My thoughts on Slackware, life and everything

Beta3 of Slackware Live Edition is available

blueSW-64pxIt took me a while to get to a level where I could do another public update of my “liveslak” scripts for the Slackware Live Edition. The previous two articles about the Live OS generated quite some feedback and I think I was able to address a lot of those remarks and suggestions in the updated code. My TODO has however only shrunk with one item…

A “Beta3” is what we have now. My milestone for emitting a new Beta was to have a working UEFI boot. And I hope I managed that. Works here… for what it’s worth.

What is Slackware Live Edition?

Please read the previous two articles, “Slackware Live Edition” and “Beta 2” to get a better understanding and so that I do not have to repeat myself too much 🙂

Update 06-jan-2016: please continue reading and commenting in my follow-up article on “Beta 5“.

We’re talking about a “live OS” here, which you can run off a CDROM, a DVD or a USB stick and does not have to be installed to a computer hard drive. You can carry the USB stick version with you in your pocket. You’ll have a pre-configured Slackware OS up & running in a minute wherever you can get your hands on a computer with a USB port. The USB version is “persistent” meaning that the OS stores your updates on the stick. The CD/DVD versions (and the USB stick if you configure it accordingly) run without persistence, which means that all the changes you make to the OS are lost on reboot.

I created “Slackware Live Edition” as a showcase for the development of Slackware. It is not meant as a generic Live Distro generator – it will only support the latest slackware-current. A tool to satisfy your curiosity!

The main script “make_slackware_live.sh” creates an ISO from scratch. The script installs Slackware packages or package sets into compressed “squashfs” modules, configures and optimizes the target filesystem to be run as a Live environment, and then generates an initial ramdisk that will assemble the Live environment when you boot. All that is put into a bootable ISO image file. Thanks to Linux kernel 4.x and the squashfs-tools package added to Slackware-current, the process requires no compilation nor does it need non-standard packages to create a Slackware Live Edition (of course, the Plasma, Mate and Cinnamon flavours do require 3rd party packages). The downside is that the ISO has to be created on Slackware-current (older versions of Slackware do not have the proper tools). It follows that the only Slackware release which is supported as a Live Edition is the “-current” development tree. All future releases will be supported too of course.

The “liveslak” scripts can generate a variety of Slackware flavors. The default script action is to create an ISO from scratch that will give you a complete 64bit Slackware-current Live Edition. The scripts can also create a 700 MB slimmed-down XFCE version with XDM as the graphical login manager which fits on a CDROM medium or a 1 GB USB stick; and for my own enjoyment (as well as yours I may hope) it can create a 3.0 GB ISO image of Slackware64-current but containing Plasma 5 instead of KDE 4, as well as an addition of several other packages I maintain: vlc, libreoffice, calibre, qbittorrent, ffmpeg, chromium, openjdk, veracrypt.

Since Beta 2 the scripts are also capable of generating a Mate and a Cinnamon flavour of Slackware (replacing Slackware’s KDE 4) courtesy of Willy Sudiarto Raharjo’s repositories.

slackwarelive_syslinux_beta2

How to create a persistent USB stick?

The ISO can be burnt to a DVD or copied to USB stick using ‘dd’ or just plain ‘cp’, but that will give you a read-only medium where all changes to the Live OS happen in RAM. You can use the ‘iso2usb.sh‘ script to create a Live OS on the USB device with persistence. Changes you make while running Slackware Live will then be preserved across reboots because the OS will write all these changes to the directory “persistence” in the root of the USB device. Typically you would run the script with an input and an output parameter at a minimum:

# ./iso2usb.sh -i ~/Download/slackware64-live-current.iso -o /dev/sdX

… where /dev/sdX is the device name of your USB stick which will get formatted – erasing all data currently stored on it. The iso2usb.sh script will pause to show you the characteristics of the target device and ask you once more if you really want to continue erasing it. You will not easily destroy your harddrive unless you are really not paying attention!

Booting the Live OS

When you boot Slackware Live on a BIOS computer, Syslinux will handle the boot and show the following menu:

  • Start (SLACKWARE | PLASMA5 | XFCE | MATE) Live (depending on which of the ISOs you boot)
  • Non-US Keyboard selection
  • Non-US Language selection
  • Memory test with memtest86+

You can select a keyboard mapping that matches your computer’s. And/or boot Slackware in another language than US English. You will probably want to change the timezone; syslinux allows you to edit the boot commandline by pressing <TAB> because the syslinux bootmenu does not offer you a selection of timezones.

On UEFI computers, GRUB2 handles the boot and it will show a menu similar (and similarly themed) as the Syslinux menu:

  • Start (SLACKWARE | PLASMA5 | XFCE | MATE) Live (depending on which of the ISOs you boot)
  • Non-US Keyboard selection
  • Non-US Language selection
  • Non-US Timezone selection
  • Detect/boot any installed operating system
  • Memory test with memtest86+

Grub understands variables, which simplified the creation of the menu greatly and allowed me to add a timezone selection menu. Editing a Grub menu is possible by pressing the ‘e’ key. After making your changes to the boot commandline, press <F10> to boot.

