Remastersys 3.0.0 for debian wheezy needs testing

[fragadelic]

If you are feeling adventurous and want to help me test the new remastersys for debian wheezy, please try this new package.  You will also need the yad package for your arch.

Some notable changes from previously released version of remastersys for debian and this also applies to the squueze version that will be released simultaneously.

-Installer and regular gui has been ported to yad instead of zenity making it much better.
-a log has been added to the installer that will collect information that will help me troubleshoot and fix issues
-all progress bars will not have buttons to close or cancel now
-If you have plymouth installed it will work on live by leaving the splash boot option. If you do not, the splash boot option will be removed
-tools added to the remastersys-gui - change the menu background for the live boot, change the menu background for grub, copy your user settings to /etc/skel, create a simple plymouth theme and make it the default, clear out /etc/skel, view the remastersys.log
-Live Installer icon will show up on the desktop of the live user now
-the live installer menu item will not be removed as the installer is also capable of copying your real install over to another partition - this is handy if you bought a new hard drive and have too much to make a live iso.  You will be able to copy your real system over to the other partition as if it were the live system
-many further tweaks to the base remastersys code to produce a cleaner iso
-added the ability to set squashfs options in the config file and gui
-remastersys grub restore tool is included as well as the remastersys usb startup disk tool
-added option for showing the install icon on the live desktop
-split off the gui from the base package
-reduced creation time by having the squashfs build in 1 step now
-added option to install grub on the mbr of the root partition - ie. if you install it on a usb hard drive, etc
-added option to use grub for the live boot - thanks to geaplanet for the base code

IMPORTANT NOTE - do not use the 686-rt kernel as it is unable to boot the live system

Post feedback here.

Uploaded new deb file for remastersys.  Check the timestamp on the edit.


***************Check this post http://www.remastersys.com/forums/index.php?topic=2511.msg16942#msg16942 for instructions on how to add the new signed repo for remastersys for wheezy******************

The newest package is only available now from the repo.

[lahirdenganselamat]

Just download it and try on my LMDE KDE tracking Debian Testing..
installation of remastersys require additional 8 package, the GUI version wont work, after selecting dist option, and click OK, it always says that the ISO done. Now I'm running

Code:

sudo remastersys dist

. I'll edit this post when it finished

It finished!
The ISO boot nicely on virtualbox, but it want to login to my previous username, after I close that window, it autologin to live user. I think it have something to do with autologin like before, but its fine

here's my inxi on virtualbox and I attach the log.

Code:

System:    Host: live Kernel: 3.2.0-2-amd64 x86_64 (64 bit, gcc: 4.6.3)
           Desktop: KDE 4.8.4 (Qt 4.8.2) Distro: Linux Mint Debian Edition
Machine:   System: innotek product: VirtualBox version: 1.2
           Mobo: N/A model: N/A Bios: innotek version: VirtualBox date: 12/01/2006
CPU:       Single core AMD E-350 (-UP-) cache: 512 KB flags: (lm nx sse sse2 sse3 ssse3) bmips: 3194.16 clocked at 1597.084 MHz
Graphics:  Card: InnoTek Systemberatung VirtualBox Graphics Adapter bus-ID: 00:02.0
           X.Org: 1.12.1.902 drivers: ati,vboxvideo (unloaded: fbdev,vesa) Resolution: 800x600@60.0hz
           GLX Renderer: Gallium 0.4 on llvmpipe (LLVM 0x209) GLX Version: 2.1 Mesa 8.0.3 Direct Rendering: Yes
Audio:     Card: Intel 82801AA AC'97 Audio Controller driver: snd_intel8x0 ports: d100 d200 bus-ID: 00:05.0
           Sound: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture ver: 1.0.24
Network:   Card: Intel 82540EM Gigabit Ethernet Controller driver: e1000 ver: 7.3.21-k8-NAPI port: d010 bus-ID: 00:03.0
           IF: eth0 state: up speed: 1000 Mbps duplex: full mac: 08:00:27:c8:c7:cb
Drives:    HDD Total Size: 8.6GB (-) 1: id: /dev/sda model: VBOX_HARDDISK size: 8.6GB temp: 0C
Partition: ID: / size: 502M used: 131M (27%) fs: rootfs
Sensors:   None detected - is lm-sensors installed and configured?
Info:      Processes: 132 Uptime: 3 min Memory: 425.3/1003.0MB Runlevel: 2 Gcc sys: 4.7.1 Client: Shell inxi: 1.8.14

one more thing, when I remaster, remastersys not connecting to the internet to download some package (and thats really great)

[fragadelic]

Make sure to install the suggested packages as they are required for the gui.  I only make them suggested as remastersys for debian can run fully in cli mode and my installer will work in cli mode as well but if you want the gui you need to install all of the suggested packages.  You are missing xterm.

