VillageBox Support Page

[melodie]

Hi,
I remember each time Debian has made a testing version stable, the following testing version was unreliable for a while. I would suggest you fix the current VillageBox with the stable repos from now on, for about the next 6 months.

[djohnston]

Taco.22,

The problem is not consolekit. The version number for consolekit, libck-connector0 and libpam-ck-connector is still  0.4.5-3.1. That hasn't changed since July 30th, 2012, as far as I can tell.

darrel@Village:~$ ls -l /etc/X11/Xsession.d/90consolekit
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1027 Feb 29  2012 /etc/X11/Xsession.d/90consolekit
darrel@Village:~$ ls -l /usr/share/pam-configs/consolekit
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 169 Jul 30  2012 /usr/share/pam-configs/consolekit
darrel@Village:~$ ls -l /usr/share/polkit-1/actions/org.freedesktop.consolekit.policy
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1652 Jul 30  2012 /usr/share/polkit-1/actions/org.freedesktop.consolekit.policy
darrel@Village:~$

The remastersys file is correct, too.

darrel@Village:~$ ls -l /home/remastersys/remastersys/dummysys/etc/X11/Xsession.d/90consolekit
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1027 Feb 29  2012 /home/remastersys/remastersys/dummysys/etc/X11/Xsession.d/90consolekit
darrel@Village:~$

There's something else going on I haven't narrowed down. I just burned the DebWeb_RC3 iso to a USB drive and booted from it. It has the same Thunar version 1.2.3, which allows me to browse the hard drive with no permission errors. I started xterm, and it has the black background. Then I shutdown the machine with no permission errors.

Maybe you can figure something out by comparing the DebWeb iso to yours. I haven't started doing that yet. Nor have I tried the DebWeb_1.0 iso, because it uses the latest version of Thunar. (I have to replace wicd with network-manager-gnome on that one, anyway.) As soon as the iso has uploaded to my Dropbox account, I'll post the link.

EDIT: Here's the link: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/31006290/DebWeb_RC3.iso

If you'd like to free up some space before remastering, all of the Plymouth themes are installed, but none are in use.

[Taco.22]

Thanks for the investigative work.  I might try switching the repos back to stable for a bit and see if that does anything, although it may be that the horse has bolted.  I'll go back through the apt log and check out what else I have installed - the last thing was libmtp-runtime but I can't see that upsetting things.  Remastersys isn't reading something it should though, otherwise the master itself would be throwing up these errors. 

[Taco.22]

Well that was annoying!  I changed the repo listing to Stable Wheezy as suggested but after I updated dist-upgrade showed no updates.  No surprise!  So I took the ISO that I had uploaded and worked on that instead.  Installed it, changed the repos, updated everything, then made the changes - replaced Geany with Juffed, removed Sakura, added pytyle, installed gnome-system-tools (abridged) and libmtp-runtime.  Moved appropriate files to /etc/skel, cleaned everything up, ran Remastersys, transferred to USB stick, booted and had exactly the same issue as with the Testing repos!!!  Thunar is denied permission to root and xterm's background is white and Reboot/Shutdown doesn't work.

The next option is to try the ISO again and just update as Stable and then remaster.  In the meantime I tried the Scorpio build with Testing repos, doesn't have the gnome-system-tools but does have Juffed - got the same result on remastering.  Not sure where to go from here.  Maybe someone else could install Villagebox, change the sources.list to Stable, update and remaster.  I am in the process of doing it now - I have been using the sources list that patrick013 posted,  but minus the "us" location. 

[melodie]

Hi,
I would not bother and would start fresh from a Wheezy netinstall.

[Taco.22]

I would not bother and would start fresh from a Wheezy netinstall.

The idea of using Wheezy Testing was that when it went Stable you had Wheezy!  I can't say I'm interested in starting from scratch again - the VillageBox ISO as-is works on install and successfully updates - it just doesn't quite remaster.  I think the problem lies with Remastersys - it is now unsupported until OS4 gets its act together, and who knows when that might be. 

[djohnston]

I started from the Village_RC-2_TEST_xz.iso again. Changed all the sources from testing to wheezy. Did a full update, then rebooted. The libconsole package was showing in Synaptic as auto-removable, so I removed it. Refreshed the package list, then reinstalled libconsole. There were a lot of residual config packages showing, so I removed them all. Repopulated /etc/skel and set ownerships. Remastered.

