EasyOS version 2.3.2, June 22, 2020

[rufwoof]

lp-dolittle's method as described doesn't work for me when using bionicpup64. Has the partition at end of usb and saves to that, but on reboot the save is just ignored and reboots back to as though running for the first time again.

[lp-dolittle]

@ rufwoof and wdt

the fix-usb.sh script provides you with the option to partition the remaining space on the flash-stick after the initial dding of the iso.file onto the stick. In contrast to gparted, it is able to deal with the hybrid iso-configuration (2 partition tables; mbr as well as gpt).

@ wdt

fix-ush.sh is contained in the fatdog64-802.iso. In your situation, you could burn a fatdog64-802 CD, boot it into RAM and partition the flash-stick onto which you previously installed EasyOS according to Barry's advice. Please note that Barry's instruction reads:

dd if=easy-1.0.92.iso of=/dev/<sdx> bs=1M
(in contrast to fatdog's slightly differing command for the same step, it seems to be important that <bs> is set to bs=1M)!

@ rufwoof

your problem might be due to the fact that you are running bionic64-pup whose gparted version has limitations!! Quirky-8.6 would be a preferable choice to at least show the flash-stick's partions after the initial dding. (A Quirky-8.6 live usb-stick can be created just via Quirky-8.6 whose gparted-version allows additional partitioning)

In the case of creating an EasyOS live flash-stick, the fix-usb.sh step obviously is required.

So, first the iso-istallation onto the flash-stick, according to Barry's advice (see above: bs=1M).
Then the fix-usb.sh step, according to the fatdog64-802 method to finally create a save-partition.

Hope this additional information is helpful!
Let me know if your attempts continue failing

kind regards

lp-dolittle

[wdt]

@lp-dolittle
>dd if=easy-1.0.92.iso of=/dev/<sdx> bs=1M
Yes, I know this is the "normal" way to do it
If you were to read my post of yesterday again,
you will see I did NOT do this
"Make a partition 5% larger than the iso, dd the iso to that partition ",,
in this case sdc8, which means that there are,excluding ESP, already 6 isos
on that stick, and still ~50G unallocated
I made another partition, made a fs, touch easyos-persistent-iso
I still have to play around with initrd, to try and make it work
The UFD is a sandisk extreme 3.0,, probably still the fastest stick that
you cannot buy (they stopped making, successor is inferior)

[rufwoof]

I suspect it was the kernel boot parameters lp-dolittle. I boot/use Fatdog by default so it was all straight forward to set the USB up, and all looked OK, first boot and save creation was fine, but on subsequent bootup Bionicpup64 just wasn't seeing/loading the save. It's all gone now, but IIRC it was set as (default case of) pmedia=cd so maybe that had something to do with it.

[lp-dolittle]

@ rufwoof

just to make sure and to avoid talking at cross purposes: did you really mean Bionicpup64 when you wrote "but on subsequent bootup Bionicpup64 just wasn't seeing/loading the save"? In the case you booted Easy-1.0.92, it is 'normal' that a save file initially is not found until you have specified its location.

As announced by Barry, the next EasyOS release will provide us with the 'super-simple method' to specify a working-partition. In our case, we simply will need to create a file named 'easyos-persistent-iso' in the usb-stick's save-partition, and EasyOS is expected to search for and find it while booting and to make it become the new working-partition.

in summary: If you were able to create a so far void additional partition on your flash-stick, your configuration was SUCCESSFUL!

So, finally we will have everything we want: a removable Easyos live flash-stick with the option to save a specific configuration and additional data. Fantastic!

Please see also:

Easy persistent storage for live-CD
July 15, 2019 — BarryK

http://bkhome.org/news/201907/easy-pers ... ve-cd.html

kind regards

lp-dolittle

[lp-dolittle]

@ wdt

rethinking your post, I could imagine that your issue is due to the fact that you try to put the easy-1.0.92.iso file onto a partition on an already configured flash-stick. Barry's method, in contrast, is expected to work on a void stick via a hybrid configuration which eliminates the entire preexisting content. Trying to do the same on a partition might affect the functionality of Barry's hybrid-iso.

A possible workaround could be seen in a change in the istallation order of your various iso-files. If you started the installation putting 'easy-1.0.92.iso' in first place, you maybe might succeed. Using the fix-usb.sh method, you could then create an EasyOS working/save-partition (see also my reply to rufwoof) and all the partitions needed for the iso-files which you want to place additionally onto the flash-stick.

