debian-live based crunchbang (Page 1 of 2)

I find it interesting how Openbox+Conky+slim tools turned into something like a Crunchway. We had a lot of discussions about non-ubuntu-#!, and here it is

Yes, many Arch users have been developing systems like this for some time. Either way it's all good news for Crunchbang

Hi Toolz,

yes, you're right, ntfs was mounted with noexec and nodev, which makes impossible for the script to run the instalation.
About the midori error, this has to be related with using ubuntu based tools, as debian ones doesn't stop the installation because of a package missing, they just tell you but recover. However, debootstrap works perfect for you if you get this up to this error. I can give you to tips:
1) Try to figure out how can ubuntu tools recover from packages missing (i'll try to read something as well).
2) Make a chroot debian sid environment and execute the script from there. So the idea is:

su
debootstrap --arch i386 sid ./sid-root http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian
mv ./pathto/crunch-debianlive sid-root
mount  -o bind /proc sid-root/proc
mount  -o bind /dev sid-root/dev
chroot sid-root
cd crunch-debianlive
./ldcb

This way you'll be using debian tools to build the distro. If it works i'll add this to the script as a preinstallation task when working under ubuntu. It would be nice to have full log for debugging ubuntu installations.

Oops, you're right!! I forgot to comment this detail, and it's an important one considering you're in Asia!
Oh, and don't forget to change this  in the script also, to your closest debian mirror. This will speed up things a lot, as downloading is by large the most time demanding step. Here is a list of debian mirrors:
http://www.debian.org/mirror/list
Could you please send me all your log after finishing the build? This will be the firt time it's used in a machine different than mine and i'd like to see how it behaves. Don't worry if you read several errors during the build process, most of them are completely normal and expected. However, it might be others that aren't!

No, it's better for me having output of a full run. Evenmore, what i expect to fail more easily comes a bit later, namely, hooks and binary image build.
Thank's for testing!

Did you read the README?
Just look into ./hooks/sid and ./hooks/base to know exactly what it will install after the basic installation . Anything you don't need, move away from these directories (but 10aufs.sh, it's essential!!).
The first part of installation (just after debootstrap) it installs packages present in ./lists/crunchbang. Any package you don't like, just remove it from the list. That's all.
As a summary of main applications:

• Xorg+openbox+tint2+conky+network-manager+gnome-keyring+ALSA

• Desktop utils: xarchiver,epdfview brasero  leafpad checkgmail and some more

• totem+plugins (vlc/mplayer broken in sid)

• CUPS, geany, Gimp, Openoffice, Googleearth, Skype, Java, Flash,

• Chromium and midori

• Laptop tools: laptop-mode-tools pm-utils acpi-support acpid acpi sleepd hibernate sdparm

• Network tools: nmap, aircrack-ng+non-free firmwares traceroute ssh openntpd

• Disk and recovery utils: ntfs-3g ntfsprogs parted testdisk fuse-utils sshfs dosfstools hfsplus hfsutils

Final image size is about 650 MB, though during installation, build dir can take up to 2/3GB (including all intermediate build steps).
I find all those applications necessary for my daily use. If it's not the case for you or just want to try, remove the more heavies to have a lighter image.

Last edited by micerinos (2009-09-23 23:45:56)

ahh just realized, the ldcb parameter is passed to live helper, i guess it handles .udebs, but the build seem to fail on the hook which is copied from the hooks dir.

a.

As far as i understand from your description, i'd also recommend you to remove hooks/sid/10live_installer_sid.sh and change a value in ldcb:

INSTALLER="disabled"

This script installs live-installer-desktop, a package that allows you to install the distribution to hard disk while running the live system (you'll see an icon in Desktop that you can click to start installation, just like ubuntu live installer). I haven't been able to make it work properly, so better remove it. Does the build process fail when this hook fails? It's not normal at all, it should simply go on and build an image without it. Anyway, i'll update the link to a new package without installer all, as this is not working properly yet. So you can just download it again.

