larch - latest news

gradgrind · 2007-03-11 06:22:49

raymano wrote:

Hi Gradgrind,
First of all I want to thank you for larch. I have played around with a lot of different live cd building scripts/distributions but yours, by far, is the most simple, elegant, yet powerful solution.

Blushes ...

raymano wrote:

Using larch, I have created a live USB key which after boot up starts network, sound, X, and brings up firefox with flash plugin, without a window manager. Basically a very small and fast live USB distro for internet browsing. The boot up all the way to firefox happens under 40 seconds and could be improved with a faster USB key. Everything works flawlessly.
Now I'm trying to get fbsplash working at boot time. I have the hook for fbsplash added to /home/larchbuild/ArchImage/usr/share/larch/initcpio/mkinitcpio.conf. I have included the packages needed for gensplash/fbsplash to work and added the necessary kernel options in isolinux.cfg. When the USB key boots up fbsplash indeed starts and bootup continues but hangs at starting X/firefox which starts from .xinitrc for root when "login -f root" happens. If I get rid of the fbsplash kernel options in isolinux.cfg, X/firefox start up without any problems.
Do you have any ideas about what's causing this?

I'm afraid I've never been a great fan of fbsplash (etc.), I like to watch all the incomprehensible drivel flash by on a boring black background. So I've never tried it. My suggestion would be to install the same system (I mean a proper installation, not live CD squashed type) on a partition on your HD and see if you get the same problem. That should show whether the problem is directly related to the 'live' environment. If it doesn't work then you can ask the question again in some more general category, as it then has nothing to do with larch.

If it does work like that, post again here, or send me your configuration details and I'll try to have a look at it.

raymano wrote:

P.S. Have you thought of putting a paypal donation link on your web site? I would be happy to donate for ongoing support of larch.

No, I hadn't thought of that, and have no immediate plans for doing so. I'm sure Arch will happily accept paypal donations though.

Ryujin · 2007-03-17 04:14:08

Hi again gradgrind, long time no chat, sorry, I get to involved in work and forget to tell people what I have been up to. I am working on AxiomLinux (axiomlinux.org) and basing the installer/livecd off your larch, and man it sure works great!

I have made some modofications that do some simple xorg.conf autoconfiguring, have gdm/kdm working well. I almost have a graphical installer for Arch done to run on top of the larch cds (the installer is nice, but I fear the wrath of the Arch community for creating such a wicked beast!) I am still trying to get gensplash working, I will have more questions about rebuilding the scripts from their unfinished state, I have AIGLX and beryl going (on the rare occurance where hwd gives me a good config). I just need to get on the ball and do some real damage, and hopefully have something to contribute!

gradgrind · 2007-03-17 05:56:09

Sounds great, Ryujin, keep at it!

lilsirecho · 2007-03-20 05:37:16

Ryujin;

Downloaded HOBBES-Postulate.iso and burned a CD-r.

Booted copy-to-ram and obtained KDE desktop OK. Seems to run smoothly. Rebooted and booted normal boot.
Found system operating at good speed.

I have a fixed IP for network so was unable to access pacman to check the unionfs function or any internet function.

Is there a cheat code to enable fixed IP?

lilsirecho · 2007-03-22 02:29:13

Gradgrind;

I am using the 3.2 version and have a 267+MB memory in use at desktop, when using normal boot-up.

However, when utilizing copy-to-ram in the same 3.2 version, the memory in use jumps to 1.643968GB.

In previous copy-to-ram boots with the Larch 2 versions, a larger memory in use occurs in normal boot (600+MB) and the copy-to-ram size is roughly twice that.

I am wondering what causes the large difference in version 3.2 between normal boot and copy-to-ram.

I note that sqf was mentioned while copy-to-ram was installing. Is that the 680MB file?

It seems there is a large discrepancy versus the Larch 2 version in both the normal and the copy-to-ram on my machine

Is this activity correct in Larch 3.2?

EDIT: Guess I am losing memory in my brain.....the figure quoted for Larch 2 was wrong..it boots normal with 261MB and the copy-to-ram is 1.423GB so they are similar....ooops!!!!

