Early doors: King-Pigeon series and friends [AKA Modular Linux]

JoshuaFlynn · 2017-09-30 15:40:49

golinux wrote:

Once you have your distro together, please post to the derivatives forum.

Certainly.

Important notices and foreword:

As the task I'm taking on is a pretty big one (it isn't one main OS but a string of them), I want people to be immediately aware that these OSes will be buggy and definitely in beta, however I will attempt to signal completed OSes. It's also worth noting that the OSes and the system used will fall under a custom crafted Pacifism Public Licence, and you'll definitely want to read the fine print. Normally I'm a public domain kind of guy, however it was the only way I could feel comfortable releasing this without the concern it might be used to harm others, so no licence, there'd be no OS. At the moment it's 'just a reskin', but there are plans underfoot for more complicated technology, which is where the modular part steps in.

What is Modular Linux?

Modular Linux is an OS that fundamentally changes itself based on a series of bash scripts. More specifically, it converts one OS (for example King-Pigeon, a template OS) into another (for example, Devonshire-Class medical OS). The idea being that, you choose the final OS that you want, and the system runs the scripts stage-by-stage to achieve that specific desired OS. That means any upgrades to a template OS will be inherited into it's derivatives when they next reinstall.

There's quite a few advantages to this system: bash scripts are easy to maintain, you are not overly reliant on large scale hosting (as you only need the bash scripts and associated copy-over files), it offers a one-click run, packages will already be largely geared for that specific architecture type, there's no 4GB size limit restriction, you can automate it, you can store it (and call it down) from github, you can make it so they chain into each other, users can choose between as generic or as specialised as they need, and any initial security configurations from the template source are inherited down the line to specialist classes.

It also allows individuals to build their own bash scripts that uses the Template OS (or it's specialist subsets) to fundamentally configure the system into what they want.

What is King-Pigeon?

King-Pigeon is a 64-bit based Template OS which is set to be, ideally, the foundation of Modular Linux. Why on earth did we choose to name our Template OSes after Pigeons? Because the mere humble Pigeon beat South Africa, Australia, Britain and Youtube, they have their own working IP RFC proposals, RFC 1149 and RFC 2549 which yes, does work, Nikolai Telsa, a man with an extensive resume loved them, they helped rescue people and got medals for it, one was even subject to a heroic poem and they can even diagnose cancer and distinguish art pieces, so the real question is why the heck not?

King-Pigeon is one of several Template OSes whose goals intend to include the following features:

Mandatory:
1) Systemd-free (at the moment it still contains awful systemd references so the current goal is to minimise systemd references).
2) Reasonably secure from the start (dedicated security OSes will be coming down the pipeline).
3) Barebones but functional (that means all but the most basic packages stripped out, but as much firmware support as reasonably possible)
4) Stable
5) Relatively static (except for updates, this is so there's no sudden changes to King-Pigeon and thus no hidden surprises).
6) Able to be constructed from a brand new default Devuan installation via script
7) Reasonably user-friendly, with an eye towards one-click or one-command setups

Optional:
1) Ability to self-reproduce (currently provided by Refracta)
2) Ability to self-distribute both itself and archived packages (some sort of BitTorrent style system?)
3) Broadcom auto-configuration script lookup table system (might offer this to Devuan under a public domain licence if interested)
4) One click partitioning system/installation system that dynamically configures harddrive to be encrypted, detects UEFI/BIOS settings etc (quite complicated, probably needs to keep harddrive configuration separate from installer?)
5) Smaller than a CD (presently meets this requirement)

Current planned development line-ups are:
King Pigeon 64-bit Template OS (with the ability to switch between UEFI and BIOS).
Tumbler Pigeon 32-bit Template OS.
Borg Pigeon Template OS (which plans to assimilate/convert non-Devuan OSes like Lubuntu etc into an OS that is similar to King or Tumbler Pigeon, giving users an exit path without having to download an ISO, use a live USB etc. This depends on how successful a full conversion is. If it's not possible, we'll likely ditch it).

Can I try it?

Those interested in the Early Doors access to King-Pigeon beta (v1.0.1b) can download it so from here:
https://mega.nz/#!YPARGIAS!z7tSkEJ7rQNm … ZaZFcJG8vM

Root password is: TCL

It's advisible to test this in VM at the moment as it's only 2 weeks old and definitely very beta.

