GUI installer

[snowkeld]

i have gotten remastersys to work on debian unstable (sid) by holding back a few dependencies to squeeze versions

the included installer does not make me a user account, it creates a group but no account and does not allow me to create the system to use sudo by default, this can be changed after install easily and you can make a user account through command line.

i've been looking for a good GUI installer, something user friendly like the LMDE installer.

the debian live(gui) and LMDE installers hang at install and do nothing when i use them on my system.

if anyone knows of a good installer or maybe a fix for any of the above that would be amazing.

if anyone is interested i'm making a debian unstable distro with XFCE and a few ports from ubuntu to make things look better.
debian multimedia is included as well as good wifi and graphics support.

[fragadelic]

If you can take a look at the installer which is written in bash and try the commands manually for the user creation it would be a big help if you posted the results. I could provide you with an interim fix based on the output you provide.

[snowkeld]

currently i am in the middle of trying to force ubiquity to work on debian unstable, if it fails then i will take another look at the provided remastersys debian installer and try and provide you with the info.

[fragadelic]

The live systems are completely different so I don't think you will be able to do that.  Also remember that the Ubuntu devs are also the debian devs so if it was possible they would have already done it.  Good luck just the same.  If you manage it I will be interested in including it in remastersys.

[snowkeld]

well, so far i have made some progress.

it seems almost all my problems now are stemming from initramfs-tools package, whether i use debian or ubuntu versions it usually causes kernel panic in the live system and a few other smaller problems.

i'll keep working. but i will say that it seems that the ubuntu version of remastersys works perfectly although ubiquity still does not.

i will give detailed info after i do more work on it. the whole thing is broken and doesnt work right the way it is even though most parts do work.


i've also done a lot of reading on the whole thing. from the mouth of one of the debian and ubuntu devs the real reason it is not included is the amount of work for it to be fully compatible and the standards that debian needs to conform to. he also said that it would work given that you make a ubuntu/debian mix system that is not purely debian in backends.
i would provide the link but idk where it is..

[snowkeld]

an update on my work.

ubiquity could potentially be made to work but i have given up because the only way i can see to make a stable system using it you have one of two options, either build a repository for it as a new distribution (either in addition to debian unstable marked as priority or entirely as its own), or not include ANY sources and leave it as a frozen system.
the reason i gave up is because of the number of packages this affects, including the kernel. pinning the whole dependency tree to keep a working system would hold too many packages back from upgrade.

moving on.

mepis installer looks VERY nice, although i am concerned about using qt backends.

my next attempt will be utilizing the LMDE (Linux Mint Debian edition) live installer, i have tried this once before but i think it is worth looking into again. it is built to run as similarly to ubiquity as possible yet based on the debian installer for use in debian testing.

[fragadelic]

Last time I checked LMDE did their own live setup so their installer won't work for a regular debian live install.  AFAIK this hasn't changed.

[snowkeld]

it might have to be mepis then, your installer worked good for me on my most recent test but when i enter no password for root the system DID use sudo, but my first user account was NOT added to the sudoers list. this was on a debian stable install.

i am now doing more tests and less changes in between, i've had to start from scratch too many times.

kind of off topic for this post but it will help all the remastersys users that run in testing or unstable. you should mark remastersys dependencies as version specific (newer than, older than v0.1.x). i do think there are enough users out there to make this an easy thing to do. just a simple test on package versions then have it marked to depend on the versions that work correctly. then apt will just tell the user the problems and what packages must be downgraded or installed from an older repo.

[fragadelic]

Sudo is not typically used in Debian.  It is normally manually setup by the user if they require.

With that said, I have to look at the latest release and see if that is still the case.

The goal of the installer is to create a regular debian install of the live system.

[snowkeld]

an update of my work

mepis software is not open source, so when the meps installer didnt "just work" i moved on.

i have spent many tiring hours editing the live-installer package from LMDE

you where right, they use a different live setup, so its been a hard task making it work.


i have figured out why the user account refuses to be made, you need to "mount --bind / /target" directly due to some new security protocol chroot is denied certain privileges, like chpssswd.

i will attach an archive containing 2 binary files when i am finished with my work. should be less than a week.
the archive will contain live-installer.deb and inxi.deb

i will make the GUI generic as well, that way it will be easier for others to integrate it into their own systems.