[fragadelic]

Remastersys for debian doesn't need to go to the internet for anything as I created the installer and it is included so there is nothing else needed.

[lahirdenganselamat]

I only make them suggested as remastersys for debian can run fully in cli mode and my installer will work in cli mode as well but if you want the gui you need to install all of the suggested packages.  You are missing xterm.

Cool but I think if you put GUI shortcut on the menu, you should make them as dependency (the GUI depend on that package right?). Its great on CLI, but I think it's better if you add addition note on the GUI, something like "you have to install suggested package to make this work, or else, just use CLI"

[fragadelic]

lol - you obviously didn't check the description of the package before you installed it.

Go into synaptic and check the description for the remastersys package - says very clearly there that you should install the suggested packages if you want the gui.

Description: Debian system remaster
 This script creates a livecd of the installed system.
 You can either make a distributable livecd or backup of your system.
 If you want the gui frontend and installer make sure to install the suggested
 packages as well.
 For more information, please visit http://www.remastersys.com

[fragadelic]

I just uploaded a new remastersys package with quite a few bug fixes and some new features.

Check the first post in this thread for the package.

[lahirdenganselamat]

lol - you obviously didn't check the description of the package before you installed it.

lol.. my bad I usually install using dpkg -i then apt-get install the error package..

[Yogibaer]

hi all,

I just want want to report on the wheezy-remastersys together with linuxmint lmde 1204.  After installing remastersys and yad I was able to create the live.iso which is bootable. Trying now to install the created iso back in virtualbox I used the live-installer icon. All is fine, but at the point where the live-installer wants to have a swap-partition is curious for me. Linuxmint had installed the swap partition in front of the / partition and the live-installer is not able to handle that. No way to get tje iso installed. After creating the partitions in the right sequence all is fine. I just wanted to report that, perhaps there is a possibility that the installer could handle the switched partitions as well.

Greetz
Yogibaer

[fragadelic]

That is curious.  There are several issues with virtual box on debian and ubuntu lately.

The installer looks at the fdisk output for swap partitions and lists all the ones found.  If they aren't being shown there are 2 possibilities - somehow they weren't properly created as swap partitions in the first place or virtual box is not showing them properly on the virtual hard drive.

Please post the /var/log/remastersys-installer.log from your install after remaster so I can see what the installer saw.

[Yogibaer]

I have to go through the process install linuxmint, install remastersys and yad and after that I will post the specific logfile. Perhaps it was an unreproducible software object (USO) but we will see.
Keep you posted.
Greetz
Yogibaer

[fragadelic]

You don't have to do it all over again.  I added a log for the installer so I can see a bunch of things so all you have to do is boot into the virtual box install and copy the /var/log/remastersys-installer.log from there.

[geaplanet]

Hi, I run remastersys-gui and I clic on Backup mode. After the warning it says all process has finished ¿?

This is the messages of terminal:

ls: no se puede acceder a /home/remastersys/remastersys/ISOTMP/live/filesystem.squashfs: No existe el fichero o el directorio
/usr/bin/remastersys-gui: línea 125: [: : se esperaba una expresión entera

(my system is in spanish, sorry)

It says that the file filesystem.squashfs doen't exist.

In the remastersys-gui line 125 you can find a function that try to access to filesystem.squashfs before it has been created. It could be the problem.

[kikiburo2]

remastersys dist works fine
live mode - perfect

but have one issue - after installing dist to harddrive there is no users at gdm3, which i make with remastersys-installer. And i can't login with my name and password

i will try to delete some files from etc\skel and make dist at second time

P.S. and little question about installer - why i can't use the same password for sudo and user? (never use remastersys-installer before)

[fragadelic]

It is a very bad practice to use the same password for the normal user and root..

[fragadelic]

Hi, I run remastersys-gui and I clic on Backup mode. After the warning it says all process has finished ¿?

This is the messages of terminal:

ls: no se puede acceder a /home/remastersys/remastersys/ISOTMP/live/filesystem.squashfs: No existe el fichero o el directorio
/usr/bin/remastersys-gui: línea 125: [: : se esperaba una expresión entera

(my system is in spanish, sorry)

It says that the file filesystem.squashfs doen't exist.

In the remastersys-gui line 125 you can find a function that try to access to filesystem.squashfs before it has been created. It could be the problem.

Good catch.  I see the problem.

