Stuff that has not yet gone into the official build.
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anticapitalista

- anticapitalista
- Posts: 64
- Joined: Wed May 09, 2012 10:49 am

## Re: Refracta installer and snapshot used on other distros

Thu May 10, 2012 11:40 am

Another question/issue.
Is there a maximum file size for the squashfs file?
When I run the antiX modified version of antixsnapshot which uses xz compression, for less than 2GB it works fine, but with 2.5Gb (for example) it refuses to boot complaining that the squashfs file is not found. (It is there though).
This is using the work directory in home.
Anyone else has this issue?
fsmithred

- fsmithred
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## Re: Refracta installer and snapshot used on other distros

Thu May 10, 2012 1:16 pm

Syslinux is already installed in refracta. The last time I had non-booting isos, it was because the /vmlinuz and /initrd.img links were still pointing to a kernel I'd removed. I can probably try with antix this weekend.
There's nothing in the script to limit the size of the iso. I saw some code for that in someone else's snapshot script, and thought about adding that to mine, but I haven't done it yet. Haven't run into an iso that's too large, either. Maybe I'll try that today.
fsmithred

- fsmithred
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## Re: Refracta installer and snapshot used on other distros

Thu May 10, 2012 5:48 pm

I'll have to exclude some more stuff and try again later. Couldn't create the squashfs. From the error log:

Code:
  `File iso/live/filesystem.squashfs is larger than 4GiB-1.
  -allow-limited-size was not specified. There is no way do represent this file size. Aborting.
  `

fsmithred

- fsmithred
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## Re: Refracta installer and snapshot used on other distros

Fri May 11, 2012 5:54 pm

I just created a 2.6GB iso. Only error was from isohybrid:

Code:
  `Total translation table size: 2048
  Total rockridge attributes bytes: 2830
  Total directory bytes: 10240
  Path table size(bytes): 98
  Max brk space used 0
  1339954 extents written (2617 MB)
  isohybrid: Warning: more than 1024 cylinders: 2618
  isohybrid: Not all BIOSes will be able to boot this device
  isohybrid: /home/snapshot/snapshot-20120511_1259.iso: seek error - 6: Invalid argument
  `

The iso starts to boot in virtualbox, but then I get dropped to BusyBox with an error message from cryptsetup (I'm making the snapshot on an encrypted system). Adding /etc/crypttab to the excludes file didn't help.

Code:
  `cryptsetup: evms_activate is not available`

Have to go now, but I'll look at it some more later. Maybe try it without making it isohybrid. Any other ideas are welcome.
anticapitalista

- anticapitalista
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## Re: Refracta installer and snapshot used on other distros

Sat May 12, 2012 3:41 pm

Thanks for testing this out. I also tried without isohybrid with the same result.
There must be some size limit set to the iso or squashfs file somewhere. Maybe in the kernel? (wild guesss)
fsmithred

- fsmithred
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## Re: Refracta installer and snapshot used on other distros

Sun May 13, 2012 11:43 am

Size limits, according to wikipedia -
squashfs: 16 exbibytes (1 EiB = 2^60, or 1024 pebibytes) ...should be enough for anyone.
iso9660: 2 or 4 GiB

> All numbers in ISO 9660 file systems except the single byte value used for the GMT offset are unsigned numbers. As the length of a file's extent on disk is stored in a 32 bit value,[4] it allows for a maximum length of less than 4 GB (more precisely, less than 4 GiB). (Note: Some older operating systems may handle such values incorrectly (i.e., signed instead of unsigned), which would make it impossible to access files larger than 2 GB in size.)

Edit: @anti - if you have time today (Sunday) at 16:00GMT, please meet us in freenode #study-group
fsmithred

- fsmithred
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## Re: Refracta installer and snapshot used on other distros

Sun May 13, 2012 2:41 pm

Booted antix-base-t3.iso in vbox.
Installed refractainstaller-base-9.0.2-2
Edit: created symlinks for /vmlinuz and /initrd.img
Ran refractainstaller and got this non-fatal error:

Code:
  `Warning: Unable to open /dev/sr0 read-write(Read-only file system). /dev/sr0 has been opened read-only.
  Error: Invalid partition table - recursive partition on /dev/sr0`

Booted into the vbox installation of antix-base-t3.
Installed refractasnapshot-base-9.0.5 and its dependencies (live-boot, live-config, live-boot-initramfs-tools and live-config-sysvinit)
Changed only the name of the snapshot file and $save_work in the config file.
Ran refractasnapshot with no fatal errors and created a 414M iso.
The iso boots in vbox.
Last edited by fsmithred on Sun May 13, 2012 2:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.
fsmithred

- fsmithred
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## Re: Refracta installer and snapshot used on other distros

Sun May 13, 2012 2:49 pm

Idea for reducing laptop overheating -
1. Edit the script to use nice on rsync and maybe on mksquashfs and/or genisoimage. Of course, this will make it take longer. Or maybe just nice the whole script.
2. Something like this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6834997730
Oh yeah, I wrote this awhile ago. It stops rsync from hogging the cpu. Run this script while refractasnapshot is copying the filesystem.

Code:
  `#!/usr/bin/env bash
  # limit_rsync2
  for i in $(pgrep rsync); do
  sudo cpulimit -e rsync -l 50 &
  done
  echo "cpulimit"
  ps ax |grep cpulimit
  echo "rsync"
  ps ax | grep rsync
  echo "@@@@@"
  sleep 360
  if $(ps ax | grep -q mksquashfs); then
  sudo pkill cpulimit
  fi
  echo "#####"
  ps ax | grep cpulimit
  echo "#####"
  exit 0`

fsmithred

- fsmithred
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## Re: Refracta installer and snapshot used on other distros

Mon May 14, 2012 5:01 pm

anti,
How does antix boot without live-boot? What should I be looking at? If you show me the modified script, I'll try it.
fsr
anticapitalista

- anticapitalista
- Posts: 64
- Joined: Wed May 09, 2012 10:49 am

## Re: Refracta installer and snapshot used on other distros

Mon May 14, 2012 6:26 pm

antiX uses custom scripts (a bit like Knoppix and aptosid does) and initrd.gz.
The issue is not to do with snapshot (either yours or my adapted one for antiX), but why it won't boot an iso over 2.5GB in size.
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