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#1 2006-12-26 08:56:49

gradgrind
Member
From: Germany
Registered: 2005-10-06
Posts: 921

larch - latest news

It's been a while now, so it's time for a brief report.

I've been working on other things, so there hasn't been much change to larch.

I have just updated the squashfs package so that it should be possible to use the stock kernel again (the beyond kernel has the module integrated).

Unfortunately the change to pata seems to remove the ability to eject the CD when shutting down. Previously cdrecord could eject it even though it was still mounted. Unmounting it is not possible within the live CD system, so that is a bit of an annoyance. (It should be no problem if you can do a copy-to-ram.)

If anyone knows of any way of forcing an eject in this situation please let me know. Otherwise, I'll try to figure out some other way around this problem, but that will probably take a while.


Edit (31.12.2006):
I discovered that cdrecord/wodim can still do a forced eject if you feed it the x,y,z SCSI name for the device.

cdrecord dev=/dev/cdrom -eject        # doesn't work with mounted CD
cdrecord dev=0,1,0 -eject                  # does work with mounted CD

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#2 2006-12-27 04:00:52

lilsirecho
Veteran
Registered: 2003-10-24
Posts: 5,000

Re: larch - latest news

Happy New Year!!!!


Prediction...This year will be a very odd year!
Hard work does not kill people but why risk it: Charlie Mccarthy
A man is not complete until he is married..then..he is finished.
When ALL is lost, what can be found? Even bytes get lonely for a little bit!     X-ray confirms Iam spineless!

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#3 2006-12-31 16:58:40

gradgrind
Member
From: Germany
Registered: 2005-10-06
Posts: 921

Re: larch - latest news

Well, just in time for the New Year, larch-3!

The larch scripts

iphitus wrote:

....which from what i've seen, are horribly hacky.

have taken another leap in horrible hackiness (yes, I'm not too proud to admit it).

I've changed how squashfs and unionfs are used (yet again). Now it's nearer the larch-1 approach than the more 'standard' one adopted in larch-2. In larch-3 I have gone back to the idea of not using a unionfs root, but rather mounting the individual root directories as unions. By using a small base system for booting, I can then unmount the main system fairly cleanly before shutdown. That means that session saving back to CD/DVD and medium ejecting should be 'easier'.

Well, it's not all smooth sailing, but my initial tests look quite promising.
And the user interface is essentially unchanged from the most recent version 2, so no new instructions to get confused by.

Also included is a new example profile - a vlc/lirc/xosd/python stand alone media player for old computers. I have had a p3 (933MHz, 128MB) with larch on compact flash playing DVDs and music for the last week or so, with only IR remote controller for user input.

Share and Enjoy!

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#4 2007-01-03 20:30:41

lilsirecho
Veteran
Registered: 2003-10-24
Posts: 5,000

Re: larch - latest news

Gradgrind;

Loaded the default profile and ran mklarch -p default.

Burned the CD and it did not boot...couldn't find ramdisk.img...larch.img

What did I do wrong?

Should that item..larch.img be in boot folder of archimage?





Ray


Prediction...This year will be a very odd year!
Hard work does not kill people but why risk it: Charlie Mccarthy
A man is not complete until he is married..then..he is finished.
When ALL is lost, what can be found? Even bytes get lonely for a little bit!     X-ray confirms Iam spineless!

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#5 2007-01-04 09:05:05

gradgrind
Member
From: Germany
Registered: 2005-10-06
Posts: 921

Re: larch - latest news

lilsirecho wrote:

Gradgrind;

Loaded the default profile and ran mklarch -p default.

Burned the CD and it did not boot...couldn't find ramdisk.img...larch.img

What did I do wrong?

Should that item..larch.img be in boot folder of archimage?

