larch-4 testing, can also 'livify' existing Arch installation

wantilles · 2007-11-04 13:27:31

I corrected the lib issue.

However the mksquashfs issue remains.

I have tried all kinds of terminals I could lay my hands on (Gnome Terminal, Konsole, and a new "clean" console with Ctrl+Alt+F2), out of or within a screen.

And the same output happens.

How can I try mksquashfs outside of larch?

There is no man page for mksquashfs.

Also there is no script or executable with that name.

gradgrind · 2007-11-04 13:51:36

To get mksquashfs:

pacman -S squashfs-tools

How to use it:

www.tldp.org/HOWTO/SquashFS-HOWTO/creatingandusing.html

wantilles · 2007-11-04 17:49:15

I did some tests with mksquashfs as you said.

I had the same strange terminal output, however, final results were produced, and they were correct. I tested them by mounting them.

So I went on to test larch again, and this time let it finish.

Again I had the strange output, however, as with the tests above, final results were produced, and they were correct. I tested them by burning the resulting image to a DVD+RW and successfully booting from it.

So, larch works successfully in x86_64.

As for the strange mksquashfs terminal output, I did one last test and redirected the output to a text file so that I could study it.

It appears that during the last phase -> equivalent to "-b" -> this strange output occurs many times (I think I counted three), and just before this strange thing happens, there was a line in the text file saying:

TIOCGWINZ ioctl failed, defaulting to 80 columns

gradgrind · 2007-11-04 19:33:20

Maybe you could post your findings in the x86_64 section - perhaps someone there would have an idea what's going on. If you have another distribution installed somewhere, you could also try it in that, to see if this behaviour is specific to Arch.

s26c.sayan · 2007-11-06 21:13:26

Wow!! Just noticed this thread!!!

So, does this mean I can finally use Larch as a substitute for linux-live scripts??

gradgrind · 2007-11-07 07:11:32

s26c.sayan wrote:

Wow!! Just noticed this thread!!!
So, does this mean I can finally use Larch as a substitute for linux-live scripts??

Please give it a try and let us know if there are any problems!

s26c.sayan · 2007-11-07 17:49:24

When I try ./mklarch -X, this is what I get:

//
// **********************************************************
//
// *****    Creating liveCD from system at ''
//
// This will delete EVERYTHING under  ::: /.larch/cd :::
//
// I really mean it ... Are you sure you want to do this?
// **********************************************************
[y/N]: y

// Kernel version: 2.6.23-ARCH
//  -> regenerating kernel dependencies

ERROR: No squashfs module found
ERROR: No aufs or unionfs module found

I have done these:
1) Got the larch-setup script and ran it to obtain mklarch
2) Installed all the packages suggested from the larch testing repository ( like larchin, archin, initcpio_larch, klibc_larch, larchin, pacin )
3) Installed squashfs-tools, aufs, & aufs-utils from extra.
4) I am using the 2.6.23-ARCH kernel.

Am i missing something really obvious? I admit that I haven't spent enough time to RTFM.

gradgrind · 2007-11-08 08:19:44

I'm very sorry about that - it's a silly mistake of mine (an oversight related to chroot). I have uploaded updates to larch and initcpio_larch.

Please note that I have also made one or two other changes, mainly so that there is no longer an initcpio_larch_aufs package. If you have this either installed or in profiles, please replace it by the new initcpio_larch. The presence of an aufs module is now automatically detected (i.e. if you have aufs installed it will be used). (This does not apply to larch-3! But, then, this is the larch-4 thread.)

s26c.sayan · 2007-11-08 16:37:23

I've tested the larch 4 scripts as a 'substitute' for linux-live scripts to 'livify' an existing Arch installtion. And it works!! I got a 'mylivecd.iso' which booted fine in virtualbox!

IMHO, these is how larch compares to linux-live:

1) Larch takes considerably lesser time to build the final iso. But the size of the iso is MUCH bigger!! (672 mb as compared to 470 mb).
I suspect this is because linux-live uses lzma compression while squashing filesystems. Any way this can be implemented in larch?