[fragadelic]

That is great investigative work.  Thanks for the tip about the chroot.  I plan on looking at it this weekend.

If you do get the gui working I may include it but it also has to be able to work in cli mode without a gui for it to be included.

I'm currently working on a qt frontend for remastersys and when I get that done I should be ready to release a totally revamped remastersys for debian.  I might put out an update in the interim as it may take me a while to iron all the bugs out of the qt frontend.

[snowkeld]

great news.

i dont think it will work without the GUI at all. its in python, and i dont think they have any built in command to run only from command line. i run live-installer from root terminal emulator so i can watch the output.

also, the new GUI for ubuntu remastersys is awsome, great work. i will be very pleased if you release a gtk version like that for debian.

also, maybe if you could separate remastersys and the remastersys installer into 2 packages.

[fragadelic]

I can't take credit for the gtk gui in the ubuntu version.  It is the remastersys-gtk frontend app incorporated and included with a few tweaks by me.  It was made by Krasimir Stefanov with input from me on the new features I included in remastersys.  I'm working on the qt one myself though.

[mdmarmer]

I looked at this in the past but lately I have not had much time. It's pretty easy to get remastersys, including the installer, working in the Debian testing branch.  I have not tried unstable or ubuntu.  The Mepis installer source code is available here https://github.com/MEPIS-Community/MEPIS-Installer (Warren uses Apache license 2.0, not GPL, but it is open source).
Another possibility is the acritox installer used in Kanotix.  It is open source but I don't have a current link. If you can't find it you can probably talk to Kano or acritox on IRC.
You may not want to use the latest xorg as it doesn't work with many old video cards.
Here's the link to my latest .iso (a couple months old, Debian testing with LXDE)
wget -Nc http://arnoweb.net/canabix/canabix.iso -- full version 1.2GB  There is a lite (CD size) version on the same link but it is even older and needs to be updated (minor GRUB problems).  
UserID is "canabix", password is "live".  To get root type "sudo su"

-- Mike

[fragadelic]

I will be putting out an updated package prior to having the qt frontend and new installer completed.

I prefer to use bash/zenity/dialog or bash/yad/dialog or python/pyqt/pygtk/urwid to maintain cli compatibility but I will be separating the gui installers from the main package.

When all is said and done there will be 3 packages for debian:
remastersys - this is the main app with cli installer
remastersys-frontend-gtk - gtk frontend with gtk installer
remastersys-frontend-qt - qt frontend with qt installer

I have no timeline on the split and updates as I'm the only one working on it but the regular updated package will be released hopefully in a week or so.

Eventually I may be making remastersys in python rather than bash as some things are easier to do in python.

[snowkeld]

thank you for the info mdmarmer. the linux mint debian installer is definitely the best one from the perspective of a new user (very easy to use GUI) although it uses gparted to edit partitions and there is no automatic disk format option at all, something that helps in ubuntu/ubiquity installer.

thank you for the info frag, i'm looking forward to seeing the release.



back to previous discussion, adding the user account with installer.

forget what i said about the "mount --bind /target" it doesnt work, i posted that in the middle of trying to figure it out, and my advice, dont try yourself it fooled me a little bit.

this is how i got it to work.
       

Code:

            os.system("chroot /target/ mkdir /home")
            os.system("chroot /target/ useradd -s /bin/bash -c %s -G sudo -m %s" % (setup.real_name, setup.username))
            newusers = open("/target/tmp/newusers.conf", "w")
            newusers.write("%s:%s" % (setup.username, setup.password1))
            newusers.close()
            do_chroot = open("/target/tmp/do_chroot.conf", "w")
            do_chroot.write("cat /tmp/newusers.conf | chpasswd")
            do_chroot.close()
            os.system("cat /target/tmp/do_chroot.conf | chroot /target")
            os.system("chroot /target/ rm -rf /tmp/newusers.conf")
            os.system("chroot /target/ rm -rf /tmp/do_chroot.conf")

if you run

Code:

os.system("chroot /target/ cat /tmp.newusers.conf | chpasswd")

the result is an error having to do with PAM, i have the output for this error saved on another machine or i would post it precisely.
i dont exactly know why my fix above works, but i figured out that if i "chroot /taget/" then run chpasswd it worked, so i tested it with one line "chroot /target/ cat xx.conf | chpasswd" and i got the pam error, so i made the installer chroot, then run the command.

also, to note, \n for new line did not work. i googled it and found some bug reports for python.



now that i have officially made this installer work correctly i will go back through all the included files and package my own .deb to be as generic as possible (take all mention of linux mint out, save for the copy write of course which i will just add a line saying modified by me.)