Ray

I'm afraid I can't reproduce this one, Ray. I just tested it again to make sure:

- Make a new empty folder, say 'larchtest'
- Go to website (download page).
- Copy script 'larch-setup.sh' into new folder.
- 'cd' to this folder
- Run 'sh larch-setup.sh'
- Run (as root) './mklarch -p default'
- Answer 'y' when asked.
- Wait.
- Burn resulting iso (/home/larchbuild/mylivecd.iso) to CD
- Boot with CD

(The 'larch.img' file is - on the CD - in the /isolinux folder. On your build system, the CD contents are in /home/larchbuild/cd.)

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#6 2007-01-04 16:18:12

phrakture
Arch Overlord
From: behind you
Registered: 2003-10-29
Posts: 7,879
Website

Re: larch - latest news

gradgrind wrote:

I have just updated the squashfs package so that it should be possible to use the stock kernel again (the beyond kernel has the module integrated).

You were able to build it without segfaulting on load? Can you PLEASE provide a PKGBUILD and other things? The official squashfs is horribly outdated because it's broken.

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#7 2007-01-04 16:46:16

gradgrind
Member
From: Germany
Registered: 2005-10-06
Posts: 921

Re: larch - latest news

re: squashfs

Sorry to be misleading, phrakture. I have again 'cheated' by building it during a whole kernel compilation, then copying the resulting module to a separate package.

Version 3.2 has just been released, but there isn't anything hopeful in the changelog about out-of-kernel compiling, so maybe it's no better than the last one in this respect (but I haven't tried it).

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#8 2007-01-04 18:22:21

lilsirecho
Veteran
Registered: 2003-10-24
Posts: 5,000

Re: larch - latest news

Performed the steps you outlined...
Received an error ...

    archive lshwd-1.1.4a-1pkg.tar.gz is corrupted

Ran pacman -Sy lshwd and received a confirm of latest lshwd installed.

Should I try another mirror?

I think the first attempt at larch3 was done with wrong download....

Any ideas for this problem?


Prediction...This year will be a very odd year!
Hard work does not kill people but why risk it: Charlie Mccarthy
A man is not complete until he is married..then..he is finished.
When ALL is lost, what can be found? Even bytes get lonely for a little bit!     X-ray confirms Iam spineless!

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#9 2007-01-05 06:17:45

gradgrind
Member
From: Germany
Registered: 2005-10-06
Posts: 921

Re: larch - latest news

lilsirecho wrote:

Performed the steps you outlined...
Received an error ...

    archive lshwd-1.1.4a-1pkg.tar.gz is corrupted

Sorry about that one - I got a bit confused with different builds of (my modified) lshwd (which are the same inside but have different checksums). Delete it from your package cache (/var/cache/pacman/pkg), then it should work.

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#10 2007-01-10 00:48:50

madhatter
Member
From: Freudenstadt, Germany
Registered: 2004-09-01
Posts: 59

Re: larch - latest news

Hi,

larch is really nice; took me little time to make a custom working livecd.
But I also have some concerns:
  - is there any way to change the destination dir for mklarch?
  - the default x.org configuration doesn't work on my computer; some auto-detect magic would be nice (hwd -xa?)
  - can you install graphic driver with glx (nvidia, ati)?
  - a little menu on startup, where you can select your keyboard layout like in the gentoo-livecd would be nice

Anyway - keep up the good work!

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#11 2007-01-10 06:25:04

gradgrind
Member
From: Germany
Registered: 2005-10-06
Posts: 921

Re: larch - latest news

madhatter wrote:

Hi,

larch is really nice; took me little time to make a custom working livecd.
But I also have some concerns:
  - is there any way to change the destination dir for mklarch?

In the configuration file 'config_larch', change LARCHBUILD

madhatter wrote:

  - the default x.org configuration doesn't work on my computer; some auto-detect magic would be nice (hwd -xa?)

hwd is also not perfect, it doesn't work on at least one of my machines. But if you like, you could put it in the overlay, in /etc/rc.local for example.
If anyone comes across a good autoconfiguration program for xorg, which is easily portable(!), please let me know.

madhatter wrote:

  - can you install graphic driver with glx (nvidia, ati)?

