larch-7 testing

gradgrind · 2009-10-20 10:27:26

Kampsun wrote:

sudo larch, gksu larch and su -c larch, all give me this error.

Hmmm. Can you tell me a bit more about how you are trying to run larch?

rdmelin · 2009-10-24 23:22:44

I tried larch7 a few weeks since and found it working well to build the live system. But the installer was not yet working. Since the installer is key to my project I tried switching back to larch5.3 but it has some issues with the new initscripts, etc. The docs for larch7 still indicate the installer is incomplete. I'm wondering if I should hack on 5.3 (I am fairly comfortable with shell script) or wait for the installer for 7.

Thnx

gradgrind · 2009-10-25 15:29:59

rdmelin wrote:

I tried larch7 a few weeks since and found it working well to build the live system. But the installer was not yet working. Since the installer is key to my project I tried switching back to larch5.3 but it has some issues with the new initscripts, etc. The docs for larch7 still indicate the installer is incomplete. I'm wondering if I should hack on 5.3 (I am fairly comfortable with shell script) or wait for the installer for 7.
Thnx

That rather depends on how impatient you are. I'm making good progress on the larch 7 installer, but I'm also making no promises about when it will be ready - it is also nearly a complete redesign and rather a lot of work.

I guess it shouldn't be too difficult to fix larch 5, but I must confess it's such a long time since I used it that I can't remember that much about it! Can you describe what the problems are?

farvardin · 2009-10-26 07:31:44

I'm still using the larch7 version from the 18 october: ftp.berlios.de is still down.

What I've tried so far:

- normal larch starting (from an user session) is not working. I'm running it from an X session and I have gksu installed though. I only get "granting rights" in the background and that's all. No error in the console, no window shown.

- if I type "xhost +" and then su, I can start larch from root.

- If I run larchify from the GUI, I get "no kernel found" then the GUI crashes.

- If I run "larch -c 'larchify sr' /" I get the same "no kernel found".

- If I click in several options or tabs in the GUI (like prepare medium or in larchify>edit supported locales), it crashes with "this error could not be handled"

Last edited by farvardin (2009-10-26 07:32:38)

gradgrind · 2009-10-26 08:51:08

farvardin wrote:

I'm still using the larch7 version from the 18 october: ftp.berlios.de is still down.

It's up now.

farvardin wrote:

What I've tried so far:
- normal larch starting (from an user session) is not working. I'm running it from an X session and I have gksu installed though. I only get "granting rights" in the background and that's all. No error in the console, no window shown.

That sounds like a problem I occasionally have with gksu, but it only occasionally happens here. Does gksu do that with other applications?

farvardin wrote:

- if I type "xhost +" and then su, I can start larch from root.

Yes, that is expected, but depending on how you entered the root account you might find your config stuff (~/.config/larch) in the root account rather than in your user account (maybe not a problem for you).
If you become root with plain "su" (no '-', '-l', '-login') the config files should get created in your user's home directory.

farvardin wrote:

- If I run larchify from the GUI, I get "no kernel found" then the GUI crashes.
- If I run "larch -c 'larchify sr' /" I get the same "no kernel found".

Could you tell me what you get from 'ls /boot' and 'ls /lib/modules'?

farvardin wrote:

- If I click in several options or tabs in the GUI (like prepare medium or in larchify>edit supported locales), it crashes with "this error could not be handled"

Does it tell you what error could not be handled?

farvardin · 2009-10-26 20:00:24

Does gksu do that with other applications?

I can't tell, I never use gksu, only sudo. But for example if I run gksu xterm it does the same so I guess there is a problem with gksu on this system (it's running in a virtual machine so I don't use it regulary)

Could you tell me what you get from 'ls /boot' and 'ls /lib/modules'?

uname -a
Linux esclinux-box 2.6.31-ARCH #1 SMP PREEMPT Fri Oct 23 11:12:58 CEST 2009 i686 AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 3800+ AuthenticAMD GNU/Linux

ls /lib/modules/
2.6.29-ARCH 2.6.31-ARCH

ls /boot
System.map26 kconfig26.pacsave kernel26.img vmlinuz26
grub kernel26-fallback.img lost+found

