[arch-general] ArchISO FTP Installer - Testers Needed
Hey everyone, I'd like to begin testing some preliminary work with the arch livecd system. You can find a livecd rigged up to work as an ftp installer at: http://dev.archlinux.org/~simo/archiso_tests/arch-ftp-live-1206519468.iso This ISO consists of our current installer scripts and a functioning arch livecd containing most of the base package set. It uses the grub boot loader, which is likely to be changed to isolinux in the near future. At this point, it's an i686-only thing, but an x86_64 version will be coming soon. If you've got some time to kill, please give the iso a whirl. You'll find the installer and its documentation in its usual home at /arch/ on the livecd system. It'd be nice to have this tested on a large variety of systems if possible. **I need feedback on the following regarding ISO bootup** - Did the grub loader work as expected? - Did it pick up and load the module for your network hardware? - Did it pick up and load the modules for your disk controllers? - Any kernel panics, freezes, that sort of ugly stuff. Please keep in mind that this is not intended to be production quality at this point, and it's a very early version, so there are still a lot of sharp edges that need to be smoothed out. Thanks for your help, -Simo offtopic: archiso_tests also contains a hacky xfce4 livecd image you might want to play around with, although it's a little oldy moldy.
2008/3/26, Simo Leone <simo@archlinux.org>:
Hey everyone,
I'd like to begin testing some preliminary work with the arch livecd system. You can find a livecd rigged up to work as an ftp installer at: http://dev.archlinux.org/~simo/archiso_tests/arch-ftp-live-1206519468.iso
I'll be able to test in vmware only.
This ISO consists of our current installer scripts and a functioning arch livecd containing most of the base package set.
Will the next release include the same package set as in tpowa's ISO? -- Roman Kyrylych (Роман Кирилич)
Wednesday 26 March 2008, Simo Leone wrote: | I'd like to begin testing some preliminary work with the arch | livecd system. You can find a livecd rigged up to work as an ftp | installer at: | http://dev.archlinux.org/~simo/archiso_tests/arch-ftp-live-1206519 |468.iso i'll give it a try in qemu on x86_64 | This ISO consists of our current installer scripts and a | functioning arch livecd containing most of the base package set. | It uses the grub boot loader, which is likely to be changed to | isolinux in the near future. At this point, it's an i686-only | thing, but an x86_64 version will be coming soon. | | If you've got some time to kill, please give the iso a whirl. | You'll find the installer and its documentation in its usual home | at /arch/ on the livecd system. It'd be nice to have this tested | on a large variety of systems if possible. i have a no-optical-drive laptop (non-macs are not able to boot from firewire cdroms) and usually i prepare a image to put on a memory-stick to boot from [1]. since this setting (no cdrom) are getting more common and having a live-linux-system on a usb-key is getting interesting i'm wondering if we should provide also a partition image[2] for such use? - D [1] : as described here: http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Lenovo_Thinkpad_x61t_SXGA+#No_optical_dr... [2] : partition image that can be directly written to a device e.g. with dd -- .·´¯`·.¸.·´¯`·.¸¸.·´¯`·.¸.·´¯`·.¸.·´¯`·.¸.·´¯`·.¸¸.·´ ° ° ° ° ° ° ><((((º> ° ° ° ° ° <º)))>< <º)))><
First of all I'd like to say nice project. And heres my first feedback: When I tried booting it up on my LG A1 (No internal CD-Rom) it kernel paniced on me saying: Couldn't find CD-Rom. I'm more than happy to beta testa some more if the next version includes me being able too boot it up :-) Regards Rickard Eriksson Damir Perisa wrote:
Wednesday 26 March 2008, Simo Leone wrote: | I'd like to begin testing some preliminary work with the arch | livecd system. You can find a livecd rigged up to work as an ftp | installer at: | http://dev.archlinux.org/~simo/archiso_tests/arch-ftp-live-1206519 |468.iso
i'll give it a try in qemu on x86_64
| This ISO consists of our current installer scripts and a | functioning arch livecd containing most of the base package set. | It uses the grub boot loader, which is likely to be changed to | isolinux in the near future. At this point, it's an i686-only | thing, but an x86_64 version will be coming soon. | | If you've got some time to kill, please give the iso a whirl. | You'll find the installer and its documentation in its usual home | at /arch/ on the livecd system. It'd be nice to have this tested | on a large variety of systems if possible.
i have a no-optical-drive laptop (non-macs are not able to boot from firewire cdroms) and usually i prepare a image to put on a memory-stick to boot from [1]. since this setting (no cdrom) are getting more common and having a live-linux-system on a usb-key is getting interesting i'm wondering if we should provide also a partition image[2] for such use?