If you mean the proprietary one(s), just put it/them in 'addedpacks' in the profile - but don't ask me how to configure them automatically ... hwd won't do it, anyway.

madhatter wrote:

  - a little menu on startup, where you can select your keyboard layout like in the gentoo-livecd would be nice

I sort of assumed people would customize their builds to start up with the right keyboard layout, but if you want to cope with more than one layout, this might be useful. Do you mean in the console? Then you can use 'km' (putting /larch/km in /etc/rc.local might work, but I haven't tested it). In xorg there are various possibilities. KDE and GNOME have their own keyboard setters - the 'default' profile uses the KDE one. Otherwise you could include my package xkmap (which inexplicably seems not to be in my 'larch' repo - I'll fix that) in 'addedpacks', which uses pygtk to provide a simple keyboard-setter GUI. Of course, you could also make a boot menu to adjust xorg.conf, but I wasn't planning to do that.

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#12 2007-01-10 18:38:36

madhatter
Member
From: Freudenstadt, Germany
Registered: 2004-09-01
Posts: 59

Re: larch - latest news

gradgrind wrote:

In the configuration file 'config_larch', change LARCHBUILD

Thanks, I thought I have to use some command line arguments

gradgrind wrote:

If anyone comes across a good autoconfiguration program for xorg, which is easily portable(!), please let me know.

Any chance to get mkxf86config(from Knoppix) working?
I looked at the Gentoo port but it only got me a headache...

gradgrind wrote:

[...] Of course, you could also make a boot menu to adjust xorg.conf, but I wasn't planning to do that.

OK that shouldn't be too hard to make it myself

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#13 2007-01-10 19:15:43

drynish
Member
Registered: 2003-10-01
Posts: 36

Re: larch - latest news

Larch seems really wonderful, I just bought myself a new usb key and I wanted to use it to show the power of Linux (booting and saving on the USB key) and I think that would be the most wonderful way doing so and it should be faster than a CDRW

Michel

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#14 2007-01-10 21:32:20

Sigi
Member
From: Thurgau, Switzerland
Registered: 2005-09-22
Posts: 1,131

Re: larch - latest news

madhatter wrote:
gradgrind wrote:

[...] Of course, you could also make a boot menu to adjust xorg.conf, but I wasn't planning to do that.

OK that shouldn't be too hard to make it myself

Also check out this thread for more informations on this topic.

You'll find a nice overlay for an xorg.conf creation script, as an input to your efforts...


Haven't been here in a while. Still rocking Arch. smile

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#15 2007-01-11 10:13:40

Sigi
Member
From: Thurgau, Switzerland
Registered: 2005-09-22
Posts: 1,131

Re: larch - latest news

I seem to be unable to include my old custompacks in a LiveCD using larch-3. Is there something that has changed regarding this issue? And if there is, what's the prefered way of defining custompacks and generating custom.db.tar.gz in larch-3?

edit: I deleted my old config_larch and config_pacin, copied pacman.conf to the profile dir and entered "-p /usr/share/larch/custompacks" as pacin option in /usr/share/larch/config_larch. It works!  8)

I'll report back about other things that worked as intended (or broke my system...)


Haven't been here in a while. Still rocking Arch. smile

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#16 2007-01-11 12:00:13

Sigi
Member
From: Thurgau, Switzerland
Registered: 2005-09-22
Posts: 1,131

Re: larch - latest news

lilsirecho wrote:

Gradgrind;

Loaded the default profile and ran mklarch -p default.

Burned the CD and it did not boot...couldn't find ramdisk.img...larch.img

What did I do wrong?

Should that item..larch.img be in boot folder of archimage?

