[CLOSED] Fatdog64-720 Beta [1 Dec 2017]

[rockedge]

That Bismarck was one hell of a ship...until she went down, that is Wink

I agree...here are some of my photos of the Bismarck at 4192 meters.....


my collection : http://g3.rockedge.org/index.php/Film-T ... n-Bismarck

[kirk]

Slow boots are usually do to your boot loader or slow media such as USB2.0 or optical drive. The laptop I usually use has grub legacy installed, which works fast with ext2 or ext3, but with ext4 it's very very slow. So I use ext3. You may not notice how slow your boot loader is with a typical size kernel/initrd of 10MB or so, but when you make that 370MB, now it's very noticeable. For slow boot loaders you basically have three options:

1) Replace your boot loader.
2) Find a filesystem that your bootloader works well with (Ext3 for grub legacy, maybe others)
3) Split the base.sfs out of the initrd. See http://distro.ibiblio.org/fatdog/web/fa ... nitrd.html

The reason that splitting the initd speeds things up is that your slow boot loader only has to load 10MB and then the OS loads the rest.

[Wognath]

Fatdog team, thanks for 720.

As always, against advice, I copied my save folder over to the new install (frugal, large initrd). At first, there were no drive icons or panel with lxqt. lxqt-panel reports liblxqt.so not found. ** Edit: found .wh.liblxqt.so in /usr/local/lib64 **

Make-spot-more-secure went off without a hitch.

In all, a smooth transition. So far, everything I have tried works as expected. It boots a little slower (50s vs 44s for 710, from lickgrub menu to appearance of drive icons).

720 is now promoted to top of the grub menu! Thanks again.

[jamesbond]

@LateAdopter - you're correct. Here: http://lightofdawn.org/wiki/wiki.cgi/MinimalFatdogBoot.

@belham2: We started the huge/humongous initrd in Fatdog 600, that was back in 2012. The idea is not even new; Barry wrote Puppy support for humongous initrd back in 2007.

Machines I've previously booted Fatdog on (using USB flash drive)
(I no longer have access to some of them):
- Acer eMachines Netbook (2010): Atom N450 (single-core, 1.6GHz), 1GB - BIOS
- HP desktop (2012): Core i5 (dual-core 3.4 GHz), 8GB - UEFI
- Samsung laptop (2012): AMD A6 (quad-core, 1.6GHz), 8GB - BIOS
- Sony Vaio (2014): Core i5 (dual-core, 2.0Ghz), 16GB - UEFI
- MacMini (2017): Core i5 (dual-core, 2.6GHz), 8GB - UEFI
- Self-assembled desktop (2007): Athlon X2 (dual-core, can't remember GHz, definitely faster than the Atom Netbook), Gigabyte motherboard, 4GB - BIOS

Of all these machines, only the last one has the slowness problem. The rest boots from USB stick in less than 30seconds (from start of bootloader until kernel starts to run). The last one does take over 10 minutes if booted from USB or optical drive; **however** if booted from harddisk, it boots as fast as the others.

So no we're not expecting latest and greatest machine. Machines from 10 years ago is good enough.

... and always laying that at the feet of the user saying "...well, your BIOS (or some other thing) is holding you guys back..."

Unfortunately it is indeed the case. What other explanation could, then, explain why the much-lower-powered Atom netbook can boot Fatdog faster than the Athlon desktop?

As SFR said it, "it's incredible bad luck that **all** your machines have this problem".

@mavrothal:

OK.
Shouldn't /etc/brightness.conf takeover at some point though?

By default this file is empty. /etc/brightness.conf is updated by "brightness-up/brightness-down" (which you can activate using keyboard shortcuts, in sven); and by fatdog-brightness applet.
But for the this settings to be used at boot, you need to call "brightness-set restore" inside /etc/rc.d/rc.local.
Reason why this is not the default? This only makes sense if the machine as machine-adjustable brightness screen (=ie, laptop).

Otherwise looks like that the settings did not stick, which is not a good second impression

Yeah, this is a tough one because of conflicting objectives. What I've done is, if the settings have been set before, it will not be asked again. E.g. if you have set the keyboard map during first boot and then save the session, the first-run wizard which runs on the next boot will not ask about keyboard anymore. At least that's how it is supposed to work.

@bigpup -

The only problem with this.
It looks like the computer is locked up or frozen.
Nothing indicates it is still in the bootup process.

My answer will sound like a cop-out, but it is the truth. The problem of "no indication" is the bootloader problem. Fatdog hasn't even been started at that time, it's the bootloader who's in charge. So there is nothing we can do about it.

