porting multisystem to arch

FarmerF · 2011-01-18 15:10:13

Ls,

I'm trying to port multisystem (http://liveusb.info/dotclear/index.php) which i used on a ubuntu machine to arch. As it is written for ubuntu and its deratives it might not be possible but i wanted to give it a shot anyway. Started on a PKGBUILD but got stuck on some dependency's that I can not find in arch. Anyone have an idea what packages provide the following:

grub-setup (seems part of grub, but can't find it in the files list)
fatresize (seems old, possibly deprecated)

There are also some dependencies on apt and dpkg but these seem to be for updates and non-essential components so I hope to be able to remove those.

The PKGBUILD as far as I got it:

pkgname=multisystem
pkgver=1.0034
pkgrel=1
pkgdesc="A GUI tool to create a usb system that can boot multiple distro's"
arch=('i686' 'x86_64')
url="http://liveusb.info/dotclear/index.php"
license=('GPL3')
depends=('sudo' 'lsb-release' 'zenity'  'xterm' 'gtkdialog' 'hal' 'xdotool' 'wmctrl' 'fuseiso' 'qemu' 'imagemagick' 'syslinux' 'cryptsetup' 'rsync' 'mtools' 'squashfs-tools')
source=(http://liveusb.info/multisystem/$pkgname.tar.bz2)
md5sums=('e1eab3eccf2460625c982f6c07ced5fe') #generate with 'makepkg -g'

Last edited by FarmerF (2011-01-18 15:10:45)

ngoonee · 2011-01-18 16:08:08

I believe grub-setup may be ubuntu-specific, probably whatever it is they use to auto-modify /boot/grub/menu.lst. Arch, of course, does not do that.

skodabenz · 2011-01-19 08:37:47

FarmerF wrote:

Ls,
I'm trying to port multisystem (http://liveusb.info/dotclear/index.php) which i used on a ubuntu machine to arch. As it is written for ubuntu and its deratives it might not be possible but i wanted to give it a shot anyway. Started on a PKGBUILD but got stuck on some dependency's that I can not find in arch. Anyone have an idea what packages provide the following:
grub-setup (seems part of grub, but can't find it in the files list)
fatresize (seems old, possibly deprecated)
There are also some dependencies on apt and dpkg but these seem to be for updates and non-essential components so I hope to be able to remove those.

ngoonee wrote:

I believe grub-setup may be ubuntu-specific, probably whatever it is they use to auto-modify /boot/grub/menu.lst. Arch, of course, does not do that.

grub-setup is not ubuntu specific, update-grub/update-grub2 is ubuntu specific (wrapper script for grub-mkconfig) . grub-setup is a part of the grub2 package . fatresize is a separate project ( http://sourceforge.net/projects/fatresize/ ) based on gnu parted but I think it is not developed anymore and there are no package for it even in AUR.

FarmerF · 2011-01-19 10:02:07

Thanks for the info. I'll see if I can leave it out.

sumindless · 2011-01-19 19:16:17

Grub-install is not an Ubuntu-specific file. It is a binary or script that comes with Grub2 for ease of installation.
Check here for more info: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GR … stallation

As for fatresize, I'm going to have to agree with you, it is likely an older package, but I would do more research on your own to make sure. Given the name though, it seems like it wouldn't be too difficult to replace it with some file system tools that are more relevant to Arch.

matt_head · 2011-01-30 03:28:19

Any luck getting this ported? This is one of the best programs around!

FarmerF · 2011-01-31 08:08:26

To be really honest I have not had much spare time lately. I think it should be possible to strip out some specific functionality and get it running on arch (for example formating the usb stick can be done before so don't need fatresize). When time permits i'll look further into it. Don't hold your breath though.

tomk · 2011-01-31 09:27:36

Or you could jump in and finish the job yourself.

vilbjoern · 2011-03-05 12:29:46

Don't know if anybody is still watching this thread, but for the legend I'll give my results of 'jumping in' :-)

I managed to install MultiSystem:
First I installed the dependencies, except fatresize, then fetched http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/parted/parted-1.8.0.tar.bz2 and compiled it, moved the lib with links from /usr/local/lib to /usr/lib.(having backed up the original)
Then I got fatresize from sourceforge and compiled.
Untarred multisystem.tar.bz2 into /tmp (it will only install from there), and ran install.sh.
It installed OK, apart from a message (in french) that it couldn't install the .desktop file; so I pasted the contents of the desktop file output by the installer to /usr/share/application/multisystem.desktop.

