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Tag: live (Page 10 of 12)

New ISO images for Slackware Live Edition (beta 7)

March 16, 2016 / / 104 Comments

blueSW-64pxI finished the compilation of new KDE 5_16.03 packages (64-bit) and that was a good point to stamp a new version on the liveslak scripts and build Live ISO images based on liveslak-0.7.0. This update of the Live ISOs is using Slackware64-current dated “Mon Mar 14 02:18:20 UTC 2016” as the base.

In the meantime the upload of the new ISO images for Slackware Live Edition, release “0.7.0” to slackware.uk has completed.

As always, I encourage new readers to visit my previous articles on Slackware Live Edition for more background information.

What’s new in 0.7.0?

I could not spare as much time as for the previous betas (work comes first because it pays for food and shelter). So the new ISO images are primarily meant to be a showcase of both Slackware -current and the new Plasma 5 version. Still, there are a few things to mention.

  • The scope of the boot parameter “livemedia” has been extended. It will now also accept an ISO file (containing Slackware Live Edition of course) as parameter value, so that you can more easily test a freshly downloaded ISO without having to copy it to a USB stick or burn it to a DVD first. It’s use is quite versatile:
    • “livemedia=/dev/sdX1:/path/to/live.iso” points to an ISO file on partition “/dev/sdX1”.
    • “livemedia=DATA:/path/to/liveslak.iso” points to an ISO file on a filesystem with label “DATA”.
    • “livemedia=”7550954e-3d40-4e46-ae91-d02dce1d52a4:/your/live.iso” points to an ISO file on a partition with a specific UUID.
  • A new boot parameter “nga” was added. It stands for “no glamor acceleration” and should be useful on hardware (including QEMU virtual hardware) where X.Org refuses to start with the error “EGL_MESA_drm_image required; (EE) modeset(0): glamor initialization failed“. It adds a file to /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/ to disable glamor 2D acceleration, something which used to be off by default and since X.Org 1.18 seems to be on by default.
  • The “setup2hd” hard disk installer was polished a little bit.
  • A wiki-fied version of the README.txt documentation was added to the Slackware Documentation Project. See http://docs.slackware.com/slackware:liveslak.
  • Documentation on how to customize the Live Edition for your own Slackware derivative was added. This is a work in progress – I still need to separate the syslinux and grub theming from the menu content.
  • Lots of small improvements and bug fixes were applied to liveslak. Check out the commit log if you are interested.

Download the ISO images

I have created ISO images for the SLACKWARE, XFCE, PLASMA5 and MATE flavours using the latest Slackware64-current packages available (Mon Mar 14 02:18:20 UTC 2016) as well as the latest Plasma 5 release  which I yet have to upload to ‘ktown‘… you will see it first on Slackware Live Edition!

You can find the ISO images plus their MD5 checksum and GPG signature at any of the following locations – look in the “0.7.0” subdirectory for ISOs based on the liveslak-0.7.0 scripts. I made a symlink called “latest” which will always point to the latest set of ISO images:

These mirror servers will sync up in the next 24 hours – slackware.uk is already uptodate.

Good to know when you boot the ISO

Slackware Live Edition knows 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.
Note: the “su” and “sudo” commands will want the ‘live’ user’s password!

Slackware Live Edition is able to boot both on BIOS-based computers (where syslinux takes care of the boot menu) and UEFI systems (where grub builds the boot menu, which looks quite similar to the syslinux menu):

slackwarelive-0.4.0_syslinux

Let me know if you are creating a custom Live distro based on liveslak. I may be able to help with scripting adjustments if necessary. There’s a reboot of FluxFlux by Manfred Müller using these scripts for instance.

Have fun! Eric

Beta 6 for my Live ISO images

February 25, 2016 / / 57 Comments

blueSW-64pxYesterday  I uploaded new ISO images for Slackware Live Edition, release “0.6.0“. Then I waited a bit before writing this article to allow the mirrors to catch up with the 8 GB of new files.

Check out my previous articles about Slackware Live Edition for more background information and read the README.txt file provided with the “liveslak” sources to get a grasp on a more technical level of how this all works.

What’s new in 0.6.0?