2) Larch seems to slightly edit some of the config files (like inittab & rc.sysinit) while livifying. I think this behavior can be controlled, esp. if I RTFM & STFW properly!

Great job, Gradgrind!

gradgrind · 2007-11-09 20:56:41

s26c.sayan wrote:

I've tested the larch 4 scripts as a 'substitute' for linux-live scripts to 'livify' an existing Arch installtion. And it works!! I got a 'mylivecd.iso' which booted fine in virtualbox!
IMHO, these is how larch compares to linux-live:
1) Larch takes considerably lesser time to build the final iso. But the size of the iso is MUCH bigger!! (672 mb as compared to 470 mb).
I suspect this is because linux-live uses lzma compression while squashing filesystems. Any way this can be implemented in larch?

I guess in principle, yes. But as it requires a custom kernel, it is not something I plan to do. My aim in larch was to use (as far as possible) standard Arch packages.

s26c.sayan wrote:

2) Larch seems to slightly edit some of the config files (like inittab & rc.sysinit) while livifying. I think this behavior can be controlled, esp. if I RTFM & STFW properly!

Yes, it does, though rc.sysinit (and rc.shutdown) is actually quite heavily edited. And yes, the overlay mechanism allows these to be altered. But the reason they are changed is that the 'live' system is actually quite a different one from the normal installed system, and this requires some attention at boot and shutdown. The structure of the 'live' system in larch is also rather different from that in linux-live, somewhat more complicated, I would say. The main reason for this is the support for the session-saving feature (so that changes can be written back to the boot medium). I regard the extra complication as a negative feature, but the session saving seems quite useful, ... maybe some day we'll come up with a better way of doing it.

wantilles · 2007-11-17 10:25:10

gradgrind wrote:

I'm very sorry about that - it's a silly mistake of mine (an oversight related to chroot). I have uploaded updates to larch and initcpio_larch.
Please note that I have also made one or two other changes, mainly so that there is no longer an initcpio_larch_aufs package. If you have this either installed or in profiles, please replace it by the new initcpio_larch. The presence of an aufs module is now automatically detected (i.e. if you have aufs installed it will be used). (This does not apply to larch-3! But, then, this is the larch-4 thread.)

I suppose this means I have to re-build my x86_64 larch-4 packages.

Last edited by wantilles (2007-11-18 12:14:00)

gradgrind · 2007-11-17 10:50:45

wantilles wrote:

gradgrind wrote:
I'm very sorry about that - it's a silly mistake of mine (an oversight related to chroot). I have uploaded updates to larch and initcpio_larch.
Please note that I have also made one or two other changes, mainly so that there is no longer an initcpio_larch_aufs package. If you have this either installed or in profiles, please replace it by the new initcpio_larch. The presence of an aufs module is now automatically detected (i.e. if you have aufs installed it will be used). (This does not apply to larch-3! But, then, this is the larch-4 thread.)
I suppose this mean I have to re-build my x86_64 larch-4 packages.

It would probably be a good idea (larch and initcpio_larch, and discard initcpio_larch_aufs).

spookykid · 2007-11-21 01:22:53

Hi gradgrind, I have tried larch and it is working great. Everything is fine. but I would like to request a feature, sometimes my network is down (ISP problems), and to be able to make a new install larch runs pacman to see if there are new updates, so as I do not have network larch fails to make a new installation. I would like to request, if that is possible an ''offline-mode''. Thank you.

