larch-5.3 released

bb83 · 2009-04-11 20:43:16

I've got the same problem as farvadin. squashfs error.

wantilles · 2009-04-13 08:43:31

smartboyathome wrote:

farvardin wrote:
is larch compatible with the 2.6.29 kernel?
It seems the aufs package requires a kernel < to the 2.6.29
[edit : I've managed to build an iso, probably the aufs module is already build in the 2.6.29 kernel]
[edit 2: The iso is not working, I got: "squashfs error : major/minor mismatch, older squasfs 3.1 filesystems are unsupported...]
Squashfs was integrated into the main kernel tree with the 2.6.29 release. Because of this, the old squashfs filesystems are unsupported.

So what can we do about it?

Would ommitting squashfs aufs and aufsutils packages be enough?

And including the new kernel-compatible ones?

farvardin · 2009-04-16 19:27:26

I've upgraded squashfs-tools to the 3.4 version and built a new livecd with larch, but I still get the same error. Probably it's something inside the larch package, but I don't know what to modify.

rdmelin · 2009-04-17 14:41:57

The problem is squashfs-tools is still at 3.4 but the kernel has squashfs4
I just grabbed the squashfs-tools from abs and changed the version to 4.0 and installed the new squashfs-tools on both host and target. Now the CD builds and boots.

gradgrind · 2009-04-17 15:10:31

Regarding the aufs changes in 2.6.29:
As aufs is now in the kernel, you should remove aufs from addedpacks. Also, you should include aufs2-util.

Unfortunately the 'overlay merging' variant of session saving won't work any more as the necessary feature has been removed from aufs2. The simple session saving by recompressing the writeable overlay should still function. Unionfs can no longer be used (unless you compile your own kernel), but I don't think it has any advantages over aufs.

I have a few ideas for updating larch, but as I will be very busy with real life for at least the next couple of months, I don't know when I will get round to it. There was, for example, an aufs-patch to re-enable the overlay merging, but I don't know if I will ever have the time to test it. Also (a) the future of unioning file-systems is at present rather uncertain, and (b) usage patterns are gradually changing, so I am reluctant to invest too much energy in tests which may prove irrelevant.

Perhaps people could post what they regard as the most important features (what larch, or any other live-system creator, should do)?

wantilles · 2009-04-17 20:51:36

gradgrind wrote:

As aufs is now in the kernel, you should remove aufs from addedpacks. Also, you should include aufs2-util.

So if these changes are made in a profile, can then this profile create a live CD normally, as it used to?

farvardin · 2009-04-18 09:26:06

Hello,

thank you very much rdmelin and gradgrind, it's working well with your tips.

it's a pity the squashfs-tools is not up to date, because I don't think it's of any use if everyone is using the 2.6.29 kernel now on archlinux.

For aufs I can confirm the simple session saving is working, but the merging overlay will erase any simple session previously saved so beware!

For my livecd/usb, I've disabled the option to merge session. With big usb key around there, it's not really a problem so far.

Perhaps people could post what they regard as the most important features (what larch, or any other live-system creator, should do)?

people have probably different request, but as long as I can create a live system from a working system, I'll be happy with that. I don't really understand the need to make profiles and such.
If unionfs is less interesting than aufs, then it's probably better to drop support for unionfs, unless there are still some people needing it.
It's like also to be able to easily customize name, bootmenu of larch and such with larchify. I could modify the bootmenu, but if there is a new version of larch, it may erase my modifications.

About session saving, you should wait until the implementations of mergin is back into aufs2 (if it's possible). At the moment, the merge option in larch should be disabled to prevent people from losing data.

For the creation of liveusb, this new software could be used:
http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/2009.1_RC_2#Hybrid_ISOs

The thread on the mandriva forum (in french only)
http://forum.mandriva.com/viewtopic.php?t=108861

it should work with other distribution as well, but the current version is not working at the moment on my archlinux, but it is said it will be updated soon.

