[Antix core M12] Openbox alpha 1-3

[melodie]

Hi,

I am testing another way of saving threads from the former linuxvillage forum. Please let me know if that works for you ?

page 1 of the thread, page 2, and page 3.

If this looks ok in your web browser I would like to bring back at least one or two more threads from the old forum before getting rid of the "beta" sub-domain here.

What do you think ? How does it look ?

[djohnston]

Oh noes! There is an ad at the top, and it is being served by www6.smartadserver.com. The horror! 

And we are all Hors ligne! Why are we always "offline"? Is it because we are all "outstanding"?

It looks fine to me, except some of the very light colored text. If you link to the content, you probably won't have any control over how it is displayed. If you copy the content, it can always be reformatted. Waddya think, eh?

[melodie]

I am probably sort of a savage, I just hit "File > Save under" from the web browser, because I don't want to loose the content, which might some useful parts if we started working on some antiX spins some day in the future.

Can it be used for this purpose in case of need ? (Is there really an add ? I haven't seen it... but if so I could probably edit the html file? ). Or maybe it comes from the provider, "free.fr". :>

I always make use of Adblock while using this web space.

[djohnston]

I am probably sort of a savage, I just hit "File > Save under" from the web browser, because I don't want to loose the content, which might some useful parts if we started working on some antiX spins some day in the future.

That's fine. By posting the link, you are linking to the original page. As I said, you can't modify any of the original content that way. You have to actually copy the content from the old site to the new.

Can it be used for this purpose in case of need ? (Is there really an add ? I haven't seen it... but if so I could probably edit the html file? ). Or maybe it comes from the provider, "free.fr". :>

What I'm getting at is actually copying the html code from there to here. Not today, but tomorrow, I'll copy/paste your three links and put them in the Admin section for you to see what I'm talking about.

I always make use of Adblock while using this web space.

I'm running AdBlock, too. However, because of the kerfuffle on the old site with not being able to post anything due to AdBlock, I turned it off for that (the old) site. It's still turned off.

[melodie]

Hi again,

I have full confidence in your ability to do it in a more clever way, so no need to post in the admin section, please go ahead, create a new thread with a few different characters in the title then I'll erase the thread here, if this is ok for you, of course.

[melodie]

Hi,

I don't understand much about what you are trying to do and how. Just this as the main point: all I want is to keep the feedback you brought about the alpha 3 antix Openbox I tried to do, because it was an interesting information which I didn't find time to use.

Once brought back here, and if no one has something else to bring back, we could sail off the old forum.

[djohnston]

Posted: Wed 12 Sep 2012 - 14:27

My apologies to Melodie and everyone else. I did some minor fixes to her second remaster and PMed her about it. I should have just posted instead. Anyway, here's what I sent her:

I have installed your alpha 1-1 iso. I've made a few corrections and changes to it. Some are in the Openbox menu. Preferences > Desktop Preferences now works. The antiX Control Center now works. Some items are missing, though, and I didn't want to go very far in customizing it yet. I also found and corrected the updatedb permission problems.

Installation is still tricky, though. I haven't figured out why minstall isn't working correctly in your remaster. It still has the problem with creating a new user's home directory. And, it still leaves the old user guest's account active and home directory intact. The accounts are:

username / password
------------   ----------
guest          guest
root            root

The RAM usage has gone up to 70MB because wicd daemon is running. It can be changed to something else later. It's one of the antiX Control Center items, so I reinstalled it. Many items in the Control Center also use gksu, so I reinstalled that. I also reinstalled the /usr/share/icons/gTangish-2.0a1 directory that the Control Center is reading from. I'm not ready to reinvent the wheel yet.

You can download the remaster here:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/31006290/LinuxVillage1-1.iso
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/31006290/LinuxVillage1-1.md5

Let me know what you think.

Darrel


I'm afraid I got busy with two other projects afterwards. I don't remember what else I've done, but you can take a look for yourself. I think Melodie's choice of antiX as a base is a good one. The only choice which would be as good or better would be to use Debian proper. I'll post back after looking at the VirtualBox install I have. It's what I used to create the remaster.

[djohnston]

Posted: Fri 14 Sep 2012 - 16:43

Taco.22 wrote:

I'm trying LinuxVillage1-1 at the moment and have hit the Default User issue.  How do I get the install to accept a user name?  By the way it still has "darrel" as a user in the live cd.