Last edited by spookykid (2007-11-21 13:17:40)

spookykid · 2007-11-21 21:58:34

gradgrind, I am currently using GNOME on my LiveCD and I have noticed that all storage devices are correctly mounted, but when I save my session, next time I boot my LiveCD the previously mounted devices are on my desktop and the same ones (if mounted) are mounted in duplicate. If I save my session 5 times I get all mounted devices X5. Do you know some work around this? My idea would be to before saving my session all mounted devices would be unmounted so the next time they wouldn't appear as duplicate or triplicate. Thank you.

lilsirecho · 2007-11-21 23:28:35

Wow!!!! What drastic power you have!!!!

spookykid · 2007-11-22 11:58:49

Yes, I have very powerful magical powers and I turned my computer to a living beast how's mission is to breed it's hardware parts to assist me in word domination. Be afraid, very afraid.

gradgrind · 2007-11-23 15:03:49

spookykid wrote:

Hi gradgrind, I have tried larch and it is working great. Everything is fine. but I would like to request a feature, sometimes my network is down (ISP problems), and to be able to make a new install larch runs pacman to see if there are new updates, so as I do not have network larch fails to make a new installation. I would like to request, if that is possible an ''offline-mode''. Thank you.

I'm a bit busy with real life at the moment, but I am slowly getting a new larch version together with a few quite far reaching changes, including the one you are asking for here.

As to your gnome icon problem, I'll have to think about that one. I don't normally use either gnome or hal-automount, so I'm not quite sure how these work. Is there any way to make gnome unmount the stuff it has mounted automatically?

peets · 2007-11-23 15:38:13

I haven't been able to reach the larch website (http://four.fsphost.com/gradgrind) in the last few days. Am I the only one?

spookykid · 2007-11-23 20:32:32

Hi gradgrind, thank you for answering my questions.

As to your gnome icon problem, I'll have to think about that one. I don't normally use either gnome or hal-automount, so I'm not quite sure how these work. Is there any way to make gnome unmount the stuff it has mounted automatically?

I've managed to overcome this problem by simply swapping ############################ Deal with ejecting with ############################# Deal with session saving in rc.shutdown file, this seem to work as my drives get unmounted before saving my session.

As for grub not working on my usb I'll have to test it by using a CD ROM to see if it's my computer problem or a configuration problem.

I must say that by now I managed to automatically detect Sound cards and Video Cards (Video cards works almost flawlessly, but I have to review this) just by changing a few things and using alsaconf, loll larch is great. I've squashed a full desktop (GNOME+some console apps) under 470 Mb. At the moment my problem is detecting user keyboard, can't figure this out yet, any help with this will be greatly appreciated. And I am starting to mess around fbsplash. Round #1, FIGHT. loll

Thank you gradgrind.

EDIT - I'm counting on having something available for download for everybody to test and comment, maybe in the end of December.

Last edited by spookykid (2007-11-23 20:36:33)

gradgrind · 2007-11-24 08:20:40

spookykid wrote:

At the moment my problem is detecting user keyboard, can't figure this out yet, any help with this will be greatly appreciated.

Could you explain what you mean by 'detecting user keyboard'?

spookykid wrote:

And I am starting to mess around fbsplash.

I think raymano is campaigning to get better Arch support for this.

spookykid · 2007-11-24 18:15:39

I'm having problems detecting user keyboard. When I change keyboard options under Gnome Keyboard settings everything seem to be fine but instead of the chosen keyboard I get the default US keyboard. Using setxkbmap I can get my keyboard to work, I don't know if this has something to do with generating xorg.conf with X -configure as this doesn't detect keyboards. Another thing I noticed is if I set my keyboards with setxbmap and save my session, when I boot into it again my default keyboard is still US (but this time it doesn't generate a new xorg.conf). Can't seem to figure if this is a Gnome Session management problem or a settings problem, I don't think it has nothing to do with larch . On the console I use km to change keyboards.
gradgrind, I have another question for you, this time related with kernel26fallen. I'm trying to use that kernel as it has everything I need and doesn't need compiling & patching, but larch always installs kernel26. Is there an option to instead of installing kernel26 from core repo I can just install kernel26fallen? Even if I install the two that would be a waste of media space.
I can install the two but when I run mklarch -p ./utopia/ -b i get this error:

// mklarch finished
//
//
// **********************************************************
//
// *****    Creating liveCD from system at '/home/larchroot'
//
// This will delete EVERYTHING under  ::: /home/larchroot/.larch/cd :::
//
// I really mean it ... Are you sure you want to do this?
// **********************************************************
[y/N]: y

Error - more than 1 kernel found:
        vmlinuz26
        vmlinuz26fallen

Is there an option to choose from different installed kernels? Or maybe an option to choose which kernel to install? I've been looking at the docs but can't find nothing. Thank you.