Here are more errors:

larch -c 'larchify sr' /
LOG: #Initializing larchify process
LOG: >rm -f /home/larchbuild/.larch/system.sqf
LOG: X:@0
LOG: >rm -rf /home/larchbuild/.larch/tmp && mkdir -p /home/larchbuild/.larch/tmp/overlay
LOG: X:@0
LOG: #Seeking kernel information***** ERROR *****
No kernel found
Press <Enter> to continue

on prepare medium:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/opt/larch/modules/pyqt/larchgui.py", line 97, in new_line
GuiApp.new_line(self, text)
File "/opt/larch/modules/pyqt/guibuild.py", line 655, in new_line
wo = self.widgets[w]
KeyError: ':$nodevice'

(of course I don't have any cdrom in my drive, but it shouldn't crash like that)

for "larchify/edit supported locales" :

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "larch.py", line 204, in worker_run
s(*args)
File "/opt/larch/modules/buildpage.py", line 67, in locales
config.ipath("etc/locale.gen"))
File "larch.py", line 347, in edit
source = readfile(source, filter)
File "larch.py", line 453, in readfile
fh = open(f)
IOError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/home/larchbuild/etc/locale.gen'

(I don't know how it could be generated in this folder, do I have to create this user to larchify my existing system? I'm even wondering if it shouldn't use /etc/locale.gen instead, especially when I run larch as root)

Last edited by farvardin (2009-10-26 20:01:51)

gradgrind · 2009-10-27 12:09:56

farvardin wrote:

Does gksu do that with other applications?
I can't tell, I never use gksu, only sudo. But for example if I run gksu xterm it does the same so I guess there is a problem with gksu on this system (it's running in a virtual machine so I don't use it regulary)

Indeed ... try sudo or su.

Thanks for the info. I can see one or two reasons why it's not working for you. The main thing is that I would really recommend using the GUI, if possible - the command line interface is not that easy and requires quite a good knowledge of how it all works.

farvardin wrote:

ls /lib/modules/
2.6.29-ARCH 2.6.31-ARCH

Depending on what's in it you might have trouble with the old 2.6.29-ARCH directory, but that's not the reason for your present problems - have a look in there, it's probably only old useless stuff.

farvardin wrote:

larch -c 'larchify sr' /
LOG: #Initializing larchify process
LOG: >rm -f /home/larchbuild/.larch/system.sqf
LOG: X:@0
LOG: >rm -rf /home/larchbuild/.larch/tmp && mkdir -p /home/larchbuild/.larch/tmp/overlay
LOG: X:@0
LOG: #Seeking kernel information***** ERROR *****
No kernel found
Press <Enter> to continue

That is not the same as the old larchify. First do
larch -c i?
to see what the current settings are.
Then do
larch -c 'ip: /' i? to set the path and show the change.
Then you could try
larch -c larchify

farvardin wrote:

on prepare medium:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/opt/larch/modules/pyqt/larchgui.py", line 97, in new_line
GuiApp.new_line(self, text)
File "/opt/larch/modules/pyqt/guibuild.py", line 655, in new_line
wo = self.widgets[w]
KeyError: ':$nodevice'
(of course I don't have any cdrom in my drive, but it shouldn't crash like that)

I'll try to investigate this one.

farvardin wrote:

for "larchify/edit supported locales" :
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "larch.py", line 204, in worker_run
s(*args)
File "/opt/larch/modules/buildpage.py", line 67, in locales
config.ipath("etc/locale.gen"))
File "larch.py", line 347, in edit
source = readfile(source, filter)
File "larch.py", line 453, in readfile
fh = open(f)
IOError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/home/larchbuild/etc/locale.gen'

This is because you didn't set the path correctly earlier, it's nothing to worry about.

gradgrind · 2009-10-28 08:33:32

farvardin wrote:

on prepare medium:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/opt/larch/modules/pyqt/larchgui.py", line 97, in new_line
GuiApp.new_line(self, text)
File "/opt/larch/modules/pyqt/guibuild.py", line 655, in new_line
wo = self.widgets[w]
KeyError: ':$nodevice'

I can't find any trace of ':$nodevice' in the current larch code, so I would guess it's a bug that has been squashed. Please try with the latest larch version.

banshee28 · 2009-10-29 00:05:29

gradgrind, very nice work. I have several uses for this, one as a simple usb install, and another possibly as a main HD install.

