Salix Live Mate 14.1 BETA1

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djemos
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Salix Live Mate 14.1 BETA1

Post by djemos »

Since we are waiting for the new stable version of Slackware, things are moved very slowly there. And since in Salix also there is a bit of relaxation,
This is something really good because it is MATE, which i like very much.
So last weeks i worked on building Live isos 64 and 32 bit for Salix Mate desktop environment flavor.
Note that programs included are not the same version programs with the installation isos since a lot of updates happened since then.

32 bit ISO image support pae and non-pae pc systems.

The salix live installer is in version 1.2.3.
- Now supports many filesystems (ext2,ext3,ext4,btrfs,xfs,jfs,reiserfs).
- can choose between grub and (e)Lilo boot loaders. Grub is default.
- can use a different partition for /home
- can find and add in grub.cfg windows partition. This is a bug and has been solved. Also, note that if you use eLilo cannot boot windows partitions.

For users installing in UEFI/EFI GPT partitions, have to create a GPT partition table if does not exist with gparted.
- the first partition have to be 100MB and in Fat32 filesystem
- the second have to be a linux partition of any type (NOTE!!! if you choose grub then the partition cannot be in xfs filesystem because system will not boot after installation, this is a grub bug) If you want the xfs filesystem the choose eLilo boot loader.
- the third partition for /home (if you want a different partition for /home)
- and of course a swap partition
- Important!!! Before proceeding with installation flag the first fat32 partition boot,esp. Just click on boot in gparted. This mark the partition EF00.

This development first happened and tested on Slackel and it is a give back to Salix. As my friend akuna said in the past, it is an ecosystem. :-)
Well, that's it i will not write more. You can use the Live isos and write here your opinion.


You can download the Salix Live MATE 14.1 BETA1 using the iso images found in our Sourceforge project page:

Salix Live Mate 14.1 beta1 (32-bit, i686)
(size: 852 MB, md5: 64b813d731cc519a8c0080960aefd958)
Sourceforge: http://sourceforge.net/projects/salix/f ... o/download

Salix64 Live Mate 14.1 beta1 (64-bit, x86_64)
(size: 858 MB, md5: 23ab7d6780635b5392702adcda39c62a)
Sourceforge: http://sourceforge.net/projects/salix/f ... o/download

Also grub package rebuilded and added support for finding windows efi partitions and more, but it is not on salix repos. So if you install the system do not upgrade grub package to previous version till the new package added in salix repos. This will be done soon. Thanks

Have fun!

Dimitris
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ginsim
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Re: Salix Live Mate 14.1 BETA1

Post by ginsim »

^ Cool thank you for the write up Dmitris. Very useful :)

I will try this ASAP.

cheers
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laprjns
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Re: Salix Live Mate 14.1 BETA1

Post by laprjns »

Downloaded the 64 bit iso and burned it to a 2G usb drive. UEFI booted into a elilo screen without problems, selected English and boot up into the Mate Desktop. Went righ to using Salix Live Installer to install on a spare partition on my hard drive. Did four installs, a Basic and Full install with grub, and a Basic and Full with elilo. Had no problems with the install, but in all four case, when booting up into the installed OS after logging in I immediately got a "System has no Xclient files...." and could not boot into the desktop.

As for the boot loader options grub2 does present a nice boot menu, but it was somewhat disappointing compared to rEFInd boot manager that i have been using. Here's the problems, as compared to rEFInd , that I found:

1) it did not detect and create a launch menu item for Window 10
2) it does not detect and create a launch menu items for valid EFI removable disks. ( I kept the Salix Mate Live stick plugged in during several reboots and grub never presented a boot menu option for it.)
3) although it did detect and create menu items for the three different Salix installations, it name them all with "Slackware 14.1" which made them indistinguishable from each other.
4) I believe that it deleted a couple of my uefi boot menu entries, although I am not certain of this.
Installing using the elilo options resulted, as expected in the system directly booting into Salix Mate OS without a boot menu.
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mimosa
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Re: Salix Live Mate 14.1 BETA1

Post by mimosa »

Great work!