Change line 120 from:

Code:

xterm -fn 9x15 -e "$TITLETEXT"

to:

Code:

xterm -fn 9x15 -e "remastersys backup"

[Yogibaer]

switching back to the linuxmint-problem. I think I made something wrong. Not reproducible so keep the problem as solved. Most probably I was not used to the installer and I missunderstood the words wruitten there. The second install with the swap in front of sda1 worked pretty cool so it was an USO:

The error in the GUI I will repair immediately.

Thanks for your great help and the hope that mdv- or unity-devs will talk to you, fragadelic.

Greetz
Yogibaer

[kikiburo2]

OK, i already install my wheezy on harddrive, but with original debian-installer (from crunchbang testing iso). System works fine.
Remastersys-installer don't work for me - it doesn't create any users.
Anyway, thank you for this tool.

sorry for  eng

P.S. How can i made remastersys not to create live-installer shortcut on desktop?

[AnthLee]

Hello there    I have been working with the latest package you have on this thread and so far it is looking really good.  Some things I have noticed:

It doesn't name the file what I told it to, In the modify settings screen I set SalineOS-2.0-Dev1-i686-pae and the file that gets generated is named SalineOS with no extension. Renaming the file manually results in a working image.

The Remastersys grub restore seems too limited and has several issues that havn't been reported here.  You might be interested in the code I have up in git called Grub Doctor, I re-wrote the old grub restore mostly from scratch to come up with it. Shows partition labels, size in MiB and GiB, fixes issues relating to using it from a non live environment, allows restoring grub to any drive and errors out if you try to restore the boot loader for a 64 bit system from 32 or vice versa.

git clone https://github.com/SalineOS/SalineOS will clone my git tree.

The grub image doesn't work, I am unsure if this has to be a certain size like the live background? The live is working good.  If you wanted to you could resize the live image for people using imagemagick, though this would require adding a dependency to the package imagemagick . The code for this would be:

Code:

convert "$ImageVariable" -scale 640x480'!' "$ImageVariable"

You would have to use something else for the second $ImageVariable or move the file to /tmp first, either way works.

Having an option for moving a different .desktop file for the installer would be nice, something like a one time option.  As it is I just patched it for building images with, no big deal really.

Everytime I boot an image I get a whole barrage of ls cannot stat /etc/fstab errors, though I think this is Debian live's fault not yours?

All told the new version is looking really good and working well.

[fragadelic]

OK, i already install my wheezy on harddrive, but with original debian-installer (from crunchbang testing iso). System works fine.
Remastersys-installer don't work for me - it doesn't create any users.
Anyway, thank you for this tool.

sorry for  eng

P.S. How can i made remastersys not to create live-installer shortcut on desktop?

Can you try the install again and send me the /var/log/remastersys-installer.log?

[fragadelic]

Hello there    I have been working with the latest package you have on this thread and so far it is looking really good.  Some things I have noticed:

It doesn't name the file what I told it to, In the modify settings screen I set SalineOS-2.0-Dev1-i686-pae and the file that gets generated is named SalineOS with no extension. Renaming the file manually results in a working image.

The Remastersys grub restore seems too limited and has several issues that havn't been reported here.  You might be interested in the code I have up in git called Grub Doctor, I re-wrote the old grub restore mostly from scratch to come up with it. Shows partition labels, size in MiB and GiB, fixes issues relating to using it from a non live environment, allows restoring grub to any drive and errors out if you try to restore the boot loader for a 64 bit system from 32 or vice versa.

git clone https://github.com/SalineOS/SalineOS will clone my git tree.

The grub image doesn't work, I am unsure if this has to be a certain size like the live background? The live is working good.  If you wanted to you could resize the live image for people using imagemagick, though this would require adding a dependency to the package imagemagick . The code for this would be:

Code:

convert "$ImageVariable" -scale 640x480'!' "$ImageVariable"

You would have to use something else for the second $ImageVariable or move the file to /tmp first, either way works.

Having an option for moving a different .desktop file for the installer would be nice, something like a one time option.  As it is I just patched it for building images with, no big deal really.

Everytime I boot an image I get a whole barrage of ls cannot stat /etc/fstab errors, though I think this is Debian live's fault not yours?

All told the new version is looking really good and working well.

Your iso name is too big for genisoimage.

As far as the installer and icon go, you can change the /usr/share/applications/remastersys-installer.desktop and then divert it.  The icon for the installer is /usr/share/pixmaps/remastersys-installer.png so you can change that to anything you want to but I would stay with a 48x48 icon.

The grub image should be 1920x1080 typically so it can fit on any screen.

