KLV-Airedale-rc14 with Void Linux Kernel 6.1.20

[rockedge]

KLV-Airedale-rc14
Kennel Linux Void Airedale Release Candidate 14 775 MiB download size ↓
KLV-Airedale-rc14
SHA1-MD5.txt
Download from SOURCEFORGE

The team fine tuned login/logout with a long term solution utilizing the Void Linux service manager runit to fix a conflict after upgrades to the runit-void package added a service directory agetty-tty1 that conflicts with KLV's custom agetty-autologin-tty1 during logout/login causing difficultiy in changing user. Adding a file called : /etc/sv/agetty-tty1/down instructs runit to disable the service which is persistant across reboots.

Complete system update/upgrade and outfitted with a Void Linux kernel 6.1.20_1 on 03/23/2023

The initrd.gz and w_init are upgraded to version 7.0.1-rc1 which are constructed from the latest FirstRib skeleton-initrd.

Added the symlink gtk2dialog that targets the binary gtkdialog-8.5 which is compiled against GTK2 which gives access to either gtk2 or gtk3.

@fredx181 has repaired a bug in save2flash and modified swapper.sh to adapt for the /mnt/home device showing directly in Thunar and on the desktop. swapper.sh activates any swap partitions available to KLV-Airedale during system start.

From a suggestion by @wiak added in a modification to w_init that will display icons for /mnt/home partition in Thunar and on the desktop.

New and improved tuning of the /boot directory boot stanza's. improving the reliability of booting in QEMU, Ventoy and S2SG.

Improved and rebuilt initrd.qz including expanded support for SD cards.

Routine system update/upgrade. And wallpapers from @Sofiya are included, replacing some of the stock xfce4 backgrounds.

@wiak has again done more work improving the boot system menus and further improvement to the initrd.gz boot mechanisms :

The iso config file boot/grub/menu.lst is used to boot from cdrom using that internal to iso provided menu.lst (i.e. he currently uses grub4dos for that purpose).
The iso config file boot/grub/loopback.cfg is used (per usual) to provide the boot menu for SG2D
The iso config file boot/grub/grub.cfg is used by Ventoy (but included no Ventoy-compatible entries until my alterations below)

I have made some modifications to all of the above (though have left previous entries in place for later experimentation and possible modification or deletion).
In particular I have provided the ability when booting via SG2D or Ventoy of using the FR modes:

a. RAM0 for session changes in RAM only (i.e. no save persistence)
b. RAM2 save on demand mode back to upper_changes folder (or ucimg savefile) in same directory iso is stored (or in subdirectory if symlink manually made to iso).
c. RAM2 save on demand mode back to upper_changes folder in, Clarity suggested, partition with LABEL 'Persistence' and directory 'Sessions'
d. Direct save (not in RAM) back to upper_changes folder (or ucimg savefile) in same directory iso is stored (or in subdirectory if symlink manually made to iso).
e. Direct save (not in RAM) back to upper_changes folder in, Clarity suggested, partition with LABEL 'Persistence' and directory 'Sessions'

No editing of the presented SG2D or Ventoy boot menus will be required to achieve these most useful FR initrd modes. User just needs to put the KLV iso in BOOTISOS (or wherever it is put usually) and boot...

starting of the pulseaudio system for any user that is logged in has been fixed and improved. Thanks wiak, Sofiya and fredx181 for the exact steps.

Upgraded to a new version of @fredx181 's save2flash, and set LANG=en_US.UTF-8 in /etc/environment as default localization.

Thanks to @Sofiya for the poorercputemp and Display Control packages that also have been added to desktop.

• Grub4Dos is now included in the System menu. Making KLV-Airedale capable of setting up a boot-able device using GParted and Grub4Dos.

• CUPS starting as a service has been added and is working thanks to @rcrsn51 spotting missing components!

This is constructed from KLV-Airedale-beta27->rc1->rc2->rc3->rc4->rc4.1 and is equipped with a Void Linux kernel version 6.0.12_1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC constructed with @wiak 's scripts that will extract the Void Linux kernel for KLV. Also has had a system wide upgrade. Uses an initrd.gz based on the FirstRib skeleton initrd.gz constructed by the kernel/module creation script. Firmware SFS is from a woof-CE kernel-kit built huge 6.0.0-1 kernel.

KLV-Airedale-rc5 is just as at home on FAT32, NTFS prtitions as it is running from ext2/3/4 formatted partitions.

