Refracta Development, Scripts, etc.
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jheaton5

- jheaton5
- Posts: 45
- Joined: Wed Mar 09, 2011 9:26 pm

## Re: 606_beta2

Sat Oct 08, 2011 7:34 pm

> dzz wrote:Good to hear you got it running. Lots of people have issues with nvidia, with or without nouveau... isn't proprietary hardware great...
> All changes should carry through in a snapshot. The menu file to edit is: /usr/lib/refractasnapshot/iso/isolinux/live.cfg
> <man syslinux> (I think isolinux, the bootloader, uses that) tells more of how it ticks. It's very good at booting cd or from fat-partitioned usb where grub might not be appropriate.
> Regarding the Refracta default cmdline, it does need to be reviewed, possibly some entries are outdated (e.g. noxautoconfig, is mentioned in now deprecated live-initramfs but not squeeze live-boot manpage) Some might be irrelevant because the user is already configured (in usual debian-live and derivitives, the user is created "on-the-fly")

Thanks for the help. I already searched and found the boot parameters were set by /usr/lib/refractasnapshot/iso/lisolinux/live.cfg. I edited that file to remove the "nomodeset" parameter. Then I created a snapshot and burned it to cd. I am posting this from the live cd.
I really like this system.
fsmithred

- fsmithred
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## Re: 606_beta2

Mon Oct 10, 2011 3:04 am

I'm back. I'm tired and sore. You guys are good. Thanks for working on it in my absence. I'll play with boot parameters a bit and probably add a boot menu entry for nvidia cards. There are enough of those cards around, and nobody should have to go through this ordeal.
display-savior (or maybe it's display-saviour) is the script for creating xorg.conf. It'll only add a few sections - you can choose driver, resolution and specify horizontal and vertical frequency ranges. It'll also let you add or remove "nomodeset" from the boot line, but only in grub (I think.) Run it from console, because it'll kill your display manager (if you're using gdm, gdm3, kdm or xdm.)
meandean

- meandean
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## Re: 606_beta2

Mon Oct 10, 2011 11:03 am

> fsmithred wrote:...display-savior (or maybe it's display-saviour) is the script for creating xorg.conf.

thats the one....
ukbrian

- ukbrian
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- Location: Cheltenham, UK

## Re: 606_beta2

Tue Oct 18, 2011 11:30 am

Hi to all, I'm 68 and I done a bit of tweaking of screen forms and databases in Visual Basic 4 in the 90's on a bespoke office app I had written for me by a friend for a small company I set up, but I can't read/understand/comprehend manuals.
I do not use a separate home partition but have a sym link in home pointing to a NTFS data partition that stores my iceweasel/icedove profiles and all my data files so that any OS's I install use the same profiles including windows apps.
On my desktop a 3 core AMD with ATI graphics using the standard linux drivers I installed Refracta and the only problem I encountered was that it didn't see either of my Logitech C270/300 cameras, no problem with the mics.
I used both the Refracta snapshot and install scripts with no problems.
I did a fresh install of LMDE Xfce, updated it and installed the refractasnapshot/install .debs. The snapshot took 20 minutes to complete and the installer installed from the iso with no problems so I guess you have the basic's in the scripts done and it might be time to start polishing up the interface.
I was surprised that Refracta worked on LMDE as I had read on the remastersys forums before fragelic retired that LMDE wasn't quite true debian and remastersys would not work on it.
I installed the Refracta debs on SalineOS which is Debian Stable based with Xfce which I have been using as my main OS for a few months now and you both seem to be treading the same path.
The Refracta snapshot installed successfully with no problems
Refracta scripts took 10 minutes to run and Saline's remastersys took 5 minutes, I only mention in case it's of interest, it's not a race or competition, the only things that matter are reliability and a user friendly interface.
Anthony Nordquist the developer has made a truly excellent job of updating the remastersys scripts and has written others one you might be interested in one is Grub-Doctor.
I did try Refractasnapshot on AVLinux, a distro that shared the remastersys forums and is aimed at folk editing audio and video, a very full distro, 13GB installed but the only debian distro I have found using a later kernel than 2.6.38 that doesn't make me sound like donald duck in skype, audacity etc. and is the reason I don't use LMDE. AVLinux doesn't use Pulseaudio which might be the answer to the sound problem.
The debs installed and the snapshot ran OK but the iso seized up when you pressed enter on an option on the opening menu. I had the same problem with an earlier version of refracta I tried a few months ago.
I tried RefractaMagic on a couple of other Debian distros but snapshot.deb had a version problem with live-boot 2.0.15 when they only had live-boot 2.0.14 installed.
I found this text when the installer is nearly finished confusing.