Booting from the iso in VirtualBox worked fine. Booting from a USB on bare metal did not. After doing a little more research, I found the problem. The solution is easy. Copy the following to a text file and save it as /etc/apt/sources.list.d/remaster.list:

deb http://www.remastersys.com/debian wheezy main
deb-src http://www.remastersys.com/debian wheezy main

If you need the repo key, run as root:

wget -O - http://www.remastersys.com/debian/remastersys.gpg.key | apt-key add -

Update remastersys packages. After doing that, I remastered again. Everything works from USB on bare metal. If I were you, I'd remove wicd-gtk and replace it entirely with network-manager-gnome. Don't worry about the dependencies it adds. It won't make that much difference in the size of your iso. From my last test, Thunar works, shutdown and reboot work, xterm has the black background and network-manager-gnome allows me to connect to the wireless network. It didn't before I updated remastersys.

I'll hang onto the iso I created, just in case.

EDIT: You'll have to redo the GRUB and syslinux splash screens, etc. after updating remastersys. But's that's a helluvalot easier than starting completely over. What was it you said once about keeping something that works? 

[patrick013]

When I did a Scorpio remaster about 10 days ago it worked.

1) chattr closed the remaster config file

2) updated etc/skel from within remastersys only

3) made a copy of my /home/user files to extract after the install

4)  put the iso on a usb and just installed it to another usb

Only problem was a few permissions in /home/user config folders.

Will put the remastersys repos in the sources.list  but not going to
update anything just yet.    What do you have to do to the grub
screen anyway  ?     

regards,

patrick

[Taco.22]

Thanks all.  I'll put in the Remastersys repo and try again.  Hopefully all will continue on - couldn't face doing all that work again 

@ patrick013 - you set the grub and splash images in Remastersys via the options offered when you launch it.  DistBoot and DistGrub allow to set your images. 

[melodie]

Great news! Congrats to all for this good job!

[Taco.22]

HOORAY !!  Added and updated the Remastersys repo and the remaster worked fine.  I'm not sure why I never added the repo in the first place - I may have been trying to be conservative and stay away from the bleeding edge.  I will now apply the same fix to the new Scorpio as it is based on VillageBox, unlike the current downloadable version.

Hopefully the Remastersys repo will run for a while - OS4 look to be making it an integral part of their distro so hopefully System Imager will be available for all to use.

@djohnston - thanks for your perseverance.  By the way, what advantage does network-manager-gnome have over wicd-gtk - is it the gtk element?

[djohnston]

@djohnston - thanks for your perseverance.  By the way, what advantage does network-manager-gnome have over wicd-gtk - is it the gtk element?

You're welcome. Glad I could help. After testing wicd-gtk several times with two different wireless setups, it's impossible to get a wireless connection. The detectable local networks, (a few in the neighborhood), won't even show. With network-manager-gnome, I don't get a connection right off the bat because we're using WPA2 encryption. I can't connect to our home network without supplying the password. But, network-manager-gnome shows all the available networks by SSID and immediately offers to connect to one. It's easy and painless.

Hopefully the Remastersys repo will run for a while - OS4 look to be making it an integral part of their distro so hopefully System Imager will be available for all to use.

fragadelic won't be doing any more development, as you know. However, the repo will be up for a while. This is a good time to grab the packages for local storage. After testing your respin again yesterday, I happened to remember there was a Debian update to syslinux which "broke" part of remastersys. That's the reason remastersys was again updated beyond the version you were using.

[melodie]

Hi,
In the Ubuntu spin I had done lately with wicd-gtk inside instead of gnome-network-manager we could not succeed having the wifi connection working either. So back to gnome-network-manager too.

[patrick013]

After testing wicd-gtk several times with two different wireless setups, it's impossible to get a wireless connection.

I'm using wicd-gtk --tray and am very happy with it.
There must be a permission conflict somewhere in that
directory.   Debian 7 is supposed to be super with hardware
so it should work.

Otherwise updated remastersys thru the repo, lost the
graphical screen during boot, but did assign a default
Debian screen for that purpose for later use.    Changed the
font size and weight on the grub text screen instead.

regards,

patrick

[Taco.22]

Well that's a bit of a dilemma - to wicd-gtk or not   I noticed that patrick013 referred to "wicd-gtk --tray".  That is the default placement for VillageBox so I was wondering how others were launching wicd.  Maybe that is a key?