Another difference between Syslinux and Grub menus: in Grub you select keyboard, language and/or timezone and you’ll return to the main menu every time. You still have to select “Start Slackware Live” to boot. In the Syslinux menu, only the keyboard selection menu will return you to (apparently bot not actually) the same main menu. The non-US language selection will boot you into Slackware Live immediately without returning to the main menu. A limitation of syslinux, which could only be overcome by generating a lot more syslinux menu files than we already have.

 

Boot parameters & tweaks

You can use the following tweaks to the boot commandline:

  • 0|1|2|3|4|5|6|S|s|single (Select another runlevel to start with; the default is 4 for graphical login)
  • lang=nl_NL kbd=nl tz=Europe/Amsterdam (Example of language, keyboard and/or timezone customization)
  • nop (No persistence, i.e. boot the virgin installation in case your ‘persistence’ directory got corrupted)
  • nomodeset (Boot with kernel mode setting for graphics — needed with some machines)
  • load=nvidia (Load and configure binary Nvidia drivers that are present in some of the ISOs)
  • rootdelay=10 (Add 10 second delay to give the kernel more time to initialize USB – try this if the Live OS fails to boot)
  • hostname=aliens (Change the hostname for the OS; default hostname is “darkstar
  • livepw=”somestring” (Change the password for the ‘live’ user)
  • rootpw=”somestring” (Change the password for the ‘root’ user)
  • load=mod1[,mod2[…]] (load one or more squashfs modules that are present in the directory “/liveslack/optional”; by default none of the modules in the “optional” directory are loaded)
  • noload=mod1[,mod2[…]] (Prevent loading of one or more squashfs modules that are present in the directory “/liveslack/addons”; by default all of the modules in the “addons” directory are loaded on boot)
  • rescue (After initialization, you will be dropped in a rescue shell where you can perform lowlevel maintenance; the same happens anyway if the OS fails to boot)
  • debug (During init, pause at strategical locations while assembling the overlay filesystem and show relevant mount information)
  • swap (Allow the Live OS to activate all swap partitions it finds on the local hardware; by default, the hard drive will not be touched at all)
  • livemedia=/dev/sdX (Tell the init script which partition contains the Slackware Live OS you want to boot; this can become necessary if you have another copy of Slackware Live already installed to another drive partition)
  • livemain=directoryname (Use this if you copied the content of the ISO to a different directory than the default “liveslak” directory)

Download the ISO images

I have created ISO images for the SLACKWARE, XFCE, PLASMA5 and MATE flavours using the latest packages available today. You can find them at any of the following locations:

Please allow some time to synchronize these mirror servers.

The ISOs have two user accounts: root (with password ‘root’) and live (with password ‘live’). My advice: login as user live and use “su” or “sudo” to get root access.

Can I create an ISO myself?

Certainly! You can download my sources and have a go at it. Apart from the sources & scripts, you will need local copies of the repositories where the packages will be taken from. The Slackware and XFCE ISOs will of course need a mirror of the official Slackware64-current package tree. The Plasma5 ISO requires that you have mirrored my ‘ktown‘ repository as well as my regular SlackBuild repository. The Mate ISO depends on the Slackware mirror as well as Willy’s Mate mirror.

The git repository for the scripts can be found here: http://taper.alienbase.nl/cgit/liveslak/

A checkout of this repository can be found in http://www.slackware.com/~alien/liveslak/ and http://taper.alienbase.nl/mirrors/people/alien/liveslak/

If you wonder how I created the squashfs module (0060-nvidia-352.63_4.1.15-current-x86_64.sxz) containing the Nvidia drivers:  I used the SBo scripts for nvidia-kernel and nvidia-driver to compile two packages. I then created a temporary directory and installed the resulting nvidia-kernel, nvidia-driver packages together with Slackware’s xf86-video-nouveau-blacklist package all into that directory (using the command “installpkg –root”). Then I ran the “makemod” script with the temporary directory as first parameter and “0060-nvidia-352.63_4.1.15-current-x86_64.sxz” as the second parameter which created the .SXZ squashfs module which you find in ./graphics/. Simple!

Happy hacking! Eric

93 Comments

  1. kjhambrick

    Woo Hoo !

    What an wesome Christmas Present !

    Thank you and Merry Christmas Eric and all.

    — kjh

  2. kjhambrick

    oops

    What an awesome Christmas Present !

  3. Willy Sudiarto Raharjo

    Posting this comment on Firefox from Slackware Live Edition Beta 3 – Plasma Edition. Works great 🙂

  4. Willy Sudiarto Raharjo

    Uh oh… i just noticed a KDE bug actually
    when you select Reboot entry, there’s a problem with the translations.

  5. alienbob

    Yes I mentioned that bug with the translations in my post about KDE 5_15.12.
    There is a bug report, https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=356529 , but there is no activity. No idea if it was fixed in the Plasma 5.5.2 which I did not yet compile.