Last edited by lilsirecho (2007-03-22 02:48:03)

gradgrind · 2007-03-22 17:46:13

larch-3.3 released. I think I've fixed the CD-unmounting problem, so now
ejecting and session-saving should work properly with both stock and beyond
kernels.

Also various other small fixes, and some quite important ones
to the session saving (merge_overlay).

Added experimental option to use aufs instead of unionfs (aufs package
for kernel26-2.6.20.xxx in larch repo) - see docs/CHANGES for details.

Share and Enjoy!

gradgrind · 2007-03-23 17:01:37

Quick fix release: larch-3.4. There was a problem with the suid bits on (u)mount. Anyone using larch with non-root users will probably want this update.

lilsirecho · 2007-03-23 22:42:27

Gradgrind;

My root system in Larch3.3 loaded and burned CD at 698MB. Booted into KDE with no problem.

Also ran ./mklarch -iup default to burn the boot data to a flash drive and it loaded well into a 2GB flash.

No mobo to try it yet....

Thanks for the new Larch with aufs which boots with the latest arch kernel26 and a pacman download in c2r was successful.

Found no problems.......

Great stuff!!!!

lilsirecho · 2007-03-24 17:48:57

Gradgrind;

Made a DVD-R of Larch 3.4 and booted into ram in 2 minutes to KDE desktop. 697MB

Will run CD-R of Larch 3.3 and compare.

EDIT: Boot of CD-R took 3min 40 sec in boot to ram with Larch 3.3. 697MB

Do you think that boot from USB flash would be any faster than DVD-R?

EDIT.2: Can the USB flash be removed after booting to ram?

Last edited by lilsirecho (2007-03-24 20:30:08)

gradgrind · 2007-03-25 09:39:29

lilsirecho wrote:

Gradgrind;
Made a DVD-R of Larch 3.4 and booted into ram in 2 minutes to KDE desktop. 697MB
Will run CD-R of Larch 3.3 and compare.
EDIT: Boot of CD-R took 3min 40 sec in boot to ram with Larch 3.3. 697MB
Do you think that boot from USB flash would be any faster than DVD-R?

It might be. It depends on various factors.

lilsirecho wrote:

EDIT.2: Can the USB flash be removed after booting to ram?

I assume you mean the c2r option. Yes it can be removed but it might work better if you unmount it first. I hope I have described this in the documentation - I think there is a little script that does this, but I have forgotten what it's called.

lilsirecho · 2007-03-28 00:57:15

My son's shuttle has boot usb-cdrom and Larch 3.4 booted correctly with the cdrom.

Unfortunately, it did not have boot usb-hdd option so I could not test the flash drive boot function.

Still searching for a motherboard which can boot USB-HDD with a socketA Athlon462CPU and 2GB of 2100 ram.

drynish · 2007-03-30 12:50:12

I'm unable to use it anymore... I was able couple of months ago but right now, X doesn't start.

I got the error : Could not open default font 'fixed'

What I tried:

fc-cache -fv it failed most of the time

When I googled for this error I saw to do a touch for each directory in /usr/share/fonts.

So I did it, now fc-cache works but I'm still having the issue.

I installed all the necessary fonts (I think), I used a copy of the default one and added packages in teh addedpackages (removed KDE, added gnome).

I never had this error before and I'm pretty sure it's not related to larch, but larch suffers from it.

Any idea ?

drynish · 2007-03-30 14:06:16

I think I know the issue, I'm using pacman 3.x

I will try tonight with pacman 2.9.8

Michel

gradgrind · 2007-03-30 19:23:59

drynish wrote:

I think I know the issue, I'm using pacman 3.x
I will try tonight with pacman 2.9.8
Michel

Which version of pacman 3? That problem was supposed to be fixed ...

drynish · 2007-03-30 20:03:45

gradgrind wrote:

Which version of pacman 3? That problem was supposed to be fixed ...

I don't know where to get the good version of pacman 3. I got one of the first one released... and never updated it.

Last edited by drynish (2007-03-30 20:04:25)

gradgrind · 2007-03-31 08:21:30

drynish wrote:

gradgrind wrote:
Which version of pacman 3? That problem was supposed to be fixed ...
I don't know where to get the good version of pacman 3. I got one of the first one released... and never updated it.

If you want to try it again, probably the one from the 'testing' repo is the best.

drynish · 2007-03-31 20:05:45

It worked well...