EDIT

When I delete all files from kernel26 from /boot and /lib/modules it says this:

//
// Getting live CD configuration details
//
// **********************************************************
//
// *****    Creating liveCD from system at '/home/larchroot'
//
// This will delete EVERYTHING under  ::: /home/larchroot/.larch/cd :::
//
// I really mean it ... Are you sure you want to do this?
// **********************************************************
[y/N]: y 

// Kernel version: 2.6.22-fallen
//  -> regenerating kernel dependencies

ERROR: No squashfs module found
ERROR: No aufs or unionfs module found
WARNING: Package archin is recommended
WARNING: Package larchin is recommended

I have suashfs-tools and unionfs-utils and aufs in addedpackages file.

Last edited by spookykid (2007-11-24 18:53:10)

gradgrind · 2007-11-25 07:47:16

spookykid wrote:

I'm having problems detecting user keyboard. When I change keyboard options under Gnome Keyboard settings everything seem to be fine but instead of the chosen keyboard I get the default US keyboard. Using setxkbmap I can get my keyboard to work, I don't know if this has something to do with generating xorg.conf with X -configure as this doesn't detect keyboards. Another thing I noticed is if I set my keyboards with setxbmap and save my session, when I boot into it again my default keyboard is still US (but this time it doesn't generate a new xorg.conf). Can't seem to figure if this is a Gnome Session management problem or a settings problem, I don't think it has nothing to do with larch . On the console I use km to change keyboards.

setxkbmap only works on the current session, so it's not surprising that you have to redo it every time. I don't know why the gnome keyboard setter isn't working, I have never used it - the KDE one works, but isn't retained, so it would be nice to know what is going on here! I would suggest editing xorg.conf so that it has your keyboard setting, then after a session save everything should be ok.

spookykid wrote:

gradgrind, I have another question for you, this time related with kernel26fallen. I'm trying to use that kernel as it has everything I need and doesn't need compiling & patching, but larch always installs kernel26. Is there an option to instead of installing kernel26 from core repo I can just install kernel26fallen? Even if I install the two that would be a waste of media space.
I can install the two but when I run mklarch -p ./utopia/ -b i get this error:
// mklarch finished
//
//
// **********************************************************
//
// *****    Creating liveCD from system at '/home/larchroot'
//
// This will delete EVERYTHING under  ::: /home/larchroot/.larch/cd :::
//
// I really mean it ... Are you sure you want to do this?
// **********************************************************
[y/N]: y

Error - more than 1 kernel found:
        vmlinuz26
        vmlinuz26fallen
Is there an option to choose from different installed kernels? Or maybe an option to choose which kernel to install? I've been looking at the docs but can't find nothing. Thank you.
EDIT
When I delete all files from kernel26 from /boot and /lib/modules it says this:
//
// Getting live CD configuration details
//
// **********************************************************
//
// *****    Creating liveCD from system at '/home/larchroot'
//
// This will delete EVERYTHING under  ::: /home/larchroot/.larch/cd :::
//
// I really mean it ... Are you sure you want to do this?
// **********************************************************
[y/N]: y 

// Kernel version: 2.6.22-fallen
//  -> regenerating kernel dependencies

ERROR: No squashfs module found
ERROR: No aufs or unionfs module found
WARNING: Package archin is recommended
WARNING: Package larchin is recommended
I have suashfs-tools and unionfs-utils and aufs in addedpackages file.