  6. Gérard Monpontet

    live-plasma5, work here 😉

    posted with.

  7. Gérard Monpontet

    plasma5

    Just little report have no time today 😉

    no shutdow reboot option on menu,

    maybe live user isn’t in power group or other……

  8. kjhambrick

    Eric —

    Posting from Plasma Beta 3 + UEFI + grub2 …

    Works great now !

    Found the UEFI Partition, grub ‘e’ command allowed me to append: 3 load=nvidia

    boot booted and took me to a console login

    logged in as root to ‘look around’ — looked good.

    startx as root worked fine — no warnings about not running X as root.

    logged in as live

    startx worked great. a little customization and here I am !

    Great work !

    Thank you and Merry Christmas !

    — kjh

  9. kjhambrick

    p.s. Before trying the UEFI + grub2 boot, I did boot via BIOS + syslinux + appended kernel parameters: 3 load=nvidia

    This worked perfectly as before.

    I am most excited about the UEFI + grub2 though.

    Excellent work !

    Thanks again.

    — kjh

  10. eyo

    Feels like Christmas. Thanks.
    Is there a suggested limit to rsync or wget for the ISOs on your mirror? I’ve the feeling it exceeds my maximum bandwidth but you never know. Cheers!

  11. alienbob

    Hi eyo – it was actually meant as a Christmas gift to Slackware community.. but I forgot to mention that in my post.
    I was in a hurry because it was late at night and I had to prepare the dough for next morning’s christmas star buns.

  12. E. Wayne Johnson

    Got the plasma version and it works very nicely. I notice that on my machine with the broadcom bluetooth hardware it has been a real pain getting bluetooth to work, but this USB version found the bluetooth hardware right away on first boot and got everything running pronto. I am running up-to-date slackware 64 current so I am surprised at this. obviously something is different…

  13. alienbob

    E. Wayne Johnson, the difference may be the bluedevil version of Plasma 5? That is a lot newer than the version which ships with Slackware’s KDE 4.

  14. kjhambrick

    yes, I also noticed with the Plasma Release that NetworkManager is at Version 10.0.10 which was only officially released on 2015-12-23.

    Nice !

    — kjh

  15. kjhambrick

    Dang ! I am bad at this !

    I meant to say NetworkManager 1.0.10, and not 10.0.10 !

  16. somename

    Hi

    Some options for make a version with Trinity desktop aka KDE-3 ???
    please ??
    I love kde 3 but i can compile in new slackware

    im folllower alll my life of slax and porteus (until backtrack 3 also based in slax)
    another live is very good and if you make the live is much better

    thaks a lot for your job you are a big human alien xD

    • somename

      I make a service menu for extract .sxz modules with mouse in kde4
      I left here if some one like to use

      the module is here: www. mirrorcreator.com /files/1BARQ0VK/

      thanks a lot again, this time with “N” xD

  17. alienbob

    Trinity Desktop support can be contributed if you like.
    What it requires is that you maintain a repository containing a full Trinity package set for Slackware64-current on an Internet server, and provide me with the list of packages to add to the Live ISO.

    What I am not going to do is compile Trinity myself – I think it is a dead end.

  18. alienbob

    Please “somename”, do not post URLs to mirrorcreator on my web site. The links lead to filesharing sites that have a not-so-good reputation and I do not want to get associated with these.
    You can use any other kind of pastebin, dropbox, or other cloud service if you want to share your files with us.

  19. somename

    very sorry i dont have time for help you in this

    kde 5 each time look more like windows, i hate windows and kde 5 reminds me, and need more resources, like windows,
    involution.

    so dead end with trinity no problem

    no options for a 32 bits version no?

    i want to read your instrucctions for make my live but i need time and eyes, maybe some day i can

    thanks alien

  20. somename

    very very sorry for the link I didn’t know
    mirrorcreator are 12 servers at time for this i use

    never more mirrorcreator again sorry

  21. alienbob

    Hi “somename”, the final goal for version 1.0 of my liveslak scripts is that you can create a 32bit Slackware Live as well. But before that point, I want to have everything working the way I want it, and because of that I am only testing on a single architecture; it saves half of my time and disk storage.
    It is funny that you mention KDE 5 looks more like Windows… I never liked KDE 3 because I thought it tried too much to be like MS Windows…
    However with KDE 4 and Plasma 5, KDE is again being unique. Remember – many desktops (not just KDE) have a task bar, an application menu and a system tray. That does not make them look like MS Windows! In fact, 25 years ago I was programming applications for Atari GEM OS, and that too had a task bar, a system tray and an application menu… did not look much like the Microsoft products though, because there was no MS Windows yet.

