Create Debian 9 (Stretch) minimal ISO similar to DebianDog

[fredx181]

Hi All,

I'm not sure if this falls under the heading "Buying into problems before they materialize" or "Reading the Writing on the Wall and Preparing to meet an unavoidable problem".

Short version: As far as I can tell, grub4dos is no longer maintained. The last version on the Puppy Linux Forum was created in 2014. Although it has support for Linux Ext4, it is unable to boot operating systems from drives formatted as 64 bit Linux Ext4.

See the following problems which have recently surfaced trying to boot Puppies:

http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 862#964862
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=111371. See, in particular, jd7654's analysis of what works, and what doesn't. http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 267#965267

mikesLr

Hi Mike,

Uhhh, what? Fyi, I have mutliple hard drives (from IDE to SATA I,II & III, internal and external), and all of them, save for one, is governed by grub4dos (the other one had grub2). Here's the thing: all those other drives? They are all formatted, inside pups, 64-bit ext4, and grub4dos is then next installed.

Grub4dos even handles my drive that is specifically targetted to rpm distros. On that one, I am booting manjaro, openSUSE, antergos, pclinuxOS and Fedora......all S.O.B. distros that are finicky & picky as heck since some require require separate boot/home partitions to function well.

I am not sure what is being propagated out there, but it is complete nonsense that grub4dos "...is unable to boot operating systems from drives formatted as 64 bit Linux Ext4." Yeah, it currently is nt mantained, but it handles everything today with aplomb. It just is not automatic...a person has to pay a bit of attention.

HTH

To avoid confusion:
It's not that grub4dos doesn't work anymore booting newer systems (e.g. Stretch), it's when formatting a drive by using a newer system
For info again: The Dogs and StretchLive won't have the problem because the workaround is included. (modified mke2fs.conf)

To clarify, taking example Stretch as "newer" system:
If you boot Debian-Live Stretch official, or Debian Stretch official full install (also dpup-Stretch from ttuuuxx)
Then use gparted to format a partition to ext4
If then you install grub4dos and MBR on that partition and make some frugal installs on it, these won't boot.

EDIT: Belham, I just see your EDIT, so you may see what's the point already

Fred

[bluenix]

Thank you, fredx181 you're my hero & learn something from debian dog xfce is my goal.
I used to build from live-build but it can't compress size to debiandog script level.
I never expect that you would share your scripts and techniques you're so kind.
Naturally many distro competitors don't share their secret distro build techniques.
Someday I'll pay back my gratitude after I success. While other debianies over there struggle embrace
other sysvinit distro or strip down quality throw away DE to i3wm. I'm among odd
that want to build my own sysvnit distro from pure debian like debiandog, mx/antix did
without embrace devaun or any other non-systemd distro.

Currently I've planned to make a pure Debian Xfce 4.12 transitioning to 4.13 iso but
compress to size ram under 165mb and size iso under 600mb to 150mb-350mb~ I don't know if it's possible
to make a pure xfce distro under 300mb-150mb size with cups, gvfs, samba, tumbler preinstalled or not but if it can that'd be nice.
I've notice debiandog xfce throw away some xfce packages and merge with lx, jwm, openbox stuffs.
However what I want is to build a pure xfce without throw away any xfce features & that's why I'm here to research of making it.

Also I've my own obs repo for my custom Debian 9.1 Xfce. There's a lot of homework for me to do & I'll take time to read this.

[fredx181]

Side note:
While playing around with Dog package tool AptToSfs to create sfs modules to load, ran into failures of that app when using older or newer forced version packages such as:
firefox-esr=24.8.0esr-1~deb8u2 mpv=0.23.0-2+b2
I found that if you remove the "=" sign from the working directory name, then the AptToSfs completed successsfully with those forced version packages.