Here are some statistics:
- syslinux - prints dots as it loads the file. It does take a ridiculous amount of dots before Fatdog boots (about half a screen I think) but at least you know it's not hanging or something.
- old grub4dos (version 0.4.4 dated 2009) - does not show any indication.
- newer grub4dos (version 0.4.5c dated 2014) - prints the partial loaded size, updated every second
- grub-legacy: I don't know. Never used one.
- grub2 bios: I don't know. Never used one.
- grub2-efi: does not show any indication.
- refind: does not show any indication.
The only saving grace from refind and grub2-efi is that worst-case UEFI-based firmware can usually load it faster (under 30 seconds) than worst-case BIOS.

@All - thanks for test and feedback.

EDIT: Fix typo - Atom is N450 not N270.

[chiron²]

Any chance for a newer GLIBC (like 2.22) in final? The later claws-mail builds from Debian repos complain and want GLIBC >=2.22. Apart from that, great. Soundcard selector works again. Desktop drive icons work. Boot time is fast. Tested on a Thinkpad R500, T9600, 4GB, 120GB SSD and a Thinkpad X61 Tablet L7200, 4GB, 120GB SSD. Both work ootb. Including the serial Wacom pen and touch of the tablet. Screen rotation in the tablet does work, only the rotate key is not recognized yet. The new WPA-GUI is great, too. Setting up static IP made easy .

Kodi from SFS manager misses libsmb, but that's explained earlier.

Only thing missing: NFS. Whoever needs it, the famous NFS utils pet does also work in FD 720 Wink to the devs, it's only 152k.

[Sage]

Thanks for that discursive list of FD characteristics, jb - nice to know.
Entirely satisfied with your selection of options, procedures: slow liveCD booting not an issue for me, plenty more machines calling for attention while the dots chase down the screen!
FD is a dream machine for 64bit AFAIC.

[chiron²]

Regarding Kodi, it's just a missing symlink. libsmbclient.so.0.2 is present, and in the Kodi SFS, also the symlink from libsmbclient.so.0 is. But in 720 somehow does not make it into the top layer of the filesystem. Manually created the symlink, and it works.

[LateAdopter]

Any chance for a newer GLIBC (like 2.22) in final? The later claws-mail builds from Debian repos complain and want GLIBC >=2.22.

Ubuntu Xenial binaries have the same problem with FD710

[belham2]

@LateAdopter - you're correct. Here: http://lightofdawn.org/wiki/wiki.cgi/MinimalFatdogBoot.

@belham2: We started the huge/humongous initrd in Fatdog 600, that was back in 2012. The idea is not even new; Barry wrote Puppy support for humongous initrd back in 2007.

Machines I've previously booted Fatdog on (using USB flash drive)
(I no longer have access to some of them):
- Acer eMachines Netbook (2010): Atom N270 (single-core, 1.6GHz), 1GB - BIOS
- HP desktop (2012): Core i5 (dual-core 3.4 GHz), 8GB - UEFI
- Samsung laptop (2012): AMD A6 (quad-core, 1.6GHz), 8GB - BIOS
- Sony Vaio (2014): Core i5 (dual-core, 2.0Ghz), 16GB - UEFI
- MacMini (2017): Core i5 (dual-core, 2.6GHz), 8GB - UEFI
- Self-assembled desktop (2007): Athlon X2 (dual-core, can't remember GHz, definitely faster than the Atom Netbook), Gigabyte motherboard, 4GB - BIOS

Of all these machines, only the last one has the slowness problem. The rest boots from USB stick in less than 30seconds (from start of bootloader until kernel starts to run). The last one does take over 10 minutes if booted from USB or optical drive; **however** if booted from harddisk, it boots as fast as the others.

So no we're not expecting latest and greatest machine. Machines from 10 years ago is good enough.

Hi Jamesbond,

So, can I ask, all these machines that were tested used "frugal' installs? Or did you do "full" installs to those USBs? Is it possible full installs have no problem booting quickly? (in fact, the same Vaio laptop of mine that took 17 mins booting FD64-720 'frugal'-wise and takes only 30-40 secs with full install to the exact same USB-SDCard---I thought there was no way that was possible, but that's what happened yesterday after a "full" install to the same USB-SDcard & on the same Vaio laptop).

Anyhow, the gist of things is, like Barry, Fatdog has decided to push frugal from their area of focus. For Barry, it was with the Quirkies on.

Personally, I don't understand why, since so many of us on Murga still do 'frugal' installations with 'savefile/folder' and grub4dos. But, that said, for Fatdogs there is the ability to pull the .sfs out of the initrd, and make FD usable again, which is great but a bit of a pain. Still, the pain is uber minimal, since we wouldn't even have our Fatdogs if it wasn't for you & the the FD team making them in the 1st place, which I am super appreciative about.