Still working towards a stable 1.0 release, I think I am mostly there feature-wise and I would like to see bug reports so that I can be sure that a future stable release is going to be enjoyed by everyone – seasoned or aspiring Slackware user alike. If I am not at version 1.0 by the time Slackware 14.2 is released, that event will trigger a Live Edition v1.0 for sure! But we’ll get there before Pat 🙂

The persistent USB variant of Slackware Live is what most people are probably going to use. But the ISO on DVD or a read-only stick is just as awesome, because that variant will be particularly interesting for people who are demo-ing Slackware (because they are new to Slackware or because they want to see how slackware-current performs). For this new beta, I have focused on fixing all the small bugs I ran into, but here are some of the highlights in terms of new functionality:

  • You can now use an encrypted container file to store persistent data. The “iso2usb.sh” script was extended with a new “-C” parameter that allows you to specify a size for this LUKS container file, quite similar to what you already could do for a LUKS encrypted homedirectory. The data on your persistent USB Live will be safe from people who steal the stick from you.
  • A hard disk installer was added to all Live variants except the minimal XFCE. As far as I am concerned, the XFCE version is nice to run as a small Live OS but unsuited for hard disk installation. This works straight from the DVD, and also in USB versions.
    You will be able to install the latest Slackware64-current, or the Plasma5 or Mate version to your computer’s hard drive, in the background while you are working/playing in your Live Desktop.
    From within the Live environment (either at the console or in an X terminal in your running Desktop Environment) you can call “setup2hd” which will guide you. The script is a modified Slackware setup as known from the official install media, but it has already made the choice of package SOURCE for you. Note that you are responsible for partitioning your hard drive before you call “setup2hd”. This aspect is no different from the regular Slackware installer.
    The “setup2hd” script will install all the active Live modules to your hard drive (this encompasses all “system” modules, and furthermore including modules in addons/” and “optional/” which you enabled).
  • Documentation was added. A README.txt file contains all the details of using the Live Edition, as well as technical background on how the liveslak scripts do their work.
  • Customizing the Live Edition has been made easier. You are no longer tied to the choice of “SLACKWARE”, “PLASMA5”, “KDE4”, “XFCE”, “MATE” or “CINNAMON” when generating a new ISO variant. A “custom” variant with its own custom name and custom post-install configuration is now also possible.

Download the ISO images

I have created ISO images for the SLACKWARE, XFCE, PLASMA5 and MATE flavours using the latest Slackware64-current packages available (Tue Feb 23 19:31:59 UTC 2016) as well as latest Plasma 5 and Mate releases.

You can find the ISO images plus their MD5 checksum and GPG signature at any of the following locations – look in the “0.6.0” subdirectory for ISOs based on the liveslak-0.6.0 scripts. I made a symlink called “latest” which will always point to the latest set of ISO images:

These mirror servers should have synchronized by now.

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 (note: “su” and “sudo” will want the live password!).

The ISOs are able to boot both on BIOS-based computers (where syslinux takes care of the boot menu) and UEFI systems (where grub builds the boot menu, which looks quite similar to the syslinux menu):

slackwarelive-0.4.0_syslinux

Have fun! Eric

Slackware Live Edition – on its way to 1.0?

February 6, 2016 / / 89 Comments

blueSW-64pxLast week the second Beta of the upcoming Slackware 14.2 was released. My goal was to have a new Beta of my liveslak ready by that time, so that I could provide new ISO images to test the Slackware Beta2 on a live medium. Unfortunately, there was an attack of the flu in my team at work and things got a bit busier than usual. There was a plus side to this: some last moment bug fixes which could be applied to my scripts – the result of having more evenings available to test. Therefore the new release is not labeled “0.5.0” but “0.5.1”

Check out my previous articles about Beta1 Beta2 Beta3 and Beta4 releases for these scripts, they contain a lot of background about the reasons for creating “yet another” Live version of Slackware. The articles contain instructions on the use of the Live ISO images and their boot parameters and I am not going to repeat all of them here.

What’s new in 0.5.1?

My releases are meant to accomplish something I think is essential to my Live Edition. When I reach 1.0 it means that no essential functionality is missing, and that the features I am going to add later on are “nice to have”. I think that that liveslak is mostly complete at this point, but it is lacking proper documentation – the last thing to do before 1.0.

One of the essential properties of the USB variant of a Live Distribution is that it should be able to store your changes and make them persistent across reboots. In the 0.4.0 release, I added a LUKS encrypted homedirectory and earlier on, I implemented OS persistence by writing changes to a directory “persistence” in the root of the Linux partition of the Live USB drive. Some people will rather want to be able to use a FAT/NTFS formatted USB stick because that allows them easier data transfers to and from non-Linux computers. So my Beta5 adds an alternative persistence method: writing the changes to a loop-mounted container file instead. That file is called “persistence.img” and should be in the root of the Live partition. The “iso2usb.sh” script takes care of creating the persistence and LUKS container files, the process of transforming the ISO into a practical USB Live OS is straight-forward and simple.

Adding my Slackware Live Edition to a FAT formatted drive is an exercise I will leave to the reader, but in theory this should now be possible.

Some more noteworthy updates in 0.5.0:

  • The Compose Key for german keyboards is now Scroll Lock instead of Right-Alt (aka Alt-Gr).
  • A “toram” boot parameter allows you to run the Live OS completely in RAM (you can remove the bootable Live medium after boot).
  • A “blacklist” parameter allows you to blacklist kernel module(s) that prevent a properly functioning environment (like “nouveau” does with some new hardware).
  • The XDM graphical login for the XFCE variant was extended with a “console” button which allows you to effortlessly drop to a console (runlevel 3).