Change to /usr/local/bin/apt2sfs line 352:
Code:
export SFS=$(for i in "$INSTALL"; do echo $(echo $i | sed 's| |_|g' | sed 's|=||g'); done)

Made new version of package apt2sfs with that change from jd7654, install:

Code: Select all

apt-get update
apt-get install apt2sfs   # installs version 1.1.2

Had tried some time ago already to include with version number e.g. mpv=0.23.0-2+b2 in the apt2sfs package list, and got error of course.
But didn't know the cause (difficult to debug this (over)complicated script !)
So, thanks jd !

@bluenix
Just for info, you can make build with full xfce4 by using this in the config:

Code: Select all

DESK_APPS_INSTALL="xfce4 xfce4-goodies slim"

added "slim" login manager but can be without, then start xfce4 from console with:

Code: Select all

startxfce4

(instead of startx)
You may need to add some apps to autostart e.g. peasywifi , depending on what you installed.

Fred

[zagreb999]

VLC-GTK style

IS THERE VLC-GTK style
FOR STRTCHDOG 32BIT...?

REGARDS.

[rufwoof]

To avoid confusion:
It's not that grub4dos doesn't work anymore booting newer systems (e.g. Stretch), it's when formatting a drive by using a newer system
For info again: The Dogs and StretchLive won't have the problem because the workaround is included. (modified mke2fs.conf)

I don't know if ext3 has the same issue (64bit filesystem flag being set when created using newer systems)? Personally I prefer ext3 as for instance that can be rw from a freebsd boot, whereas ext4 is ro. I have used freebsd to create and restore backups using mksquashfs/unsquashfs and that works well with ext3. My understanding is that access is however ext2 like i.e. no journalling, but for a simple operation such as unsquashfs to restore the content of a ext3 partition from a backup using freebsd that's not really a issue anyway (if there was a power cut midway then likely you'd redo from afresh afterwards).

I believe that if you want to share a partition with Windows then ext3 is also a better choice than ext4.

A point of interest is that you can mount ext3 as ext4 i.e. to 'try out' ext4 without having to reformat. Such as changing /etc/fstab to say ext4 instead of ext3. That way you can go back to ext3 at any time.

Seem to recall Fred saying however something like 'must be ext4' so perhaps the script is tuned specifically for ext4?

[rufwoof]

VLC-GTK style

IS THERE VLC-GTK style
FOR STRTCHDOG 32BIT...?

REGARDS.

The official Debian vlc version looks to be qt5 based https://packages.debian.org/stretch/vlc.

If you were looking for a more common look-n-feel then I believe if you add

export QT_STYLE_OVERRIDE=GTK+

to your .profile then that will set qt5 to look more like your gtk3 theme

For qt4 you need to include/add something like

[Qt]
style=GTK+
font="Sans Serif,13,-1,5,50,0,0,0,0,0"

in ~/.config/Trolltech.conf to do similar.

[rcrsn51]

Hint: To check for firmware problems, run the command:

Code: Select all

dmesg | grep -i firmware

This is a summary of the firmware packages required by various Ethernet and WiFi adapters. You can install them via apt-get.

Older USB adapters using Atheros carl9170: firmware-linux-free
The PCI ath5k and ath9k adapters do NOT need firmware.

Atheros USB ath9k_htc and PCI ath10k, etc: firmware-atheros

Ralink rt2800usb, rt2800pci and the new Mediatek mt7601: firmware-misc-nonfree

Realtek PCI r8169 and USB r8712u,8188eu, etc: firmware-realtek

Newer Intel PCI WiFi (Centrino, etc): firmware-iwlwifi
Older Intel Pro Wireless: firmware-ipw2x00
The Intel e1000e PCI Ethernet driver does NOT need firmware.

The alternate Realtek USB drivers built by me (8192cu, 8192eu, 8812au, 8822bu) do NOT require firmware.

The broadcom-wifi driver does NOT require firmware. However, it may need additional blacklisting.
Run the "lsmod" command to see if other drivers are being auto-installed.
For other Broadcom drivers like b43 or brcmsmac, read here or here.

Broadcom tg3 Ethernet: firmware-misc-nonfree

For information about radeon graphics firmware, read here.