However my questions would be can larch actually run completely in RAM? Once the OS loads from the HD, USB, etc, is the entire build or root directory loaded and run from RAM? I will have 8GB in my new system and this would be great!!!

I was trying to figure out a way to run most and if possible everything in my new install (/) in RAM! Is larch going to do this for me ??

gradgrind · 2009-10-29 13:18:15

banshee28 wrote:

gradgrind, very nice work. I have several uses for this, one as a simple usb install, and another possibly as a main HD install.
However my questions would be can larch actually run completely in RAM? Once the OS loads from the HD, USB, etc, is the entire build or root directory loaded and run from RAM? I will have 8GB in my new system and this would be great!!!
I was trying to figure out a way to run most and if possible everything in my new install (/) in RAM! Is larch going to do this for me ??

You can try the c2r boot option (copy to ram). It's a long time since I looked at this and even longer since I tested it, so it might not work, but in theory it is there. And whether the session saving works with c2r is another matter - it might be difficult to know where to save the changes! I'll probably look at it again some time, but it's a feature that never particularly interested me personally - booting is slow and I have been quite happy with running speeds from usb, so I haven't paid much attention to this feature.

grey · 2009-10-29 16:01:57

I was very happy to find out about larch. I had actually installed debian testing just in order to use the debian live_helper scripts, which are essentially larch for debian (or maybe larch is live_helper for Arch - I don't know what came first).

Some initial thoughts / question:
1. My main Arch install is 64-bit, but I want the larch system to be 32 bit. So I selected 'i686' as processor architecture on the first tab, but the installation still pulled x86_64 packages. Not surprising, since it looks at /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist, and easy to fix, but larch probably shouldn't even try to pull these packages.
2. Are there any real problems with the cross - architecture larch build? I've decided to avoid any potential issues and instead installed a i686 version of arch on a spare partition. Was that unnecessary, or might it be a good idea that should be mentioned in the user guide?
3. I was glad to notice that larch re-uses the main package cache - live_helper doesn't, and in general is a bit messy about maintaining its package cache.
4. I like the GUI - simple, doesn't get in my way and I can still add the text files myself if I want to.
5. The "installation tweaks" tab might fit better between the "installation" and "larchify" tabs instead of at the end.
6. An include directive for the addedpacks file would be useful.

Last edited by grey (2009-10-29 16:02:23)

gradgrind · 2009-10-29 19:15:27

grey wrote:

I was very happy to find out about larch. I had actually installed debian testing just in order to use the debian live_helper scripts, which are essentially larch for debian (or maybe larch is live_helper for Arch - I don't know what came first).

I have no idea, I was initially inspired by slax.

grey wrote:

Some initial thoughts / question:
1. My main Arch install is 64-bit, but I want the larch system to be 32 bit. So I selected 'i686' as processor architecture on the first tab, but the installation still pulled x86_64 packages. Not surprising, since it looks at /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist, and easy to fix, but larch probably shouldn't even try to pull these packages.

I'll try to dream up some solution here.

grey wrote:

2. Are there any real problems with the cross - architecture larch build? I've decided to avoid any potential issues and instead installed a i686 version of arch on a spare partition. Was that unnecessary, or might it be a good idea that should be mentioned in the user guide?

I have no idea. I don't run a 64-bit system, but I did read somewhere that using a 64-bit kernel with 32-bit system is no problem, so I guess it might work. All reports welcome.

grey wrote:

5. The "installation tweaks" tab might fit better between the "installation" and "larchify" tabs instead of at the end.

I can consider that.

grey wrote:

6. An include directive for the addedpacks file would be useful.

Do you mean something like '*include file-path' to include the contents of the referenced file?
I can consider it.

Thanks for the feedback!

banshee28 · 2009-10-30 03:34:46

You can try the c2r boot option (copy to ram). It's a long time since I looked at this and even longer since I tested it, so it might not work, but in theory it is there. And whether the session saving works with c2r is another matter - it might be difficult to know where to save the changes! I'll probably look at it again some time, but it's a feature that never particularly interested me personally - booting is slow and I have been quite happy with running speeds from usb, so I haven't paid much attention to this feature.

Hmm, I would think that most users would want to use this feature if they had enough ram since it would really speed up their system. It may take longer to boot since it would be copying everything from the drive to ram, but once its done, it would be really quick? It would be great if this was the case and worked.

