20

October
2019

Another update for Slax 10.1 testing version

I've updated the download link to include third ISO image with Slax 10 + desktop + some apps.

https://sharegorilla.com/q/nPfxS2Z

Unfortunately leafpad is no longer a part of Debian so I had to exclude it. Furthermore, it looks like all packages are growing in size, so I will need to find new ways to delete unneeded stuff.

User comments
Leonardo Vieira 2019-10-22 22:38

Não desista. Descobri o slax ah alguns minutos e essa distribuição é basicamente tudo que estava procurando. Uma distribuição limpa e sem desperdícios capaz de rodar em praticamente qualquer hardware pelo pendrive. Ótimo trabalho!!!

parrothead 2019-10-27 16:12

Tomas,

Sorry for the delay in trying 10.1. Wow, not much in comments so far!

Anyway, I have two kind of odd issues. The first is not much of a problem, just odd. When I boot from a USB drive, there is a delay of 1 minute 37 seconds during a boot script while it is trying to get a DHCP address. This is on a laptop with no network cable (wifi only). This did not happen with 9.x. But what is really odd is that when I boot from CD this delay does not happen. I have downloaded the full 10.1 ISO (the big one) twice and the md5sums were the same both times. I've formatted the USB key and installed on different keys with the same behavior. I can't figure out why there would be a difference booting from a key vs. a CD. But other than this, everything works fine so it's hard to believe I have some corruption that only results in this one difference. Have you tried to boot your PC from a flash drive with the network cable unhooked? Do you get this delay?

The other problem is more frustrating. I went to rebuild my frequent bundles for version 10 using the apt2sb chroot script you provided in the Google group. On some bundles, it hangs on umounting the union. From the bottom of the script:

umount $UNION/proc
umount $UNION/dev
rm $CHANGES/doit
rmdir $CHANGES/* 2>/dev/null
savechanges /"$INSTALL".sb $CHANGES

umount $UNION
umount $TMP
rmdir $TMP

The script works through the savechanges line, then hangs at umount $UNION. I can copy the created bundle from / to my hard disk, but of course this leaves the hung umount command and a lot of memory tied up. This happens consistently for some bundles, such as firefox-esr, mencoder, and deluge. But other bundles such as heirloom-mailx, lynx, bc, and patch do not hang like this.

Thanks again for your work. I have just started using 10 in full, and will post back if I run into anything else.

Pat

শামীম ওসমান 2019-10-29 09:38

not connected via USB tethering from android device. that's connected on slax 9

Tomas M 2019-10-31 09:10

@parrothead, thank you very much for testing.
I noticed that there is a sr0.mount service hardcoded, could it be possible that your computer's boot is delayed due to an unsuccessfull attempt to mount the sr device (cd/dvd disc) while you are actually booting from USB drive so the CDROM tray is empty?

Regarding the second issue, maybe the union mount is busy and that causes it to be unmountable, I am not sure. Please try to modify all the umounts to include -l parametr (lazy unmount) so it unmounts $UNION/dev and $UNION/proc and frees the $UNION mountpoint. Also you can check dmesg to see if there are any messages regarding the freezed umount.

parrothead 2019-10-31 23:41

@Tomas - I'll test more this weekend and probably post in the google group to avoid cluttering this space up. But I did put a pause in the bundle script before the umount already and then did testing from another window and couldn't find anything with lsof or fuser. Figured it might have been some modules running some software on "install" but couldn't find any. Anyway, I'll continue to test and report back.

In the meantime, man pages please. :) Or is there a package to install? Figure each package has their own.

Pat

Tomas M 2019-11-01 22:18

Man pages are included, but blocked by apparmor. Please add this boot parameter to enable man pages: apparmor=0

Alexander Manakov 2019-11-04 09:10

Make a distribution based on arch Linux or as it was on slackware. And it will be easier and faster. Debian is terribly slow when installing and assembling packages, as if it hung.

parrothead 2019-11-04 23:00

@Tomas - Thanks for the tip on the man pages - it would have taken me a long time to figure that out! :)

On the delay on booting, it was definitely the DHCP thing. The boot aused with something like "Trying to obtain DHCP address", and a counter up to 1:37 when it finally went on to the next step. I think I read somewhere (but
can't find it right now) that there was a bug where this was supposed to be skipped if you didn't have a cable plugged in but the code sometimes mis-detected this condition. I still don't know why it's different when booting
from USB vs CD-ROM. Maybe something with udev or my specific hardware? Anyway, I was able to fix it with a rootcopy/usr/lib/systemd/system/dhclient.service file, where I added a TimeoutSec=30 to the [Service] section. Now it counts up to 37 seconds (not sure why the extra 7 seconds). I was afraid to cut the timeout too short in case this same code is used for wifi later on, when it does take a few seconds to get an IP.