Now it's working back again... still some issue with my networking card on my laptop but I assume this is due to my old dlink wireless router that it's so much aging Sorry to bother you, great work there!

I'm writing to you through my usb key system right now, because I'm playing with gparted on my disks so I wanted to have complete control over them. So this is why I'm using larch to have nothing mounted in my os. This is somehow wonderfull since I could continue to work as if I was on my real computer and I could install missing stuff that I simply forgot when I build the USB key. Simply forgot ghostscript (to be able to print), one download and it was there !

You're helping me a lot, you're making USB key simpler

Michel

Last edited by drynish (2007-03-31 20:06:41)

lilsirecho · 2007-04-10 05:33:10

An item of interest regarding boot of Larch.

I connected via a USB/IDE device my sony cdrom.

I booted into Larch using the normal CDROM (with Larch3.4 cd installed) and the boot recognized my USB device as SR0 and proceeded to load Larch3.4 from its CD of Larch3.4.

This was possible with either normal boot or copy-to-ram.

Can I now create a way to recognize the flash drive on sda1 as SR0?

This boot was from SR0 as I write this post.

Gotta try DVD-R media next!

EDIT: DVD-R works the same way about one minute faster.

EDIT2: Perhaps I can change the ID of the flash drive generated to boot Larch3.4 and make it be recognized as a scsi HDD by the system altho the boot may be looking for a CDROM. The USB/IDE device reports the device by ID params which make it be recognized as scsi.

Can this be implemented with a change to the flash boot device to provide the ID required?

Last edited by lilsirecho (2007-04-10 07:07:39)

lilsirecho · 2007-04-13 04:24:37

Have attempted to load the Larch3.4 flash drive into a mobo with USB-HDD capability.

The USB is recognized in the boot process but it is looking for.....LINUX... and boot message is .........cannot find kernel.img.

Is it possible to change the Larch.img to Linux.img and get it to respond? Or maybe kernel.img?

EDIT: Boot was successful with USB-CDROM from a USB/IDE connected CDROM. C2r ran correctly and I am editing this from the booted system. The background image was presented and the options displayed.

It does not recognize the Larch produced flash drive in USB-HDD configuration. The flash drive was generated from the larch3.4 CD with the selection "1" and it completed the flash burn with 15 files (14 files of Larch data and one file which says "yes". The flash device is a patriot xporter 1GB.

Last edited by lilsirecho (2007-04-13 05:25:01)

Shagbag · 2007-04-13 05:29:35

I'm trying to put a Live version of Arch onto USB and I've followed the instructions for larch.
I thought I would start off with a default profile, see how that works. So I just copied the default profile and edited the locale.gen and rcconfx files for and en_GB locale and a uk keymap. I then ran ./mklarch -u -d path-to-my-customised-default-profile.

I now see that everything has been completed and I have a 1GB+ /home/larchbuild/ArchImage folder. I must have done something wrong here. My USB drive is completely empty and the above ArchImage folder is not compressed.

Sorry for being a n00b at this but can someone please tell me what I need to do?

gradgrind · 2007-04-13 05:29:35

lilsirecho wrote:

Have attempted to load the Larch3.4 flash drive into a mobo with USB-HDD capability.
The USB is recognized in the boot process but it is looking for.....LINUX... and boot message is .........cannot find kernel.img.
Is it possible to change the Larch.img to Linux.img and get it to respond? Or maybe kernel.img?

The question is rather: why is it looking for kernel.img?

Did you change something in isolinux.cfg (=syslinux.cfg on the flash drive)? I can't find any reference to kernel.img here, so you'll have to investigate further. Check especially the contents of syslinux.cfg. You could also try GRUB, as an alternative.

gradgrind · 2007-04-13 05:40:34

Shagbag wrote:

I'm trying to put a Live version of Arch onto USB and I've followed the instructions for larch.
I thought I would start off with a default profile, see how that works. So I just copied the default profile and edited the locale.gen and rcconfx files for and en_GB locale and a uk keymap. I then ran ./mklarch -u -d path-to-my-customised-default-profile.
I now see that everything has been completed and I have a 1GB+ /home/larchbuild/ArchImage folder. I must have done something wrong here. My USB drive is completely empty and the above ArchImage folder is not compressed.
Sorry for being a n00b at this but can someone please tell me what I need to do?