---------------------

[dancytron]

Just a note on enabling mesa graphics.

Most Debian dogs don't come with libgl1-mesa-dri (Xenial Dog 64 is an exception), which is the package necessary to have mesa video acceleration. When you install it and mesa-utils, all things being equal, if you restart X, then you should be able to run glxgears and see that mesa is working.

For a few (including my Intel G30 GPU) though, installing libgl-mesa-dri will result in X crashing when it tries to load. This is because you are missing the xserver-xorg-video-* driver (in my case xserver-xorg-video-intel) for your GPU. It should be a fairly simple matter at that point to figure out what GPU you have and google up what the correct driver is and install it.

If you go to the intel site, it will make you think that you need to compile the driver, you don't. It is already in Debian along with many others.

[dancytron]

I've gotten this error when upgrading with synaptic and a similar error when installing galculator. I think it just happens the first time you use it each session. The install seems to work though.

Code: Select all

W: Download is performed unsandboxed as root as file '/var/cache/apt/archives/partial/porteusbootscripts_0.0.4_all.deb' couldn't be accessed by user '_apt'. - pkgAcquire::Run (13: Permission denied)

I've attached permissions for /var/cache/apt/archives/partial.

[fredx181]

I've gotten this error when upgrading with synaptic and a similar error when installing galculator. I think it just happens the first time you use it each session. The install seems to work though.

Code:
W: Download is performed unsandboxed as root as file '/var/cache/apt/archives/partial/porteusbootscripts_0.0.4_all.deb' couldn't be accessed by user '_apt'. - pkgAcquire::Run (13: Permission denied)

Thanks! I mostly use apt-get (gives no such warning message) , so didn't notice yet, should be fixed now by keeping the ownership '_apt' as it should.
(the warning is because it's owned by root)

Bug fixed
mklive-stretch script (right-click > Save link as and make executable)

Fred

[rcrsn51]

@dancytron: Can you explain this "mesa" business?

My Intel Atom machines also need xserver-xorg-video-intel, but I thought that it provided hardware acceleration.

What else does mesa provide?

Thanks.

[dancytron]

@dancytron: Can you explain this "mesa" business?

My Intel Atom machines also need xserver-xorg-video-intel, but I thought that it provided hardware acceleration.

What else does mesa provide?

Thanks.

My understanding (which is limited) is that Mesa is the open source version of OpenGL which is what provides 3D graphics acceleration.

There is a long wikipedia article which I haven't read. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesa_(computer_graphics)

[rcrsn51]

So I don't need it for video like Flash?

[dancytron]

So I don't need it for video like Flash?

No, but you do need it for 3D accelerated games and for 3D things like Google Earth (which won't run on my computer anyway because of how outdated the 3D acceleration is). Some things, like Google Chrome, don't need it but will use it if it is there.

If you want to test it, install mesa-utils and run "glxgears" from a terminal. If it doesn't work, install the libgl1-mesa-dri package, restart X and try again.

[zagreb999]

regards rufwoof

thank you

it is impossible to open vlc in stretchdog
in gtk style

your advice does not work

is it possible to install

vlc 2.2.4 weatherwax
in stretch-it has gtk...???
greetings

[fredx181]

*** Update mklive-stretch ***

Added choice of Desktop Environment, it's for GUI only, when run without specifying a config file:

Code: Select all

./mklive-stretch -gui

It works by downloading a config file from here:
https://debiandog.github.io/MakeLive/configs
And before creating the ISO it will download corresponding module(s) from here:
https://debiandog.github.io/MakeLive/modules
and will be added to isodata/live folder

All will autologin and autostart X without need to install a login manager, e.g. slim
The DE-configuration, in most cases added as extra module zz_......squashfs, are mostly very simple, I might extend these a liitle more, basically it works now, which was my goal.

