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#101 Re: Devuan Derivatives » GNUinOS - Libre » 2025-02-15 06:47:36

Don't like yad? Try tcl/tk instead, like e.g.:

#!/bin/sh                                                                       

[ $(id -un) = root ] &&	exec "$@"

[ "$SUDO_ASKPASS" = "$0" ] && exec wish <<EOF                                   
wm title .  {${*%: }}                                                           
pack [entry .pw -show {#} -width 40 \                                           
   -background "#efe60c" -insertwidth 6 -justify center ]                       
bind .pw <Return> { puts -nonewline [.pw get ] ; exit 0; }                      
bind .pw <Escape> { exit 1; }                                                   
focus .pw                                                                       
EOF                                                                             

exec env SUDO_ASKPASS="$0" sudo -A "$@"

That'll use a third of resident and a tenth of virual memory.

#102 Re: Installation » [SOLVED] Does different apt mirrors even work? They didn't work for me » 2025-02-12 23:34:23

All package mirrors support HTTP access to Devuan packages in the domain name of "deb.devuan.org". Only some of them support HTTP access to Devuan packages in other domain names. That is really how HTTP access works.

Some of the mirrors also declare HTTPS access, and in that case the service is offered in their nominal domain names and not in the doman name "deb.devuan.org". This is because HTTPS access requires the service to have a certificate for the service domain, essentially proving that they are the current renter of the domain name. That's what the S part of the HTTPS service means.

To have deb.devuan.org resolve to some particular service IP addresses other than the authoritative name resolution, you need to arrange for that in your client; e.g. by populating your /etc/hosts file, or set up your own DNS service.

#103 Re: Hardware & System Configuration » How do I get apt-add-repository to work on Devuan? » 2025-02-10 13:02:28

I agree it's not the appropriate response. Someone should report it upstream.

#104 Re: Off-topic » Do you guys have girlfriends or boyfriends? » 2025-02-09 10:04:17

mmm the life coach center is two doors down to the left ...

#105 Re: Hardware & System Configuration » How do I get apt-add-repository to work on Devuan? » 2025-02-07 21:47:03

@einpoklum, it's a little bit interesting that you on the one hand make your system be part of Devuan's (and thus Debian's) testing/unstable effort and on the other seem annoyed that not all of that software is fully integrated as a stable release environment with "complete organisational branding".

Whilst it's helpful that you unravel misbehaviour, I'd suggest that your annoyance is somewhat misplaced. Rather one would expect you to follow through on the priviiege of partaking in the trialing of testing/unstable software by reporting on the feedback channels set up for that purpose. You have isolated a functional misbehaviour which thus should be reported to the upstream maintainers (those concerned with the functionality rather than packaging).

Also as you probably are aware, Devuan's charter is to reflect Debian sans [identified badness], and there is no additional commitment to software interoperability and completeness. It obviously would have been fun if that software (apt-add-repository) had been designed to automatically slot in a Devuan branding (or arbitrary non-Debian branding) in its principal functionality, but extending that software (either specifically for Devuan or generically in its design) is unrelated to [identified badness] and therefore actually outside the scope of Devuan's charter.

But there's of course nothing wrong in pointing to these kinds of bugs. It's just the matter of following throw with constructive action rather than "whine about it".

#106 Re: Hardware & System Configuration » Resolution » 2025-02-07 03:02:26

You could also add a configuraiton snippet for the Monitor in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/

Start with running Xorg -configure :1, which dumps the current configuration into a file xorg.conf.new. clip out the applicable "Monitor" for your snippet, and add the desired ModeLine to it. (You might also need to disable "DefaultModes")

See man xorg.conf for details.

#107 Re: Installation » Unable to install from the Excalibur netinstall ISO » 2025-02-06 07:27:35

That looks well equipped and farily normal. Though  is that only USB 3 ports? Maybe that's a problem for the installer preamble ... I guess your DVD attempt was via a USB drive as well?