1) larch (in its current incarnation) only accepts one kernel (to avoid having to ask which one to use, and
also to make detection of module mismatches easy).

2) To avoid installing kernel26, make a file 'baseveto' in your profile folder which has the following line:
kernel26/
(I hope baseveto is in the documentation somewhere!)

3) Apparently you do need to patch/rebuild the kernel because it has no squashfs module (and as far as I know squashfs must be built within the kernel).

4) You don't need unionfs-utils but you do need to build aufs for your kernel. The aufs package is for kernel26.

I hope that helps!

gradgrind · 2007-11-25 08:49:41

peets wrote:

I haven't been able to reach the larch website (http://four.fsphost.com/gradgrind) in the last few days. Am I the only one?

It has probably 'died'. When I have a bit of time I'll try to sort out a 'proper' web-site. I hope you can get by with just the repositories for now (you'll probably just need the larch-setup.sh script to get started).

gradgrind · 2007-12-11 14:44:48

The larch-4 repository has moved and there have been a few updates. See the website for details.

wantilles · 2008-01-13 11:11:06

I see there was an update in i686 larch-4 a few days ago.

Do I need to re-build my x86_64 larch-4, or that was a trivial change?

Arch Linux

#26 2007-11-04 13:27:31

Re: larch-4 testing, can also 'livify' existing Arch installation

#27 2007-11-04 13:51:36

Re: larch-4 testing, can also 'livify' existing Arch installation

#28 2007-11-04 17:49:15

Re: larch-4 testing, can also 'livify' existing Arch installation

#29 2007-11-04 19:33:20

Re: larch-4 testing, can also 'livify' existing Arch installation

#30 2007-11-06 21:13:26

Re: larch-4 testing, can also 'livify' existing Arch installation

#31 2007-11-07 07:11:32

Re: larch-4 testing, can also 'livify' existing Arch installation

#32 2007-11-07 17:49:24

Re: larch-4 testing, can also 'livify' existing Arch installation

#33 2007-11-08 08:19:44

Re: larch-4 testing, can also 'livify' existing Arch installation

#34 2007-11-08 16:37:23

Re: larch-4 testing, can also 'livify' existing Arch installation

#35 2007-11-09 20:56:41

Re: larch-4 testing, can also 'livify' existing Arch installation

#36 2007-11-17 10:25:10

Re: larch-4 testing, can also 'livify' existing Arch installation

#37 2007-11-17 10:50:45

Re: larch-4 testing, can also 'livify' existing Arch installation

#38 2007-11-21 01:22:53

Re: larch-4 testing, can also 'livify' existing Arch installation

#39 2007-11-21 21:58:34

Re: larch-4 testing, can also 'livify' existing Arch installation

#40 2007-11-21 23:28:35

Re: larch-4 testing, can also 'livify' existing Arch installation

#41 2007-11-22 11:58:49

Re: larch-4 testing, can also 'livify' existing Arch installation

#42 2007-11-23 15:03:49

Re: larch-4 testing, can also 'livify' existing Arch installation

#43 2007-11-23 15:38:13

Re: larch-4 testing, can also 'livify' existing Arch installation

#44 2007-11-23 20:32:32

Re: larch-4 testing, can also 'livify' existing Arch installation

#45 2007-11-24 08:20:40

Re: larch-4 testing, can also 'livify' existing Arch installation

#46 2007-11-24 18:15:39

Re: larch-4 testing, can also 'livify' existing Arch installation

#47 2007-11-25 07:47:16

Re: larch-4 testing, can also 'livify' existing Arch installation

#48 2007-11-25 08:49:41

Re: larch-4 testing, can also 'livify' existing Arch installation

#49 2007-12-11 14:44:48

Re: larch-4 testing, can also 'livify' existing Arch installation

#50 2008-01-13 11:11:06

Re: larch-4 testing, can also 'livify' existing Arch installation

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