KLV-Airedale-sr2 with Void Linux Kernel 6.3.12_1

[rockedge]

KLV-Airedale-sr2
Kennel Linux Void Airedale Stable Release 2 861 MiB download size ↓
KLV-Airedale-sr2
SHA1-MD5.txt
Download from SOURCEFORGE

This is Stable Release version 2
with a complete system update/upgrade and outfitted with a Void Linux kernel 6.3.12 on 07/09/2023

Features full SAMBA support and managed by a modified for KLV Samba Simple Management GUI script, borrowed from F96-CE_4.

This version is equipped with 01fdrv_upup_22.04.sfs borrowed from KLU-jammy. The size of the file is larger than in version rc16 leading to the increase in size of the ISO.

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 difficulty in changing user. Adding a file called : /etc/sv/agetty-tty1/down instructs runit to disable the service which is persistent across reboots.

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-rc16 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

[rockedge]

Host machine is F96-CE_4 running KLV in a QEMU virtual machine:

Screenshot(65).jpg (30.67 KiB) Viewed 685 times

[geo_c]

So I copied the sr2 iso files underneath my collected upper_changes which were running on top of rc13, and happy to say all seems to be running very smoothly so far.

I'm going to give the remaster idea another shot soon, though because I'm using laptops, it may involve scaling the cpu first.

All my Dell laptops tend to run hot, and they are older, but my HP laptops all run significantly cooler. In fact running F96 on my newest HP laptop, which is about 3 years old, temperature was down at about 34 degrees at one point, and I don't think I've ever seen that on any of my machines. I haven't used a desktop in quite a long time, but if I ever want to get to building systems using woof or firstrib, I should probably think about purchasing a desktop setup.

[geo_c]

Remaster complete!

Amazing that my 10GB of upper_changes comprised of 16 folders resulted in a 2GB compressed sfs root filesystem.

I did as @fredx181 suggested and excluded module and firmware sfs's from the remaster and now I'm running the sr2 kernel, firmware, and rootfs constructed with upper_changes I've collected since RC3.

That's a significant win for me. Because this system is loaded with powerful and large applicatons, runs flawlessly, is highly customized with launchers, symlinks and such, and is a rolling release, meaning it still has plenty of room to grow.

Thanks to all!

And after checking to see what cpu governor was running in KLV, turned out be powersave. So I pointed a fan at my cooler running HP laptop and used LZ4 compression, and the CPU stayed around 65 degrees.

[wiak]

I haven't used a desktop in quite a long time, but if I ever want to get to building systems using woof or firstrib, I should probably think about purchasing a desktop setup.

Personally I haven't used a desktop computer for over ten years now. That's partly because I picked up some 2008 core2duo laptops back then for a song and these still run all current KL distros fine. But main reason is their low power consumption that basically saves their purchase price in terms of power savings compared to typical desktop every year of use. Not generally so fast as modern desktop but not noticeably slow for my usage/dev needs.

Everything to do with FirstRib, weedog, and FR overlayfs-based initrd was created on a 2008 hp 2530p core2duo elitebook laptop. I'm back to using that machine type cos of recently dropping newish hp probook! but old 2530p working fine with kla xfce

I can hardly wait till my international home removals is completed around Feb 2024 since then I'll get back to FR dev work. Early target being new version of firstribit (was weedogit) in which I'll include KLV developed utilities such as save2flash and sfs load on demand. Thereafter I want to focus on that rollback remaster support, which via firstribit will also work with FR frugal installs of all these mainstream/upstream firstribit moulded big distros. Will definitely be spoiled for choice then... Of course, will make new iso releases of my kl Base variants sometime then too; that's a relatively small job now.

It 'might' be worthwhile polishing up a firstribit variant of Puppy Linux itself for those who enjoy using FR initrd facilities/multi-numeric-layers/utilities, but I've generally hesitated to do that so as not to interfere with other distro developments. Plenty to do with current KL distros along with firstribit anyway.

[geo_c]

Is there a tool to set the cpu frequency/scaling in SR2?

I've reading up on it, and cpupower and cpupower-gui are both in the Void repos. Not sure if I should mess with it or not though.

Xfce has a tray plugin that reports the cpu governor and frequency, and also the available governors and speeds. It doesn't allow for changing them however.

Interesting to see what governors are available on different machines using the exact same OS. The machines aren't the same in that regard.