Quirky Xerus 8.6 (Aug. 16), Beaver 8.7.1 (Sept. 21), 2018

[Billtoo]

If Billtoo can tell me what missing files he replaced, I try to fix that. This release actually looks pretty close to working, even from the problematic installations.

Hi,

I prepared my flash drive in Fatdog64-710 with gparted, formatted fat32 and I didn't set the boot flag

The installer script erred out saying files were missing (something about gdisk I think) so I ran gslapt and installed the missing files),then I reran the install script.
I don't think you can run gslapt until you have installed Fatdog64.
The flash drive or SDHC card must not be mounted when running the install script.

HTH

[prehistoric]

My installation got past the problem with gdisk, but reported missing files /usr/share/syslinux/efi64 and /usr/share/syslinux/efi32. Also told me it needed to have syslinux 6 or later.

Your description left us with a problem of figuring out which system had the missing files. If you needed gdisk with Fatdog 710, this makes sense, but still leaves me out on those efi files needed to boot. Now I know that I needed to install those two files above on the Fatdog installation before running the script.

This presented a problem for my test procedure, which uses a clean boot of Fatdog 710 to avoid corrupting my production system or running a buggy script which will wipe years of accumulated work off a hard drive instead of the flash drive intended. My test machine is running with SATA drives disconnected, and booting off a flash drive with a clean Fatdog 710 installation. Once I have that running, I remove that drive to protect it before running the suspect script, which can only affect the chosen flash drive for the Quirky installation.
(Do I sound paranoid about untested computer software?)
This is why those files were not available.

Now that I know it should be simple. I'll get back when I have more to report.

Added: Success! Now posting from Quirky 8.1.5 on an AMD64 machine with quad-cores. Booted from an 8 BG flash drive prepared with 4install-quirky-to-drive-gpt script. The trick is actually to install the syslinux packages named efi32 and efi64 on the Fatdog installation, if that is what you are using to run the script to prepare the drive. These are actually folders in /usr/share/syslinux containing many files used by syslinux. I simply copied those folders from another installation to my test machine.

[Sage]

Thanks for comments Bill - you know my opinion of laptops! Only use SD cards for my RPi s and one of my smart phones, which I use to tell the time and take pictures (nothing else!), and I don't use the other one at all. No intention of jumping on the tablet bandwagon, got rooms full of working regular PC s, all with wired NIC s, and Smart TV s ditto. That just leaves the Android Remix unit, which doesn't get much attention. All friends, family and neighbours are content with their CD/DVD-on-PC + .iso s. A few use streaming and boxes. No sign of SD cards! So that's where we are in this corner of the world.

[Billtoo]

My installation got past the problem with gdisk, but reported missing files /usr/share/syslinux/efi64 and /usr/share/syslinux/efi32. Also told me it needed to have syslinux 6 or later.

Your description left us with a problem of figuring out which system had the missing files. If you needed gdisk with Fatdog 710, this makes sense, but still leaves me out on those efi files needed to boot. Now I know that I needed to install those two files above on the Fatdog installation before running the script.

This presented a problem for my test procedure, which uses a clean boot of Fatdog 710 to avoid corrupting my production system or running a buggy script which will wipe years of accumulated work off a hard drive instead of the flash drive intended. My test machine is running with SATA drives disconnected, and booting off a flash drive with a clean Fatdog 710 installation. Once I have that running, I remove that drive to protect it before running the suspect script, which can only affect the chosen flash drive for the Quirky installation.
(Do I sound paranoid about untested computer software?)
This is why those files were not available.

Now that I know it should be simple. I'll get back when I have more to report.

I'm pretty sure that I used gslapt to install the syslinux files as well (sorry about my terrible memory), anyway they are installed in my fatdog64-710.

I can run the install script over and over to sdhc cards and flash drives now that it works successfully, don't know if I need to but I delete the mntpt folder before each new install then open a terminal and enter ./4install-quirky-to-drive-gpt

I just use it for installing to a flash drive or sdhc card, too risky for an empty partition on the hard drive for me but that would work too I guess.