EDIT - error reads

Code: [Sélectionner]

Sorry, failed to set ownership of user directory.
I tried setting up a new user through console, but the installer then says user already exists!

Is this of any use - this page has the complete code for minstall - just a shot in the dark!

EDIT - just tried the install launched from console.  At the add user point, after adding a user (ejt) and password (ejt) and setting root, console reads -

Code: [Sélectionner]

Enter new UNIX password: Retype new UNIX password: passwd: password updated successfully
passwd: user 'demo' does not exist
Installer then quits.

Thanks for reminding me of the extra user account, Taco.22. Because of the condition Melodie's remaster was in to begin with, I chose to make changes in my user account. Whatever worked went into /etc/skel. To double check before doing a remaster, I deleted the guest account, then recreated it so it would pick up the new configurations from /etc/skel. I guess I need to delete darrel as a user, but the problem still remains that the guest user is carried over on installation, too.

Minstall is broken in Melodie's antix-openbox-alpha-1-1 remaster, and is still broken in mine. Because of this, the installation process is tedious. You can install from this remaster, though. The following is how to do it, if you wish to.

From the boot menu, press F3 to set your timezone. Select antiX-snapshot from the boot menu.



Login as user guest. Password is guest. Click the Installer icon on the desktop. Root's password is root.



Proceed with the installation as normal. The problem occurs at the user creation step. Go ahead and create a new user and password for that user. Enter a password for root, too.



Once you click the Next button, you will get an error message that the new user's home directory ownership cannot be set. Because of this, minstall will not proceed to its logical end.



After clicking the OK button on the error message window, click the Next button in the installer again. This is just to be sure that the user you tried to create actually has a home directory created. You should see the following.



Click Yes to reuse the old home directory. You will then get the same error message that the new user's home directory ownership cannot be set. At this point, the only option left is to click the Close button in the installer window. Shut down the machine from a console or from the menu. The CD will not auto eject at shutdown. The installation has completed as far as you can take it with the installer.

Reboot the machine. At the login window, login as user root and supply the password you assigned for root during the installation process.



You'll be looking at a gray screen with nothing else showing. Right-click to get the menu, and select Terminal emulator. If you list the /home directory, you will see there are two users' directories - guest and the user you created during installation. Enter:

deluser --remove-home guest
deluser darrel

We don't want the guest account or guests' home directory. We don't want the user darrel's account. He has no home directory. Enter:

adduser (the-username-you-chose-during-installation)

Substitute the actual username for (the-username-you-chose-during-installation). Note that the user's home directory already exists, but is currently owned by root. That's okay. It will be corrected.



Note that the groups scanner and lpadmin do not exist. These are system groups and should be added back to the base installation. The last step is to change ownership of your user's home directory. Enter:

chown -R /home/(the-username-you-chose-during-installation)

Again, substitute the actual username for (the-username-you-chose-during-installation).



You are done. Logout and login as your new user.

[djohnston]

Posted: Fri 14 Sep 2012 - 16:53

mélodie wrote:

Hi,

It behaves strange. Let's see what happens next, if we start again from a core but in a real machine. For the minstaller we know, and Lagopus might work on it in the future. For the other strange things it might be necessary to eliminate possible source of trouble due to the creations in the Vbox machines (although it should not... but never know).

I'll try to work from a real machine in the next weeks, as soon as I will have time to prepare one.

The installation problem(s) have nothing to do with whether it is installed to or remastered from VirtualBox. The minstall program is broken in the antix-openbox-alpha-1-1 remaster. It is still broken in mine. I've done nothing to add to it, though. Selecting antiX-cli-install from the boot menu of an antiX iso leads directly to a cli-only installation process.



Selecting that entry from the boot menu of the antix-openbox-alpha-1-1 remaster leads to a lightdm login screen, then a full GUI desktop. The installer(s) definitely need to be fixed. However, they both already work in the original antiX isos.

[djohnston]

Posted: Sat 15 Sep 2012 - 17:40

mélodie wrote:

djohnston : minstall is not "broken in antix  alpha", it just does not work. In the full antix it works, so I would  suppose it is meant for a full antix and not for the core, with any  packages added on top of it. If you use "install.sh" as root in a  console that works.

lagopus said he will work to rewrite the installer.