MultiSystem needs hald, so I installed & started hal.

MultiSystem then showed up with a message, that <username> is not admin, so I added <username> to adm group.

Now MultiSystem launched OK, detected my usb-stick, could install grub2 to it, but I can't drag and drop .iso files to the MultiSystem window, neither from Thunar (I'm using Xfce4) nor from the desktop, and likewise it's nogo to try to use the Add LiveCD button.

It's possible to test grub2 on the usb-stick with either Qemu or virtualBox from the menu, though.

So I suppose that the scripts are so debian/ubuntu/gnome specific (with some slitaz too), that they may need a rewrite to work in Arch.

UPDATE: Not so much distro specific as tool specific, it turns out: it's possible to drag .iso files from rox filer to the multisystem window, and it should work with nautilus, konqueror and dolphin too.

So far so good, for me at least. I can use multisystem to create and update multiboot usb sticks, but there is still a long way to a PKGBUILD.

Last edited by vilbjoern (2011-03-05 18:20:46)

FarmerF · 2011-03-07 10:06:00

Thanks for the info. Wanted to play around with it some more today and your info is certainly usefull In ubuntu I didn't get the drag and drop to work either (with Thunar) and I'm not too bothered by that. Just add it by browsing to the file in multisystem.

FarmerF · 2011-03-07 11:20:57

Short update:

extra dependency on grub2-bios
fatresize seems an optional function so for the time being I just removed it from the dependency list and it seems to still work Better solution needed sometime.
Also to edit the config files you need an editor in the list included in the sources: gedit, kwrite, kate, mousepad,geany,leafpad.

Installing and updating grub seems to fail in multisystem if i'm not root. Need to look into that as well.

The image selection seems to work fine. Do note that single click/selection isn't enough. You need to double click it or press return when selected to add it to the left most browser pane. Drag and drop was a problem in Ubuntu as well so I'm not gonna bother with that.

For the package build. It seems to be easier to skip the install script and just copy the files. Just run gui_multisystem.sh directly and it should work.

sundar_ima · 2011-05-02 13:47:35

I have written a shell script to do the same as multisystem.Of-course this may not have have as many features like multisystem but supports many distros. It uses Zenity and kdialog as GUI. The main idea to write this script is to have minimum dependencies and should run on all distros. I have tested it on Arch Linux (Kde), Opensuse and other Distros based on xfce, LXDE and Kde (and all works fine). I am posting this so that some of you may find it useful. I have hosted my script on sourceforge site and link to the site is https://sourceforge.net/projects/multibootusb/files/ . If required some one can port it to AUR build (and drop a link to me).

Thanks and Enjoy.

sundar_ima · 2012-07-02 08:11:42

I have updated the MultiBootUSB script in to proper GUI written in Gambas3. Latest package for various distros (including archlinux) can be found here
http://sourceforge.net/projects/multibo … les/Linux/

Arch Linux

#1 2011-01-18 15:10:13

porting multisystem to arch

#2 2011-01-18 16:08:08

Re: porting multisystem to arch

#3 2011-01-19 08:37:47

Re: porting multisystem to arch

#4 2011-01-19 10:02:07

Re: porting multisystem to arch

#5 2011-01-19 19:16:17

Re: porting multisystem to arch

#6 2011-01-30 03:28:19

Re: porting multisystem to arch

#7 2011-01-31 08:08:26

Re: porting multisystem to arch

#8 2011-01-31 09:27:36

Re: porting multisystem to arch

#9 2011-03-05 12:29:46

Re: porting multisystem to arch

#10 2011-03-07 10:06:00

Re: porting multisystem to arch

#11 2011-03-07 11:20:57

Re: porting multisystem to arch

#12 2011-05-02 13:47:35

Re: porting multisystem to arch

#13 2012-07-02 08:11:42

Re: porting multisystem to arch

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