Eitherway I will be trying this out soon ...

wantilles · 2009-10-30 10:10:20

@ gradgrind

My post, by no means, intends to be demeaning for the time and effort you put in larch 7.x.

But I have a genuine question.

For someone that has fairly learnt larch 5.3, does, and what, the new larch 7.x have to offer?

I never, and will never, use session saving, or the installer.

So, is there a motive for me to spend more time learning larch 7.x?

One more thing -> in such critical system areas and tasks, I do not believe in GUIs.

wantilles · 2009-10-30 10:12:01

Also another question, this may be stupid:

I see the suffix "any" on all larch 7.x packages.

Does this mean they are truly architecture-independent?

I assume they are most bash and/or python scripts, correct?

grey · 2009-10-30 11:25:39

gradgrind wrote:
Do you mean something like '*include file-path' to include the contents of the referenced file?
I can consider it.

Yes. debian live_helper has it, and I found it convenient. It allows me to bundle packages (say 'sound', 'xorg', 'light_office_apps' etc), and then have a small and readable final package file like

%include core
%include lxde
%include light_office_apps

It would also allow you to bundle the larch packages in a separate file and %include that.

I've also found another issue and I have an enhancement request.
The issue: users should be warned not to set DBPath and LogFile in pacman.conf.options. You are running pacman --root and 'man pacman' says:

NOTE: if database path or logfile are not specified on either the command line or in pacman.conf(5), their default location will be inside this root path.

When running larch you need to have at least the database inside larchbuild. Else larchify fails.

The enhancement request: make the GUI editor honor $EDITOR.

grey · 2009-10-30 12:33:55

I just built an i686 larch on a x86_64 Arch system and it works - or at least where it doesn't (see below) it fails in the same way as i686 larch built on i686 Arch.

Any larch system that contains X fails to boot on my laptop. The only larch system that succeeds to boot is "mini". Both "xmini" and my own versions (with lxde) fail to boot from both USB and CD. My desktop succeeds in booting these media, so it's not a bad burn or a messed up build.
Boot fails even when I tried to boot into a console. If fails shortly after control is handed over to the arch init scripts, around the time udev is called. It's had to be sure, because at that time the screen goes black and that's it until I do a hard reset.

I've never installed Arch on the laptop, but I've run plenty of linux live systems on it, both from USB and CD, and never had any problems.

Edit: Seems to be a KMS issue. Adding nomodeset to the kernel line in grub solved it.

Last edited by grey (2009-10-30 12:53:46)

grey · 2009-10-30 21:33:42

Is it possible to modify the larch system after the installation stage by doing a chroot into the newly created filesystem? For example to create a non-root user, could I do

$ chroot /home/larchbuild useradd -m liveuser
$ chroot /home/larchbuild passwd liveuser

gradgrind · 2009-10-31 10:08:09

A few replies:

Wantilles: If you really don't want session saving or the installer and don't like guis, larch7 will not be very attractive to you. You are not the intended 'customer'. I hadn't intended to keep larch5 maintained when larch7 is really 'ready', but it is really much smaller and simpler. Maybe it won't be much work to keep it working, if people report problems.

On the other hand, maybe archiso would be better for you? That is the official Arch live system builder, and will probably be properly maintained. Does larch have something for you that archiso doesn't?

And yes, the packages are only python and bash, so they are architecture independent.

grey: I'll make a note of your enhancement requests, they sound reasonable. Maybe I could add a boot option with nomodeset to the default set, if it turns out to be a frequent problem.

You should be able to do pretty well any changes you like to the installed system.

Last edited by gradgrind (2009-10-31 10:14:40)

wantilles · 2009-10-31 16:43:38

gradgrind wrote:

On the other hand, maybe archiso would be better for you? That is the official Arch live system builder, and will probably be properly maintained. Does larch have something for you that archiso doesn't?

To be honest, I do not know if archiso would be better for me.

The reason, I have never tried it.

On the other hand, I can now say, that I know larch 5.3 fairly well.

And it can do exactly what I want.

Lo7 · 2009-11-18 15:26:18

Hi,

Before asking you questions about my problem i will first of all thank you for your job.

