Progress, useful test build/boot notes & TODO

To: Debian Live <debian-live@lists.debian.org>

Subject: Progress, useful test build/boot notes & TODO

From: Ben Armstrong <synrg@sanctuary.nslug.ns.ca>

Date: Tue, 24 Nov 2015 21:58:08 -0400

Message-id: <[🔎] 565515B0.7070907@sanctuary.nslug.ns.ca>

I wrote on my blog today about getting re-involved, what we've been doing lately, some notes about test building and booting official live images, and a pointer to the TODO on the wiki Iain wrote and I've added some items to. I hope this is useful/inspiring to users and developers alike. http://syn.theti.ca/2015/11/24/debian-live-after-debian-live/ Debian Live After Debian Live Get involved After this happened[0], my next step was to get re-involved in Debian Live to help it carry on after the loss of Daniel. Here’s a quick update on some team progress, notes that could help people building Stretch images right now, and what to expect next. Team progress * Iain uploaded live-config[1], incorporating an important fix, #bc8914bc[2], that prevented images from booting. * I want to get live-images ready for an upload, including #8f234605[3] to fix wrong config/bootloaders that prevented images from building. Test build notes * As always, build Stretch images with latest live-build from Sid (i.e. 5.x). * Build Stretch images, not Sid, as there’s less of a chance of dependency issues spoiling the build, and that’s the default anyway. * To make build iterations faster, make sure the config is modified to not build source & not include installer (edit auto/config before ‘lb config’) and use an apt caching proxy. * Don’t forget to inject fixed packages (e.g. live-config) into each config. Use apt pinning as per live-manual, or drop the debs into config/packages.chroot. Test boot notes * Use kvm, giving it enough ram (-m 1024 works for me). * For gnome-desktop and kde-desktop, use -vga qxl, or else the desktop will crash and restart repeatedly. * When using qxl, edit boot params to add qxl.modeset=1 (workaround for #779515[4], which will be fixed in kernel >= 4.3). * My gnome image test was spoiled by #802929[5]. The mouse doesn’t work (pointer moves, but no buttons work). Waiting on a new kernel to fix this. This is a test environment related bug only, i.e. should work fine on hardware. (Test pending.) * The Stretch standard, lxde-desktop, cinnamon-desktop, xfce-desktop, and gnome-desktop images all built and booted fine (except for the gnome issue noted above). * The Stretch kde-desktop and mate-desktop images are next on my list to test, along with Jessie images. * I’ve only tested on the standard and lxde-desktop images that if the installer is included, booting from the Install boot menu option starts the installer (i.e. didn’t do an actual install). Coming soon See the TODO[6] in the wiki. We’re knocking these off steadily. It will be faster with more people helping (hint, hint). 0. http://syn.theti.ca/2015/11/09/the-passing-of-debian-live/ 1. https://tracker.debian.org/news/727349 2. http://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/debian-live/live-config.git/commit/?id=bc8914bccdbf10c60ec647678ec68672fc031f63 3. http://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/debian-live/live-images.git/commit/?h=debian-next&id=8f23460506cf1cf426350d8ab98a873a55badbc9 4. https://bugs.debian.org/779515 5. https://bugs.debian.org/802929 6. https://wiki.debian.org/DebianLive/TODO Ben