Ray

I get the same error. There is no *.img file in the /boot/ folder of the CD if I/you use grub (mklarch -g). Strange

edit: I installed "initcpio_larch" which isn't pulled as a dependency of larch. I get this error:

// copying additional packages/data to /home/larch/cd/packages
// calling gen_larch_init to generate the initramfs
chroot: es ist nicht möglich, »/usr/sbin/gen_larch_init« auszuführen: Datei oder Verzeichnis nicht gefunden
mv: Aufruf von stat für »/home/larch/ArchImage/larch.img« nicht möglich: Datei oder Verzeichnis nicht gefunden
// moving system images from /home/larch/ArchImage/.tmp
// squash overlay to overlay.sqf and etc.sqf

Haven't been here in a while. Still rocking Arch. smile

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#17 2007-01-11 12:23:51

gradgrind
Member
From: Germany
Registered: 2005-10-06
Posts: 921

Re: larch - latest news

Sigi wrote:

I seem to be unable to include my old custompacks in a LiveCD using larch-3. Is there something that has changed regarding this issue? And if there is, what's the prefered way of defining custompacks and generating custom.db.tar.gz in larch-3?

edit: I deleted my old config_larch and config_pacin, copied pacman.conf to the profile dir ...

'profile dir'? The program (pacin, called by mklarch) will (should!) take a pacman.conf in the current directory (when mklarch or pacin is called), not in the profile directory. If there isn't one there it will take the one in /etc, and if there isn't one there (i.e. you are not running Arch!) it will take the one supplied in the pacin package.

Sigi wrote:

... and entered "-p /usr/share/larch/custompacks" as pacin option in /usr/share/larch/config_larch. It works!

It might be more convenient to put your edited config_larch in the current directory ( pwd ) when you run mklarch.

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#18 2007-01-11 12:30:37

gradgrind
Member
From: Germany
Registered: 2005-10-06
Posts: 921

Re: larch - latest news

Sigi wrote:

I get the same error. There is no *.img file in the /boot/ folder of the CD if I/you use grub (mklarch -g). Strange

I'll have to investigate that - I haven't tried grub for a while.

Sigi wrote:

edit: I installed "initcpio_larch" which isn't pulled as a dependency of larch. I get this error:

// copying additional packages/data to /home/larch/cd/packages
// calling gen_larch_init to generate the initramfs
chroot: es ist nicht möglich, »/usr/sbin/gen_larch_init« auszuführen: Datei oder Verzeichnis nicht gefunden
mv: Aufruf von stat für »/home/larch/ArchImage/larch.img« nicht möglich: Datei oder Verzeichnis nicht gefunden
// moving system images from /home/larch/ArchImage/.tmp
// squash overlay to overlay.sqf and etc.sqf

You don't need to install initcpio_larch, but it must be in your addedpacks. Are you using an old addedpacks? Check the ones in the supplied profiles.

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#19 2007-01-11 13:18:41

Sigi
Member
From: Thurgau, Switzerland
Registered: 2005-09-22
Posts: 1,131

Re: larch - latest news

gradgrind wrote:

You don't need to install initcpio_larch, but it must be in your addedpacks. Are you using an old addedpacks? Check the ones in the supplied profiles.

Thanks a lot for the quick reply!
I'm really using an old addedpacks and haven't thought far enough - I'll add initcpio_larch to addedpacks and have a look for other changed things. Don't expect this to happen in the next few hours as I'm at school right now...


Haven't been here in a while. Still rocking Arch. smile

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#20 2007-01-11 13:44:58

gradgrind
Member
From: Germany
Registered: 2005-10-06
Posts: 921

Re: larch - latest news

gradgrind wrote:
Sigi wrote:

I get the same error. There is no *.img file in the /boot/ folder of the CD if I/you use grub (mklarch -g). Strange

I'll have to investigate that - I haven't tried grub for a while.

Of course, if initcpio_larch is not in addedpacks, you won't get a larch.img generated ...

Anyway, a quick run through of './mklarch -gfp mini' seemed to work ok here.

