EasyOS version 2.3.2, June 22, 2020

[lp-dolittle]

@ Barry,

please look at the following contribution.

After I met several problems, I decided to delete a yesterday's contribution and to replace it with a new one. If I will not succeed in transmitting the screen-shots, I could send them to you via eMail.

sorry, and kind regards

lp-dolittle

[lp-dolittle]

@ Barry

please note: this is the revised version of a yesterday's contribution!

in view of your report on esmourguit's HD-issue and of the changed expansion-mode of the pristine 640MB <sdx2>, I continued experimenting with partitioning variants, after dumping the easy-2.0-amd64-img onto an external drive and firstly booting in zram0-mode.

Intending to avoid mbr-gpt conflicts, I created an sdb3 partition at the end of the drive, and then rebooted easy-2.0, to let it expand the 'all-purpose' partition (in my case sdb2). After again rebooting in zram0-mode, I finally compared the result with that of previous similar attempts with easy-1.0.92.

My checking tools were gparted, fdisk, gdisk, and fsck. I discovered a couple of 'inconsistencies' and warnings. All in all, the warnings do not seem to differ markedly, from those which I know from similar experiments with easy-1.0.92.

My attempts at illustrating these observations by screen-shots failed so far. After browsing for the png-attachments and opening them, they disappear when the 'add an attachment' button is hit.

I'm unable to judge the relevance of the warnings and error messages, but I could imagine that such problems might affect a HD's functionality. Easy-2.0 seems to work fine, despite all that, ... as far as I can see. (Yet, the transmission problem might require me to revise this supposition!?)

I will retry to transmit the screen-shots

kind regards

lp-dolittle

[BarryK]

@lp-dolittle
Just a quick reply -- the easyos img does not have a gpt, so do not use gdisk to examine it, use fdisk.

[BarryK]

I have been posting to my blog, many fixes and improvements not reported to this forum.

The latest improvement:

http://bkhome.org/news/201908/easyos-bo ... n-ram.html

[BarryK]

Photo 1 : All available repositories. I have selected 4 +1 (fixed). I performed a repositorie update and after pushing the OK buttor PPM restarts.
After the PPM has been restarted the next screen appears, see photo 2. Only two selected repositories appears and not 5.

Photo 3 is the software selection screen with only two active repositories.

You can select all 11 + 1 (fixed) but after restart of PPM only two (only pet-noarch-official and pet-buster-official) will be selected.

It is probably a bug. Anyway I do not understand it.

I have fixed the PPM, see blog post:

http://bkhome.org/news/201908/petget-up ... fixes.html

[BarryK]

@Keef,
Audacious and mhWaveEdit are fixed:

http://bkhome.org/news/201908/audacious ... uster.html

[Lobster]

The latest improvement:

http://bkhome.org/news/201908/easyos-bo ... n-ram.html

Very exciting news ... still innovating eh ...
That is a good one. Look forward to the save option ...
The container feature is useful but I prefer DVD (ISO) booting and saving on SD or HD ... not the cloud (which seems incredibly open to breach)

Running in ram will be the way once a future Quantum Pup is produced but quantum storage for general usage is some way off ... ( Seem to have meandered off topic as usual ... )

[BarryK]

I have been posting to my blog, many fixes and improvements not reported to this forum.

The latest improvement:

http://bkhome.org/news/201908/easyos-bo ... n-ram.html

Have done some more work on this, see appendum to the blog post.

It is now possible to mount the USB-stick partitions simply by replugging it.

So, files can be saved, but an actual save-session is for future consideration. It is easy enough to reboot as a normal bootup, if it is desired to save the session.

[Sage]

Something missing in this discussion? The CD-RW is elegant simplicity. ALL the information is immediately available for booting. It is secure if 'closed' during writing. Being an -RW, it can be overwritten with any new releases or even someone else's distro! It doesn't need any of those funny start-up programmes on FD, which many machines don't possess and for which external FDD are rarer than hen's proverbials. On the other hand, external DVD - USB drives are still readily available for those who insist on accepting hobbled HW from our ever-profit seeking industry, determined to offer less-for-more. Progress has to be measured by ALL the variables - including consumer advantage. Let's not encourage the greedy b*****s.

[lp-dolittle]

@ Barry

@ Argolance

Fantastic!! Thank you for further developing the 'totally in RAM idea'!

As for the planned new boot options, I could imagine an additional option that might be highly appreciated by security-aware users.

If EasyOS, at start-up, apart from offering to load the 'last saved session' totally into RAM, could do the same with any stored 'snapshot', everyone had the option to create her/his own preferred specific 'RAM version' which would have a lot in common with a remastered CD-iso.