I'm aware that this method - if successful - would slightly affect your preferred installation order, but perhaps you can cope with that limitation.

kind regards

lp-dolittle

[BarryK]

Bonjour ,
Merci rufwoof et lp-dolittle pour vos réponses!
I was and am still used to a simple button on the Desktop, clickable if necessary as well as to the possibility of saving or not the session when the computer turns off.
I find this simple, appropriate for all situations and very user-friendly.

Thanks for the links and "how to" I will test soon.

Cordialement.

The guys are discussing creating an extra partition on the usb stick, then all that is required is to create a file named 'easyos-persistent-iso', that's it.

However, if you want simplicity, forget about the iso!!!

Download 'easy-1.0.92-fr-amd64.img.gz' and write it to a usb stick. For example, if the usb stick is sdb:

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# gunzip easy-1.0.92-fr-amd64.img.gz
# dd if=easy-1.0.92-fr-amd64.img of=/dev/sdb bs=1M
# sync

Then boot it, it will automatically increase the working-partition to fill the drive. That working partition is your save partition, there is nothing that you have to do. It just works, and you have the entire drive to save in.

There is no save file, the entire working partition is used.

If you decide that something bad happened, say went to a suspicious web site, just reboot and choose to roll back to last saved snapshot at bootup.

Yes, you can make snapshots at any time, look in the menu Filesystem -> Easy Version Control

[Argolance]

Bonjour,
Thanks for replying.

Download 'easy-1.0.92-fr-amd64.img.gz' and write it to a usb stick. For example, if the usb stick is sdb:[...]

Rest assured that it is exactly what I did and EasyOS works fine. But at next startup from the stick, all what I previously installed, configured or set does not persist. It is why I thought the saving process is not done automatically and that I should have to do "something" manually to solve the problem.

Cordialement.

[rufwoof]

If you decide that something bad happened, say went to a suspicious web site, just reboot and choose to roll back to last saved snapshot at bootup.

Hi Barry. If a in-session 'something bad happens', then if the boot medium (such as usb) is still attached then the bootloader/MBR/whatever, could have been compromised. With ram loaded/running where the usb is unplugged after bootup, there's no way for a in-session something-bad to crack that usb. For EasyOS a compromised container is of course relatively safe assuming the cracker can't break out of that containment (so running Xephyr and with chroot capabilities dropped within that goes a long way to prevent such breakout).

For instance for the Fatdog usb multi-session that I predominately boot - its mostly boot, unplug usb, use, shutdown without saving. That boot usb is pretty much guaranteed clean (I use grub4dos so MBR, grldr, vmlinuz, main sfs, multi-session save sfs's). When I do reconfigure its - boot (clean), change, save (little opportunity to be cracked). That excludes data, which is managed/stored separately.

Under Fatdog, to alleviate the potentially running out of ram I've created a 16GB HDD based swap partition, that on bootup I activate using encryption (randomly generated session key). So for instance on a 4GB ram laptop I can cd /root;dd if=/dev/zero of=bigfile bs=1G count=10 ... to create a 10GB file within /root without adverse effect (other than being slower to create than if it were all being created in actual ram).

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if [ ! -z "$SWAP" ]; then

	# Create the encrypted swap /dev/mapper ...
	cryptsetup open --type plain --key-file /dev/urandom /dev/$SWAP cswap
	mkswap /dev/mapper/cswap 
	swapon /dev/mapper/cswap

	# My swap partition is 16GB, so I resize / to match that
	mount -o remount,size=16G /
fi

(where for instance if my swap partition is sda2 then $SWAP = sda2. Care has to be taken with that as Linux dynamically allocates device names so /dev/sda2 can be /dev/sdb2 under a different boot, I check that with fdisk -l).

[williams2]

I used the multi sound card wizard, which creates /etc/asound.conf
It put this in the file:

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defaults.pcm.card 1
defaults.pcm.device 0

It should be this:

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defaults.pcm.card 1
defaults.pcm.device 0
defaults.ctl.card 1

It needs the ctl line to set the default mixer

Without the ctl line, pnmixer doesn't work (crashes if you try to use it)

Alsamixer works, but that is because it is a script that figures out what the default sound card should be and starts the alsamixer binary using that option. If the ctl line is in the asound.conf file, you do not need the alsamixer script, the alsamixer binary starts and shows the correct default sound card.

Also, alsamixer does not work well with sakura. Alsamixer does work well with urxvt. The Home and End keys don't work in urxvt.

[williams2]

ok, I fixed the Home and End keys in urxvt.

I put this in /etc/inputrc

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"\e[7~": beginning-of-line 
"\e[8~": end-of-line

inputrc is the readline config file.