Please be aware it has an installation bug for BIOS systems (UEFI should not be affected), which is easily fixed if the Live ISO has access to an internet connection, simply go into lxterminal and do the following commands:

su
(password, in this case it's TCL)
apt-get update
apt-get install grub-pc-bin

This will switch King-Pigeon from UEFI mode to BIOS mode, allowing the Refracta installer to continue on normally.

If you're installing to a UEFI based system, make sure the gparted partition table is gpt and not msdos (you shouldn't run the above commands).

Can I try out the modular conversion system?

Those who want to try out the modular conversion script and convert a Devuan install from scratch, first download the Devuan Jessie amd64 desktop ISO (note: the install script may work on other ISO types [including 32-bit] but your mileage may vary and we're not responsible if it goes wrong). Install Devuan using the default settings. Then on the target OS, go to:

https://github.com/JoshuaFlynn/Modules/ … ing-Pigeon

Copy down the King-Pigeon.sh file to your desktop, go into terminal, make yourself root, CD to where the script is and execute the bash script (bash ./King-Pigeon.sh). Make sure you have an internet connection on the target machine, otherwise things might go awry. You're welcome to eyeball the script but chances are you'll find most of what it's doing is fairly obvious (I've added comments where possible). Please be aware the script may change from time to time as bugs are found and improvements are made (we need to improve the purging of XFCEs trailing dependencies).

Once script conversion has started, it's inadvisible to interrupt the process, as the King-Pigeon script rips out the guts of the system, and an early interruption might result in it being left in an unusable state. It will automatically reboot from Devuan into King-Pigeon once it's finished, and your main tip-off it's succeeded with be the giant Pigeon staring at you in the login screen after reboot. Note, this is only known to work on default from new installs.

Please be aware I will be extremely busy with real life, so updates here will be slow.

All feedback from whatever tests you conduct will be greatly appreciated, as well as suggestions for improvements.

Last edited by JoshuaFlynn (2017-09-30 16:11:53)

darry1966 · 2017-10-01 10:06:54

Interested in your 32bit version any idea of a release date? Your idea of pidgeonising a distro is a bit like Barry Kauler's idea of Puppyfying ubuntu/Debian a few years ago. Mmmm come to think of it your ideas of modulism sound very Puppy Linuxish.

aitor · 2017-10-01 20:15:48

darry1966 wrote:

Interested in your 32bit version any idea of a release date? Your idea of pidgeonising a distro is a bit like Barry Kauler's idea of Puppyfying ubuntu/Debian a few years ago. Mmmm come to think of it your ideas of modulism sound very Puppy Linuxish.

Barry Kauler, the author of Puppy Linux

JoshuaFlynn · 2017-10-01 21:18:49

darry1966 wrote:

Interested in your 32bit version any idea of a release date? Your idea of pidgeonising a distro is a bit like Barry Kauler's idea of Puppyfying ubuntu/Debian a few years ago. Mmmm come to think of it your ideas of modulism sound very Puppy Linuxish.

Puppy Linux are vocally anti-systemd, from what I recall, which is a good trait. King Pigeon is more akin to an, ideally, even more stripped down Lubuntu (where the roles are reversed, with the 'Lubuntu-esque' OS being the basis for the larger 'Ubuntu-esque' OS, which makes way more sense in my mind). In my mind everyone wants their own Arch Linux style OS that doesn't require they spend five hours setting up an internet connection and doesn't come with more than the basics, and most definitely does not use systemd.

Given Tumbler Pigeon (32bit) is only a slightly modified variant of King Pigeon, I wouldn't push it longer than a month for release, tops, give or take my real life work scheldule. I strongly suspect the King-Pigeon.sh would work on a 32bit default Devuan install (only thing that would fail is the installation of the grub-efi-amd64, but that shouldn't interrupt the installation process).

I'd like to do more research, bug testing and ideally regear King Pigeon into being based on ASCII so udev can be shoved out the window (along with it's defunct systemd dependencies) before hand, and making sure it's stable, so Tumbler Pigeon can then inherit all of the sweet upgrades. I'd also like to roll out default port blocks on UFW for the Samba service (445, 112, 113), given that SambaCry is apparently still a menace.

Given the similarities, it might be possible to build a universal script that identifies the bit-type and pulls the appropriate configurations down. But functionality first, cool stuff later.