The program it self is located at:
http://distrib-coffee.ipsl.jussieu.fr/p … va-seed.sh

Last edited by farvardin (2009-04-18 09:28:14)

Dieter@be · 2009-04-18 09:35:29

Well, the squashfs-tools version issue is really easy to fix.
just get the pkgbuild from abs, change the version to 4.0, change the m5sum and run makepkg. It's that easy and it builds very, very fast. It's a small and simple package.
My guess is there will be an updated version in testing soon.

farvardin · 2009-04-18 10:26:48

when I read "older squasfs 3.1 filesystems are unsupported..." I thought the 3.4 was the last one, especially when you read nothing about squashfs 4.0 on the official homepage http://squashfs.sourceforge.net/

I've seen squashfs-tools has just been updated. Thanks to the maintainer for that!

yvonney · 2009-04-26 21:26:18

I have had brilliantly enlightening and successful experiences with LARCH recently. (had to delay further LARCHing about 6 weeks ago due to being too busy) I look forward to wherever the LARCH knowledge points in the future for making as CLEAN an ARCH usb boot version as is possible. What makes LARCH so so wonderful is that it doesn't add a bunch of extra stuff, obviously.
I will read the links above now. Thanks everyone. And gradgrind, biggest appreciation for all your scripts and help.

rdmelin · 2009-05-04 02:24:15

gradrind wrote:

Perhaps people could post what they regard as the most important features (what larch, or any other live-system creator, should do)

Some features I liked in the mandriva / pclos mklivecd script would be nice.

1. The ability to specify the /path/output.iso
2 The ability to choose a path for temporary files other than /home/larchroot/.larch/tmp/ or /.larch/tmp/

With these features it may be an easy leap to remastering while running from the livecd by using "larchify / " and writing the iso and tmp files to a HDD

gradgrind · 2009-05-04 05:59:01

rdmelin wrote:

2 The ability to choose a path for temporary files other than /home/larchroot/.larch/tmp/ or /.larch/tmp/
With these features it may be an easy leap to remastering while running from the livecd by using "larchify / " and writing the iso and tmp files to a HDD

Thanks for the feedback. I think point 2 is already (sort of) possible by making /.larch a symlink or with "mount (--bind)".

rdmelin · 2009-05-04 15:26:21

OK, symlinks are certainly easy enough. I'll give that a try.

Another nice feature mklivecd has is the "changes=/dev/xxx" boot switch which tells the system to save the overlay to a writable partition on the HDD, also to load it from there if it already exists at bootup. With these features one can massage a system into shape over several sessions and then create a new iso without ever doing a real installation to HDD.

And thank you, I continue to find larch the perfect (enough) toolkit for my several custom live CD projects.

mumpf · 2009-05-27 11:35:02

gradgrind wrote:

If anyone is having problems with larchin, I would be grateful if you could test the latest versions of the larchin and larchin-syscalls packages. I have put them in a 'testing' folder (ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/larch/testing), as they have several untested changes, so they are a little less convenient to use. You can download them with
wget ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/larch/testing/*
and install them (also to a running larch live system) using pacman -U.

I have done so (user rights), but now I get the error
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/opt/larchin/run/larchin.py", line 87, in <module>
__builtin__.install = installClass(target)
File "/opt/larchin/modules/install.py", line 69, in __init__
"Couldn't initialize installation system")
AssertionError: Couldn't initialize installation system

Last edited by mumpf (2009-05-28 07:12:48)

gradgrind · 2009-05-28 08:00:09

You need to be root to run larchin ...

gradgrind · 2009-05-29 12:54:41

I've uploaded a few fixes to larch and larchin, and a replacement aufs module (package aufs2) which should reenable session merging.
At the moment the latter is a nasty hack (though it seems to work), and i686 only, but I hope a cleaner solution can be found once the patches have been integrated into aufs. (You don't have to use the aufs2 package, only if you want session merging.)
The profiles xmaxi and xmini have been updated a bit.
Please test and report bugs.

smartboyathome · 2009-05-29 21:47:43

One suggestion, perhaps you should consider making Larch a frontend to AIF sometime in the future, as Arch is going to that for its future installer. It would enable you to do an install like currently, but would be modular enough to allow customization of the install. Just a thought.

gradgrind · 2009-05-31 18:23:24

smartboyathome wrote:

One suggestion, perhaps you should consider making Larch a frontend to AIF sometime in the future, as Arch is going to that for its future installer. It would enable you to do an install like currently, but would be modular enough to allow customization of the install. Just a thought.

Could you explain a bit more what you mean? AIF is for doing an Arch installation, larch is for making live systems - how should larch become a front end for AIF?

smartboyathome · 2009-05-31 18:46:23

gradgrind wrote:

smartboyathome wrote:
One suggestion, perhaps you should consider making Larch a frontend to AIF sometime in the future, as Arch is going to that for its future installer. It would enable you to do an install like currently, but would be modular enough to allow customization of the install. Just a thought.
Could you explain a bit more what you mean? AIF is for doing an Arch installation, larch is for making live systems - how should larch become a front end for AIF?