> Installing the boot loader...
> Installation finished. No error reported.

and would suggest using

> Installing the boot loader...
> Installation almost finished. No errors reported.

as it hasn't quite finished and you could start banging away at the keyboard at that point(I did once).
I think you need a name for your remastersys type scripts as Refracta is the name of your distro, maybe RefractaClone or something if I may be so bold.
If you change the script to write UUID's to the fstab this post might be of interest as I seem to be one of the minority of folk who use labels to identify their partitions and it gave a problem with Saline's remaster scripts http://salinelinux.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=installsetup&action=display&thread=383
Another post about formatting the install partition that might be of interest is http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=189&t=68762
Hope this post was helpful to you, I'm exhausted from all this typing as I'm an end user who uses a mouse so I'm off back to my cave for a few days rest. but congratulations on a fine distro and some excellent scripts, I used your tzk script to correct a time problem on a Saline install.
edit Just trying a snapshot on AVLinux again and I think you could double the default width of all the screen forms to make them more readable.
meandean

- meandean
- Posts: 392
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## Re: 606_beta2

Fri Oct 21, 2011 2:10 am

hello ukbrian
Probably not much point comparing remastersys and refracta-snapshot as I suspect they are significantly different. That being said I never cared to use or even look at the remastersys code to get any ideas. That is all I will say about that.
nothing else to add, just wanted to say hello
meandean

- meandean
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## Re: 606_beta2

Sat Oct 22, 2011 3:00 am

> Installing the boot loader...
> Installation finished. No error reported.

I have to report that I also thought it was done and even started to reboot. I think some tweakage may be needed.
One other thing is that the root account does not have good bash completion enabled. I don't know how people live without it really.
Besides that it is too bloaty for my taste but you already knew that
Looks good
oh and it looks like gdm complained about a missing log file but did not affect anything
fsmithred

- fsmithred
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## Re: 606_beta2

Sat Oct 22, 2011 6:26 pm

> Installing the boot loader...
> Installation finished. No error reported.

That's not my text. The only way to change that is to tweak the update-grub script, and I haven't looked into it at all. But I agree with both of you on that.
ukbrian - Thanks for testing and for the report. I'm right in the middle of doing other stuff, so I'll address some of what you said as soon as I get a chance.
On the bash completion stuff - I just installed the package, but I didn't do anything with it. I've never played with it. Tell me what tweaks you'd like.
meandean

- meandean
- Posts: 392
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## Re: 606_beta2

Sat Oct 22, 2011 6:44 pm

> That's not my text. The only way to change that is to tweak the update-grub script, and I haven't looked into it at all.

Yea I realized that later. I didn't play with it but I thought maybe some way to be sure the users focus is on something else or or maybe there is a silent option or maybe pipe the grub messgae out to a file instead of the screen. Just thinking out loud.

> On the bash completion stuff - I just installed the package, but I didn't do anything with it. I've never played with it. Tell me what tweaks you'd like.

I am not sure this is the corrent way to go about it but I usually just be sure bash-completion is installed and then copy /etc/skel/.bashrc to /root/.bashrc and that allows me to go crazy with the tab key.
meandean

- meandean
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## Re: 606_beta2

Sat Oct 22, 2011 11:23 pm

> fsmithred wrote:That's not my text. The only way to change that is to tweak the update-grub script, and I haven't looked into it at all. But I agree with both of you on that.

Thinking about it more, if it was me I would just redirect it out to null or a file if I needed the output.
I am not sure if no message is better than a confusing one though.
Maybe redirect and then just echo something.
Anyway, just some ideas to think about.
fsmithred

- fsmithred
- Posts: 2101
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## Re: 606_beta2

Sun Oct 23, 2011 10:48 am

1. This line still shows up.

> Installing the boot loader...

The rest gets redirected to the error log. Easy. (I hope. Will test later today.)
2. copied /etc/skel/.bashrc to /root/.bashrc for bash completion and adjusted the prompt color. Another thing I like to do is increase the number of lines in the history. Added this:
export HISTSIZE=1500
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