Light-Debian-Core-Live-CD-Wheezy + Porteus-Wheezy

[sunburnt]

Yes... For Toni`s older PC he will probably have to try a manual format to ext2 ( no journal ).

Toni; Use gParted to format your USB to ext2, copy DebDog files and grldr & menu.lst. to it.
Then run weeinst and see if the format change allows it to work.
If does not work try installing grldr.mbr to the USB. And maybe try a FAT partition also.
.

[saintless]

Hi, Terry, Fred.

Terry, at least for me the problem is in this first empty 8Mb partition that debdog-install creates. Flash drive does not boot if this 8Mb partition is there.

This works for me with Fat32, ext,2,3,4:
Using Gparted I delete the partitions and create only one new partition for all drive (fat, ext2,3,4 does not matter).
Then I run:

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weeinst /dev/sdb

and manual copy of /live folder + grldr and menu.lst
It boots fine DebianDog but I need to add edd=off to the boot code. Otherwise probing EDD takes around 2 minutes.
Too late for more tests. Tomorrow again

Toni

[saintless]

I guess you did have success with grub4dos in the past.

No, Fred.
I use only Grub Legacy. Grub4Dos is new for me.

BTW for old computers without usb boot bios option I use Plop boot manager on floppy. My last working test with DebianDog on flash drive boots using Plop also.

Toni

[mcewanw]

Hi Toni, Terry
I've read about (can't remember exactly what) that wee doesn't work on some BIOS's
Maybe you can try bootlace.com manually and see if it boots then:

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bootlace.com --time-out=0 --no-backup-mbr /dev/sdb

for sdb

Tested also with weeinst /dev/sdb1

That should be:

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weeinst /dev/sdb

Not sdb1 but sdb

I hope the use of unetbootin could be avoided.

Toni, what size of usb stick are you using. I'm wondering if the problem you are having is something to do with old 1024 bios cylinder limits or one of the other old ATA bios type limits (I've no idea if these issues could apply here though if using LBA). If so, you could try making a say 1GB ext4 first partition. Bootlace, as Terry says, doesn't work with ext4 partitions, so it has to be wee.

I'm also hoping unetbootin can be avoided - far too big. You still of course have to install wee to /dev/sdb (which installs it to MBR) and not /dev/sdb1.

If wee doesn't work on your BIOS (or some other peoples BIOS) then perhaps the installer should allow choice of ext2 or ext4 (albeit without journal); not ext3 since that uses a journal does it not(?), which is bad for usb flash life. I suppose fat32 ok also, except it restricts usage (no symlinks, permission issues). I would have suggested a small fat32 first partition and then main installation to second partition to allow the fat32 part to be read by MSblows users, but since we can't tell the size of usb stick a user would use it is hard to spare space for fat32.

I'm also curious what difference, if any, starting at 1MB boundary rather than 8MB boundary would have. Perhaps Toni's machine would boot if the first (and only?) partition started at 1MB boundary therefore, rather than at an 8MB boundary. I don't think there should be an 8MB first partition (rather I think that [8MB or 1MB] should just be the start boundary of the first partition, which I presume it is - haven't had time to test since waking up!).

[fredx181]

Hi Terry, Toni
Here's my modified version of Terry's debdog-install.
Lots of changes and additions.
Clicking the 'install linux' button gets you (after installing DebianDog) to a grub4dos install (using wee for installing mbr).

Installing DebianDog to a second partition works also (generated menu.lst corresponds with uuid).
The buttons on the bottom are replaced by just 'Run gparted'.
I thought most people do a frugal install on a ready drive without formatting or create new drive.

Added menu entries for PorteusDog.

Maybe there needs to be added a warning that it doesn't work on FAT filesystem.
Copying gives a error message then because of the symlink in the 'base' folder.
Thanks, Terry, btw I like gtkdialog, but i'm only just starting with it.

Fred

[mcewanw]

Thanks, Terry, btw I like gtkdialog, but i'm only just starting with it.

Fred

Thanks Fred, I've downloaded your version for trying later.

The main advantage to gtkdialog over Bacon is that the code itself is also the source and more people (in Puppy linux forum anyway) probably understand scripting and also use of gtkdialog to Bacon code writing. Either way, the uptodate source code needs to always be provided so everyone can contribute to the debugging/fixing, so if using Bacon please always do that Terry.