However, I had trouble with install-on-usb.sh

First off, it checks for the slackel iso not salix. I corrected this, but it still didn't work. The script is also not tidying up after itself - each attempt left behind a separate temporary loop mount of the image, and /mnt/install is not removed (the directory isn't empty so rmdir fails). After the first such attempt, I got an error when trying to create persistence saying no room on device, and this continued even after deleting the 'old' persistent file left behind in /mnt/install.

I tried fixing the naming issue two ways: first by editing a copy of the script (so I wasn't running it inside the boot directory of the mounted iso) then by creating a symlink to the image:

Code: Select all

ln -s salixlive-mate-14.1-beta1.iso slackellive-14.1.iso
I'll dd the iso to my stick and report anything further.

EDIT

So far, I've noticed the following:

Default homepage should be Salix

I can't work out how the video player is meant to open a file from its menu, though double-clicking on the file works, and having done that, you see those files in recently opened files.

Can't get sound working. This may be a local problem. I installed multimedia codecs, and also tried mplayer.

Installing multimedia codecs updates the package list, but when I came to install a package (youtube-dl, which is a slackbuild) spi couldn't find anything till I had also done spi -u.
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Re: Salix Live Mate 14.1 BETA1

Post by ikke »

Thank you very much for providing this new iso. Thank you very much indeed since I was afraid that Salix was no longer interested in LiveCDs.

Am using the iso as a LiveCD . Did a frugal install on hard disk(64-bit, x86_68). Am booting with grub legacy.

After woking / playing with it for a couple of hours found that it is a pleasure to work with it. So far no problems.

Have one question : what is your best way to make additional modules? Kindly provide 'dir2slm / slm2dir' scripts.

One remark : all essential salix files ('liveboot' 'modules' 'optional') are in the directory /boot. Is there a possibility to put them in another directory , eg."salixlive". Is there a bootcode something as 'bootfrom='?

Once more : thank you for your efforts.

Regards,
djemos
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Re: Salix Live Mate 14.1 BETA1

Post by djemos »

First thank you for your tests and report.

The easy part.
1. Creating liveiso in all editions the .dmrc file exist so live iso autoboot on X.
user-settings-mate package does not contain a .dmrc file but zzz-setings-mate package add an entry on /etc/gdm/custom to boot on X.
At installation time this file turn to default (clean)
So because there was no .dmrc on user-settings-mate laprjns got a "System has no Xclient files...."
I recreated the file adding the .dmrc fiel for mate.
Both isos has been tested and they are working. Grub and elilo

2. I pushed on repos when creating the mate tag the wrong install_on_usb. Now it is working fine. Also because file managers mount usb automatically, i umount usb before procced to installaton on usb.
This has been tested on both 32 and 64 bit. And usb boot on system.

3. About entries. If there is lsb-release package then os-prober, grub read from this and put e.g. salix mate , but there is not on salix repos. It is in my repos. And i will change this. We will look at it in 14.1 release of slackware.
even if lsb-relase exist and someone has 3-4 different salix flavors then it is a problem with entries.
In my system having, windows 8.1, slackel openbox 6.0.4.1, salix mate 14.1, ubuntu entries are different. For salix i see slackware 14.1 for ubuntu and slackel where there is lsb-release i see ubuntu 14.0.4 and slackel 14.1
About the look of gurb menu. I cannot do now anything else. It is not bad.

Now the difficult part. The 3 days nightmare of EFI

On slackel (slackware current) system boot after installation no matter if efi partition is fat16, fat32 and 100MB at least in size.
I spent three days trying to find what is wrong. I could not boot with grub or lilo. I downloaded the salixlive xfce and also i could not boot after installation. I got crazy.
Then i checked the efi partition it was fat32, 100MB I got a message in gparted to turn to fat16. I did the installation and system booted.
So for fat16 efi can be 100 or 200MB, for fat32 has to be 300MB or more. There is nowhere saying this. Only says efi partition has to be at least 100MB in size

What i have checked.
1. Installed 32 and 64 bit isos on vmware and both booted after installation.
2. Create two usb installations on 32 and 64 bit with persistent. I got no errors and in both cases i booted with usb.