Sorry, I meant Larchin, not larch itself.

gradgrind · 2009-06-01 08:19:02

smartboyathome wrote:

gradgrind wrote:
smartboyathome wrote:
One suggestion, perhaps you should consider making Larch a frontend to AIF sometime in the future, as Arch is going to that for its future installer. It would enable you to do an install like currently, but would be modular enough to allow customization of the install. Just a thought.
Could you explain a bit more what you mean? AIF is for doing an Arch installation, larch is for making live systems - how should larch become a front end for AIF?
Sorry, I meant Larchin, not larch itself.

Ahhh! I have been meaning to have a look at AIF, but haven't had time yet. I'm not sure how much sense it makes to write a front end for it, though - does it really need one? And it might be that the ideas behind it and larchin are not really very compatible - AIF is meant to be for installing Arch under all circumstances, catering for all needs, from Arch packages; larchin was supposed to be a quick and easy way to install the live system on which it is running (not packages). But I will try to find time to investigate.

godane · 2009-06-05 22:41:50

I get this bug with larchin 6.1.2 on xfce. This bug is only with xfce though. On lxde desktop larchin works fine.

PS This image is 582KB in size.
http://arch-live.isawsome.net/devel/screen-18-31-49.png

EDIT: This is bug is cause of gvfs-fuse-deamon or something. Its only run on xfce and maybe gnome(not tested yet). So its not a bug with larchin then. The best way is to find .gvfs folder and and not copy them to hard drive. I also think you don't need to make the folder either since its auto made on boot to xfce desktop.

I hope this helps.

Last edited by godane (2009-06-05 22:53:13)

gradgrind · 2009-06-06 16:11:32

That's annoying - I hope it's one of those bugs that goes away quickly! It is not the copying that is causing the error here but the estimation of the size using 'du'. One can't (easily) tell 'du' not to look at .gvfs ...

I'll try to find a little time to investigate, but I did an installation a week or so ago (with xfce) and didn't get that bug - do you know what exactly is under .gvfs when the problem arises?

godane · 2009-06-06 23:38:51

Its cause by having gvfs package being installed. So its more of a gnome problem then xfce. I just have to find out why gvfs is used with xfce.

I hope this helps.

gradgrind · 2009-06-07 16:26:00

I don't think just having gvfs installed can be the problem, it must be something about what it puts in .gvfs when it's in use. Still, it's strange that du running as root gets a permissions problem.

gvfs seems not to be a dependency of any of the standard xfce stuff.

callista · 2009-08-07 09:16:01

Hi all,
Sorry for asking this in this post, is someone know where can I find the aufs PKGBUILD ? I need to recompile the package for a 2.6.27 and 2.6.28 kernel.

Thanks

Arch Linux

#176 2009-04-11 20:43:16

Re: larch-5.3 released

#177 2009-04-13 08:43:31

Re: larch-5.3 released

#178 2009-04-16 19:27:26

Re: larch-5.3 released

#179 2009-04-17 14:41:57

Re: larch-5.3 released

#180 2009-04-17 15:10:31

Re: larch-5.3 released

#181 2009-04-17 20:51:36

Re: larch-5.3 released

#182 2009-04-18 09:26:06

Re: larch-5.3 released

#183 2009-04-18 09:35:29

Re: larch-5.3 released

#184 2009-04-18 10:26:48

Re: larch-5.3 released

#185 2009-04-26 21:26:18

Re: larch-5.3 released

#186 2009-05-04 02:24:15

Re: larch-5.3 released

#187 2009-05-04 05:59:01

Re: larch-5.3 released

#188 2009-05-04 15:26:21

Re: larch-5.3 released

#189 2009-05-27 11:35:02

Re: larch-5.3 released

#190 2009-05-28 08:00:09

Re: larch-5.3 released

#191 2009-05-29 12:54:41

Re: larch-5.3 released

#192 2009-05-29 21:47:43

Re: larch-5.3 released

#193 2009-05-31 18:23:24

Re: larch-5.3 released

#194 2009-05-31 18:46:23

Re: larch-5.3 released

#195 2009-06-01 08:19:02

Re: larch-5.3 released

#196 2009-06-05 22:41:50

Re: larch-5.3 released

#197 2009-06-06 16:11:32

Re: larch-5.3 released

#198 2009-06-06 23:38:51

Re: larch-5.3 released

#199 2009-06-07 16:26:00

Re: larch-5.3 released

#200 2009-08-07 09:16:01

Re: larch-5.3 released

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