  22. somename

    i need to read the scripts but im not a diehard linux like you so is too hard for me understand all,
    i need work more this theme but the problem is the time and my little knowledge not the motivation

    every body know microsoft is a copy of Ibm Mac Linux Solarin Qnx and until Beos
    I believe that is windows who copied kde 3 (kde. kde2), so kde 3 is not like windows is the opposite, is only my opinion…

    you know this??
    http://linux.exton.net/
    i believe yes but if not now you know 🙂
    is a men than never stop to make live isos, slack too but with the scripts of slax

  23. david

    Hi Eric,
    thank you very much for your work!
    I’ve two questions:
    1. You wrote “Changes you make while running Slackware Live will then be preserved across reboots because the OS will write all these changes to the directory ‘persistence’ in the root of the USB device.”.
    But when beta 4 or another release will be cooked up by you, ‘persistence directory’ will be wiped by ‘iso2usb.sh’.
    Is it possible to have a directory which persists forever?
    2. Is it possible to store in a usb memory more Slackware Live versions, e.g. Plasma 5 and XFCE?
    I dream of many versions available at boot, plus a ‘persistence directory’ in which I store my data, shared between Slackware Live versions.

  24. Willy Sudiarto Raharjo

    @David: If you don’t want all those changes removed, simply upgrade the packages using slackpkg+ which was already setup in the live media. You don’t use iso2usb.sh again as that will overwrite and erase all your changes.

  25. alienbob

    Hi david

    Apparently you did not realize that the Plasma5 variant is very complete. It consists of a full Slackware (minus KDE4) topped with Plasma5. Threfore it does not just contain Plasma 5 but also XFCE, fluxbox, windowmaker and all the other Slackware environments.

    A “persistence” directory will by the way not be transferable to another Live variant. The installed filesystems are just too different. Perhaps all you want is to keep your homedirectory preserved.

    What you will get with Beta4 is an opportunity to store your $HOME in a LUKS-encrypted container file in the root of the USB stick. That single file is easily saved in another place (and copied back later) in case you want to erase the stick and put a new version of the Live ISO on it.

  26. david

    @Willy: I’ve simply not thought at this opportunity… thanks for your suggestion.

    @Eric: You’re right, as usual 🙂
    It’s the first time I download Plasma5 version and I’ve not used it… my desktop refuses to boot from usb stick. Excuse me for the trivial question.
    Glad to read the news of the upcoming Beta4 and $HOME in a LUKS-encrypted container file.

  27. alienbob

    david, do you get any errors when trying to boot from the USB stick? IS this a computer with UEFI or a BIOS? Do you have to enable anything in your BIOS perhaps?
    Do you have other computers that will boot from the USB stick?

    And lastly: did the “iso2usb.sh” script show any weird messages or errors while it was writing the USB stick?

  28. Darth Vader

    Eric, It is sad that, while I see even a MATE variant, yet there is no i586 version of your Live Edition…

  29. alienbob

    Hi Darth Vader

    As explained in this post: for the duration of the beta versions, I am focusing on 64bit only, in order to cut my work in half. Also, I will never be able to offer 32bit ISO images besides the 64bit ISO images simply because my “taper” server does not have the required disk space to hold all of them.

    By the way, someone already created a 32bit ISO from my scripts and he sent me a couple of patches to fix some lib64 paths. Those patches were added before Beta2.

  30. Last

    Hi, Eric. How are you??

    Do you still have the make_slackware_live.sh of Beta 2?
    I clean up my system and I dont have it anymore…
    I like to know whats changed,
    Thank you,

    Last.

    ps.: you know, sorry about the language 🙂

  31. alienbob

    Last: http://taper.alienbase.nl/cgit/liveslak/tree/?id=Beta2

    You can see all the changes if you read the git history.

  32. david

    Eric, excuse me for my delayed response.
    I’m using an 8 years old HP workstation xw4600, so no UEFI here.
    In the BIOS I already enabled USB boot.
    When the computer boots I only see:
    “Attempting boot from CD-ROM
    Attempting boot from USB Device
    Attempting boot from Hard Drive”
    …and Windows boots.

    The “iso2usb.sh” script completed successfully with no error messages.

    At this moment I have no other computer to try, I’ll try ASAP when holidays end… I hope never! 😉

  33. alienbob

    Hi david, unfortunately that means that I have no further options or advise to offer you. I am still interested to hear what happens with the USB stick in another computer.

  34. Willy Sudiarto Raharjo

    @David:
    Try to enter the BIOS screen once again to give the flash drive to be recognized by the motherboard. I had that problem once too, but after being delayed for few seconds, it went to Slackware Live on the next attempt

  35. Last

    Erik, I don’t know if I done the question in the best way that I can do. But I questioned if you still have the .sh file… I know that I can see the changes through the site, but I really prefer have the two .sh files and use a “diff”. But well, I can use the ctrl copy and paste and create manually the two files. I am very sorry for the inconvenience. And thank you so much by always contest me.

  36. Willy Sudiarto Raharjo

    Last: you can see the history of the file here: http://taper.alienbase.nl/cgit/liveslak/

  37. Pi

    Hi, new (mostly happy 😉 ) Slackware user here.
    It seems that starting Kalarm in xfce needs additional ~200MiB of RAM, while everything else there uses less than 300MiB (free stats), and it practically doubles the RAM usage. So is there really a need for it in xfce session (tested on Plasma5 beta3 iso)?
    TIA for the answer, and for your work.