[fragadelic]

Just make sure not to remove the copyright info or you'll be in violation of the gpl.

I will hopefully get to do some testing tomorrow.

[snowkeld]

>disregard this post

[fragadelic]

live-installer.deb link is bad.

Why would it use inxi?  That thing is meant to put your sys info up on irc?  Are the mint folks gathering data about users systems with their installer?

[snowkeld]

good question, i'm going to look into it.

and when i was working on my sourceforge project my girlfriend distracted me and i clicked remove on my user for admin of project !!! it didnt even ask to verify!!!

so i will figure something out and upload again later.

[snowkeld]

ok.

recompiled. this download link should stay good.

inxi is no longer a dependency.

i have not tested with this change, but all should be fine. (just made the change and i have to leave for work now)

installer may error at end of install with grub-check, its a false error, just force quit the program, the install should have worked perfectly. i need to take a deeper look at the grub check code so it says it installed correctly when it does.

link: http://sourceforge.net/projects/imagine-linux/files/live-installer_12.02.b2_all.deb/download

[fragadelic]

Can you also put up your package that had inxi included?  I'm curious as to what they were using it for.  It can be used locally to get info about the system so I'd like to see the python code they used and what they got from it.

[snowkeld]

i only removed inxi as a dependency. the code is the same and i have not looked at it yet myself.
so that version would show you any info.

[fragadelic]

I just checked the code.  It uses it to check for drives in the gtk_interface.py file - line 589.

[snowkeld]

i was in a rush, when you said what you did about inxi, given the definition you gave for it i thought "oh, lets not use that" figured no harm to just not use it.

i just got home from work and ran a test, inxi is needed or you cannot see your hd partitions to install on the GUI. so i am now removing the version i posted last and this new link is a working version that requires inxi (as before)

live-installer

inxi

edit: anyone willing to help make this installer better could possibly start with the grub check. code is located near the end of /usr/bin/live-installer/installer.py

[snowkeld]

GOOD NEWS!

i have publicly released my first live image.

imagine-linux_12-02_dev2.iso

[snowkeld]

the previous link i gave has an issue with the live-installer, i forget to edit one line that causes failure. i have already fixed the issue and uploaded a new image.

instead of linking to the new image it may be best to just give the sourceforge project page.

Imagine-Linux

[fragadelic]

I am going to take a look at this quite closely and there is a good chance it will be included if it works as it should.  Great job.

[fragadelic]

You should add the inxi as a dep for the live-installer if it truly is a dep as it isn't ojne right now on the b2 package.

[snowkeld]

OOPS.

ok, i will do that for my next upload release.

i should note that currently the version that is up is meant for any pure debian using GDM3, my distro uses GDM (2) it is only one line and can be easily changed to point to either package, the next upload i do i will likely make 2 versions for this, i have not decided if i will adopt GDM3 into my distro yet/ever, and since most people use it i should have a version of the live installer made for it.

the changes i have made to the live installer are technically minor, just point this operation somewhere else kind of stuff due to the differences in live config.

user and password creation are the biggest changes of course, mostly what this whole thread has been about.
___________

if ANYONE can help me i have a couple things left to do with the live installer.

1: grub check fails at end of install even when it should not, this does not affect the install, but live-installer sits idle at this point and needs a force quit. i should be able to figure this part out, i dont want to simply remove the grub check from the installer because it serves a very important function.

2: i very much want either another page to the GUI or maybe added to the grub page (advanced config page) for installation of "other" software, i want to use this section in my distro for libreoffice, GIMP, and nonfree software like kernel modules and wireless firmware.
it would be very beneficial to use the config file for the text in the GUI and which packages to install for easy use by others.