At the moment I'm researching Borg Pigeon for converting from one Debian derivative distro into, ideally, Devuan and thus a near King Pigeon. At the moment I'm experimenting on Lubuntu first, then I'll test on Ubuntu, before finally testing on Debian. Anything later than 14.04 is going to cause issues Ubuntu wise, because it appears systemd doesn't even allow the Live ISO to run in VM.

I'll keep you posted and let you know when Tumbler Pigeon is ready.

greenjeans · 2017-10-01 22:24:30

JoshuaFlynn wrote:

Can I try out the modular conversion system?
Those who want to try out the modular conversion script and convert a Devuan install from scratch, first download the Devuan Jessie amd64 desktop ISO (note: the install script may work on other ISO types [including 32-bit] but your mileage may vary and we're not responsible if it goes wrong). Install Devuan using the default settings. Then on the target OS, go to:
https://github.com/JoshuaFlynn/Modules/ … ing-Pigeon
Copy down the King-Pigeon.sh file to your desktop, go into terminal, make yourself root, CD to where the script is and execute the bash script (bash ./King-Pigeon.sh). Make sure you have an internet connection on the target machine, otherwise things might go awry. You're welcome to eyeball the script but chances are you'll find most of what it's doing is fairly obvious (I've added comments where possible). Please be aware the script may change from time to time as bugs are found and improvements are made (we need to improve the purging of XFCEs trailing dependencies).
Once script conversion has started, it's inadvisible to interrupt the process, as the King-Pigeon script rips out the guts of the system, and an early interruption might result in it being left in an unusable state. It will automatically reboot from Devuan into King-Pigeon once it's finished, and your main tip-off it's succeeded with be the giant Pigeon staring at you in the login screen after reboot. Note, this is only known to work on default from new installs.
Please be aware I will be extremely busy with real life, so updates here will be slow.
All feedback from whatever tests you conduct will be greatly appreciated, as well as suggestions for improvements.

1. Seems like it might be easier just to use the Devuan netinstall iso and unselect everything but LXDE? But I haven't tried the netinstall isos in a while, is LXDE not an option?

2. line 201 and 202 : Thundar is a barbarian, not a file manager. (sorry, virgo OCD ya know)

3. So you were able to purge libsystemd0 completely and the keyboard and mouse etc. all still worked?

4. File-roller? Gonna drag in a lot of gnome crap isn't it? Maybe some nasty gtk3? I would try Engrampa, same thing but more Mate-ish than Gnome-ish.

5. Would love to try out an iso when you have one ready, I love minimalism, and some of your chosen apps are some of my favorites too.

6. Is Pcmanfm the default file-manager of LXDE? If so I have some cool extensions if you're interested in such.

Looking forward to future development of this, very interesting ideas.

JoshuaFlynn · 2017-10-03 03:15:42

Thank you for the feedback!

greenjeans wrote:

1. Seems like it might be easier just to use the Devuan netinstall iso and unselect everything but LXDE? But I haven't tried the netinstall isos in a while, is LXDE not an option?

I had originally tried LXDE from install, and it definitely worked, but there were some issues I can't recall off the top of my head.

A completely plain Devuan install I previously had issues with, specifically with the GUI of Refracta, and yad on Devuan Jessie not being available from the package repositories and having to do a manual install via dpkg, that might not be an issue now, but I was told by fsmithred that Refracta was in experimental (every time someone says this, it's unclear if they mean an experimental source repository or an experimental Devuan build).

I found by using the desktop installer, Refracta was included with GUI as par for the course. I could install LXDE, but that has a couple of downsides, in that LXDE pulls in everything (I try to pull in LXDE-core and keep it minimal), and it's not part of an automated script but a manual selection.

I have yet to figure out the question/answer system on installation candidates.

2. line 201 and 202 : Thundar is a barbarian, not a file manager. (sorry, virgo OCD ya know)

Thundar seems pretty resilient to deletion, I will say that.

3. So you were able to purge libsystemd0 completely and the keyboard and mouse etc. all still worked?

Not yet, work in progress. I can't yet stamp it out without purging udev, and to access vdev/eudev I need to convert King Pigeon from Jessie to ASCII. The spread of systemd has contaminated a lot of Linux OSes far and wide, and despite my best efforts it's slimy tentacles have reached every part of the galaxy.

I'm considering possibly joining the codebase contributors as a part time coder whose sole objective is to weed out systemd. Once my paying job eases up on the workload I'll look into joining.