On the umount of the UNION in the apt2sb script, I think I'm hitting some kernel or aufs bug, or both. I tried changing all the umounts to -l, -f, and -lf and nothing really worked. The hang of the umount was always on the umount of the union, and always on the same packages, like firefox-esr. The closest I could get was changing that one to:

umount -fl $UNION &

to throw it into the background, followed by a sleep 2 to give it time to work. The command would hang but would seem to do the umount okay. Looking at the output of mount or /proc/mounts did not show it mounted, and the rest of the script completed okay. I thought this would be good enough but after building several modules like this, the system would become unstable and hang. Pressing the caps lock key would not toggle the light. I eventually came up with a workaround, though, using unionfs vs. aufs. I changed these lines:

mount -t aufs -o xino=$TMP/.xino,trunc_xino,br=$CHANGES aufs $UNION
# I don't use chromium so filter it out.
\ls -1d $BUNDLES[0-1]* | grep -v chromium | while read MOD; do
mount -o remount,add:1:$BUNDLES/$(basename $MOD)=ro aufs $UNION
done

to:

LOWERS=$(\ls -1dr $BUNDLES[0-1]* | grep -v chromium | tr '\n' ':')
LOWERS=${LOWERS/%:/}
rm -rf $TMP/xino ; mkdir $TMP/xino
mount -t overlay -o lowerdir=$LOWERS,upperdir=$CHANGES,workdir=$TMP/xino overlay $UNION

This allowed me rebuild all my modules without problems. Note that the order of the base bundles is reversed from the aufs version with the ls -1dr. Without the -r, the bundles were building okay but were including hundreds of unnecessary packages. I'm not familiar with the apt/dpkg databases but my assumption is there was a conflict between identical files within the base modules and with the order wrong in the union, the wrong file(s) "win" making the package system think packages which are
really installed are missing. But with the order correct, the bundles get produced as expected, and the same size as produced with the aufs version, just no hangs and no other parameters needed on the umounts. Also, I've not noticed any other problems with aufs - slax activate and slax deactivate have all continued to work as expected. It was the umounts in this special script. Version 10 has been very stable otherwise.

I will wait a few days to make sure I don't have any problem with these newly rebuilt modules and then post the updated script to the groups site.

Thanks,

Pat

mgiunktode 2019-11-06 11:53

Thanks @Thomas for the great work and unique distribution.
I've created a module in which I delete a file (in particular /lib/systemd/system/dhclient.service but I think that the behaviour regards every file).

If I reboot and select "persistent changes" option the file is correctly deleted
but...
If I reboot and select "copy to ram" option the file is uncorrectly(in my expectations) present

So I'm asking: is this a bug, is this desired, or is this unavoidable? I have checked and the behavior is the same also in 9.9.1.

Is there a way for me to change this behaviour and allow deletions also in "Copy to RAM" mode?

Thanks,

Leehom Chen 2019-11-09 12:10

Hello, Mr. Thomas!
I probably found the https://www.linux-live.org site a week ago by looking for a custom linux ISO image solution. Slax was sent on this site. Surprise!
I am annoyed to integrate the software I need in an ISO image. Of course, it is best to run in live mode instead of installing it on your hard drive. Because I only use linux when I work, and I only use linux as much as possible.
Surprisingly, the slax completed almost all my thoughts in a very small volume. This is the Linux distribution I have been looking for that can be customized.
For almost a week, I have completed almost all possible customizations for slax9. There are also many ideas that have failed. Not all software may be installed and running. It doesn't matter, it can be enough to meet the needs.
Later I took the time to read your blog and site and I found the beta version of slax10.
Another big surprise! Slax10 is based on Debian10. This software source contains a lot of software that is not available in slax9. I am a Chinese user and hope to install some linuxdeepin software.
I tried to install the mate-gnome desktop environment on the core slax10 version. It seems that I can't start it directly. Later I tried to install deepin-terminal successfully. But other deepin software has almost failed. It is clearly installed in the command line terminal. However, there is no icon to start. It is similar to the performance of many software in slax9 after installation.
However, I have learned how to add icons myself. A `.desktop` file is placed in `/usr/share/application/` according to a certain configuration.
By the way, I use slax9 at night, it feels too bright, I have learned how to adjust the screen brightness by the command line `xrandr --output $(xrandr | grep " connected" | cut -f1 -d " ") - -brightness 0.7`.
Two questions about the hairline when testing slax10:
1. At startup, waiting for a service for more than 1 minute and 30 seconds `/dev/sr0`, and finally failed.
2, I tried to install `chromium` through the icon, the installation seems to be no abnormal completion, but can not start. The VLC works fine after installation. In the case of retaining persistent data, I tried to restart the system and `chromium` still could not be started. I think slax9 is also based on debian. Maybe you can use the sb package directly. After copying it, it still doesn't work.