Good luck!

[prehistoric]

@Billtoo,

I also used gslapt on Fatdog to install the missing files, but I was careful to run the script on a different machine that could not write to anything I wasn't prepared to lose. That is why I copied the directories with those files to the flash drive I used to boot the clean Fatdog 710 installation on the test machine. It was simply a matter then of moving those directories to the /usr/share/syslinux folder on the system running in RAM.

After that I could remove the drive so there was only one drive to write to when I ran the script. This also allowed me to check that gslapt wasn't installing anything else I needed.

[dangerfirebob]

Hi I just updated my Quirky Xerus running on a HP mini with no internal hard drive, it runs great on my 16gb flash drive, I have been using it for a month, previously I had Quirky Werewolf 7.4 running also a great OS for this 64bit HP mini.

The 8.1.5 upgrade worked fine but my touchpad is no longer working, discovered that I am missing this dependency: xorg-input-abi-22

Someone over at Debian had a similar problem I found this:

https://lists.debian.org/debian-x/2016/11/msg00260.html

I have had a go at reinstalling xserver-xorg-input-synaptics_1.8.2 but that did not fix the problem.

Fortunately I have a usb mouse that works perfectly

[TeX Dog]

Lump of Christmas Coal.. Kernel Panic! hardware clock not found first msg.

[prehistoric]

Lump of Christmas Coal.. Kernel Panic! hardware clock not found first msg.

Sounds like you tried the ISO version. Read above how Billtoo and I got a version on a flash drive to boot.

You need the syslinux efi32 and efi64 packages installed in the system that runs the script to create the installation on a flash drive. We both used Fatdog 710, which allows installing these via Gslapt.

[dangerfirebob]

Prehistoric said

You need the syslinux efi32 and efi64 packages installed in the system that runs the script to create the installation on a flash drive. We both used Fatdog 710, which allows installing these via Gslapt

Another easy way to install is to use Quirky Werewolf to create a new flash drive using the universal installer just by adding the Quirky Xerus iso file instead of the Werewolf one, that worked for me. Had to have two flash drives connected for that to work. One running Werewolf and an empty one for Xerus.

[TeX Dog]

Lump of Christmas Coal.. Kernel Panic! hardware clock not found first msg.

Sounds like you tried the ISO version. Read above how Billtoo and I got a version on a flash drive to boot.

You need the syslinux efi32 and efi64 packages installed in the system that runs the script to create the installation on a flash drive. We both used Fatdog 710, which allows installing these via Gslapt.

Wow! haven't unpacked ( or repacked ) computer room after family Christmas members left, I sure hope that is smeared chocolate,
So down to a single unused till now dvd-r and looking for a can of wood cleaner. Did find a cool old flashdrive in the mad drive to clear space, but I dislike having to 'save' whatever was on it first. That is the big reason after far lower cost to using a dvd-r over flashdrive.
So will have to wait til next 'fixed' version and my dvd-rw are found.
There where a bunch of nice stuff (scripts etc) in Raspberry Pi version so hope to find same tiny helpful stuff in Fixed version.

[TeX Dog]

Never found the wood polish, but had time to attempt to install linux EFI boot into Win!0, not happening??? took away esp (???) and boot flags and it still <but with more spinning blobs of white dots, now> refuses to boot linux EFI when I know this worked when it was still win8

[Sage]

Afraid our archaeologist colleague and others are missing the point - both barrels, both feet. Regular folk ain't gonna jiggle with broken offerings, even if they understand the jargon.
Too many other more essential calls in this frenetic life.

[mavrothal]

Took a fast look on 8.1.5 iso
As mentioned it fails. I believe that this is because the kernel does not have AUFS, so the mounting of the layered filesystem fails and there is nothing to switch_root to.
I guess the kernel has overlayfs now, but the mount call in the init still has aufs.

[prehistoric]

@mavrothal,

Can that explain why the ISO fails, but installations to flash drives derived from the ISO file work? At this point I am confused.

If true this would narrow the search for a fix considerably.