Download:
mklive-stretch script

Screenshots here:
https://debiandog.github.io/MakeLive/screenshots

@peebee
I added your LxDD concept as one of the options, tell me if you don't agree, or to make changes
And thanks! Adding .squashfs modules, like you did, seems to be a good way to add stuff.

Fred

[belham2]

*** Update mklive-stretch ***

Added choice of Desktop Environment, it's for GUI only, when run without specifying a config file:

Code: Select all

./mklive-stretch -gui

It works by downloading a config file from here:
https://debiandog.github.io/MakeLive/configs
And before creating the ISO it will download corresponding module(s) from here:
https://debiandog.github.io/MakeLive/modules
and will be added to isodata/live folder

All will autologin and autostart X without need to install a login manager, e.g. slim
The DE-configuration, in most cases added as extra module zz_......squashfs, are mostly very simple, I might extend these a liitle more, basically it works now, which was my goal.

Download:
mklive-stretch script

Screenshots here:
https://debiandog.github.io/MakeLive/screenshots

@peebee
I added your LxDD concept as one of the options, tell me if you don't agree, or to make changes
And thanks! Adding .squashfs modules, like you did, seems to be a good way to add stuff.

Fred

Hi Fred,

Hey, the popup 'desktop environment' box is really nice!!

Was just wondering, could the following be added to the new popup de gui? Don't know if ya remember, but I did a long while back in the beginning: FVWM-Crystal. Really think people would like it (fvwm-crystal) if they would give it a chance. It's unique in how it uses left & right mouse-clicks, plus its DE customization is something, along with its wonderful ability to run "nested DEs" inside the fvwm-crystal DE that you're in (example: you can run 2, 3 or 4 nested DEs inside the one you are in, without having to logout-login crap & having only 1 DE at a time for use). It is something special. Is this possible, or not, since it seems things are moving to this downloading of modules too?? Anyway, here is the post about fvwm-crystal I did:

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... &start=195


P.S. Also, is adding a "Budgie DE" build button/icon choice a possibility? I got it working/built too

[festus]

Hey, all

I'm preparing my list for a new run of the script and need some help with selecting them.

What additional packages need to be added, if any, not including a burning app like pburn, for: CD/DVD detection and to be able to burn and work with mp3/ogg, etc?

And, a working Battery-Monitor, that sits in the taskbar?

Also, is there any way to include " simple_network_setup" (sns)?

Thanks for any input,

festus

[fredx181]

Was just wondering, could the following be added to the new popup de gui? Don't know if ya remember, but I did a long while back in the beginning: FVWM-Crystal. Really think people would like it (fvwm-crystal) if they would give it a chance. It's unique in how it uses left & right mouse-clicks, plus its DE customization is something, along with its wonderful ability to run "nested DEs" inside the fvwm-crystal DE that you're in (example: you can run 2, 3 or 4 nested DEs inside the one you are in, without having to logout-login crap & having only 1 DE at a time for use). It is something special. Is this possible, or not, since it seems things are moving to this downloading of modules too?? Anyway, here is the post about fvwm-crystal I did:

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... &start=195


P.S. Also, is adding a "Budgie DE" build button/icon choice a possibility? I got it working/built too Wink

Thanks. Yes, now almost anything is possible with the combination of custom .conf files and the adding of extra .squashfs modules. I will have look at fvwm-crystal in the next days, any know-how you can share, e.g. nice custom configuration ?
Or if you like to make .squashfs with your special configuration inside would be nice also.

Fred

[backi]

Hi Fred .......everyone !
Tested your new Makelive-Stretch-gui .
Choosed JWM Desktop very light on the Ram /System ....
Uses 61 Megb Ram idle ......
Makelive-Stretch-gui makes creating a minimal Debian 9 (Stretch) Iso so easy as drinking a cup of tea.
Thanks for all your (and of course anybody elses ) hard efforts .
Nice to see such a sophisticated Project growing more and more.

Just want to throw in a small proposal .....
Maybe you should include "ntfs-3g" into base Install script ......makes NTFS Partition writable by default .

Keep on rocking