- D
[1] : as described here: http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Lenovo_Thinkpad_x61t_SXGA+#No_optical_dr...
[2] : partition image that can be directly written to a device e.g. with dd
On Wed, Mar 26, 2008 at 9:27 AM, Rickard Eriksson <rickard.eriksson@gigabit.nu> wrote:
First of all I'd like to say nice project.
And heres my first feedback: When I tried booting it up on my LG A1 (No internal CD-Rom) it kernel paniced on me saying: Couldn't find CD-Rom.
Ah, interesting. Simo, I forget, are we still loading usb and firewire hooks before scanning for the cdrom? The obvious issue here is that the right modules weren't loaded for this external cdrom.
Am Mittwoch, 26. März 2008 17:10:04 schrieb Aaron Griffin:
On Wed, Mar 26, 2008 at 9:27 AM, Rickard Eriksson
<rickard.eriksson@gigabit.nu> wrote:
First of all I'd like to say nice project.
And heres my first feedback: When I tried booting it up on my LG A1 (No internal CD-Rom) it kernel paniced on me saying: Couldn't find CD-Rom.
Ah, interesting.
Simo, I forget, are we still loading usb and firewire hooks before scanning for the cdrom? The obvious issue here is that the right modules weren't loaded for this external cdrom.
Maybe this is grub-related. Afaik tpowa switch back from grub to syslinux because grub could not boot from certain devices. -- http://www.archlinux.de
On Wed, Mar 26, 2008 at 11:53 AM, Pierre Schmitz <pierre@archlinux.de> wrote:
Am Mittwoch, 26. März 2008 17:10:04 schrieb Aaron Griffin:
On Wed, Mar 26, 2008 at 9:27 AM, Rickard Eriksson
<rickard.eriksson@gigabit.nu> wrote:
First of all I'd like to say nice project.
And heres my first feedback: When I tried booting it up on my LG A1 (No internal CD-Rom) it kernel paniced on me saying: Couldn't find CD-Rom.
Ah, interesting.
Simo, I forget, are we still loading usb and firewire hooks before scanning for the cdrom? The obvious issue here is that the right modules weren't loaded for this external cdrom.
Maybe this is grub-related. Afaik tpowa switch back from grub to syslinux because grub could not boot from certain devices.
The kernel would never get loaded if this was a grub issue- I think Aaron is right in that we don't have all the necessary drivers in our initrd, so the driver for his external CD drive wasn't loaded. Simo, I assume this is a sample FTP installer by its name. I did notice some things when attempting to run through a "install from CD" type run, and that is that mount requires the user to be root (which was the case on the archboot-based installer, but the push here seems to be to use 'arch' as the user), and that the location of the packages is hardcoded to a specific mountpoint and directory. Just things to keep in mind later on. -Dan
Am Mittwoch, 26. März 2008 18:19:19 schrieb Dan McGee:
The kernel would never get loaded if this was a grub issue- I think Aaron is right in that we don't have all the necessary drivers in our initrd, so the driver for his external CD drive wasn't loaded.
You are right. I did missed the "kernel panic". Btw: The bug I was refering to was: http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/6292 This might still be an issue. -- archlinux.de
On Wed, Mar 26, 2008 at 12:51 PM, Pierre Schmitz <pierre@archlinux.de> wrote:
Am Mittwoch, 26. März 2008 18:19:19 schrieb Dan McGee:
The kernel would never get loaded if this was a grub issue- I think Aaron is right in that we don't have all the necessary drivers in our initrd, so the driver for his external CD drive wasn't loaded.