4. File-roller? Gonna drag in a lot of gnome crap isn't it? Maybe some nasty gtk3? I would try Engrampa, same thing but more Mate-ish than Gnome-ish.

GNOME is a horrible entangled nightmare almost on par with systemd, but xarchiver I found regularly to be quite... buggy, shall we say? File-roller isn't necessarily a saint, but xarchiver gave me a 50/50 odds of freezing when opening different types of archiver. I might try engrampa, all alternatives welcome.

5. Would love to try out an iso when you have one ready, I love minimalism, and some of your chosen apps are some of my favorites too.

64 or 32 bit?

Given the interest I think I'll freeze the technical mess that is Borg Pigeon and get an ASCII based release of King and Tumbler out.

6. Is Pcmanfm the default file-manager of LXDE? If so I have some cool extensions if you're interested in such.

Yep.

Looking forward to future development of this, very interesting ideas.

Thank you!

darry1966 · 2017-10-03 04:46:58

Joshua a version of Yad is available for Jessie here:

http://smokey01.com/saintless/DebianDog … /Included/

Last edited by darry1966 (2017-10-03 04:48:30)

golinux · 2017-10-03 05:01:29

Actually it's in the devuan ascii repo (or so says this pkg list) http://devuanpackages.viralds.it/ascii/package/yad

JoshuaFlynn · 2017-10-03 05:33:13

That's what got me confused, when people say experimental I'm thinking Ubuntu style of a tag you'd append in the repositories (which I tried and naturally it threw angry errors at me), as opposed to ASCII. I realise ASCII is where all the fun is at, however in trying it (updating sources.list and apt-get update) I was a bit confused as I couldn't see eudev or vdev, is there something I'm missing?

@greenjeans
I've decided to - excuse the pun - kill several birds with one stone, including other people's problems. I'm going to decouple portions of King-Pigeon's planned upgrades into separate helper scripts (which I'm planning to place away from the Pacifism Public Licence into a general purpose Public Licence as I can see a number of other OSes wanting to use such scripts).

Right now on my github page there's two (untested) helper functions. One will perform a distribution upgrade from Jessie to ASCII, which should ideally work regardless of how far along a Devuan Jessie distribution is (and I'll need to test to see if it will take on Debian Jessie too, which means Borg Pigeon could likely use it), the other of which will try to pulldown a github copy of vdev (this is more for learning, and is primarily aimed at Jessie without importing ASCII, as I want to learn 'out-of-the-box' solutions, and as vdev is tried and tested, makes for a great sandbox).

Vdev helper function won't work at this stage, but upgrade script should.

Other planned helper functions include the aforementioned broadcom lookup, and ideally a 'from scratch' OpenJDK8, although last time I did that I ended up figuratively pulling out my hair.

golinux · 2017-10-03 05:39:39

JoshuaFlynn wrote:

That's what got me confused, when people say experimental I'm thinking Ubuntu style of a tag you'd append in the repositories (which I tried and naturally it threw angry errors at me), as opposed to ASCII. I realise ASCII is where all the fun is at, however in trying it (updating sources.list and apt-get update) I was a bit confused as I couldn't see eudev or vdev, is there something I'm missing?

Maybe this will help? https://devuan.org/os/etc/apt/sources.list

Or this? https://devuan.org/os/etc/apt/sources.list.d/

greenjeans · 2017-10-03 19:02:28

I kept thinking about this project yesterday, and it struck me that the very detailed listings in that script would be perfect for a live-sdk "blend" file too, that may be something to look at.

Your basic template you have up now works pretty good as a base, i'm trying to document the changes I make to things better so I can write a blend myself at some point, not necessarily for my own project but something more targeted at just basic improvements, connecting installed programs and making the user environment better, dotting the i's and crossing the T's so to speak.

I totally get using file-roller over x-archiver, I swapped it too with engrampa mainly because engrampa supported more file types out-of-the-box and the user interface seems a tad better too.

fsmithred · 2017-10-03 21:07:03

golinux wrote:

Actually it's in the devuan ascii repo (or so says this pkg list) http://devuanpackages.viralds.it/ascii/package/yad

The version of yad (0.38) in the ascii repo uses gtk3 and does not work will with refracta tools - buttons are off-screen. I made gtk2 verions in jessie, but they seem to be working fine in ascii -
http://distro.ibiblio.org/refracta/file … _packages/

Or, you could package them yourself. I already made the one or two small changes for gtk2.
https://git.devuan.org/fsmithred/yad

JoshuaFlynn · 2017-10-03 22:39:13

golinux wrote:

Maybe this will help? https://devuan.org/os/etc/apt/sources.list
Or this? https://devuan.org/os/etc/apt/sources.list.d/

Yep. I still got a lot of things to learn about Devuan.

greenjeans wrote:

I kept thinking about this project yesterday, and it struck me that the very detailed listings in that script would be perfect for a live-sdk "blend" file too, that may be something to look at.