If you would have a USB 2 hub it could possibly make a difference; to let the preamble find the ISO and switch into the installer proper.

Alternatively if you could dd the ISO onto an nvme partition to be available there for the preamble's media detection. That would be an option too ... you would boot from the USB stick but let it find the duly labelled nvme partition as its media (for unpacking the installer proper), and when the installer proper has started you could (with immediate Alt-F2 hands-on) guide its media detection to the USB. If you would want that, e.g. to make that nvme partition avaiable for the installation. (If you wish I could give a more detailed step-by-step for this)

#108 Re: Installation » Unable to install from the Excalibur netinstall ISO » 2025-02-05 11:46:35

The blkid response looks fine.

It looks like the boot preamble is missing some modules; especially I could see it lacks the "hid" module that is required by the "usbhid" module, which (I think) is the one that handles the USB keyboard.

The preamble also seems to be missing a module for the media device. Perhaps you could provide an lsmod listing from the working devuan system so I can check them out.

#109 Re: Installation » Unable to install from the Excalibur netinstall ISO » 2025-02-05 09:42:06

Can you provide output of

blkid $USBDEV

where $USBDEV is the device node for that USB; It appears the boot preamble fails to find a duly labelled partition.

Next, if you are somewhat confident with command line, you could try adding EMERG to the boot line (push TAB, then type EMERGE, then  Enter). That will bring you to a busybox shell early in the preamble, where you could investigate things, and especially modprobe any special modules that might be needed for the hardware. When you exit that shell, it will continue with the installation (loading device modules and scanning for the labelled partition).

There's also the variant adding "emerg" in lowercase, which enters the shell late in the preamble sequence (after failing to mount the ISO). At that point it has loaded modules to handle devices, and you might there be able to coax it manually by setting up a loop mount and run unpack by hand... review its /init for inspiration.

#110 Re: Other Issues » [SOLVED] linux-image not updated » 2025-02-02 22:33:20

Note that the installed linux-image-amd64=6.1.76-1 has its "depends"

Depends: linux-image-6.1.0-18-amd64 (= 6.1.76-1)

which is that exact version of linux-image-6.1.0-18-amd64.

The new version of linux-image-amd64 (the one held back) has its own exact dependency on some other package linux-image-*-amd64 which is not currently installed. Therefore an upgrade, which does not install new packages, will not upgrade linux-image-amd64 (since it would then need to install that new package).

See man apt-get about the upgrade parameter.

You would get it upgraded, and the new package installed, by using

apt-get dist-upgrade

EDIT: seeing you use apt rather than apt-get there is a slight difference, see the upgrade parameter notice in man apt; it's due to the same sort of logic but applied to removing packages.

EDIT 2: it's never too early to start reading "man" pages...

#111 Re: Off-topic » Statement regarding X community » 2025-01-30 23:25:12

... and to continue on the real X discussion; I note that xserver-xorg-core is already a forked package. Though not forked from upstream, but rather a fork of debian's project so as to add the libseat extension that provides the seatd alternative to (e)logind for input device mediation.

#112 Re: Devuan » Why are systemd files present in Devuan? » 2025-01-25 11:15:34

@pcalvert: for any assistance and/or discussions you should use IRC channel #devuan-dev at libera.chat.

#114 Re: Devuan » Why are systemd files present in Devuan? » 2025-01-23 01:11:36

Software-wise, yes; UX-wise, no, i.e. the general design principle of the debian-installer was upheld so as to essentially "look the same".

The installer is a rather small program that gets its UX appearance from the postinst scripts of the packages as they are installed. Only the inital boot is determined by the installer and thereafter the babies come with the bath water. Firstly by installing udeb packages to expand itself, and secondly deb packages to the target installation. E.g. it uses partman for the partitioning and debootstrap for setting up the base system, then especilly task-select for selecting desktop etc.

(It is significantly different from a live installer which essentially copies whatever it consists of into the installation system)

Netinstall uses the packages of the day of installation (which may be different versions from when the ISO was built) while the server and desktop variants may be used off-line to only use packages included in the isos.