  38. kjhambrick

    Eric —

    Another data point for Plasma Beta 3.

    My Wife’s WinDOS 7 Laptop suddenly stopped connecting to the ethernet port ( it worked fine last week ).

    Tried all kinds of stuff — turn off Laptop ( not reboot ) turn off wireless, checked drivers, etc.

    Booted from the Plasma 5 Thumb Drive with wireless turned off via the switch.

    Grub Menu worked, Slackware Live Plasma Beta 3 connected right up to ethernet ( good ole RealTec ) without messing with any settings at all.

    Rebooted Windows 7 — ethernet suddenly works again.

    Slackware Live Plasma Beta 3 ‘fixed’ Windows !

    Beta 3 is a keeper, but I can’t wait to see what’s in store for Beta 4

    Thanks again Eric.

    — kjh

  39. alienbob

    kjhambrick… now that is a weird story!
    Glad the hardware works again, but don’t ask me what happened 🙂

  40. alienbob

    Hi Pi.

    When you run an XFCE session, no KDE linraries are required so what’s loaded in memory is all XFCE related (plus the applications you may have running such as Chromium).
    When you start Kalarm, it will load the Plasma 5 base libraries which will in turn require the KDE Frameworks libraries. For that single application, these will all me added as consumed memory, which is what you noticed. However, when you start additional KDE applications, you will find that the memory usage does not keep rising because the base libraries are already loaded memory and won’t be loaded for a second time.

  41. alienbob

    Last, I do not see the problem. What’s difficult about “wget http://taper.alienbase.nl/cgit/liveslak/plain/make_slackware_live.sh?id=Beta2” to download the script?

  42. ikke

    Gelukkig Nieuwjaar!

    Just to say : nice piece of work. Thank you.

  43. Pi

    Sorry, I wasn’t precise enough. After login KAlarm starts itself automatically, and this is the problem, because it loads a whole bunch (20?) of Akonadi processes, and these are not necessary even for some other KDE programs (I checked few and none needed it), and take a lot of memory. As for the script, thanks, I will definitely use it, even for the fun of it, but I thought that others will also benefit from solving this in your original iso. Thanks once again

  44. david

    @Eric: I’ve got another computer, an HP Elitebook 8540w with UEFI, but Slackware live is not booting.
    I’ve used another usb stick, completely different from the original one I used, but the result is always the same, in both HP computer I have.

    @Willy: I’m sure that my usb sticks are recognized by the motherboard, they are listed in the boot menu when I press F9 at boot time.

    At this moment I’ve no idea what to do…

  45. alienbob

    Hi Pi

    It looks like Kalarm is auto-started even in XFCE sessions because the file “/etc/kde/xdg/autostart/kalarm.autostart.desktop” is missing the line “OnlyShowIn=KDE;”.

    I will patch that omission in my next release of the “kdepim” package which contains this file.
    Therefore the next release of the ISO should have this fixed.

  46. alienbob

    Pi, it is not that simple unfortunately. If I add “OnlyShowIn=KDE;” to the autostart file for kalarm then it will no longer start in a Plasma session either.

    If you have created a persistent USB stick then you can prevent XFCE to look for autostart files in /etc/kde/xdg/autostart by redefining the variable XDG_CONFIG_DIRS to “/etc/xdg” before you start XFCE. This variable is set to “/etc/xdg:/etc/kde/xdg” by the profile script “/etc/profile.d/kde.sh”.
    If you are using the Plasma5 Live ISO image without persistency to run XFCE sessions then you’ll have to learn to live with it unless someone else comes up with a solution.

  47. Pi

    Thank you, adding “OnlyShowIn=KDE;” works flawlessly, you just made a wrong assumption here, KAlarm doesn’t autostart in KDE even without this change (in its .desktop autostart file there’s an option ” X-KDE-autostart-condition=kalarmrc:General:AutoStart:false”, maybe it should be set to true?). Cheers

  48. alienbob

    Hi Pi.

    OK, you convinced me to add the line to the autostart desktop file in the kdepim package.

    Cheers, Eric

  49. Pi

    It was just an accident, I promise it won’t happen again 😉 Happy New (Slack)Year 🙂

  50. Robinspi

    Well, I am commenting in the right article this time. 😉

    So, I tried using my Lexar 32GB USB3 GB Flashdrive for this, and I finally got it loaded onto the flashdrive. However, I tried to boot onto it, and nothing happened. I went into the boot menu and for boot override selected “UEFI: Lexar USB Flashdrive….” Didn’t work. Nothing popped up. Just sat with a black screen. Got any tips?

  51. Niki Kovacs

    I’ve just installed the stripped-down Slackware Live Xfce to a 4 GB USB disk using the script for persistent use. Fired it up, logged in and then tweaked it to my needs by installing a few packages and defining a nice default appearance. Looks like this will replace my Slax USB stick for diagnostics and data recovery. Great work, Eric! Thanks very much!