As far as I can see, this would be the option which Argolance was looking for, some days ago.

kind regards

lp-dolittle

[BarryK]

@ Barry

@ Argolance

Fantastic!! Thank you for further developing the 'totally in RAM idea'!

As for the planned new boot options, I could imagine an additional option that might be highly appreciated by security-aware users.

If EasyOS, at start-up, apart from offering to load the 'last saved session' totally into RAM, could do the same with any stored 'snapshot', everyone had the option to create her/his own preferred specific 'RAM version' which would have a lot in common with a remastered CD-iso.

As far as I can see, this would be the option which Argolance was looking for, some days ago.

kind regards

lp-dolittle

Yes, there are various future possibilities. I intend to release Easy Buster 2.1 as-is at this stage of development, and get feedback on how it could be improved.

One really great thing, on modern UEFI-firmware PCs, the reFind boot manager remembers the last boot menu selection. So, if you want to bootup everytime with "totally running in RAM" option, you won't have to quickly change the menu selection in that 5-second pause, it will be automatically the default.

[Argolance]

I intend to release Easy Buster 2.1 as-is at this stage of development, and get feedback on how it could be improved.

Well done! We look forward to this with great interest.

[BarryK]

Running-totally-in-RAM snapshots:

http://bkhome.org/news/201908/run-total ... om-pc.html

[TiredPup]

Barry posted:

blgs wrote:
Photo 1 : All available repositories. I have selected 4 +1 (fixed). I performed a repositorie update and after pushing the OK buttor PPM restarts.
After the PPM has been restarted the next screen appears, see photo 2. Only two selected repositories appears and not 5.

Photo 3 is the software selection screen with only two active repositories.

You can select all 11 + 1 (fixed) but after restart of PPM only two (only pet-noarch-official and pet-buster-official) will be selected.

It is probably a bug. Anyway I do not understand it.


I have fixed the PPM, see blog post:

http://bkhome.org/news/201908/petget-up ... fixes.html

I downloaded Easy OS 2.0 from Ibiblio today and installed to usb drive using EasyDD. I used the flash drive to boot my desktop PC. I have had the same experience with petget package manager today that blgs experienced. You mentioned a fix for it and I read your blog post. Is there something that I missed?

[blgs]

Barry posted:

blgs wrote:
Photo 1 : All available repositories. I have selected 4 +1 (fixed). I performed a repositorie update and after pushing the OK buttor PPM restarts.
After the PPM has been restarted the next screen appears, see photo 2. Only two selected repositories appears and not 5.

Photo 3 is the software selection screen with only two active repositories.

You can select all 11 + 1 (fixed) but after restart of PPM only two (only pet-noarch-official and pet-buster-official) will be selected.

It is probably a bug. Anyway I do not understand it.


I have fixed the PPM, see blog post:

http://bkhome.org/news/201908/petget-up ... fixes.html

I downloaded Easy OS 2.0 from Ibiblio today and installed to usb drive using EasyDD. I used the flash drive to boot my desktop PC. I have had the same experience with petget package manager today that blgs experienced. You mentioned a fix for it and I read your blog post. Is there something that I missed?

Very soon easyos 2.1 will be released. The pedget issue and other issues are solved then.

[TiredPup]

blgs wrote:

Very soon easyos 2.1 will be released. The pedget issue and other issues are solved then.

Thank you.

[blgs]

blgs wrote:

Very soon easyos 2.1 will be released. The pedget issue and other issues are solved then.

Thank you.

No issue.

The next release has several nice improvement such as operating totally in ram (security improvement).

You can re-install Easy OS 2.0 and use pedget to install applications. But DON'T use the update button that will break petget.

[lp-dolittle]

@ Barry


just a question. When refind remembers the last boot menu selection, where is this information stored? In the UEFI-firmware?
Might that (theoretically) include a security risk?

kind regards

lp-dolittle

edit:
at second thought:
If the information gets stored at boot-up, no security risk might arise. If it is stored during shutdown, the situation might be different.

[scsijon]

Little problem with playing video's.
I can play pal standard ones without problems, but trying ntsc format ones all fail. This should not happen nowadays on a computer, maybe there is a driver or configuration setting missing. Unlike a tv a computer can play both if set correctly.

[BarryK]

blgs wrote:

Very soon easyos 2.1 will be released. The pedget issue and other issues are solved then.

Thank you.

No issue.

The next release has several nice improvement such as operating totally in ram (security improvement).

You can re-install Easy OS 2.0 and use pedget to install applications. But DON'T use the update button that will break petget.

There was more than that broken. The download URLs were also sometimes wrong.