EDIT: they key problem for the installer is to be able to handle "all" sorts of target systems, which recently has been any combination of legacy or UEFI bios with the ISO presented as crom or disk image over any of a range of media drives (sata, nvme, USB 1/2/3, sd-card, etc)

#115 Re: Hardware & System Configuration » Devuan Daedalus: /i386-pc/normal.mod not found » 2025-01-21 10:15:25

Some oldish cards or drives can't deal with GPT partition table but need DOS table.

You could check that by trying again with the first card but then make sure to create a DOS table on it before partitioning. (Use expert mode with activated lowest possible priority level, or perhaps use ctrl-f2 shell and fdisk)

There are also usb sticks that don't support boot setup, but they are rare.

#116 Re: Hardware & System Configuration » Devuan Daedalus: /i386-pc/normal.mod not found » 2025-01-21 03:56:23

not sure what you are saying there; did you try to install onto that third partition of the installer USB (primed as discussed before)?

#117 Re: Hardware & System Configuration » Devuan Daedalus: /i386-pc/normal.mod not found » 2025-01-20 13:58:29

Now I'm more confused, because now I also lose the label when I try it, and I'm actually not sure how I could have imagined something else before.

To make it work, you'll rather have to "be clever" and restore the disk image apart from the first sector after having changed the partition table. E.g.

dd if=devuan_daedalus_5.0.1_amd64_netinstall.iso of=/dev/sdg skip=1 seek=1 conv=notrunc

The partition table is really just the last 64 bytes of the first secor, and the bytes before that have not been changed by fdisk. Some bytes in some later sectors have changed though, which amounts to losing the label, The suggested copying will restore those without restoring the partition table.

I apologise for making this so confusing and convoluted.

#118 Re: Hardware & System Configuration » Devuan Daedalus: /i386-pc/normal.mod not found » 2025-01-20 12:23:49

That's peculiar that partition 1 (and the disk) loses its label.... though you had it mounted(!) when changing parition table. That's not a good idea. Is it possible to re-run the test without that? I.e., to make sure the device is unmounted when changing it with fdisk.

#119 Re: Hardware & System Configuration » Devuan Daedalus: /i386-pc/normal.mod not found » 2025-01-19 22:13:31

hmmm fdisk (mine, of package version 2.38.1-5+deb12u3devuan1) doesn't change the signature (despite the warning), and the partition is correctly marked as Empty in the partition table. It further preserves the partition label (DEVUAN501) which is the access detail used by the installer's mounting.

When you plug in the USB (on another linux) without mounting it, what does blkid /dev/sdg and blkid /dev/sdg1 say? I'd expect it to be like

/dev/sdg1: BLOCK_SIZE="2048" UUID="2023-09-14-08-12-43-00" LABEL="DEVUAN501" TYPE="iso9660" PTUUID="0650bbcb" PTTYPE="dos" PARTUUID="0650bbcb-01"

#120 Re: Hardware & System Configuration » Devuan Daedalus: /i386-pc/normal.mod not found » 2025-01-19 10:50:11

The first partition should remain starting at sector 0, not 64. fdisk would have left things good despite the warning.

EDIT: ....

EDIT: I've got confused about the disk layout and have to explore this a bit. It seems xorriso changed how it does things and I have been living with the "old idea" of how it did things before, without actually confirming it.

In any case, the first partition starts at sector 0. Then the second partition comes after the first (non-overlapping). It is safe to use fdisk to change the type of the second partition and to add a 3rd primary partition.

#121 Re: Hardware & System Configuration » Devuan Daedalus: /i386-pc/normal.mod not found » 2025-01-18 23:50:31

Actually you can run fdisk on the USB stick and change the partition type to 0x0c. I.e., mark it as plain FAT32 instead of EFI (0xef). Then the partition should not be seen as an EFI partition.... and you may further mount the partition somewhere and rename its EFI directory, say to OFF, to further reduce its appearance as EFI partition.