    Happy new year!

    Niki

  52. Niki Kovacs

    Here’s a mini-bug-report on the Xfce version.

    1. Links is installed, but it lacks libevent to work properly.

    2. Similarly, slackpkg is installed, but it uses stuff from the curl package, which is missing.

    As far as I’m concerned, I would welcome the addition of the “swiss french” keyboard layout on startup, which is similar to the germand QWERTZ, but with french special characters.

    Cheers,

    Niki

  53. alienbob

    Hi Niki

    Ah, the links package prior to 23-dec-2015 had way less dependencies than the updated package of 23-dec. In particular, libevent was not a dependency of links before links-2-12. So this needs to be added.
    As for slackpkg: the default downloader is wget, not curl. Slackpkg works properly in the XFCE Live ISO, I have not found it failing yet.
    About keyboard layouts… well, I want to cater to the major languages but every new language pack adds to the size of the ISO. And I maintain hard maximum values for the XFCE and the KDE4 ISO image sizes. I’ll have to think this over.
    You can of course easily create your own ISO… especially the XFCE version generates “in no time”.

  54. Niki Kovacs

    Thanks, Eric. I wonder if the slackpkg error comes from my addition of slackpkg+, since I install the odd package from my own repo. The addition of swiss french would only be a keyboard layout, since Switzerland’s official languages are french, german and italian, already present in the ISO.

  55. Didier Spaier

    Hi Nicolas,
    currently only one console keymap is configured per language, the XkbLayout is written as the two first characters of the console keymap and no XkbVariant is set (see liveinit, lines 390 sqq). So adding swiss french would need to change that logic, I think. Whether it’s worthwhile or not is up to Eric.

  56. Niki Kovacs

    Thanks for the clarification, Didier. Anyway, it’s really no big deal, since I can always use the german layout (which I use as a second layout in my daily routine work), and once Xfce is up, open a terminal and ‘setxkbmap -layout ch -variant fr’.

  57. alienbob

    Niki, I have now split the console and X keyboard customization in my scripts and also added “deutsch (schweiz)” as well as “francais (suisse)” as localization options in the menu.
    When the next Beta is released ( want to integrate a LUKS-encrypted container file for $HOME first) you should have a go at this.

  58. Niki Kovacs

    Wow, that’s nice, Eric! Thanks very much!

    Another suggestion: add pciutils to the LiveCD. My primary use for the LiveCD will be for hardware diagnostics with lspci and the likes.

  59. Robinspi

    Well, I am commenting in the right article this time. 😉

    So, I tried using my Lexar 32GB USB3 GB Flashdrive for this, and I finally got it loaded onto the flashdrive. However, I tried to boot onto it, and nothing happened. I went into the boot menu and for boot override selected “UEFI: Lexar USB Flashdrive….” Didn’t work. Nothing popped up. Just sat with a black screen. Got any tips?

    Reposting, but does anybody have any ideas? Kinda at a loss right now…

  60. alienbob

    Robinspi, if no one answers… then no one has an answer.
    Have you tried booting with that flash drive on other computers? I am not convinced that the issue you are experiencing is something I can fix.

  61. alienbob

    Niki, pciutils (and usbutils) is already part of every Live ISO I generate.

  62. gorson

    Hello Alien. I just write to thank you for all your work, I always look this blog and slackware web site with the hope there is the official announcement slackware 15 with your kde 5 integrated. I hope that happen soon.

  63. alienbob

    gorson, there will at least be a Slackware 14.2 before there will be a Slackware 15.
    And Slackware 14.2 will not contain Plasma 5.

    • kalo86

      Hi Alien, what will be the DE for the incoming Slackware 14.2?
      I have tried all 3 betas ISO of Live Slackware but there is always a boot issue due to the new hardware maybe not recognized by the kernel.
      My laptop has a new 6th generation Intel Core i5 and I read that this processor requires at least kernel-4.3.x.
      It would be a pleasure for me (and for other people) if you could provide a new beta with a recent kernel.
      Best regards and keep up your amazing work.

      kalo86

  64. alienbob

    Hi kalo86

    The Live ISOs that I provide are a reflection of Slackware-current. The Slackware Live ISO will always have the Slackware kernel, which is 4.1.15 at the moment. If you require a newer kernel then there is nothing I can do about that. You could try writing Pat Volkerding with a request for a new kernel (4.3 or 4.4 even) in the /testing directory of Slackware-current.

    The desktop environments for the next stable Slackware are those that you can find on the slackware64-live-current.iso. Plasma 5 will not be part of Slackware 14.2.