By the way, udebs are the packages that conform debian installer, the installer that is runned if you choose this option from syslinux boot menu, so while in a live environment, no real debian installer (that's why previous hook is needed for installing from a running live system). In my script real debian installer is selected in the option i recommend you to disable. This way, you'll have just two boot options (live, live failsafe).

Even though you are building a sid distribution, the host system is never "turned" into a sid distribution, but all this process is accomplished setting up a chroot environment (if you're running ubuntu and need to pre-setup a debian chroot, then your host is one abstraction layer further). So it won't hurt your system allowing automatic upgrading, but this is only a recommended step in sid in order to have up to date build utils. Evenmore, i've been running sid for one year an haven't had major issues during system upgrades (and testing and reporting bugs are good practices of debian experimental users). Anyway, it's up to you.

Last edited by micerinos (2009-09-24 00:02:44)

As i wrote in the README, this images are not intended to be virtualized in qemu (though it can be a good shorcut for testing). So, booting option Live you should be able to see the Desktop and after a few seconds, X server restarts in an infinite loop. This means everything is alright. If you google for "openbox+qemu" you might find more information on how to fix it (you should setup a customized xorg.conf for qemu). If it hangs before X is started, it would be interesting to know exactly when.

As a summary, you'd better write the image to a usb and reboot the computer. If you don't have a usb, generate and iso and try boot from CD (debian installer should work for CD live systems, in case anyone wants to install to hard disk, it's the only available method now).

Before rebooting the computer it's important to know (commented in KNOWN BUGS section of README), that live system might try to mount your local partitions during boot process, which for certain systems ends up in setting a last mount time in the future (because of time zone configuration). As a result, when restarting your local system boot process will stop asking for a manual fsck in root partition to fix last mount time. It won't damage your system, but is annoying. I haven't found a decent solution yet for this.

About your hang in booting in Live (Failsafe), you must know that qemu hangs on kernels without acpi (like the failsafe one). See this link if you're interested, this is one of the first google results for this bug:
http://www.nabble.com/Re:--PATCH--Fix-t … 11225.html
Of course, no need to boot Failsafe in qemu.

Hopefully, you'll be able to boot you're image soon. I'd be glad to know that finally it works for you. Good luck.

Well done! Good to hear it works for you. 

Haha! That's a big problem! Yes i forgot to change this file. I developed it with spanish configuration, and just changed all files before posting. I'll try to completely automate locale selection in the future. (BTW, / is in SHIFT-7, )

I realized of that problem a bit late. /usr/bin/openbox-logout is a python script that makes a system calls to gdm restart and reboot function, but gdm is not installed in this system (it uses nodm instead, good if physical security is not a major concern).  It should be changed to something like sudo reboot/halt

That's because Xorg without no specific configuration doesn't enables tapping. No need to install more software but simply setup an appropiate xorg.conf. I added mine to /etc/Xorg/xorg.conf.intel I didn't enabled by default as it tweaked for Samsung NC10. It should work perfect with all Atom netbooks (and similar intel graphics boards), but synaptics values might need some fine tuning.

Yeah, well, for my tiny screen they do fit OK, but sure, you might need changing it. For all user configurations look into includes/chroot_local-includes/etc/skel. This one is in file .gtkrc-2.0 and .config/openbox/rc.xml

Yes, with a good connection it takes me over 30 minutes to build an image (10MB/s at work). If you find any improvement interesting to share, just let me know.

Hey, good to know of another out-sidder over here!
Yes, you're right, i doesn't add any help and can potencially (although rarely) led to big problems. I'll change in future versions. aptitude safe-upgrade is a better choice for this situation.

hi,
the keyboard issue wasn't solved with just the locale change...
i also found a "XkbdLayout" "es" in th xorg.conf.intel. should in be "en"? "us"?
and regarding the touchpad, i couldn't find a clear hint on how to enable tapping. since the "TappButton[12]" are set in your original file, what is the parameter blocking it? should i add "TouchpadOff" "0" ?

thanks,
a.

alon_h,
have you tried editing the file /etc/default/console-setup ? I think this is the origin of the keyboard layout misconfiguration. I'll update the script to automatically modify all this files according to the languaje and locales selected.