Not much news of late about my ‘liveslak‘ scripts. I occasionally tweak them but the modifications these days are fairly minor. I stamped a new version on the repository this week: liveslak 1.1.8 on the occasion that I wanted to generate and upload a fresh series of Slackware-current based Live ISO images. After all, liveslak is meant to be a showcase of what Slackware-current is all about, and with the recent updates to kernel, gcc, glibc and more, a refresh was more than welcome.
The Slackware Live Edition ISOs are based on liveslak 1.1.8 and Slackware-current dated “Tue May 9 23:33:37 UTC 2017“.
If you already use a Slackware Live USB stick that you do not want to re-format, you should use the “-r” parameter to the “iso2usb.sh” script. The “-r” or refresh parameter allows you to refresh the liveslak files on your USB stick without touching your custom content.
New in the ISOs
The new ISOs are based on the latest slackware-current with Linux kernel 4.9.27, gcc 7.1.0 and glibc 2.25.
The SLACKWARE variant contains exactly that: the latest slackware-current and nothing else. Ideal for testing and for checking out the status of its development.
The XFCE variant contains a stripped down Slackware with a minimalized package set but still quite functional. The small size is also accomplished by excluding all documentation and man pages, and the localizations for the languages that are not supported in the boot menu. This ISO is small enough that you can burn it to a ’80 minutes’ CDROM (700 MB).
The MATE variant (a Slackware OS with KDE 4 replaced by Mate) contains packages from the repository at http://slackware.uk/msb/current/ which is Mate 1.18.
The PLASMA5 variant (Slackware with KDE 4 replaced by Plasma 5) comes with the latest Plasma 5 release “KDE-5_17.05” as found in my ktown repository. Additionally you will find several packages from my regular repository: chromium (with flash and widevine plugins), vlc, ffmpeg, libreoffice, palemoon, qbittorrent, openjdk and more. This ISO also contains the LXQT and Lumina Desktop Environments. Both are light-weight DE’s based on Qt5 so they look nice & shiny.
The liveslak scripts support three more variants out of the box: CINNAMON, DLACKWARE and STUDIOWARE. There’s no ISO image for the Cinnamon and Dlackware variants this time. The Studioware variant is new, and you will find the download location for an ISO further down (in the “Download the ISO images” section).
What happened between liveslak 1.1.6 and 1.1.8
- A boot-time tweak ‘nsh’ was added so that you can disable freetype’s new sub-pixel hinting if you are no fan of how the fonts look in slackware-current by default now.
- I ensured that the XFCE ISO will again fit on a CDROM medium. Apparently the recent updates in Slackware cause packages to swell up. This reduction in ISO size required the sacrifice of quite a few packages (many X bitmap fonts, the TTF Sazanami font, the XFCE weather plugin, and GhostScript).
- Studioware was added as a supported Live variant. From their web site: “Studioware is a project aimed at providing build scripts and packages of the best open source audio, video and photo editing software available for Slackware Linux.“
- The liveslak scripts will now download everything they need, including a local copy of the Slackware package tree if that’s missing.
Download the ISO images
This time, the ISO variants I uploaded for Slackware Live Edition are: SLACKWARE (64bit & 32bit), XFCE (64bit & 32bit), PLASMA5, MATE. These ISO images (with MD5 checksum and GPG signature) have been uploaded to the master server (bear) and should be available on the mirror servers within the next 24 hours.
- Primary location: http://bear.alienbase.nl/mirrors/slackware-live/ (rsync://bear.alienbase.nl/mirrors/slackware-live/)
- Darren’s mirror (also fast!): http://slackware.uk/people/alien-slacklive/ (rsync://slackware.uk/people/alien-slacklive/)
- Willy’s mirror: http://repo.ukdw.ac.id/slackware-live/
- Shasta’s mirror: http://ftp.slackware.pl/pub/slackware-live/ (rsync://ftp.slackware.pl/slackware-live/)
- Tonus’s mirror: http://ftp.lip6.fr/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/people/alien-slacklive/
There is another Slackware Live ISO, but it is not hosted by me – I simply do not have the free space for it. It’s the STUDIOWARE Live ISO and you can find it at http://studioware.org/iso.php . It’s filled with many audio, video and photography manipulation applications and you should definitely give it a try!
Read more about liveslak
This blog has quite some posts about the Slackware Live Edition. Check them out: http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/tag/live/ – they contain lots of insight and helpful tips.
And this was the original post (which has been edited later on so it could become a proper landing page for curious visitors): http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/slackware-live-edition/
Download liveslak sources
The liveslak project can be found in my git repository: http://bear.alienbase.nl/cgit/liveslak/ . That’s all you need to create a Slackware Live ISO from scratch. Documentation for end users and for Live OS developers is available in the Slack Docs Wiki.
Have fun! Eric
Would it be possible to allow the persistence to be stored inside a file next to the iso?
So in ${SUPERMNT}/${PERSISTENCE}.img rather then in /mnt/media/${PERSISTENCE}.img?
lleroy, I think that should be doable.