I've never heard of a live-sdk blend file before, could you tell me more about it?

I probably could run off and do a search but I often find Linux documentation to be patchy at the best of times.

Your basic template you have up now works pretty good as a base, i'm trying to document the changes I make to things better so I can write a blend myself at some point, not necessarily for my own project but something more targeted at just basic improvements, connecting installed programs and making the user environment better, dotting the i's and crossing the T's so to speak.

Let me know if you find any 'garbage' programs/packages that need removal or possible improvements for King-Pigeon.

I totally get using file-roller over x-archiver, I swapped it too with engrampa mainly because engrampa supported more file types out-of-the-box and the user interface seems a tad better too.

I'll definitely try it out at some point. I am looking to reduce GNOME dependencies ever since they opted to sell out and move towards systemd so this should be helpful, although as this will be older GNOME I'm not too worried (yet!). With 47,000+ packages plus the ability to build from external git, it should be possible to develop workarounds for this. My main concern is systemd at this stage, and I encourage people to change their copy of King-Pigeon how they see fit, as it's kinda like <insert your own packages here>.

fsmithred wrote:

The version of yad (0.38) in the ascii repo uses gtk3 and does not work will with refracta tools - buttons are off-screen. I made gtk2 verions in jessie, but they seem to be working fine in ascii -
http://distro.ibiblio.org/refracta/file … _packages/
Or, you could package them yourself. I already made the one or two small changes for gtk2.
https://git.devuan.org/fsmithred/yad

I previously posted on your forum under the username Gravimetric after I had issues with the Liveboot portion.

The text version works nicely from manual install, but my concern is both maintainability and usability. How does one update a manual install? And is a user going to want to use text?

Without trying to be rude (but written text always does sound like it), Devuan dev team might want to sort out Refracta so it's more consistent on Jessie/ASCII, because as I mentioned on fsmithred's forum, Refracta is secretly Devuan's biggest strong point, and whilst it is technically external to Devuan, it's allowing for so many spin-off OSes based on Devuan to be made, which is fundamentally drawing power away from systemd OSes, which is, of course, what we want. We have to show that a monolithic, all-encompassing monstrosity is beaten out with adaptability and flexibility.

Ideally Devuan should aim to draw both disgruntled developers who have been shunned by systemd and users likewise (more users, more visibility; more visibility, more developers), and Refracta is definitely enabling that. I wouldn't be here without it, as ISO creation kits are notoriously difficult to find or use, and Refracta is one of the better designed ones I've seen so far. Sure, I could learn to build an OS from scratch but the complexities involved consume vast amounts of time, and why reinvent the wheel?

Anyway, getting off-topic there, for current purposes King-Pigeon does what it needs to (regarding Devuan ISO deployment choice), just wanted to answer the queries of why I didn't do things a particular way. Believe me, I prefer easier routes, I usually only divert via scenic if the easy route isn't easy or isn't available.

Last edited by JoshuaFlynn (2017-10-03 22:42:22)

golinux · 2017-10-03 23:36:59

JoshuaFlynn wrote:

greenjeans wrote:
I kept thinking about this project yesterday, and it struck me that the very detailed listings in that script would be perfect for a live-sdk "blend" file too, that may be something to look at.
I've never heard of a live-sdk blend file before, could you tell me more about it?

Simple Distro Kit (SDK) is a Devuan thing. There's a lot of info on the devuan.org site.

greenjeans · 2017-10-04 19:21:20

golinux wrote:

JoshuaFlynn wrote:
greenjeans wrote:
I kept thinking about this project yesterday, and it struck me that the very detailed listings in that script would be perfect for a live-sdk "blend" file too, that may be something to look at.
I've never heard of a live-sdk blend file before, could you tell me more about it?
Simple Distro Kit (SDK) is a Devuan thing. There's a lot on info on the devuan.org site.