Also included is wiak's generate a set of boot stanzas script. fredx181's mksplash has a menu entry and the remaster script is installed.

With the addition of a xfce4 desktop tiling configuration. A tip from wiak for configuring Tiling windows done with the Super (Windows) key and an up, down, left, right, home, pgup, pgdown or end key.

gxmessage in the default rootfs.

save2flash has been expanded to handle persistence on FAT32 and NTFS partitions.
The mksplash GUI utility to create splash notification banners.

The latest initrd.gz brings vFat and NTFS formatted partition support to KLV, allowing persistence on NTFS/vFat systems as well as the usual /ext2/ext3/ext4/swap support.

• included htop, Grub4Dos, CUPS

• created a symlink /root/spot with the target /home/spot

• Auto login cleaned up.

• includes also the logout logic provided by fredx181 gives true mulit-user support.

• replaced loop.cfg to the most recent modifications.

• Debian kernel 6.0.0-3-KLV SMP PREEMPT DYNAMIC is used.

• added gtkhash

Plus the other important improvements contributed by the KLV team.

Added @fredx181's save2flash utility that can be used when KLV is started in RAM2 mode to perform session saves on demand for persistence.
This is similar to PUPMODE13 in Puppy Linux.

fredx181's swap partition enable script includes the latest revisions and also added are the packages

• mime-add-1.0_0.noarch.xbps

• edit-sfs-1.0_0.noarch.xbps

KLV-Airedale-beta25 is able to load squash SFS packages on the fly or during the boot sequence.
Squash files and ISO images can be opened from the file manager and the read the contents.

• can run with rootfs, 01fimware and 00module SFS files as uncompressed directories.

• Also able to load compressed and/or decompressed directories,
  once a 2 digit prefix is added to the file name.

• It is possible to mix using compressed squash files and uncompressed directories.

Also can be downloaded from https://rockedge.org/kernels in ISO->Kennel_Linux->Airedale

[Clarity]

Bare Metal test booting ISO file via SG2D USB.
Booted fine to this desktop taking default Menu stanza.

SG2D to KLV Grub2 Menu to desktop

Screenshot_2023-03-25_05-32-37.jpg (154.05 KiB) Viewed 884 times

Terminal results

Code: Select all

root# uname -a
Linux void-live 6.1.20_1 #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Tue Mar 21 01:05:38 UTC 2023 x86_64 GNU/Linux
root# tldr
bash: tldr: command not found
root# smblient -U% -L localhost
bash: smblient: command not found
root# findsmb
Can't load /etc/samba/smb.conf - run testparm to debug it

                                *=DMB
                                +=LMB
IP ADDR         NETBIOS NAME     WORKGROUP/OS/VERSION 
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Can't load /etc/samba/smb.conf - run testparm to debug it
172.28.14.254  ROUTERNAS     +[	WORKGROUP   ]
172.28.14.20   LAPTOP        +[	WORKGROUP   ]
172.28.14.21   F96-TEST      +[	WORKGROUP   ]
172.28.14.22   FATDOG        +[	WORKGROUP   ]
root#

Further tests will continue over the weekend

Thanks!

[rockedge]

@wiak I've produced a KLV-Airedale-rc14-Z that has all the SFS files converted to zstd compression by using @fredx181's latest SFS-Edit utility. It has been testd only as far as to see it it boots, which it does.

Further testing needed but preliminary results on VitualBox and QEMU are showing promising results.

KLV-Airedale-rc14-Z.iso 948 mb
SHA1-MD5.txt

[wiak]

@wiak I've produced a KLV-Airedale-rc14-Z that has all the SFS files converted to zstd compression by using @fredx181's latest SFS-Edit utility. It has been testd only as far as to see it it boots, which it does.

Further testing needed but preliminary results on VitualBox and QEMU are showing promising results.