Also i added some more lines in README_INSTALL_ON_USB.TXT: and the install_on_usb.sh script
Also for users do the installation from other distribution not slackware type.
These are: in bold
sudo mkdir /tmp/iso
sudo mount -o loop path_to_iso_image /tmp/iso
cd /tmp/iso/boot
sudo sh install_on_usb.sh --usb path_to_iso_image device
cd ~/
sudo umount /tmp/iso

Note: If this script is executed from a different distro then be sure gdisk is installed and also maybe have to type
sudo bash install_on_usb.sh --usb path_to_iso_image device



Here is the BETA2
http://forum.salixos.org/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=6702

Thank you again for your time and tests.
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laprjns
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Re: Salix Live Mate 14.1 BETA1

Post by laprjns »

djemos wrote:About the look of gurb menu. I cannot do now anything else. It is not bad..
My apologies, I was not commenting on the aesthetics of grub boot manager, in fact I like the look so much that I am now using the background for my rEFInd boot manager. What I was disappointed with was that grub did not detect and provide a menu item for my Windows 10 install and my bootable removable media.
djemos wrote:Even if lsb-release exist and someone has 3-4 different salix flavors then it is a problem with entries.
This issue was discussed a while back and at that time I believe that it was decided that it would be looked at for the next release (14.2)
djemos wrote:Now the difficult part. The 3 days nightmare of EFI......
On slackel (slackware current) system boot after installation no matter if efi partition is fat16, fat32 and 100MB at least in size.
I spent three days trying to find what is wrong. I could not boot with grub or lilo. I downloaded the salixlive xfce and also i could not boot after installation. I got crazy.
Then i checked the efi partition it was fat32, 100MB I got a message in gparted to turn to fat16. I did the installation and system booted.
So for fat16 efi can be 100 or 200MB, for fat32 has to be 300MB or more. There is nowhere saying this. Only says efi partition has to be at least 100MB in size
I believe that this is attributable to the various UEFI firmware. I have two UEFI computers, one a Asus laptop and the other is a Desktop with a MSI motherboard. I flashed your recent Slackel Open Box 6.0.4 to a usb stick and it would not boot on the laptop but had no problems on the desktop. On the laptop I had to go into the UEFI firmware shell and cd to the efi boot loader on the stick and launch it from there.

I am downloading beta2 and will test over this weekend.
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laprjns
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Re: Salix Live Mate 14.1 BETA1

Post by laprjns »

Then i checked the efi partition it was fat32, 100MB I got a message in gparted to turn to fat16. I did the installation and system booted.
So for fat16 efi can be 100 or 200MB, for fat32 has to be 300MB or more. There is nowhere saying this. Only says efi partition has to be at least 100MB in size
Apparently on hard drives formatted with 4096 byte (4KiB) sectors, when using FAT32 the minimum partitions size is 260MB. So it's a hard drive limitation, not UEFI. My laptop which came with Win 8 installed has a 300 MB EFI System partition and right now is around 60% used. With the size of hard drive these day, I suggest that 300 MB as an appropriate size.

Also downloaded Beta2, dd'ed it to a usb stick. It booted uefi without problems right into the Live desktop. From there installed to hard drive using SLI with the gurb options. After install rebooted to the grub menu as with the beta1 version and then booted into the new install. Was able to log in and went to the Mate desktop with out problems.
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djemos
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Re: Salix Live Mate 14.1 BETA1

Post by djemos »

Thank you very much laprjns for your help on testing.
I did not know it. As i wrote in a previous post on slackware current efi with fat32, 100MB has no problem. Maybe is the grub parted new version. So i mention this for users to know it.
Also even in ubuntu if someone have 2 salix flavors see them as slackware 14.1. So it is not salix, slackware specific problem. The solution is to include lsb-release. But even in this case it will also add a slackware 14.1 boot label in grub menus. It will include all.
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