From your description it's not very clear what could be going wrong. I would suggest you try it again and then copy the ouput from the terminal (I assume you are using an xterm/Konsole/whatever which remembers enough lines) into a mail to me.

lilsirecho · 2007-04-13 06:23:49

Gradgrind:

Have had successful boot with USB-CDROM device with Larch3.4.

It has a folder called syslinux in it. This folder is not present in the flash drive.

How many items should be in the flash drive? One of them is SAVE and it has "yes" in it!

Very close to having this thing work...

Items in the flash drive are;

base.sqf bkgd.jpg etc.sqf kconfig larch.img Idlinux.sys memtest overlay.sqf
profile.tar.gz readme save syslinux.cfg system.sqf vesamenu.c32 vmlinuz

The content of syslinux.cfg follows;

default vesamenu.c32
prompt 0
timeout 50

MENU BACKGROUND bkgd.jpg

MENU TITLE larch live CD with 'default' profile

label linux
MENU LABEL Default: no swap, no copy-to-ram
kernel vmlinuz
append initrd=larch.img
# or with video mode for beyond kernel:
#append initrd=larch.img video=vesafb:ywrap,mtrr,800x600@60

label linux-c2r
MENU LABEL larch copy-to-ram (also activates swap)
kernel vmlinuz
append initrd=larch.img c2r

label linux-swap
MENU LABEL larch with swap
kernel vmlinuz
append initrd=larch.img swap

label memtest
MENU LABEL Memory tester
kernel memtest

Cannot find any reference to kernel.img anywhere.

Syslinux 3.31 is referenced in the bios by H.Peter Anvin. Maybe it isn't a late enough version?

How do I use GRUB for the purpose?

gradgrind · 2007-04-13 06:36:19

lilsirecho wrote:

Cannot find any reference to kernel.img anywhere.
Syslinux 3.31 is referenced in the bios by H.Peter Anvin. Maybe it isn't a late enough version?
How do I use GRUB for the purpose?

That looks ok, I wonder what is going on ...

Do you get the syslinux menu on booting? If not, then syslinux is not starting. Can you describe exactly what happens at boot?

To use GRUB just add the -g option to mklarch - but be warned that I can't test this, I don't have a machine with USB-HDD.

lilsirecho · 2007-04-13 06:55:13

I do not get the syslinux menu at start-up.

The system displays;
boot= could not find kernel image:LINUX

Thus; syslinux is not starting.....

Perhaps it is the order of the items within the flash device......

Arch Linux

#76 2007-03-11 06:22:49

Re: larch - latest news

#77 2007-03-17 04:14:08

Re: larch - latest news

#78 2007-03-17 05:56:09

Re: larch - latest news

#79 2007-03-20 05:37:16

Re: larch - latest news

#80 2007-03-22 02:29:13

Re: larch - latest news

#81 2007-03-22 17:46:13

Re: larch - latest news

#82 2007-03-23 17:01:37

Re: larch - latest news

#83 2007-03-23 22:42:27

Re: larch - latest news

#84 2007-03-24 17:48:57

Re: larch - latest news

#85 2007-03-25 09:39:29

Re: larch - latest news

#86 2007-03-28 00:57:15

Re: larch - latest news

#87 2007-03-30 12:50:12

Re: larch - latest news

#88 2007-03-30 14:06:16

Re: larch - latest news

#89 2007-03-30 19:23:59

Re: larch - latest news

#90 2007-03-30 20:03:45

Re: larch - latest news

#91 2007-03-31 08:21:30

Re: larch - latest news

#92 2007-03-31 20:05:45

Re: larch - latest news

#93 2007-04-10 05:33:10

Re: larch - latest news

#94 2007-04-13 04:24:37

Re: larch - latest news

#95 2007-04-13 05:29:35

Re: larch - latest news

#96 2007-04-13 05:29:35

Re: larch - latest news

#97 2007-04-13 05:40:34

Re: larch - latest news

#98 2007-04-13 06:23:49

Re: larch - latest news

#99 2007-04-13 06:36:19

Re: larch - latest news

#100 2007-04-13 06:55:13

Re: larch - latest news

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