[Argolance]

Bonjour,
I completely recreate my USB stick (brand new, 32 gigas) using this time the Standard English EasyOS version. I get to Easy's desktop without any problem. When I restart, I have an error message as shown in the first image below.
Back on my basic Puppy, the content of the second partition looks like the second image. If I reformat it, then Easy starts without complaint but at the next starts, the installations and configurations are not taken into account...

Cordialement.

[zygo]

Thanks williams2 so that's how it's done.

I sorely missed those 2 keys and tab and others in the 2x3 block between rtn and num pad. I fixed some by (reading then) editing .Xdefaults (via urxvtcontrol in the menu). Do you know how to fix the others?

Also, I prefer elinks for some pages and white text on black but sakura has no reverse video option. My eyes can't take a wall of light for long. Back in xerus I notice that urxvt has many more dependencies installed compared with easyos 1.0.8.

I'm off to test 1.1rc.

[Flash]

I downloaded both the EasyOS 1.0.92 .iso and .img files. I burned the .iso file to a DVD with Burniso2cd. The DVD booted to a desktop in my laptop and everything worked except the audio. I couldn't get that to work. Easy doesn't seem to have a sound to use for testing, such as the barks that Puppy used to make, which makes troubleshooting problematic.

I used Easydd to put the EasyOS .img on a SD memory card, but I seem to have misconfigured my Windows laptop's BIOS so that it no longer boots from USB (the laptop's built-in SD card reader seems to be seen as a USB device) so I haven't tested the SD card yet.

[lp-dolittle]

@ rufwoof

am I right to assume that you managed finally to configure an EasyOS live flash-stick which allows (1) booting into RAM exclusively, (2) persistent savings onto a flash-stick partition and (3) removing after boot-up.

Barry’s ‘simplicity’ variant, in fact, may serve most purposes, but the boot-medium needs to be left inserted whilst running EasyOS. Just a limitation which should be kept in view and may be relevant to a minority of (security-aware) users

kind regards

lp-dolittle

[williams2]

zygo, you can set the sakura colours by right clicking the window, and selecting "select colors" in the menu

You can type in colours like black, grey, etc or type #f7f7f7 if you like.

If you have a laptop you should be able to adjust the backlight brightness.

I don't know if there is a backlight setting in the configuration menus. You can type something like this in a terminal window:

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echo 40 > /sys/class/backlight/radeon_bl0/brightness

(look in /sys/class/backlight/ to find the right one, experiment to find a good brightness level)

I wrote a script. Something like

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#! /bin/sh
echo 40 > /sys/class/backlight/radeon_bl0/brightness

I put it in /root/Startup/

Or maybe there is a configuration option somewhere.

[williams2]

Flash, you can find wav files by typing in a terminal:

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find /mnt/easy_ro/ | grep -i wav$

Or

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find /mnt/easy_ro/ -iname *.wav

You can play wav files like this:

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aplay /usr/share/audio/*wav

You need to set the default sound card if it is the wrong one. You can do the somewhere in the setup/configuration menus. That creates an asound.conf file in /etc.

But when I did that the file was not configured properly.

It was

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defaults.pcm.card 1
defaults.pcm.device 0

It should be

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defaults.pcm.card 1
defaults.pcm.device 0
defaults.ctl.card 1

You need to edit the file and fix it for the mixer to work properly. Use the correct card number. My default card needs to be 1.

You need to run alsamixer in a terminal to set the sound levels. In my case, the master volume was set to 0 and was muted. Press the left and right arrows to select each sound level, press numbers or the up/down arrows to adjust the sound level, and press m to mute/unmute the sound control.

[rufwoof]

@ rufwoof

am I right to assume that you managed finally to configure an EasyOS live flash-stick which allows (1) booting into RAM exclusively, (2) persistent savings onto a flash-stick partition and (3) removing after boot-up.

No, it didn't work for me as described lp-dolittle

[williams2]

zygo, I edited /etc/inputrc and most of the keys in urxvt seem to be working. Home, End, PgUp, PgDn, backspace, del seem to work.

You can skip left or right to the next word by pressing Alt+left/right arrow.
This does not seem to work in Sakura.
It said in the inputrc file that ctrl+arrow should skip to the next word, but it seems to work using the alt key,

I put the line at the bottom of the inputrc file, below the last $endif line.

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"\e[7~": beginning-of-line 
"\e[8~": end-of-line
"\e[5~": beginning-of-history
"\e[6~": end-of-history
"\e[5C": forward-word
"\e[5D": backward-word
"\e\e[C": forward-word
"\e\e[D": backward-word

I don't know if this will affect other programs.

Also, I don't have a numeric keypad on this laptop.

[williams2]

Anyway, the standard readline shortcuts seem to work in Sakura.

like:

alt+F is next word
alt+B is prev word
ctrl+F is next character

etc etc