You are right. I did missed the "kernel panic". Btw: The bug I was refering to was: http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/6292
This might still be an issue.
Correct. Grub has some minor issues when booting certain hardware from CD (I *think* the grml guys documented this somewhere). I created archiso originally with grub in mind, but also wanted to offer isolinux versions for those with goofy/older hardware. We'd all prefer grub on a boot CD, as it allows us to do so much more at the boot loader level.
Damir Perisa wrote:
i have a no-optical-drive laptop (non-macs are not able to boot from firewire cdroms) and usually i prepare a image to put on a memory-stick to boot from [1]. since this setting (no cdrom) are getting more common and having a live-linux-system on a usb-key is getting interesting i'm wondering if we should provide also a partition image[2] for such use?
I've been using FaunOS (http://www.faunos.com/) for a couple of months now, and my opinion can only be described as excellent. It's a live archlinux system focused on booting from detachable usb media, fits in a 1GB stick, does a wonderful job in hardware detection (I tested it in 3 different machines), saves all changes back to the usb stick, suspends to usb and it's FAAAAAST! Wherever I can't take my arch-laptop, I take my usb stick! -- ##### # ##### ####### "We are Pentium of Borg. Division is futile. ##### # ##### You will be approximated."
On Wed, Mar 26, 2008 at 03:53:52AM -0500, Simo Leone wrote:
Hey everyone,
I'd like to begin testing some preliminary work with the arch livecd system. You can find a livecd rigged up to work as an ftp installer at: http://dev.archlinux.org/~simo/archiso_tests/arch-ftp-live-1206519468.iso
This ISO consists of our current installer scripts and a functioning arch livecd containing most of the base package set. It uses the grub boot loader, which is likely to be changed to isolinux in the near future. At this point, it's an i686-only thing, but an x86_64 version will be coming soon.
If you've got some time to kill, please give the iso a whirl. You'll find the installer and its documentation in its usual home at /arch/ on the livecd system. It'd be nice to have this tested on a large variety of systems if possible.
**I need feedback on the following regarding ISO bootup** - Did the grub loader work as expected? - Did it pick up and load the module for your network hardware? - Did it pick up and load the modules for your disk controllers? - Any kernel panics, freezes, that sort of ugly stuff.
Please keep in mind that this is not intended to be production quality at this point, and it's a very early version, so there are still a lot of sharp edges that need to be smoothed out.
Thanks for your help, -Simo
offtopic: archiso_tests also contains a hacky xfce4 livecd image you might want to play around with, although it's a little oldy moldy.
WOW thanks! I had always been wondering how an Archlinux live CD would look and function, and now its the time to find out. May ask what are the requirements for it? Especially RAM usage. I intend to try it at some point later today or tomorrow afternoon and will post feedback. Greg
On Wed, Mar 26, 2008 at 03:38:01PM +0200, Grigorios Bouzakis wrote:
WOW thanks! I had always been wondering how an Archlinux live CD would look and function, and now its the time to find out. May ask what are the requirements for it? Especially RAM usage. I intend to try it at some point later today or tomorrow afternoon and will post feedback.
My testing methods here are far from perfect, but the ftp install image boots to a shell with as little as 22mb of ram. This was tested in qemu by decreasing the emulated RAM 1mb at a time and seeing if it ran out of memory during the bootup sequence. Of course, as soon as you start running things they need memory as well, but this gives you a good idea of the "bare minimum" value. Hope that answers your question :) -S
On Wed, Mar 26, 2008 at 5:12 PM, Simo Leone <simo@archlinux.org> wrote:
On Wed, Mar 26, 2008 at 03:38:01PM +0200, Grigorios Bouzakis wrote:
WOW thanks! I had always been wondering how an Archlinux live CD would look and function, and now its the time to find out. May ask what are the requirements for it? Especially RAM usage. I intend to try it at some point later today or tomorrow afternoon and will post feedback.