[sunburnt]

As I suspected, there`s many pitfalls in partitioning and booting.
But it`s good that wee does it`s job for Toni`s PC, so it can be used.

I wondered if the partition starting at 8MB in would be a problem, but 1MB or 8MB should work.
As parted only seems to want to make partitions on 1MB boundries, then 1MB unoptimized.
So the installer will need an option for new/old PCs for optimized/unoptimized.


dialog makes nice looking console guis, checklists, etc. So nice boot options can be made.
Toni; DebianDog already has all of it`s dependencies, it`s 181KB, so it should be added.
.

[saintless]

Hi Terry, Toni
Here's my modified version of Terry's debdog-install.

Thank you, Fred!
I will test it in the next few hours and write back.

William,
I use 8Gb and 512Mb flash drive. Same result on both.
Testing hardware:
Toshiba Satellite A-100 laptop (supports usb boot in BIOS).
IBM Netvista Desktop - (doesn't support usb boot but using Plop on floppy gives this option).

Terry,
dialog is included in latest DebianDog iso.

Toni

[saintless]

Hi, Fred.

Just tested gtkdioalog version and it works well for me on ext4.
I guess this is because Gparted is used to make ext4 partition manual I do not have the problem with first 8Mb partition.

The flash drive has to be mounted manual before install linux option is started? Is this correct?

menu.lst by uuid works well for me.

I see popup message to restore mbr if needed with this code: but the code is missing in the popup message. Anyway it is visible in terminal if debdog-install is started from terminal. I think it is best to be started from terminal.

Lost+found folder is created and maybe we should remove it after the copy finish?

I think it is better not to use changes=/live/debian by default.
Maybe the user will not like to auto-start writing on flash drive. At least I don't like this for my self.

Also maybe we need to remove persistent from debian boot line. It will create troubles if live-rw is used for different debian system on the hard drive.

Or adding separate boot codes with use save file and no save file?

The second code DebianDog Light Wheezy has persistent included 2 times in kernel boot line.

I think it is good to have toram option for DebianDog boot and copy2ram for Porteus-DebianDog as in the iso.

I also think warrning message about Fat symlinking is good idea.

We are almost ready with DebianDog installer.
Thank you, Terry and Fred!

BTW what is "vmlinuz file" button for?

Does anyone else get EDD probing taking too long on flash boot? It tekes around 2 minutes on my hardware. maybe we should add edd=off by default on boot code lines to skip this.

Toni

[mcewanw]

I also quickly tried Fred's mod version of Terry's DebianDog installer.

When Gparted came up I chose to format as ext4, but as Toni says, trying to afterwards install Linux came up with error message "Partition Mount Failed" (I haven't yet tried it again to mount manually as Toni did). I then tried ext2 instead and I didn't get the "Partition Mount Failed" message.

One problem with Gparted though. ext4 is definitely the method suggested to give best performance with usb flash (from all that I've read). However, you must turn of ext4 journal and I don't see how to do that in existing DebianDog Gparted. If you don't turn off journal you will be wearing out the usb flash drive.

Though on a quick try I couldn't get Terry's original version to work out-of-the-box, I note that he correctly does try to create ext4 partition without journal (-O ^has_journal).

I think it would be good if Terry could merge in Fred's ideas to his original version (to fix some of the bugs in the original and to get the interface working and to embed the wee install code as Fred does). However, I also feel that Terry is correct to try and make an "non-expert" mode that automates the creation of the ext4 partition, so I'm hoping Terry will incorporate Fred's work and maybe add a button for manual format mode (as Fred's mod uses) and an automatic format mode (as in Terry's original). It would also be a nice to be able to choose alternative file system type (fat32, ext2, fat32) in Terry's automatic format mode though, in case there are BIOS issues with ext4 (which could nevertheless be the default mode).

This is a nice piece of coding, which is coming along well but please bear in mind my comments about Gparted - does anyone know how to ensure no ext4 journal created under Gparted - have I just missed some checkbox?)

Note that I also find the vmlinuz button confusing; is that for getting the live distribution onto the usb when it is already extracted from the iso? It didn't seem to install the grub4dos components or the menu.lst (choosing iso File did install grldr and menu.lst). Actually, both these buttons ".iso File" and "vmlinux file" are a bit mysterious in terms of user friendliness. Way round that may be to include some explanatory text when hovering mouse over the buttons (should really start using gettext so that language doesn't need to be English only - but that could be in followup versions).