1. I want to create a frugal install of arch on a CF using larch7, my CF reader is an IDE adapter connecting to a computer is it possible ?

2. I'm trying first of all to create a image of the project xmini, but when i click on Create larch medium, errors occured :
it can't create any directory example : mkdir /home/larchbuild/.larch/cd/boot

3. I install larch7 with pacman, i install gksu. I execute startx, then launch #gksu larch and i'm root when i'm doing all of this.

Thx,

Lo

gradgrind · 2009-11-19 09:53:53

Lo7 wrote:

Hi,
Before asking you questions about my problem i will first of all thank you for your job.
1. I want to create a frugal install of arch on a CF using larch7, my CF reader is an IDE adapter connecting to a computer is it possible ?

Yes, certainly, though it is not (yet) automated. It is, however, not very difficult.

Lo7 wrote:

2. I'm trying first of all to create a image of the project xmini, but when i click on Create larch medium, errors occured :
it can't create any directory example : mkdir /home/larchbuild/.larch/cd/boot
3. I install larch7 with pacman, i install gksu. I execute startx, then launch #gksu larch and i'm root when i'm doing all of this.
Thx,
Lo

I would need more information to trace the problem properly, but (a) if you are running as root there is no need for gksu, and (b) it is designed to run as a normal user (it is normally better to do this) and then you don't need to run 'gksu larch' - just run 'larch' (it will call gksu itself if it needs to).

Lo7 · 2009-11-19 12:06:04

Here are the error from the tracerback.

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "larch.py", line 204, in worker_run
s(*args)
File "/opt/larch/modules/mediumpage.py", line 181, in makedevice
ui.ask(":larchboot.active"))
File "/opt/larch/modules/mediumpage.py", line 214, in makelive
format, larchboot)
File "/opt/larch/modules/medium.py", line 213, in make
if not self._bootdir(btype, device, partsel, label): return False
File "/opt/larch/modules/medium.py", line 142, in _bootdir
fhi = open(configpath)
IOError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/home/larchbuild/.larch/cd/isolinux/isolinux.cfg'

These error occur because it can't create the directory

gradgrind · 2009-11-19 18:58:20

I'm afraid that's still not enough information to help me. Could you start again from the beginning and tell me - step for step - exactly what you did to arrive at this problem?

ig0r · 2009-11-30 19:30:52

I found in sources next string "supershell("rm -rf %s/{*,.*}" % installation_path)", if installation_path is /home/larchbuild/ this code also try to delete /home/larchbuild/..
please fix it.

Last edited by ig0r (2009-12-01 13:04:11)

Arch Linux

#26 2009-10-20 10:27:26

Re: larch-7 testing

#27 2009-10-24 23:22:44

Re: larch-7 testing

#28 2009-10-25 15:29:59

Re: larch-7 testing

#29 2009-10-26 07:31:44

Re: larch-7 testing

#30 2009-10-26 08:51:08

Re: larch-7 testing

#31 2009-10-26 20:00:24

Re: larch-7 testing

#32 2009-10-27 12:09:56

Re: larch-7 testing

#33 2009-10-28 08:33:32

Re: larch-7 testing

#34 2009-10-29 00:05:29

Re: larch-7 testing

#35 2009-10-29 13:18:15

Re: larch-7 testing

#36 2009-10-29 16:01:57

Re: larch-7 testing

#37 2009-10-29 19:15:27

Re: larch-7 testing

#38 2009-10-30 03:34:46

Re: larch-7 testing

#39 2009-10-30 10:10:20

Re: larch-7 testing

#40 2009-10-30 10:12:01

Re: larch-7 testing

#41 2009-10-30 11:25:39

Re: larch-7 testing

#42 2009-10-30 12:33:55

Re: larch-7 testing

#43 2009-10-30 21:33:42

Re: larch-7 testing

#44 2009-10-31 10:08:09

Re: larch-7 testing

#45 2009-10-31 16:43:38

Re: larch-7 testing

#46 2009-11-18 15:26:18

Re: larch-7 testing

#47 2009-11-19 09:53:53

Re: larch-7 testing

#48 2009-11-19 12:06:04

Re: larch-7 testing

#49 2009-11-19 18:58:20

Re: larch-7 testing

#50 2009-11-30 19:30:52

Re: larch-7 testing

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