KLV-Airedale-rc14-Z.iso 948 mb

Yes, it will be much more responsive on older hardware, Erik. Maybe that becomes irrelevant on more modern hardware (we notice 5 seconds but maybe not 1 second... fast CPU/disks are fast whether xz or zstd). But then again, a download size increase of only a couple of hundred MB seems more irrelevant so if works better on older hardware, including my still useful older core2duo machines, then I think zstd should be used. I'm interested to hear if samba swells things much overall - if not fine, if it does (and maybe depends client or server) then up to you whether so essential to include or not... we really don't want to 'compete' with other forum distros - let each distro bring whatever advantages it does. Choice is a fine thing and really crazy that people get worked up about supporting their favourite distros like some sort of war, battleground, or football team. I'd desert all KL distros in no time if some other distro builder (wherever) suddenly released something better! Why bother struggling??? However, for the moment I enjoy what KL distros offer that I can't find elsewhere. But competition it is not. It is all just Linux to me; if Mac proves better (and as able to be tweaked and manipulated per my own wishes) then if I'd eventually buy a Mac and throw my Linux machines away! However, seems very unlikely and more unlikely MS Windows will ever be attractive again (gets more update crazy, advert crazy, tracking crazy, all the time - Internet browsers definitely the biggest concern of all... systemd not yet proving problematic to me at all...in fact I like it).

EDIT: post too long so will leave comment about minor issues I'd like addressed to another time/place. On the whole things are fine.

[keniv]

@wiak I've produced a KLV-Airedale-rc14-Z that has all the SFS files converted to zstd compression by using @fredx181's latest SFS-Edit utility. It has been testd only as far as to see it it boots, which it does.

Further testing needed but preliminary results on VitualBox and QEMU are showing promising results.

KLV-Airedale-rc14-Z.iso 948 mb

I've downloaded and installed rc14-Z because I thought it would better suit the specs of my machine
Pentium(R) Dual-Core CPU E5400 @ 2.70GHz
Total RAM: 3905 MB
I only have this machine and don't believe it good enough to install a virtual machine so I can only test on what I seen described as bare metal. I have a manual frugal install on a partition formatted as ext3 and am booting with grub4dos. I have used the upper_changes from rc14 and am posting from it now.
In terms of speed testing are you looking for things like the time it takes from starting the boot process to getting to the desktop? If this is the sort of thing can you suggest anything else you want speed tested?

Regards,

Ken.
P.S. Is there a checksum for the rc14Z .iso?

[rockedge]

A regular frugal install will be fine. I tested it on QEMU because I don't actually have to reboot the host machine.

The zstd compression in the squash files is to speed up the boot process mostly it seems.

Is there a checksum for the rc14Z .iso?

SHA1-MD5.txt

[fredx181]

The zstd compression in the squash files is to speed up the boot process mostly it seems.

I think also that the boot process is faster with zstd (although I didn't really time it), but didn't notice a speed difference when launching applications.
But perhaps on a a very low-spec computer it will be noticeable.

[amethyst]

All my Puppys are gzip compressed for use on my older computers. Quite fast and low resources. I've checked lz4 before in comparison but didn't really notice a speed difference in decompression between that and gzip. XZ is noticeably slower. I think one will see a difference quite clearly if the applications are very big, otherwise not really much of an issue. Only really an issue on first run of applications anyway. Not really all that much of a factor in my experience. Another thing - it seems to me that an application loads faster as a loaded/mounted sfs in comparison to the application run from a folder (portable or not). Obviously in this scenario both sfs file and the folder located on the same partition. I find this interesting since the files in the application folder is already in an uncompressed state whilst the contents of the sfs still needs to be decompressed? It seems that some part of the sfs file is loaded into RAM when mounted/loaded which could explain why it is faster otherwise I'm at a loss how this could be.

[keniv]

I booted rc14 and rc14Z three times each on the machine with the specs I described in my previous post. Both have the same upper_changes. I measured from clicking on menu list to the appearance of desktop.
The average time for rc14 was 71secs.
The average time for rc14Z was 61.5secs.
There does not seem to be much of a difference on this machine between the two. I have notice messages during the boot process where it is paused for a time and then continues. One says starting udev waiting for devices to settle. I presume this varies from machine to machine and cannot be speeded up. I also tried with the palemoon browser which is installed as a portable. There was very little difference at around 13secs from launch to opening. I seem to remember reading that the portables are initially slow to launch as new sym links etc. have to be made. Probably should have tried with firefox. I'll try after I've posted this as I'm currently on palemoon.

Hope this helps.

Ken.
Edit: Firefox takes about 25secs from launch to opening for both rc14 and rc14Z. I guess this is due to palemoon being lighter than firefox.

[amethyst]

Firefox takes about 25secs from launch to opening for both rc14 and rc14Z. I guess this is due to palemoon being lighter than firefox.

Yes, Palemoon starts MUCH faster. Firefox and Palemoon starts quite faster when loaded as an sfs compared to being run in uncompressed state from a folder on the same partition (be it a portable or extracted from original tarball to folder).