  65. gorson

    I wanna die now…

  66. Pi

    Hi,
    I think there can be an issue with SDDM, it hangs – the clock stops ticking, and the screen doesn’t respond automatically – while choosing a different session. I have built-in NVidia card, load=nvidia doesn’t recognize it, the issue happens with nomodeset (more quickly) and without it. The end of dmesg looks like this:
    [code]
    [ 34.549130] nouveau E[ PBUS][0000:00:0d.0] MMIO write of 0x00820001 FAULT at 0x00b000
    [ 124.475130] nouveau E[ PBUS][0000:00:0d.0] MMIO write of 0x00000000 FAULT at 0x00b000
    [ 124.475658] nouveau E[ PBUS][0000:00:0d.0] MMIO write of 0x00820001 FAULT at 0x00b000
    [ 240.262833] backlighthelper[1859]: segfault at 7f398e2588e0 ip 00007f398e2588e0 sp 00007ffef6105c18 error 14 in libresolv-2.22.so[7f398e491000+17000]
    [ 273.863414] kactivitymanage[1862]: segfault at 7f512fb93390 ip 00007f512fba83b1 sp 00007ffe0a054198 error 4 in libQt5Sql.so.5.5.1[7f512fb94000+3e000]
    [ 274.043101] nouveau E[ PBUS][0000:00:0d.0] MMIO write of 0x00000000 FAULT at 0x00b000
    [ 274.043632] nouveau E[ PBUS][0000:00:0d.0] MMIO write of 0x00820001 FAULT at 0x00b000
    [/code]
    with nomodeset these two above segfaults are not present, but as I mentioned, it hangs even more quickly.
    Thanks for any suggestions.

  67. alienbob

    Pi, the computer hangs _after_ you logged in?
    Does not look like an issue with SDDM, and you can try ruling that out by adding a “3” to the boot commandline so that you end up in runlevel 3.
    Login as user “live” and use “xwmconfig” to select a DE. Then run “startx”.

    My guess is that your GPU is too old – if the nvidia driver in the ISO rejects the card that means you probably need the nvidia-legacy driver (340.xx) instead. If you can run a XFCE session successfully, and if in SDDM you select “Plasma (safe)” and are able to start that successfully, then your issue is with missing graphics support which is required for Plasma 5.

  68. Pi

    No, computer doesn’t hang (well, it hangs in Plasma5 without nomodeset, but this is not the issue here), but SDDM. When I get to the login screen (sometimes before logging in, sometimes after logging out) and click on session pull down menu, SDDM hangs – hovering over items doesn’t work, clock stops ticking, and I can’t select anything – but mouse works, and I can switch to some other console. It happens without and with nomodeset option.

  69. alienbob

    Ah I understand now, Pi.
    Yes I noticed the same thing: sometimes when clicking the session dropdown, the screen stops refreshing. But actually the UI still works, so if you click your mouse in the login entry field and enter username & password and then press ENTER, you will get logged in to a working Plasma 5 desktop.
    This is a SDDM issue indeed.

  70. Pi

    OK, thanks 🙂

  71. alienbob

    Actually SDDM devs think it is Qt5, and show a way of dealing with this: https://github.com/sddm/sddm/issues/575
    I will try tonight if “export QT_XCB_FORCE_SOFTWARE_OPENGL=1” does indeed help.

  72. IamReal

    Hello alienbob,

    Ian Murdock – Debian mourns the passing of Ian Murdock

    http://www.osnews.com/story/29025/Debian_mourns_the_passing_of_Ian_Murdock

    Just remember that one of the Slackware success, was the Debian disput against Slackware.

    One driving the other.

    Would be awesome see a note from you, Slackware creaters and Developers, congratulating everything that Murdock contributed to the advance that we have today.

  73. Pi

    Some more info: I put an old NVidia card with OpenGL 2.0 support (proprietary driver doesn’t recognize it), and it seems to work ok, at least in default configuration. With nomodeset computer hangs (blank screen, keyboard doesn’t respond) completely after logging out, and dmesg shows the same segfaults as before.

  74. alienbob

    IamReal – I have no history with either Murdock or Debian, and I am not going to be hypocrite and mourn someone I do not know.

    Also, please do not pollute this article with stories about how he came to his end, as all of that is just speculation. Further comments will be moderated.

  75. Rptx

    Wow! Thank you very much. I’m posting this from my new Live Slackware. Finally I can take it everywhere with me. As a note. gdisk emits a warning if your partition overlaps the last sectors of the drive. Taking into account that it will be zeroed and repartitioned. I suppose it can safely be ignored, and a little note saying this won’t hurt.

  76. kalo86

    Hi Alien, is there any OTA for a new beta of Slackware Live? I read the last post on your blog whee you said that there is a new LTS kernel 4.4.0. This is a great news because this new recent kernel will allow a lot of people to run Slackware Live on machines with new hardware (for example my laptop with 6th generation Intel i5 6200).
    I hope to read your replay soon.
    Best regards,

    kalo86

  77. alienbob

    Hi kalo86

    First priority is to finish a 64bit build of the latest Plasma 5. Then I will create some Live ISO images using latest -current:
    – to see if the changes package collection still yields a XFCE ISO that will fit on a CDROM
    – to see if Plasma 5 works properly with the latest -current and with the Nvidia drivers.