My testing methods here are far from perfect, but the ftp install image boots to a shell with as little as 22mb of ram. This was tested in qemu by decreasing the emulated RAM 1mb at a time and seeing if it ran out of memory during the bootup sequence.
Of course, as soon as you start running things they need memory as well, but this gives you a good idea of the "bare minimum" value.
Hope that answers your question :)
To put this a little more plainly: It is a complete install of Archlinux, just on a cd instead of a hard drive. The RAM usage will be as minimal as a bare-bones Arch install. Now, many people may be thinking "but what if I want to remove my cd from the drive?" - funny enough, that should work ok unless you need to access the "disk". You *can* add the "copytoram" boot param (yay grub) to have the squashfs image copied to ram first. I'm not sure of the actual image size anymore, but that should soak about 100-150 megs of RAM extra. One of the next steps would be to actually add another parameter to unpack the squashfs image into ram. This would take... oh, I dunno 300-400 megs of RAM?
On Wed, Mar 26, 2008 at 03:53:52AM -0500, Simo Leone wrote:
Hey everyone,
I've tested it on varios machines, Scenic, Thinkpad, IBMs, VirtualBox
**I need feedback on the following regarding ISO bootup** - Did the grub loader work as expected? Yes
- Did it pick up and load the module for your network hardware? Yes, all ethernet cards i use Also madwifi, usable with wpa_supplicant
- Did it pick up and load the modules for your disk controllers? Yes
- Any kernel panics, freezes, that sort of ugly stuff. No, nothing during boot or work on console.
Please keep in mind that this is not intended to be production quality at this point, and it's a very early version, so there are still a lot of sharp edges that need to be smoothed out.
What i've noticed: - km is missing to select other keyboard layout - using the installer i never could mount the cd when saying: Select packages->Mount the cdrom...->Available CD drives My cdroms are shown (sr0: Vendor|Model but trying to select gives: failed to mount /dev/sr0 Nothing about this in any log, dmesg - Installer doesn't have any output on an tty for logging - Installer log in /var ?? But maybe these are things which are generally "broken" in this state. If you mostly interested in grub/kernel then i would say: OK I've also done a quick test in a VM with RAM set to 64MB. No problem booting the kernel and start the installer.
-Simo
Regards Gerhard -- Puenktlich zur Diskussion um den Bundes-Trojaner erscheint auch das passende Betriebssystem dazu.
On Wed, Mar 26, 2008 at 8:11 PM, Gerhard Brauer <gerhard.brauer@web.de> wrote:
What i've noticed: - km is missing to select other keyboard layout - using the installer i never could mount the cd when saying: Select packages->Mount the cdrom...->Available CD drives My cdroms are shown (sr0: Vendor|Model but trying to select gives: failed to mount /dev/sr0 Nothing about this in any log, dmesg - Installer doesn't have any output on an tty for logging - Installer log in /var ??
But maybe these are things which are generally "broken" in this state. If you mostly interested in grub/kernel then i would say: OK
Sounds right. The installer was crafted with a very specific disk in mind, so I imagine there will be some hiccups which would require us to modify the installer. Thanks for the test.
On Thu, Mar 27, 2008 at 2:11 AM, Gerhard Brauer <gerhard.brauer@web.de> wrote:
- km is missing to select other keyboard layout
You still have the good ole loadkeys for this one. For exmple, "loadkeys it" loads the Italian layout. Corrado
Sorry for this being 2 weeks late, but better late then never.
**I need feedback on the following regarding ISO bootup** - Did the grub loader work as expected?
System 1: Old Dell PowerEdge 350. Won't even boot the CD. Bios says "Invalid boot device" or similar. System 2: Newer Asus P4 2.8ghz with DVD Burner. Boots to a grub> prompt. So far I'm 0 for 2, but haven't really tried it on any truly decent hardware. Dale
participants (12)
-
Aaron Griffin
-
bardo
-
Christos Nouskas
-
Dale Blount
-
Damir Perisa
-
Dan McGee
-
Gerhard Brauer
-
Grigorios Bouzakis
-
Pierre Schmitz
-
Rickard Eriksson
-
Roman Kyrylych
-
Simo Leone