Yep, and still in development though it works now, here's the link to Fsmithred's tutorial: https://dev1galaxy.org/viewtopic.php?id=551

In short, it's a semi-automated live-build system for rolling your own distro/iso. Blend files are similar to your script in that they list packages/programs to be installed on the iso, as well as customizations to be applied.

JoshuaFlynn · 2017-10-05 00:39:56

I think it's certainly another tool to add and look into. I'll eyeball that at a later stage.

As a status update:
In the meantime I'm redesigning the github script deployment system because github is no friend to non-empty directories (which is a nightmare if you need to update files without trashing useful ones), and their command structure gets messy and problematic, so I'm building a 'Download-Github.sh' script whose sole purpose is to download from, as you guessed, github.

Because I want to follow a 'keep it simple' approach, this script will become a central focus point. So instead of downloading a specific Blueprint script, you'd run this, which it will then download all of the Blueprints locally (it basically calls... itself). Eventually I'd like to make it into a User Interface where the script, when first run, asks you what blueprint or module you want to deploy.

As a result of this major github change, all of the scripts are being internally rewritten to call through this, so bear with me.

(This is what testing is for!)

JoshuaFlynn · 2017-10-05 04:48:02

greenjeans wrote:

4. File-roller? Gonna drag in a lot of gnome crap isn't it? Maybe some nasty gtk3? I would try Engrampa, same thing but more Mate-ish than Gnome-ish.

Bad news my friend.

I did a dependency check in King-Pigeon ASCII comparing Engrampa and File-roller:

Engrampa:

engrampa
  Depends: bzip2
  Depends: caja-common
  Depends: engrampa-common
  Depends: gzip
  Depends: p7zip-full
  Depends: tar
  Depends: libatk1.0-0
  Depends: libc6
  Depends: libcairo-gobject2
  Depends: libcairo2
  Depends: libcaja-extension1
  Depends: libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0
  Depends: libglib2.0-0
  Depends: libgtk-3-0
  Depends: libjson-glib-1.0-0
  Depends: libmagic1
  Depends: libpango-1.0-0
  Depends: libpangocairo-1.0-0
  Breaks: engrampa-common
  Recommends: gvfs
  Recommends: mate-icon-theme
  Recommends: unzip
  Recommends: xz-utils
  Recommends: zip
  Suggests: arj
  Suggests: binutils
  Suggests: cpio
  Suggests: <lha>
    jlha-utils
    lhasa
  Suggests: lzip
  Suggests: lzma
    xz-utils
  Suggests: lzop
  Suggests: ncompress
  Suggests: rar
  Suggests: rpm2cpio
  Suggests: rzip
  Suggests: sharutils
  Suggests: unace
  Suggests: unalz
 |Suggests: unrar-free
 |Suggests: unar
 |Suggests: unrar
  Suggests: p7zip-rar
  Suggests: zoo

File-roller:

file-roller
  Depends: bzip2
  Depends: p7zip-full
 |Depends: dconf-gsettings-backend
  Depends: <gsettings-backend>
    gconf-gsettings-backend
    dconf-gsettings-backend
  Depends: libarchive13
  Depends: libc6
  Depends: libcairo2
  Depends: libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0
  Depends: libglib2.0-0
  Depends: libgtk-3-0
  Depends: libjson-glib-1.0-0
  Depends: libmagic1
  Depends: libnotify4
  Depends: libpango-1.0-0
  Recommends: gvfs
  Recommends: yelp
  Suggests: arj
  Suggests: <lha>
    jlha-utils
    lhasa
  Suggests: lzip
  Suggests: lzma
    xz-utils
  Suggests: lzop
  Suggests: ncompress
  Suggests: rpm2cpio
  Suggests: rzip
  Suggests: sharutils
  Suggests: unace
  Suggests: unalz
  Suggests: unar
  Suggests: unzip
  Suggests: xz-utils
  Suggests: zip
  Suggests: zoo

Both pull in libgtk-3-0 as a dependency.

I'll have to eyeball some other archiver at some point.

Edit, forgot to mention:

Good news for everyone:
The standalone Upgrade-to-ASCII.sh works on King-Pigeon (Jessie). However at present it requires manual input, and seems to take an extremely long time. It (the upgrade) also installs a couple of unwanted extras (EG gnome-screenshot), however I will build custom scripts for King-Pigeon etc to remove that.