Thank you very much for the great project you created! I am learning more about slax. For example, about the features of fluxbox, such as how to use and set shortcuts, how to take screenshots, how to input Chinese and Japanese.
To your best wishes! I hope this project is getting better and better, I hope you are happy every day!

Leehom Chen.

Leehom Chen 2019-11-09 12:14

Hello, Mr. Thomas!
我大概是一周前,通过寻找定制自己的linux ISO镜像解决方案找到了 https://www.linux-live.org 站点。在这个站点上发线了slax。惊喜万分!
我苦恼于将自己所需的软件都集成在一个ISO镜像中。当然最好能够通过live的方式运行而非安装到硬盘上才能运行。因为我只在工作的时候才使用linux,也尽可能的只是用linux。
惊奇的是,slax以极小的体积完成了我几乎所有的想法。这就是我一直寻找的可以完成定制化的linux发行版。
大约一周以来,我完成了slax9的几乎所有可能的定制。也有很多想法失败了。可能并非所有软件都能安装并正常运行。这没关系,能满足需要就好。
后来我一花时间阅读您的博客和站点,我发现了slax10的测试版。
又是一个大惊喜!slax10基于Debian10,这个软件源中包含了很多slax9所没有的软件。我是中文用户,希望可以安装一些linuxdeepin的软件。
我尝试在核心的slax10版本上安装了mate-gnome 桌面环境,似乎无法直接启动,后来我又尝试了安装 deepin-terminal 成功了。但是其它deepin软件几乎都失败了。明明都在命令行终端中安装成功了。可是没有启动的图标。跟slax9中很多软件安装后的表现类似。
不过,我已经学会如何自己添加图标了。一个 `.desktop`文件按照一定的配置放到`/usr/share/application/`中。
顺带一提的是,我晚上使用slax9,感觉太亮了,我已经学会了如何通过命令行去调节屏幕亮度`xrandr --output $(xrandr | grep " connected" | cut -f1 -d " ") --brightness 0.7`。
测试slax10的的时候发线的两个问题:
1、启动的时候,在等待一个服务超过1分30秒`/dev/sr0`,最后失败了。
2、我尝试通过图标安装`chromium`,安装似乎没有异常的完成了,但是启动不了。VLC安装后可正常工作。保留持久化数据的情况下,我尝试重启系统,`chromium`依然无法启动。我想slax9也是基于debian,也许可以将sb包直接拿来用,拷贝过来后,依然无法正常工作。

非常感谢您创建的伟大项目!我正在学习更多有关slax的知识。比如有关fluxbox的功能特性,比如如何使用和设置快捷键,如何截图,如何输入中文和日语等。
致以您最美好的祝福!希望这个项目越来越好,希望您每天开心幸福!

Leehom Chen.

Wlad Wagner 2019-11-12 15:16

I'm happy to read that deepin-terminal is working on Slax :) It was my favorite tool on Deepin.

cheers

Jan Med 2019-11-15 23:01

@parrothead

Same DHCP delay for me from iso in VirtualBox. But it's odd, because if I choose Copy to RAM, then there is no delay to orbitain adress from DHCP.

Alessandro Gorreta 2020-01-03 11:36

Hallo.
First of all thanks as always for the good job.
I've tried the iso.
1) the init script which mounts /dev/sr0 waits for 1.30 minutes and fails. Due to this X doesn't start properly.
My solution has been first attach an usb cdrom , but after putting a comment in the system script which mounts /dev/sr0 because I have no cdrom attached in my laptop (today nobody uses cdroms anymore I think).
However in previous slax version all works well.
2) Launching web browser chromium is installed, but it doesn't work. Installing it manually and launching chromium --no-sandbox it starts
3) Logging off or trying to shutdown doesn't work . The desktop remains with background image freezed
I hope helping you to improve slax.
Have a good day

calamansi jean.michel 2020-04-22 04:50

thank you for your work Tomas i like very slax i have moved to fvwm because some understable problems with fluxcow
now i search how to avoid the mounting of my hard disk partitions i have changed fstab but it is erased it is surely in systemd ... i am searching i am old fashion user systemd is quite new for me

calamansi jean.michel 2020-04-23 01:31

i am ashamed because of my ignorance around systemd i have modified /etc/fstab and remount all in gpm init , i hope i will found a another solution asap