While in fdisk, you may also add another partition for the remaining portion of the USB stick.

I wouldn't try any other partitioning tool since I would fear it may well be too intelligent and eager to be helpful to not destroy the hybrid ISO setup.

#122 Re: Hardware & System Configuration » Devuan Daedalus: /i386-pc/normal.mod not found » 2025-01-18 13:26:24

Yes, I thought I told you that it appears grub gets confused upon seeing the EFI partition of the installer, making it jump to the conclusion that the system has UEFI bios.

Probably that logic is in the grub udeb that gets installed into the installer (for the grub installation step and dialog). Though afaik it's not a forked package, but it would be good to have someone making a focussed effort on isolating the problem in detail for lodging a bug report about it.

#123 Re: Hardware & System Configuration » best way to install kernel 6.12 in Daedalus » 2025-01-18 04:59:42

note that you also need to follow up with

apt-get dist-upgrade

which, in addition upgrading packages, adds and removes packages according to the dependency network. To quote the man page:

man apt-get wrote:

dist-upgrade in addition to performing the function of upgrade, also intelligently handles changing dependencies with new versions of packages; apt-get has a "smart" conflict resolution system, and it will attempt to upgrade the most important packages at the expense of less important ones if necessary. The dist-upgrade command may therefore remove some packages. The /etc/apt/sources.list file contains a list of locations from which to retrieve desired package files. See also apt_preferences(5) for a mechanism for overriding the general settings for individual packages.

Note that it's never too early to start reading man pages...

#124 Re: Hardware & System Configuration » Devuan Daedalus: /i386-pc/normal.mod not found » 2025-01-17 11:30:34

Sometime in life I have met USB sticks that refuse to change the first 440 bytes which is where the leagcy bios boot loader gets written. You should check that your sticks don't have that problem: e.g. write some certain data to there, take the USB out, eat an apple, plug in the USB ideally in a different port, then verify that data.

Do that twice with different data, to confirm that your data gets written and is preserved.

# dd if=data1 of=/dev/sdg bs=440 count=1
... etc

Next, use the rescue approach to chroot to the target file system and install grub-pc  as well as to run a manual grub-install /dev/sdg . (You might need to mount /dev and /proc for the latter; I'm not sure if the rescue entry has done chroot and those mounts)

#125 Re: Hardware & System Configuration » Devuan Daedalus: /i386-pc/normal.mod not found » 2025-01-17 06:04:07

The installation ISOs are set up as "Hybrid ISOs". This means that the ISO is a union of two data perspectives: on the one hand the ISO is a single iso9660 filesystem, and on the other hand it's a disk image with two partitions; the first partition spans the whole ISO and the second partition spans a raw image in format FAT32 within that first partition.

It's kind of like this (in beautiful ascii art):

+----------------------------------------+
|              ISO image                 |
|        +-------+    	      	      	 |
|        | fat32 |                       |
|        | image |                       |
|        +-------+                       |
+----------------------------------------+

The iso9660 file format allows for having a DOS partition table in its first 512 bytes, so those two data perspectives blend nicely and leaves it to the device driver to pick and choose which view it adopts. A cdrom drive will adopt the view of a single iso9660, while a disk driver typically adopts the view of 2 partitions (although it's vaguely unhappy about the partitions being overlapping).

The fat32 partition is further marked as an EFI partition so that the disk view makes UEFI more happy because on "the surface" it looks like an ordinary UEFI setup.

BUT it also fools grub's intelligent install logic to make it install grub for UEFI regardless of which bios there is. Probably it just scans the disks to see if there is any EFI partition and from that jumps to the conclusion that the system has UEFI bios.

Therefore you need to exercise some manual hands-on towards the end to explicitly install the grub variant you need. This can be done either after or instead of the installer's grub installation. You where doing it right using the rescue mode.

Secondly, you cannot install linux onto a FAT32 partition because that filesystem type does not have symbolic links. You must format or reformat it into some filesystem type that can.

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