    Then I will add my staged code for enabling a LUKS encrypted /home to the USB version of the Slackware Live Edition. Once I have tested that that works, I will release a new Beta. The Beta4 will actually get a version number, “0.4”.

    Hopefully all of that is done before the end of next week because then I am required to travel to the US (San Diego) for a week of “work all day, drink all night”. Not much Slackware-related work will come out of my hands during that time.

    So, anyone in San Diego who wants to drink a beer with me at Stone or Karl Strauss, let me know.

  78. Pi

    Hi,
    I still have this SDDM refreshing problem, so it’s not caused by OpenGL I think (the card I test now belongs to NV50 family, and supports OpenGL up to 2.1).
    Also some other issue, some directory icons in Dolphin doesn’t show up in Xfce (those plain ones, without any picture on the folder).
    Cheers

  79. Kriss

    Hello!
    I took the liberty of adding “toram” option (theoretically it loads modules to ram first) for personal use and made it so modules can be loaded from subdirectories.
    It looks like this if anyone interested:
    https://cbkoin.ru:450/uploads/Files/init.before
    https://cbkoin.ru:450/uploads/Files/init.after
    https://cbkoin.ru:450/uploads/Files/init.diff
    https://cbkoin.ru:450/uploads/Files/initrd.img

    Initrd also contains vgadetect code that I took directly from fanthom’s linuxrc, but it’s not working yet…

  80. alienbob

    Hi Kriss,

    Can not connect to those URLs from within the corporate firewall so I cannot check what you did.
    However, a copy2ram option is nice to have when the total amount of data is fairly small (like with the Porteus or SLAX ISO). Try copying the Slackware or Plasma5 modules to RAM and you’ll either exhaust your RAM or have to wait half an hour to see your desktop… so I am not going to add the “copy2ram” option soon.
    I may implement it after version 1.0 for people who are interested in having it included.

  81. RW

    alienbob > “Try copying the Slackware or Plasma5 modules to RAM and you’ll either exhaust your RAM or have to wait half an hour to see your desktop”

    Reading with 30MB/s from a usb-2.0, doesn`t take a 1/2 hour 🙂

    RW

  82. Silly Little User

    Slackware Live Edition Beta3

    ISO: slackware64-live-xfce-current.iso
    Runlevel: 4
    Malfunction: unable to login with ‘Non-US Keyboard selection’
    Workaround: http://pastebin.com/Ad203e3B

  83. alienbob

    Hi,

    I do not understand how a Caps Lock key would help in logging in. Can you please explain.
    My liveinit script is already a lot different than the published version (working toward a new Beta) so I may already have addressed your isue.
    I have pushed my updates to the public git repository so you can have a look: http://taper.alienbase.nl/cgit/liveslak/tree/liveinit

  84. Silly Little User

    Hello!
    Thanks for Slackware Live Edition.

    Using Caps Lock as switch key is optional. It depends on the user preference.
    New liveinit works as expected. Left Alt + Shift allows to switch languages.

  85. alienbob

    Good!
    This weekend I hope to release my next Beta which will include a LUKS-encrypted /home as an option for the persistent USB version. It will include all the updates which you already can find in the git repository.

  86. kjhambrick

    Woo Hoo !

    Great news !

    I can’t tell from the git commits …

    Will Beta 0.3.8 also include the Mass Updates from a couple weeks ago and then the PulseAudio Updates ?

    Thanks again Eric.

    — kjh( a happy Slackware Live Plasma User )

  87. alienbob

    When I release the new set of ISO files (hopefully this weekend) they will be based on the Slackware Live Edition 0.4.0 scripts (aka Beta4) and they will be using the very latest Slackware-current (including PA).
    The PLASMA5 variant will ship with the KDE-5_16.01 which I will be releasing later today.

    Note that the version of Slackware Live Edition does not tell you anything about the version of Slackware which is used to create the ISOs… The Live version number will tell you what functionality the Live ISO will offer.

    When Slackware 14.2 gets released, I will create an ISO image for that – my target is to be at Slackware Live Edition 1.0.0 when that happens.

    The “1.0.0” meaning that I have implemented everything I consider essential for my Live OS.

  88. Peter

    Big thank you for xfce beta 4. I am running it on an asus loptop that identifies as a U80A (year 2009). I am writing because the the iso2usb i downloaded to my phone (motoG) then used mtp- getfile is the contents of the web page showing the iso2usb script not a text file containing the script. Suggestions?
    My phone has internet, laptop does not.
    Live boots & runs ok. It boots from the card reader if I push the card into the reader Right after power up. Does not power off on shut down.
    Mplayer figured out the hd audio but not hd video. I must experiment w/ video driver.

    Again thank you for beta 4. I look forward to setting up encryption and working thorough my configuration issues.

  89. alienbob

    Peter, can you download the script properly when using the URL http://www.slackware.com/~alien/liveslak/iso2usb.sh ?

    • Peter

      Yes. Thank you. Let the fun begin.

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