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#21 2007-01-11 13:58:37

drynish
Member
Registered: 2003-10-01
Posts: 36

Re: larch - latest news

Just to tell you that it worked #1.

The only thing that didn't work and it was my error:

I formatted completely the usb key instead of doing some partitions on it. And when trying to install, I couldn't put a partition.

Question:

When I boot on the usb key, I get a / of about 250 megs even if my usbkey is 2 gigs. I would like to have enough space to install packets and stuff like that. When I tried that yesterday, I reached the end of space pretty quick (just installing gnome). How can I make sure obtaining more space?

Thanks

Michel

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#22 2007-01-11 15:08:49

gradgrind
Member
From: Germany
Registered: 2005-10-06
Posts: 921

Re: larch - latest news

drynish wrote:

Question:

When I boot on the usb key, I get a / of about 250 megs even if my usbkey is 2 gigs. I would like to have enough space to install packets and stuff like that. When I tried that yesterday, I reached the end of space pretty quick (just installing gnome). How can I make sure obtaining more space?

In live CD/USB-stick systems, / is in memory - in the case of larch that is tmpfs - and not on the boot device (and so is limited by memory size). In general software must be installed when you are building the system and not when you are running it. With larch this is not quite true, you can use pacman to install software (though there are reasons why this is not ideal), but especially in the case of larger pieces of software (such as GNOME) you should include them in the initial build.

How to do this is in the larch documentation, but essentially it involves editing the file addedpacks in your larch profile (see docs)  to contain the packages you want.

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#23 2007-01-11 16:57:26

drynish
Member
Registered: 2003-10-01
Posts: 36

Re: larch - latest news

Oh I see thanks smile

great work

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#24 2007-01-11 17:37:38

noriko
Member
From: In My Mind
Registered: 2006-06-09
Posts: 535
Website

Re: larch - latest news

this is how i work around this; i've written a simple bash script to automate this, then add it to the end of /etc/rc.local in the larch setup files..

when executed it removes the directory '/var/cache/pacman/pkg'
then creates a symlink from '/mnt/sd*3/pkg' >  '/var/cache/pacman/pkg'
that just enables me to have pkgs on the writable block device ... so i can install stuff when i want,
then after that i have it execute /mnt/sd*3/syz/auto
which is just a custom script that i use to install stuff like geany-svn.. which i didn't include in the larch install.

i used sd*3 / wildcard so it still works even if i insert this into a machine that  maybe has another device on sda, it would work.. a little hackish but meh was too lazy to read fstab...


The.Revolution.Is.Coming - - To fight, To hunger, To Resist!

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#25 2007-01-11 19:31:07

Sigi
Member
From: Thurgau, Switzerland
Registered: 2005-09-22
Posts: 1,131

Re: larch - latest news

Sigi wrote:
gradgrind wrote:

You don't need to install initcpio_larch, but it must be in your addedpacks. Are you using an old addedpacks? Check the ones in the supplied profiles.

Thanks a lot for the quick reply!
I'm really using an old addedpacks and haven't thought far enough - I'll add initcpio_larch to addedpacks and have a look for other changed things. Don't expect this to happen in the next few hours as I'm at school right now...

This is really strange. I had initcpio_larch already in addedpacks, but after doing a fresh "mklarch" everything worked fine.
Anyway, it worked, so thanks again for your help.
edit: I get an error while emulating my iso in qemu:

:: End of live system set-up
:: Initramfs Completed - control passing to kinit
Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill init!

Suggestions anyone?

edit2: I'm using beyond. I'm going to try the stock kernel

edit3: I first thought I'd found the error - I had uncommented unionfs in addedpacks. I rebuilt my liveCD with stock kernel and all important packages as in the newest default profile provided by larch-3 -> without any progress, I still get the same error. I somehow get the feeling the change to initcpio causes this troubles. I tried to run the livecd with the "earlymodules=piix" paramter without any luck. Which hooks are built into the larch.img?


Haven't been here in a while. Still rocking Arch. smile

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