[prehistoric]

@Tex Dog,

The scripts only work on Linux systems, and not all of them. We have determined that they work under Fatdog 710 with those added efi files, and under Quirky Werewolf 7.4, which already has them built in.

I have no idea what you are doing with W10.

@Sage,

This was obviously a release candidate rather than a true release. We are trying to fix this without waiting for BarryK, a limited commodity who is concentrating on ARM versions these days.

We now have two working ways to install this to flash drives, so I don't believe the system itself is broken, just one means of setting it up. Until we have the fix for the ISO file, we just need to warn people against using it.

[BarryK]

Oh dear. I didn't test the ISO, just assumed it would work.

I have removed the ISO from Ibiblio, the alternatives are still there.

Probably the easiest way to install is with the *.img.xz file, just "dd" it to a flash stick. Instructions are online.

Yeah, once you get it going, it seems to be working very well.

Right now, have limited time to work on it. I am working on a Slackware-based Quirky, following that line of thought right now.

[mavrothal]

@mavrothal,

Can that explain why the ISO fails, but installations to flash drives derived from the ISO file work? At this point I am confused.

If true this would narrow the search for a fix considerably.

I 'm not sure how you install in a flash drive, but if you install in a flash by extracting and copying the q.sfs then is should work because you do not use the initrd.q/init anymore (is like a full install). If you just dd the ISO to a flash than should also fail because you go again through the initrd.q.
But I would give it a couple of days, I'm sure that BK will issue a new ISO soon with corrected init or kernel
(ooops see above )

[prehistoric]

@mavrothal,

I've confirmed your analysis by trying to reproduce the success reported above by dangerfirebob. I was able to use the universal installer in Quirky Werewolf 7.4 to install from the Xerus 8.1.5 ISO. My problem was that this approach got as far as the Quirky boot screen, but failed to find the vmlinuz kernel file.

Adding the kernel file from the ISO works, I'm using it now. Also confirmed that including the initrd.q causes failure. There is, of course, no need for the q.sfs file if the partition containing the same information is directly mounted.

I think this isolates the problem pretty clearly.

@BarryK, this is not an emergency. You've already taken action to stop use of the defective ISO. Those who want to experiment have means to use the system with the alternative setup.

[Sage]

...obviously a release candidate...

Yes, of course. Such minimal skills as I possess are limited to testing and reporting. Testing is difficult for a distro that doesn't boot! This Forum attracts a majority of IT professionals, maybe a handful of advanced hobbyists and a lot of hangers-on like me who are keen to see the technology out in the field, although HW is my speciality. I read all the detailed coding discussion, but not sure what most of it means. I also follow instructions very well if they are detailed - most are not. Since HW is what I understand, I can report that the world is still running a vast number of 32bit machines with slow encroachment of 64bit ones. Non-specialist cannot be persuaded to move to newer kit if their present stuff is working! And, whether experts on this Forum like it or not, most of the great unwashed run with a CD/DVD drive available. Notwithstanding, many abandoned a laptop because someone in the family dropped it, stepped on it, grasped it across the screen, snapped the lid/hinge(s) and certainly aren't going to pay half as much as it's worth for a new screen and half as much again to have it fitted. Others have decamped to cheap Android tablets. Where are they going to archive their precious family photos? The 'cloud'? That is a by-word for someone else's server, just as likely to fail, or the company go bust. CD/DVD s might last 100yrs, but the jury's out on flash memory. HD s are old technology, but SSD s are hardly flavour of the month with strim and other issues abounding.

Those who want to experiment have means to use the system with the alternative setup.

- ain't gonna happen!

[Billtoo]

Hi Sage,

I have an older Acer Chomebook (3years I think) that I use quite a
lot.
It has an ethernet port and a 300+ GB hard drive, the newer Chromebooks
don't have ethernet ports or internal hard drives (they have 16 or 32
GB ssd).
Like any laptop they aren't droppable but if looked after they work
well.
I was given a bluetooth speaker this xmas and it works great with this
chromebook, much better than headphones or ear buds.

Anyhow, I love my Chromebook