Note that I don't think you need the isolinux folder if you are using grub4dos.

Personally, I think it is good to include several menu.lst entries, including those with persistent item in them, though I understand the problem with that, which Toni is pointing out. Perhaps you could generate an active menu.lst that didn't include the persistence item and a fuller menu.lst which included the persistent and various other options, but renamed slightly so it won't be used by default. Then the user could quickly activate that simply be replacing the default menu.lst provided on the usb installation.

[anikin]

Hi everyone,
A quick question.
Is there a reason why Debian Dog installer is not using extlinux?

[fredx181]

Hi Toni, William
Thanks for testing installer.
I'll write back tonight.

Fred

[mcewanw]

Hi everyone,
A quick question.
Is there a reason why Debian Dog installer is not using extlinux?

extlinux is certainly an alternative, though I think that only works on certain filesystem types (extlinux on some linux fs, isolinux on fat? EDIT: meant syslinux) and grub4dos is very flexible if we can get it all working well. Also grub4dos may be used on hard drive frugal installs so it is convenient to use same mechanism on other media since easy to modify menu.lst between both for booting multiple os. But extlinux certainly works well enough; I've used it quite often too.

[mcewanw]

Another thing strikes me about the possibility that could be offered by DebianDog installer:

If you think about the situation of a user interested in trying DebianDog. Many may well be using some variety of Linux already (e.g. Puppy Linux). In such a situation, a very common scenario is that the Linux user will download the DebianDog iso. But the issue is, what do they have to do next? Generally, they only have two options:

1. They burn the iso to a CD and boot from that, which would then allow them to run DebianDog installer

2. They use a utility to open the isofile and extract the main contents required for a frugal install and adjust their bootup procedure (e.g. menu.lst) accordingly. Once again, on booting, the user could then run DebianDog installer, in this case for creating say a bootable usb stick.

However, option 1 suffers the disadvantage that a CD or DVD drive is required and a disc has to be burned. Option 2 suffers the disadvantage that the user needs a fair amount of experience at manually creating frugal installs (such a user would not even really need DebianDog installer other than as a convenience).

I envisage a third option, where the user can not only download the iso, but also download a portable version of the program DebianDog installer which would run on their current Linux system. Most Linux installations include the underlying programs required such as Gparted, so that portable DebianDog installer would require only the inclusion of the custom scripts it also calls up, such as disc-info. (In theory at least, it should even be possible to create an MSwinblows DebianDog installer via the inclusion of minimum cygwin components, perhaps even cygwin-lite and commandline partitioning tools only, though I'm not suggesting creating that at present when the main priority is getting the beta release out of the door).

Note that Puppy Linux will open an isofile just be clicking on it in Rox filemanager. That didn't seem to work in DebianDog itself (though DebianDog does allow opening up a squashfs in that manner). It would be good if it did, or have I simply missed how to do that in DebianDog (other than at the commandline)?

[saintless]

Note that Puppy Linux will open an isofile just be clicking on it in Rox filemanager. That didn't seem to work in DebianDog itself (though DebianDog does allow opening up a squashfs in that manner). It would be good if it did, or have I simply missed how to do that in DebianDog (other than at the commandline)?

DebianDog also opens iso with single click, William. it is done by /opt/bin/mnt-img script. I don't know why Terry made it not to open new Rox window after click on iso as sfs and squashfs but you will find the iso mounted in /media Maybe something in the script does not work for new window opens for iso? Terry can tell us better.
I was quite happy with my first rough edited variant of this script which was opening new module or iso in new xfe window and after closing the window the module was unmounted. It is still included in Light-Squeeze.
Since Terry decided to make separate version for DebianDog it is his call how to handle the drives mounting. It is fine for me the way it is now.

We have one more option to make DebianDog easier to be tested. We can make iso and img version. The img version can be installed on usb from linux with dd command. I'm sure Windows also has a tool for similar procedure.

Toni

[mcewanw]

We have one more option to make DebianDog easier to be tested. We can make iso and img version. The img version can be installed on usb from linux with dd command. I'm sure Windows also has a tool for similar procedure.