P.S. I don't know if you noticed or, rather, had seen, but due to our pleadings for 'frugal-mercy' with Barry, several months ago he decided to again make 'frugal' booting dependable & easy once more. And it is quick, easy to setup, and works fantastic. I do believe FD team could do something similar---at least something easier than the current setup of having to go through initrd opening, stripping & re-packing (which is easy for us, given directions that is, but possibly not for others who see Fatdog on Distrowatch---CONGRATULATIONS, by the way, on the DW listing yesterday) -----but I wouldn't know where to begin

[jamesbond]

@chiron:

"Any chance for a newer GLIBC (like 2.22) in final?"

Unlikely. New glibc requires new tooling and generally speaking requires all packages to be rebuild. I do have glibc 2.26 package but I haven't tested whether it can work as an update for the current glibc in 720.

"The later claws-mail builds from Debian repos complain and want GLIBC >=2.22"

We would have built this ourselves but claws-mail has ton of dependency. claws-mail seems to be a fork of sylpheed, is there anything in claws-mail that sylpheed doesn't do?

"only the rotate key is not recognized yet"

You'll probably have to assign one yourself using sven. You need to figure out the keycode for the "rotate" key. Some devices don't send keys for rotate key, they send ACPI event instead.

"Only thing missing: NFS. Whoever needs it, the famous NFS utils pet does also work in FD 720 Wink Wink to the devs, it's only 152k."

Happy to put it in. There are a few NFS Utils. Which one are you referring (the source)? One from Launchpad or one from sourceforge?

@Sage: Thanks!

@chiron: kodi
Thanks, I will put this note to the front page.

@belham2:

"So, can I ask, all these machines that were tested used "frugal' installs? Or did you do "full" installs to those USBs?"

Fatdog only supports frugal install. http://distro.ibiblio.org/fatdog/web/fa ... drive.html (please scroll to the bottom).

"Fatdog has decided to push frugal from their area of focus."

No, how can that be? The only supported installation method for Fatdog is frugal install.

"which I am super appreciative about"[/qoute]
You're much welcome.

"which is easy for us, given directions that is, but possibly not for others who see Fatdog on Distrowatch"

Good point. We'll have to make the information on this more prominent. We'll have this information highlighted or linked in every release.

As an aside, we did have a discussion about small vs huge initrd a couple of months back (pros/cons/trade-off/etc) and decided that for the time being, the huge initrd is still the best.

[chiron²]

@chiron:
Quote:
"Any chance for a newer GLIBC (like 2.22) in final?"

Unlikely. New glibc requires new tooling and generally speaking requires all packages to be rebuild. I do have glibc 2.26 package but I haven't tested whether it can work as an update for the current glibc in 720.

Quote:
"The later claws-mail builds from Debian repos complain and want GLIBC >=2.22"


We would have built this ourselves but claws-mail has ton of dependency. claws-mail seems to be a fork of sylpheed, is there anything in claws-mail that sylpheed doesn't do?

No problem. Just wanted to test the latest 3.15 claws mail. Will stick with the 3.9 then. I know it's a fork of Sylpheed, but 'Look and Feel' are different, and I'm just used to claws.

[chiron²]

NFS utils. I don't know, where I got it from, it should be around the forum, the first I got was a *.pet, now converted it to txz. i attached the pet, *.txz not allowed.

[anikin]

... Machines I've previously booted Fatdog on (using USB flash drive)
(I no longer have access to some of them):
- Acer eMachines Netbook (2010): Atom N270 (single-core, 1.6GHz), 1GB - BIOS
- HP desktop (2012): Core i5 (dual-core 3.4 GHz), 8GB - UEFI
- Samsung laptop (2012): AMD A6 (quad-core, 1.6GHz), 8GB - BIOS
- Sony Vaio (2014): Core i5 (dual-core, 2.0Ghz), 16GB - UEFI
- MacMini (2017): Core i5 (dual-core, 2.6GHz), 8GB - UEFI
- Self-assembled desktop (2007): Athlon X2 (dual-core, can't remember GHz, definitely faster than the Atom Netbook), Gigabyte motherboard, 4GB - BIOS ...

Hi jamesbond,

Please, clarify this for me as I'm confused. Atom n270 is a pure 32-bit CPU, not capable of 64-bit. How did you manage to get FD, a 64-bit OS run on it?

[Sage]

...anything in claws-mail that sylpheed doesn't do?