Last edited by JoshuaFlynn (2017-10-05 04:53:18)

JoshuaFlynn · 2017-10-05 17:06:30

Github and Linux really don't want to play nice when it comes to copying a large number of files to a pre-existing destination (which is, of course, preventing the Modules system from being able to pull in updates).

A lot of sites suggest the usage of rsync, but from what I recall of my systemd contamination investigation, rsync indirectly had hovering references (will need to double-check that) to libraries that indirectly pointed to systemd. Naturally, if I want King-Pigeon to be systemd-free, I got to avoid relying on items and services that might pull in systemd or it's relatives.

So naturally, I wrote my own bash script that does a recursive copy (available under HelperScripts if anyone is interested in using it). Yes, it handles notorious newlines and 'bizarro characters' in filenames, and calls itself again if it encounters a new directory, passing additional arguments.

It also prints the data quite nicely (or at least I think so). Even returns colour codes for success/failure of the copy event:

Those of you on different colour terminal backgrounds (IE white, bright green, etc) will be pleased to know that the background of the coloured characters should be black (regardless of terminal background colours), so it should remain ideally visible even on differently coloured terminals.

Script is a bit hacky in that the print characters (the nice spacing you're seeing) is passed as an argument so it can recursively stack, but without doing super complex code, there's no straight way of solving it.

Query:

Is there some way to pass a subset of supplied terminal arguments to another bash script that is dynamic in numbers?

It'd be really useful if the Recursive-Copy script became a generic 'run this command' Recursive-Command type script where the command to run is passed to the script itself along with any arguments to said command. Lots of useful possibilities. Also sounds kinda tacky.

Further edit:

For anyone wondering about the functionality of Download-Github.sh, it switches mode. If Modules doesn't already exist, it simply uses a mv command (less expensive), which means first time it's run it shouldn't need Recursive-Copy.sh to deploy Modules. Subsequent calls will do, but Recursive-Copy.sh should be included in Modules by then. If not, simply delete the directory (and report the bug).

Last edited by JoshuaFlynn (2017-10-05 17:13:51)

JoshuaFlynn · 2017-10-05 17:41:53

King-Pigeon ASCII upgrade has a couple of issues (seems to be with the dist-upgrade process? Unclear):

There's no LXDE shutdown or reboot option (terminal also doesn't acknowledge shutdown or reboot as commands.) [edit: using VM to send a shutdown signal results in nothing happening. Does the dist-upgrade pull across all appropriate options, or has this been disabled due to systemd madness?]:

There's no internet connectivity (ping successfully reaches targets specified as IPs, but dig, with URLs does not: does the ASCII dist-upgrade correctly set the DNS?):

Also, minor visual error in King-Pigeon logout image isn't present but that issue is my end.

For clarification: These issues do not exist in the Jessie King-Pigeon conversion, and only appear after a dist-upgrade is executed.

Last edited by JoshuaFlynn (2017-10-05 17:49:03)

JoshuaFlynn · 2017-10-05 18:50:30

Folks who want an easier way of obtaining the Download-Github.sh script (without using a browser), run the following in bash:

curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/JoshuaFlynn/Modules/master/Download-Github.sh > Download-Github.sh

Or, if you just want to get the Modules system to immediately download (and not leave a Download-Github.sh hanging):

curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Joshu … -Github.sh | bash

Above pipe command does not work (unless the first command has been run), apologies.

Last edited by JoshuaFlynn (2017-10-05 21:17:03)

darry1966 · 2017-10-06 08:52:35

JoshuaFlynn]King-Pigeon ASCII upgrade has a couple of issues (seems to be with the dist-upgrade process? Unclear):

There's no LXDE shutdown or reboot option (terminal also doesn't acknowledge shutdown or reboot as commands.) [edit: using VM to send a shutdown signal results in nothing happening. Does the dist-upgrade pull across all appropriate options, or has this been disabled due to systemd madness?]:

Same issue with my ASCII Refracta install using nox 9 version - have to logout and shutdown from lightdm.

Last edited by darry1966 (2017-10-06 08:53:28)

fsmithred · 2017-10-06 11:29:53

For shutdown and reboot, check that you have consolekit, policykit-1, libpam-ck-connector, and maybe policykit-1-gnome. Maybe something else, too, and that might depend on what desktop you're using.

For dns, I just set it in my router. To set it in the system, you can put it in /etc/resolv.conf (nameserver) or /etc/dhcp/dhclient.conf (prepend domain-name-servers) or /etc/network/interfaces.

