost anyway).
if you get a message that 'union is busy' then some process might not have enough time to terminate and data could not be synced completely with HD/usb.
do you get 'busy union' message during the shutdown?
if no then everything should be ok.

Cheers

[wread]

@fanthom
No "busy union" at all.
I have no other issues found as yet. V1.1 is from my point of view already clean...

Regards

[Blaze]

At boot of the Porteus-v1.1rc1-i486 i have these errors:

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/etc/rc.d/rc/local: line 11: /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch: No such file or directory
/etc/rc.d/rc/local: line 12: /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch: No such file or directory
/etc/rc.d/rc/local: line 13: /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch: No such file or directory