Ah, that explains a lot. What if the desktop icon is linked instead to the install.sh executable for the time being? Will that be okay? Just wondering if you intend to start all over or to continue with what you already have.

[djohnston]

Posted: Sun 16 Sep 2012 - 16:22

anticapitalista said,

However, IMO the best way to remaster antiX is to use the admittedly rudimentary build scripts and change the Templates to suit what you want. It takes longer initially, but the result is more consistent and the gui installer as it is will work. You have total(ish) control this way including what live username/passwords to use etc.

http://antix.freeforums.org/how-antix-12-is-built-t3910.html

Thanks. Would you be available to answer questions about the build scripts? I'm a member of the antiX forum.

[djohnston]

Posted: Sun 16 Sep 2012 - 22:00

anticapitalista wrote:

Yes, but the time difference makes it awkward. Time for zzz here in Greece.

Just post here or at antiX.

The scripts are pretty basic, and they will need editing for remasters eg changing the default repos

That sounds good. I'm not in a hurry. Just wanted to be sure I wouldn't be imposing on you.

[djohnston]

Ladies and gentlemen,

I'm at an impasse here. I cannot find install.sh on the antiX-openbox-alpha-1-1 iso or on the original antiX-12-core-libre-486 iso. Below is a screenshot from a antiX-openbox-alpha-1-1 session.



There are install.sh file(s) on the antiX-12-base-486 and antiX-12-486 isos. But the files are for installing acpi kernel modules for either a 2.6.26 or 2.6.28 kernel on a Toshiba.

[djohnston]

Geez. A whole flurry of activity and questions in a matter of hours. As far as the renaming of the iso, you can rename it, or not. I guess you're not going to use it. Anyway, I've renamed the iso and md5 sum. New links are:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/31006290/antiX-openbox-alpha-1-2.md5
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/31006290/antiX-openbox-alpha-1-2.iso

Q: Ok I switch and will try to install the antix-cc from there. I just noticed the multimedia repos debian triggers a 404 error (main and non free). have you also noticed ?

A: Change the source to:

deb ftp://ftp.deb-multimedia.org/ testing main non-free

Q: djohnston, I am still waiting for you to tell how you fixed the preferences menus and the permissions on updatedb ?

A: In response to this and your post that mlocate needs to be reinstalled, that is not the case at all. updatedb is rendered inoperable in the /usr/local/bin/antixsnapshot script. As a result, it is not executable in the final installation. Open /usr/local/bin/antixsnapshot in geany. Look at lines 199 through 203. The original text reads:

# Disable updatedb for the live-CD
if [[ -x "$work_dir"/new-squashfs/usr/bin/updatedb.mlocate ]]; then
    chmod -x "$work_dir"/new-squashfs/usr/bin/updatedb.mlocate
fi

That is why updatedb is not executable in an installation. All I did was comment the section. I'm not sure why that section is in the installation script. Also, to exclude anything during the remaster, the list is in:

/usr/lib/antixsnapshot/snapshot_exclude.list

As far as getting the antiX control center working, I'm still looking at that. You can start by installing the gtangish-2.0a1-icons package. As anticapitalista has indicated, I installed gksu as a stopgap (temporary) measure. Otherwise, I'd have to rewrite antixcc and replace gksu with ktsuss. I believe their command syntaxes are different, but I could be wrong. And, as far as the fancy schmancy wbar goes, I've already uninstalled it and replaced it with a second lxpanel. I was using wbar as a placeholder to know what I had working and not working. It also gave me a convenient way to launch programs.

To correct Preferences > Desktop preferences in the Openbox right-click menu, open ~/.config/openbox/menu.xml. Change line # 22 to read:

              <action name="Execute"><command>pcmanfm --desktop-pref


As soon as I post this, I'll look at what I did to get the antiX control center working.

I also didn't/don't intent to commandeer your project. I was trying to understand where all the gaps are. And, hands on is the best way for me to understand.

Oh, one other thing. I moved the My Home and Trash icons to a different directory in darrel's ~/. Sorry. Just a personal preference. I've since put them back on the desktop. Here's a current screenshot:




Oh, one last thing, before I forget. Delete user darrel. He has no home directory.

[djohnston]

To get antixcc working, install:

gtkdialog                    <-- so it will run
gtangish-2.0a1-icons    <-- so it has icons
gksu                          <-- OR replace each instance of gksu with ktsuss


EDIT: Please let us know how you want to proceed from here.