The ${SUPERMNT} is currently always mounted read-only (for security) so I would have to add an option to mount the partition r/w instead.
I’m seeing the signature for slackware64-live-plasma5-current.iso fail.
The MD5 checksum is okay and signatures for other files work. Is there something wrong with that file?
Peter, you are correct, something is amiss with these GPG signatures. No idea what happened but I have re-generated the .asc files for all of the ISOs and uploaded them a few minutes ago.
I having trouble (still) with your liveslak: on my Dell Latitude e7440, with default boot on your plasma5 and current iso:
1. boots ok off of internal sdcard reader but then fails to find rootdev for any rootdelay. missing module?
2. booting via a USB port works to login screen (or ruhnlevel 3) but keyboard prints gibberish. (grun boot menu kb entry is ok) The Dell has a touch screen. USB boots of 14.2 have worked ok but those were not your live isos.
Both iso boot normally via USB on an Asus x200CA laptop w/ touch screen.
Ed, missing modules? Could be. if you boot into a regular working Slackware installation and run “lsmod” you should compare the loaded modules with those that I add to liveslak: http://bear.alienbase.nl/cgit/liveslak/tree/make_slackware_live.sh?h=1.1.8#n199
If you find out what’s missing I will add whatever is needed.
As for the keyboard not printing the characters correctly – does the text you type get recognized as valid when you press enter, despite the garbled output? Is it a keyboard driver that’s causing this? Are you using the default ‘US’ keyboard mapping?
update: The internal sd card reader will boot and load the slackware14.2 installer with huge.s ok. lsblk gives /dev/mmcblk0 and /dev/mmcblk0p1. I am note sure but I might need modules mmc_block, mmc_core?
Eric,
No the text is just random and is not recognized as valid. I asume from your info that us kb is default, i.e, I just hit to boot.
(I’ll check on module list – doing too may tasks at once atm and didn’t refresh browser).
The only module I can see missing/not loading is mmc_block. The MSI netbook fails like the Dell booting the sd card (no rootdev) but once booted via USB I see mmc_core loaded but not mmc_block. Inserting a sd card yields /dev/sdX not /dev/mmcblkX
The only other bootable USB I have are slackware-14.2 installer (and pxe boot) and hard drives which don’t seem to use mmc_block to boot an sd card, only mmc_core.
Both the ASUS and MSI netbooks don’t have the kb issue – only the Dell. weird.
Ed, indeed Slackware’s initrd comes with mmc-block, but Slackware Live does not have it. I’ve added ‘mmc-block’ to the list of kernel modules to add to the Live initrd, thanks for your feedback. Next release of Live ISOs will have it in.
Or, at the next public update of Slackware-current you will find a new Live ISO of it here within 24 hours: http://bear.alienbase.nl/mirrors/slackware/slackware-live/slackware64-current-live/
Since that ISO is generated using the latest git release of ‘liveslak’, it will have the mmc-block module included.
Ed, I wonder what modules are needed to support that Dell keyboard. In the list of loaded modules, what ‘hid’ related modules do you see (lsmod |grep hid)?
Hello,
I’m using YUMI to manage all my live linux/tools/windows systems.
I managed to make it boot by changing sysconfig.cfg to point to the correct kernel location but then i have another error after the boot starts:
SLACKWARELIVE: No Live Media Fount – Try rootdelay=20
Am i close to solving this? i tried adding a boot parameter “root=../” or “root=”.” to match the liveslak folder but no dice.
Roger, no idea what YUMI is, so I can not help you right now. If you find a solution, let me know. If there is anything I need to change in liveslak to make it work (better) with YUMI, you can tell me how.
Hello again,
YUMI ( Your Universal Multiboot Installer ) by https://www.pendrivelinux.com/
I managed to make it work by moving the liveslak folder to the root directory of the pendrive, leaving the boot and kernels inside the MultiBoot folder that YUMI creates.
YUMI have its own boot manager where you can select the system you want to boot, idk how they make other Linux versions boot from this MULTIBOOT folder with no problem.
=============
Quickly to finish: About a month ago i had an issue on my Installed Slackware where after some update the network manager would loop between connecting and disconnecting from my wired connection. (1/5 second loop). After troubleshoting i solved by setting IPV6 on the connection settings to IGNORE and just forgot about it.
Now that i booted on this live slackware the same thing happend, i assume i need to report my network hardware and network manager version in the slackware official page.
Eric, I’m stumped. An external USB kb worked fine; I can’t seem to see what is missing. The Dell boots fine off USB and DVD but not off the sdcard slot (using the newer iso build as discussed above). The kb is broken when booting grub UEFI (the only choice on liveslak usb or sdcard). Legacy boot results in ‘bad partition table’.
When I boot the any DVD from grub UEFI, the kb is broken but via legacy boot all works as expected.
I added the iso liveslack legacy partition to my PXE server per your slackdoc instructions. It booted fine to CLI (what happened to gui dm?) and logged in as ‘live’ then startx. KDE is up and its all functional.
I’ll keep poking away at it. Any thoughts?