Download the ISO images

I have created ISO images for the SLACKWARE, XFCE, PLASMA5 and MATE flavours using the latest Slackware64-current packages available today (Slackware 14.2 Beta 2).

You can find the ISO images plus their MD5 checksum and GPG signature at any of the following locations – look in the “0.5.1” subdirectory for ISOs based on the liveslak-0.5.1 scripts:

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 (note: “su” and “sudo” will want the live password!).

The ISOs are able to boot both on BIOS-based computers (where syslinux takes care of the boot menu) and UEFI systems (where grub builds the boot menu, which looks quite similar to the syslinux menu):

slackwarelive-0.4.0_syslinux

 

How to create a persistent USB stick from the ISO?

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 because all changes to the Live OS are in fact written to your computer’s RAM.

Use the ‘iso2usb.sh‘ script to create a Live OS on the USB device with persistence.

By default, the 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. The script requires 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.

Alternatively you can use a file “persistence.img” in the root of the USB device which will be loop-mounted by the Live OS and changes to the system will be written to the filesystem inside this container file. A feature which should be appreciated by people who want to use a USB stick with a VFAT partition instead of a Linux ext4 partition. The script requires an additional parameter “-P” in this case:

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

 

Note that your USB stick 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 hard drive unless you are really not paying attention!

How to create the LUKS encrypted homedirectory container?

The iso2usb.sh script has a parameter “-c” which takes a size argument. If you want to create a 400 MB container file to hide your homedirectory in, then you need to specify “-c 400M”. If you want 2.5 GB for your homedirectory, use “-c 2.5G”. If you are not concerned so much with the exact size but want to allocate a percentage of the free space on the stick, then use “-c 40%” to create a LUKS container that uses 40% of the available free space.

Now to put that into an actual example command line which will create a file (its name will be “slhome.img” starting with the 0.5.0 release) using up 50% of the free space on the stick:

# ./iso2usb.sh -i slackware64-live-xfce-current.iso -o /dev/sdX -c 50%

When the script gets to the point where it creates the LUKS container file, it will prompt you for a passphrase which will be used for encrypting and decrypting the container’s data. Right after that, the script will prompt you to enter that passphrase again when the LUKS container is unlocked and the ISO’s /home content is copied into the container.

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
  • Memory test with memtest86+

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.

Have fun! Eric

Almost weekend again – what’s in store

February 4, 2016 / / 22 Comments

Just a quick recap of my work during the past week (well… the work that I do besides my paid-for work):

I updated my packages for calibre and chromium with new versions. I updated the set of “compat32” packages for a multilib setup on slackware64-current to match the Slackware packages contained in the new Slackware 14.2 Beta 2.

And I updated the “plasma” package set of my KDE5 (aka Plasma 5) repository on ‘ktown‘; this is also just also for slackware-current. Plasma was upgraded to 5.5.4 which is a new bugfix release.

And there is a bit more, still in the pipeline. I have stamped a “version 0.5.0” onto my liveslak scripts and I am currently in the process of generating new ISO images for my Slackware Live Edition (in full Slackware, Plasma5, Mate and slimmed-down XFCE variants).

After I upload the new ISOs I will update the git repository with liveslak-0.5.0 sources. More about that hopefully tomorrow if my testing yielded good results.

Cheers, Eric

Slackware Live Edition, updated

January 24, 2016 / / 72 Comments

blueSW-64pxDuring the past weeks I have been working on my “liveslak” scripts for the Slackware Live Edition. Check out my previous articles about Beta1 Beta2 and Beta3 releases for these scripts, they contain a lot of background about the reasons for creating yet another Slackware Live, as well as instructions on the use of the Live ISO images and their boot parameters.

I will be numbering the releases with ‘normal’ version numbers from now on, so the 4th beta release translates to “0.4.0”. The 1.0 release will contain everything I consider essential for my Slackware Live Edition. I think I am rapidly working toward that final milestone..

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

 

What’s new in 0.4.0?

As with these previous public releases, this Beta4 marks a new milestone in the functionality of the Live OS. So what’s new? A feature I consider crucial for a persistent Live OS on a USB stick that you carry around with you in your jacket pocket… data protection! Persistence of the Live OS means, the things you change or add (or delete) are stored on the USB medium and will survive a reboot. As opposed to the raw ISO image (burnt to a DVD or ‘dd’-ed to a USB stick) which is a pure Live OS where all your modifications are written to RAM and gone when you reboot.