Toni

yes, that would be a good installer for Winblows users. Cygwin is probably not the way to go (and cygwin-lite doesn't have the functionality required I think). There is a dd for windows that apparently can write to usb flash available here:

http://www.chrysocome.net/dd

and a write-up on using that to write an image to an SD card here (Raspberry Pi image in the example case):

http://www.myraspberrypiexperience.com/ ... r-windows/

Aside from that Windows possibility, I still think a standalone DebianDog installer for running from other Linux distributions would be handy and relatively easy to create from current DebianDog installer code, since that would allow more complex partitioning than the dd image type method.

EDIT: Just came across this page, which discusses USB flash installation of Arch Linux:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/US ... tion_Media

[saintless]

Terry,
please read the following:

Note that Puppy Linux will open an isofile just be clicking on it in Rox filemanager. That didn't seem to work in DebianDog itself (though DebianDog does allow opening up a squashfs in that manner). It would be good if it did, or have I simply missed how to do that in DebianDog (other than at the commandline)?

DebianDog also opens iso with single click, William. it is done by /opt/bin/mnt-img script. I don't know why Terry made it not to open new Rox window after click on iso as sfs and squashfs but you will find the iso mounted in /media Maybe something in the script does not work for new window opens for iso? Terry can tell us better.
I was quite happy with my first rough edited variant of this script which was opening new module or iso in new xfe window and after closing the window the module was unmounted. It is still included in Light-Squeeze.
Since Terry decided to make separate version for DebianDog it is his call how to handle the drives mounting. It is fine for me the way it is now.

Checking now /opt/bin/mnt-img I see something that should not be there in my opinion:

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EXT=${L##*.}
/mnt/sda3/apps/sbin/stdDlgs -mi Ok -s 300x200 $0
/mnt/sda3/apps/sbin/stdDlgs -mi Ok -s 300x200 $L
/mnt/sda3/apps/sbin/stdDlgs -mi Ok -s 300x200 $EXT

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exit
        if [ "$EXT" = 'rox' ];then exec rox $MNT
        elif [ "$EXT" = 'rox' ];then exec xfe $MNT
        fi

stdDlgs is in /opt/bin and I guess this has to be elif [ "$EXT" = 'xfe' ];then exec xfe $MNT
Can you, please, check mnt-img in the last iso if all looks OK and is there a way to easy make it open new window for iso also?

Toni

[mcewanw]

We have one more option to make DebianDog easier to be tested. We can make iso and img version. The img version can be installed on usb from linux with dd command. I'm sure Windows also has a tool for similar procedure.

Toni

Instead of separate iso and img versions, that presumably could be an iso hybrid as discussed in that Arch Linux thread link I gave above:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/US ... _USB_drive

EDIT: Another disk imager for windows is:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/win32diskimager/

[saintless]

Instead of separate iso and img versions, that presumably could be an iso hybrid as discussed in that Arch Linux thread link I gave above:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/US ... _USB_drive

I'm not sure what hybrid iso means, William, and I see nothing that explains how to make hybrid iso in the link, but I found how hybrid iso does the copy on usb and DebianDog does it the same. Maybe it is already hybrid?

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cp /path-to/DebianDog-PorteusDog-test2.iso /dev/sdb1
sync

And we have all files from the iso written on the flashdrive as debdog-installer does it. All we need is to make it bootable with weeinst and to add menu.lst and grldr.
I see as a priority to continue testing the system and any problems we can find at the moment.

Toni

[mcewanw]

I'm not sure what hybrid iso means, William, and I see nothing that explains how to make hybrid iso in the link, but I found how hybrid iso does the copy on usb and DebianDog does it the same. Maybe it is already hybrid?
...
I see as a priority to continue testing the system and any problems we can find at the moment.

Toni

I'm not sure what hybrid iso meant either Toni :-) But I think you are right that what we are creating just now is probably a kind of hybrid iso since it deals with MBR and so on.

http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/i ... 03.html.en

On further googling, isohybrid as a name seems to be something to do with syslinux.

http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/Debian_USB ... ybrid_iso/

EDIT: Ah, the difference between what we do and hybrid iso, is that the cp stage is all you need with hybrid iso since it includes the MBR/grub4dos stuff already setup whereas we do an extra weeinstall/grub4dos install step (but that is fine anyway...). I 'think' (??) if you made a working bootable usb and then made an img file out of that whole thing, the result would be an iso hybrid (but that would be a pretty big image I think unless compressed somehow?)

As for priority, yes, testing the system to get a beta out the door is the main thing to do - everything else are just extras.