Plenty, has tons of add-ins, hence the ton of deps! It's the knees of the bees. But Sylpheed will do fine for FD, I use Claws all the time in one of my 'major' installations.

[jamesbond]

Please, clarify this for me as I'm confused. Atom n270 is a pure 32-bit CPU, not capable of 64-bit. How did you manage to get FD, a 64-bit OS run on it?

Ooops! I made a mistake. It should be Intel Atom N450, 2nd generation Atom which does support 64-bit. I'm going to fix my original post.

[LateAdopter]

As an aside, we did have a discussion about small vs huge initrd a couple of months back (pros/cons/trade-off/etc) and decided that for the time being, the huge initrd is still the best.

As an academic question!... Is it possible to make a small initrd that can load the fd64.sfs and the kernel-modules.sfs directly from the CPIO homogeneous initrd file?

[bigpup]

to bigpup....

I noticed something strange.
Your device is ---> device:sdc5

Whereas the system is looking for (hd0,4) which is the 5th partition on sda
Could that be causing the delay in booting???

____________________________________________


In my situation I have saved to a folder (fd64save-folder) rather than a save file ---> I believe that is an option when you first make a savefile??
and I am using the hard drive that the kernel recognizes --> sda

Code: Select all

title fatdog 710 (sda1/fd64save-folder)
  find --set-root --ignore-floppies --ignore-cd /fatdog710/initrd
  kernel /fatdog710/vmlinuz   psubdir=fatdog710 pmedia=atahd pfix=fsck savefile=direct:device:sda1:/fd64save-folder 
  initrd /fatdog710/initrd
  

________

It boots quickly. If it isn't booting quickly then it is having recognition problems.

My device names are correct.
The bootloader is on a USB hard drive. It is seen by my system as sdc.
I am booting from it.
The bootloader is only looking at it for stuff.
So to the bootloader it is (hd0,0)
Fatdog is on the 5th partition so it is (hd0,4) or sdc5.

THANKS for the example you use!!!

I played around with the menu entries.

I had a problem with the USB drive not being searched for the save folder I made.
Fatdog booting too fast to let the drive load, so it was not a device that was seen to search.

I used the option

Code: Select all

waitdev=5

and that fixed the search problem.

I found that a very simple boot menu entry worked about as good as any.

Grub4dos bootloader

Code: Select all

title Fatdog64 (sdc5/Fatdog64720b)
  uuid 19b0847a-549d-49c9-8c98-25af56f1d0ee
  kernel /Fatdog64720b/vmlinuz waitdev=5
  initrd /Fatdog64720b/initrd

A savefile= option really did not change the boot time.
Maybe 2 or 3 seconds faster.

The search for the save, on all devices, normally takes 2 to 3 seconds.
That is 2 hard drives and a USB hard drive.

NOTE:
If you really are going to need to do modifications to a boot loader menu.
Especially by a new to Linux normal person.
However, they are going to have problems understanding.

It is very good that the Fatdog help, actually provides some useful help.
Thank you very much for providing that!!

[LateAdopter]

In the past I used FD6xx with the bootloader on the USB SDcard. The drive numbering swapped around during the boot process, and FD mounted the wrong partition looking for the savefile that was specified as a boot parameter. The fix was to use LABEL rather than the device.

[jamesbond]

Steps to create your own nvidia sfs: http://lightofdawn.org/wiki/wiki.cgi/Cr ... aDriverSFS

@LateAdopter: device discovery is done by kernel and not under our control. In Fatdog 6xx, there was a "bug" in the kernel that caused USB disks to be recognised earlier than built-in disks. It has since rectified but there is no guarantee that it would not happen again (in fact, the kernel team said as much). LABEL or UUID is indeed the solution for this. As an side, for network devices you can rename them ("wlan0" can be renamed to "mywifi"). You can't do the same for disks, however. Once a disk is "sda1", it is always "sda1".

[artsown]

Notes on boot times and save folder location specification. Computer is
the good 'ol Dell Inspiron 530 desktop having core duo and 4g Ram.
Boot loader is grldr.

Using large initrd, here is my menu.lst item:

title fatdog 720
rootnoverify (hd0,3)
kernel /fd720/vmlinuz savefile=direct:device:sda4:/fd720/fd64save
initrd /fd720/initrd
boot

Boot time is 25 sec. If save folder is on /sda4 instead of in the fd720
folder (and search is required), boot time is 30 sec. Slacko64 boots in
25 sec and xenial64 7.5 boots in 30 sec. I measure from the time the
menu item is selected until my wireless is connected.

sda4 uses ext3 as Kirk suggested. If ext4 is used, fatdog boot time is
85 sec,

Art