Data protection. How do you protect the stuff you are accumulating in your live user’s homedirectory, such as passwords, confidential documents, GPG and SSH keys etc? You lose the USB stick, someone else may steal it – your sensitive files will be compromised. Therefore the Slackware Live Edition offers you the option to create a LUKS-encrypted container file in the Linux filesystem of the USB stick. The filesystem inside that encrypted container will then be mounted on the /home directory of the Live OS when it boots. The LUKS passphrase you entered when creating the container, will be prompted for during the boot-up of the Live OS. On shutdown, the container will be locked again and a potential thief of your USB stick will be unable to get to the files in the LUKS container.

But there’s more of course. Here are some other highlights:

  • Better looking Grub boot menu (UEFI computers) by letting the “make_slackware_live.sh” script generate the used fonts.
  • The X session now supports the Compose Key. Use the Right-Alt (aka Alt-Gr) key to generate composed characters (like ë, ï, é etcetera).
  • When selecting a non-US keyboard, you can toggle between that and the US keyboard layout in your X session by pressing the Shift-Alt key repeatedly.
  • On request of Pat, the SLACKWARE ISO no longer contains the Nvidia binary drivers. You’ll get a pure Slackware experience without any 3rd party software getting in the way.
  • The ALSA softvol pre-amp is no longer applied when the pulseaudio package is installed.
  • The “isohybrid” commandline in the “make_slackware_live.sh” script has been tuned so that the resulting hybrid ISO file should boot on a larger variety of computers.

Download the ISO images

I have created ISO images for the SLACKWARE, XFCE, PLASMA5 and MATE flavours using the latest Slackware64-current packages available today. That means, you  can check out the recently added PulseAudio comfortably. For the PLASMA5 variant, I used the very latest KDE-5_16.01 packages available in my ‘ktown‘ repository. Willy Sudiarto Raharjo built a fresh set of Mate packages specifically for this Live release.

You can find the ISO images plus their MD5 checksum and GPG signature at any of the following locations – look in the “0.4.0” subdirectory for ISOs based on the liveslak-0.4.0 scripts:

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 (note: “su” and “sudo” will want the live password!).

The ISOs are able to boot both on BIOS-based computers (where syslinux takes care of the boot menu) and UEFI systems (where grub builds the boot menu, which looks quite similar to the syslinux menu):

slackwarelive-0.4.0_syslinux

 

How to create a persistent USB stick from the ISO?

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 because all changes to the Live OS are in fact written to your computer’s RAM.

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. The script requires 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!

How to create the LUKS encrypted homedirectory container?

THe iso2usb.sh script has been extended with a new parameter “-c” which takes a size argument. If you want to create a 400 MB container file to hide your homedirectory in, then you need to specify “-c 400M”. If you want 2.5 GB for your homedirectory, use “-c 2.5G”. If you are not concerned so much with the exact size but want to allocate a percentage of the free space on the stick, then use “-c 40%” to create a LUKS container that uses 40% of the available free space.

Now to put that into an actual example commandline which will create a file (its name will be “slhome01.img” by default) using up 50% of the free space on the stick:

# ./iso2usb.sh -i slackware64-live-xfce-current.iso -o /dev/sdX -c 50%

When the script gets to the point where it creates the LUKS container file, it will prompt you for a passphrase which will be used for encrypting and decrypting the container’s data. Right after that, the script will prompt you to enter that passphrase again when the LUKS container is unlocked and the ISO’s /home content is copied into the container.

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
  • Memory test with memtest86+

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.

Caveats and tips

Remember that this is still a Beta! There are still some rough edges that I am aware of, and if you find others please let me know.

  • Using the Nvidia binary drivers on a persistent USB stick – once you pass the argument “load=nvidia” and your USB stick is persistent, you have to keep loading the nvidia module or else your X serssion will no longer start. If you are always going to use the USB stick on computers with supported Nvidia cards, the simplest solution is to move the file “0060-nvidia-352.63_4.4.0-current-x86_64.sxz” from “liveslak/optional/” to the “liveslak/addons/” directory so that it is loaded by default, saving you from typing “load=nvidia” every time. The ugly solution is to remove the content of the “/persistence/” directory on the Linux partition.
  • Booting a persistent USB stick with LUKS home to the “virgin condition” – suppose you screwed up somehow and the USB stick won’t work anymore. You can boot the original Live OS without all your accumulated persistent changes by adding the boot command parameter “nop” which stands for “no persistence”. That will still mount the LUKS container on the /home directory. If you want to ignore the LUKS container, and use the /home directory of the original Live OS, an additional parameter “luksvol=” must be added to the boot commandline. After logging in you can remount the Linux partition of your stick to make it writable:

    # mount -o remount,rw /mnt/livemedia

    and proceed with pruning the persistence directory “/mnt/livemedia/persistence” and/or fixing the LUKS container file “/mnt/livemedia/slhome01.img“.

Happy hacking! Eric

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