[AnthLee]

I see, so make a smaller image name.

What I mean by the installer .desktop file is I want the user to have my .desktop file on my images, but access to the Remastersys installer anytime else. I put quite a few options in my installer that are only really useful the first time the system is installed. I accomplished this already, by simply adding an if [ "$(echo "$@" | grep "salineos")" != "" ]; then statement and running remastersys through the command line with remastersys dist salineos. Really this is just a cornerstone case, but wouldn't be hard to add a menu entry "Dist mode with different installer" and give someone a yad file selection dialog .  Again not really important, since anyone writing an installer should be able to accomplish this on their own.

The grub image I tried using was 1024x768, I will try again next time with 1920x1080 and see if that works.

Good job with all the improvements, everything is really coming out nice.

[fragadelic]

Thanks.

One thing folks tend not to remember is that the remastersys installer can be used to copy an existing real install over to another partition or usb drive thus getting around the 4GB limit imposed by genisoimage.  I've used it to copy an install to a new hard drive and it worked great.  You don't even have to make an iso, you can just use the installer to copy it over to a new drive.

[fragadelic]

OK, i already install my wheezy on harddrive, but with original debian-installer (from crunchbang testing iso). System works fine.
Remastersys-installer don't work for me - it doesn't create any users.
Anyway, thank you for this tool.

sorry for  eng

P.S. How can i made remastersys not to create live-installer shortcut on desktop?

I will add an option to not show the icon on the desktop.  I thought about it but didn't put it in.  I will probably have some new packages in the next day or so with the option to not show the install icon.

[fragadelic]

I just put in the option for showing the install icon on the live desktop.  Check the first post in this thread.

[kikiburo2]

I'm trying install with remastersys-installer at second time. The same problem - there is no users and /home folder is empty...
(I'm install with debian-installer at previous time - user is created, but there is not working live mode)


this is my remastersys-installer.log
hope it could help

Code:

==============================
Remastersys-Installer log file
==============================
LIVEMODE=DIST
==============================================================
GUI=:1.0
==============================================================
TARGETUSER=kiburo
==============================================================
TARGETHOSTNAME=test
==============================================================
SWAP=sda5
==============================================================
TARGETPART=sda1
==============================================================
FSTYPE=ext4
==============================================================
HOMEPART=root
==============================================================
HFSTYPE=
==============================================================
GRUBLOC=
==============================================================
==============================================================
MOUNTS
==============================================================
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
proc on /proc type proc (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
udev on /dev type devtmpfs (rw,relatime,size=10240k,nr_inodes=239183,mode=755)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,nosuid,noexec,relatime,gid=5,mode=620,ptmxmode=000)
tmpfs on /run type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,noexec,relatime,size=192716k,mode=755)
/dev/sr0 on /live/image type iso9660 (ro,noatime)
/dev/loop0 on /live/rofs/filesystem.squashfs type squashfs (ro,noatime)
tmpfs on /live type tmpfs (rw,relatime)
tmpfs on /live/overlay type tmpfs (rw,noatime,mode=755)
aufs on / type aufs (rw,relatime,si=30d72583fb68246,noxino)
tmpfs on /run/lock type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,size=5120k)
tmpfs on /run/shm type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,size=385428k)
binfmt_misc on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type binfmt_misc (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
/dev/sda1 on /TARGET type ext4 (rw,relatime,user_xattr,barrier=1,data=ordered)
==============================================================
FDISK listing
==============================================================

Disk /dev/sda: 15.4 GB, 15359541248 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 1867 cylinders, total 29999104 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000ec968

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *        2048    28676095    14337024   83  Linux
/dev/sda2        28678142    29997055      659457    5  Extended
/dev/sda5        28678144    29997055      659456   82  Linux swap / Solaris
==============================================================
live config listing
==============================================================
export LIVE_USERNAME="live"
export LIVE_USER_FULLNAME="Live session user"
export LIVE_HOSTNAME="live"
==============================================================
End of Log
==============================================================

[fragadelic]

How long is your password?

[fragadelic]

I did some testing here and the password minimum is 6 characters and it can't be simple either or it fails to create the new user.

[fragadelic]

Did some more testing here and the root user changing a user password, which is the way the installer does it, can change it to anything.

If you use any special characters like the slashes, it will cause problems especially \ or $

Can you tell me if you used any special characters and if so, which ones?  I need to do some testing and see if I can make it work with your characters.

[kikiburo2]

for testing i'm using simple passwords.
root: 12345678
user: 123

is problem in short-length password?
i will try with new password and answer you soon.