JoshuaFlynn · 2017-10-07 02:48:25

darry1966 wrote:

Same issue with my ASCII Refracta install using nox 9 version - have to logout and shutdown from lightdm.

Thanks for the confirm.

fsmithred wrote:

For shutdown and reboot, check that you have consolekit, policykit-1, libpam-ck-connector, and maybe policykit-1-gnome. Maybe something else, too, and that might depend on what desktop you're using.
For dns, I just set it in my router. To set it in the system, you can put it in /etc/resolv.conf (nameserver) or /etc/dhcp/dhclient.conf (prepend domain-name-servers) or /etc/network/interfaces.

Thank you for the troubleshoot advice, I'll try that out on my next ASCII upgrade test. I vaguely recall someone building a CK/PK1 independent shutdown into LXDE who had encountered a similar issue (which was pretty barebones but it worked). Can't recall where I saw it though.

I've got DNS set in my router, but the OS wasn't referencing it for some reason (it's what my normal machine uses).

DNS configuration information should be useful, will have to devise a list of DNS services for users to choose from, perhaps even region specific.

Man, I keep adding more and more to my plate.

fsmithred · 2017-10-07 19:14:06

JoshuaFlynn wrote:

Man, I keep adding more and more to my plate.

Been doing it for six years here, and it never seems to end. And whatever install or upgrade scripts you make for jessie to ascii, there will be things that break in them when it's time to go ascii to beowulf. I'm not trying to discourage you. Just letting you know what to expect so you won't get discouraged when it happens.

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#1 2017-09-30 15:40:49

Early doors: King-Pigeon series and friends [AKA Modular Linux]

#2 2017-10-01 10:06:54

Re: Early doors: King-Pigeon series and friends [AKA Modular Linux]

#3 2017-10-01 20:15:48

Re: Early doors: King-Pigeon series and friends [AKA Modular Linux]

#4 2017-10-01 21:18:49

Re: Early doors: King-Pigeon series and friends [AKA Modular Linux]

#5 2017-10-01 22:24:30

Re: Early doors: King-Pigeon series and friends [AKA Modular Linux]

#6 2017-10-03 03:15:42

Re: Early doors: King-Pigeon series and friends [AKA Modular Linux]

#7 2017-10-03 04:46:58

Re: Early doors: King-Pigeon series and friends [AKA Modular Linux]

#8 2017-10-03 05:01:29

Re: Early doors: King-Pigeon series and friends [AKA Modular Linux]

#9 2017-10-03 05:33:13

Re: Early doors: King-Pigeon series and friends [AKA Modular Linux]

#10 2017-10-03 05:39:39

Re: Early doors: King-Pigeon series and friends [AKA Modular Linux]

#11 2017-10-03 19:02:28

Re: Early doors: King-Pigeon series and friends [AKA Modular Linux]

#12 2017-10-03 21:07:03

Re: Early doors: King-Pigeon series and friends [AKA Modular Linux]

#13 2017-10-03 22:39:13

Re: Early doors: King-Pigeon series and friends [AKA Modular Linux]

#14 2017-10-03 23:36:59

Re: Early doors: King-Pigeon series and friends [AKA Modular Linux]

#15 2017-10-04 19:21:20

Re: Early doors: King-Pigeon series and friends [AKA Modular Linux]

#16 2017-10-05 00:39:56

Re: Early doors: King-Pigeon series and friends [AKA Modular Linux]

#17 2017-10-05 04:48:02

Re: Early doors: King-Pigeon series and friends [AKA Modular Linux]

#18 2017-10-05 17:06:30

Re: Early doors: King-Pigeon series and friends [AKA Modular Linux]

#19 2017-10-05 17:41:53

Re: Early doors: King-Pigeon series and friends [AKA Modular Linux]

#20 2017-10-05 18:50:30

Re: Early doors: King-Pigeon series and friends [AKA Modular Linux]

#21 2017-10-06 08:52:35

Re: Early doors: King-Pigeon series and friends [AKA Modular Linux]

#22 2017-10-06 11:29:53

Re: Early doors: King-Pigeon series and friends [AKA Modular Linux]

#23 2017-10-07 02:48:25

Re: Early doors: King-Pigeon series and friends [AKA Modular Linux]

#24 2017-10-07 19:14:06

Re: Early doors: King-Pigeon series and friends [AKA Modular Linux]

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