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## Proto-Refracta Jessie with sysvinit

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76 posts • Page 4 of 8 • 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

### Re: Proto-Refracta Jessie with sysvinit

by fsmithred » Wed Nov 05, 2014 11:47 am

I tried the installation with grub installed to partition, and it paused on error. Running in debug mode wasn't very helpful, but I got error 126 (command found but not executable). So I tried it in another terminal window to see what was going on. Removing "/bin/bash" from the command seemed to fix it.

Code: Select all
  `chroot /target /bin/bash grub-install --recheck --no-floppy --force $grub_partition`

On reboot (chainloading from the harddisk entry in the live-iso), I get a grub-rescue prompt with the message, "error: file '/grub/i386-pc/normal.mod' not found."
From here:
https://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manua ... scue-shell
I had to modify the commands slightly to get it to work, by changing 'set prefix' from '(hd0,1)/grub' to '/boot/grub'.

Code: Select all
  `# Inspect the current prefix (and other preset variables):
  set
  # Find out which devices are available:
  ls
  # Set to the correct value, which might be something like this:
  set prefix=/boot/grub
  set root=(hd0,1)
  insmod normal
  normal`

And then the grub boot menu came up, and I could boot normally.
From the same page linked above, this may be the problem. I don't have time to test it right now:

> At least on BIOS systems, if you tell grub-install to install GRUB to a partition but GRUB has already been installed in the master boot record, then the GRUB installation in the partition will be ignored.

fsmithred
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### Re: Proto-Refracta Jessie with sysvinit

by dzz » Wed Nov 05, 2014 9:54 pm

The grub problem is fixed here by removing "/bin/bash" (in only that one line of script). It worked before (only) like that but there are newer grub versions since. I'm assuming:

> At least on BIOS systems, if you tell grub-install to install GRUB to a partition but GRUB has already been installed in the master boot record, then the GRUB installation in the partition will be ignored.

applies only to the actual installation in question, in this case a chroot of a new installation.
Another advantage of being able to chainload a test environment is simplicity in booting anywhere on a plug-in usb HD from "master grub"
I found more shutdown-related problems on the Inspiron. Can't drop to runlevel 1 without hang, from X. No console messages appear on shutdown/reboot. I'm guessing this is a limitation of xinit (which I never used routinely before because of similar issues).
After installing a DM (TDM) such problems are gone. I would try lightdm but it's now crippled unless systemd is installed.
The password problem is almost certainly my own typo error (black keyboard too close to cider barrel at 2am)
In the live session I ran htop which reported only 87 MB RAM usage!
No issues with today's dist upgrade.
Can't see a gui in openbox session to set keyboard for user. I can deal with that but less experienced users would have difficulty.

dzz
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  Joined: Wed Apr 27, 2011 11:53 am
  Location: Devon, England

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### Re: Proto-Refracta Jessie with sysvinit

by fsmithred » Thu Nov 06, 2014 2:23 pm

I can confirm that it hangs when going to runlevel 1 from xsession, but not from console. Syslog messages are the same in both cases: rcpbind and rsyslogd get shut off. Then the next message is the start of the next boot. This is in virtualbox.
I'm not happy with the lack of a language selector, either, but I don't know what to do about it. I believe I rejected slim because it didn't offer that feature. I didn't spend a lot of time on the problem. It looks like you can control the language and keyboard in openbox through a config file, but a graphical selection tool would be better. I don't know if there is one.
One other thing - I didn't configure runlevel 3 to be without display manager, since there is no display manager. If someone adds one, and they want a way to boot into console, they'll need to configure it. (sysv-rc-conf is installed)

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### Re: Proto-Refracta Jessie with sysvinit

by nadir » Thu Nov 06, 2014 9:13 pm

I searched for a gui way to change keyboard settings yesterday and found this:
http://wiki.lxde.org/en/Change_keyboard_layouts
To me it doesn't look as there would be such a solution
(I also went through the "settings", but couldn't find anything. I didn't search long).
Well: would it be hard to write such an app on your own? "yad" or whatever is used right now, a few language options, setxkbmap <choosen-option>. ? For "locales" i am not sure if it is that easy ...
I for one couldn't care less. "setxkmap de" (on live one time from the command prompt or if installed via .xinitrc) is fine for me.
And i am pretty sure that most people use English anyway.
So i herd u liek mudkip?

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### Re: Proto-Refracta Jessie with sysvinit

by UncleVom » Mon Nov 10, 2014 12:07 am

Thanks for this, I stumbled across it while looking for solutions.
While I don't have a problem with a replacement init, systemd is far more than that and pretty much out of control linux-wide.
I welcome what you have done and for the message it sends out, I hope people flock to the distro.
Some of Thorsten Glaser's repo here might help deal with the Debian repositories longer if things continue in the total systemd direction.
http://users.unixforge.de/~tglaser/debs/debidx.htm
FWIW I have been using Linux since 1997 and Debian as my main OS since 2002, Refracta is not a huge step away from that. The long term solution for me may end up as Gentoo, but that is more of a hassle and I don't want to go there yet.
Vomio

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### Re: Proto-Refracta Jessie with sysvinit

by fsmithred » Tue Nov 11, 2014 10:05 pm

@nadir: I added fbxkb, then right-click on panel, add/remove panel items, then click on the Add button, and select Keyboard Layout Handler from the list. It shows up in the panel (to the right of the time). Right-click on that for keyboard handler settings, un-check 'Keep system layouts' and then Add (as many as you want?) from the list. If you add a few, left-click on the panel icon to scroll through them.
@UncleVom: Welcome to the forum. The thought of flocks is a little scary, but I'm glad our efforts are useful to others.

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### Re: Proto-Refracta Jessie with sysvinit

by fsmithred » Wed Nov 12, 2014 2:30 am

lxdm will install. It's in sid. It has language, keyboard and desktop selectors, and it has reboot and shutdown.

fsmithred
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### Re: Proto-Refracta Jessie with sysvinit

by nadir » Wed Nov 12, 2014 11:47 am

Thanks for fbxkb.
One thing (a question): Won't most people only need one keyboard layout anyway? So, having a keyboard switcher is mostly for "distributions", but for the end user ... not pointless, but ... dunno.
I know there are a few people who need several layouts, but it doesn't seem to be a problem that common.
Don't get me wrong, a keyboard switcher in the panel doesn't bug me, au contraire.
Just a bit of chat ...
---
lxdm sounds good.
Not that i for one would use display-managers, but i think it is a good thing.
-
Keep in mind that once Jessie is stable one can expect that there won't be much problems with a sysv version of refracta (no more upgrades, duh). I expect it to work, in the long run (as long i have nothing to do ... ).
And i think something round the lines of: "If you install further apps or if you upgrade, then systemd/sysv is your problem ..." in a slightly more friendly form (it ain't that unusual to offer only a certain amount of packages, is it?)
So i herd u liek mudkip?

nadir
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### Re: Proto-Refracta Jessie with sysvinit

by dzz » Thu Nov 13, 2014 6:32 pm

Been busy with other things but finally got around to a better look at this system. I already have proper default installation on a Dell Inspiron.
The more I look at this the more I like it. I now have installed latest (custom build) libpulse0, dbus and cups. Mplayer works, removables show up and I can print.
Lxdm is in, language selector and shutdown/reboot work. As predicted no shutdown problems from menu. In openbox session, shutdown works from menu and I can change runlevel from terminal. Small disappointment you can't choose console login from lxdm.. never mind, lightdm couldn't either. Don't know how to change the greeter appearance as yet.
fbxkb works fine
A few UI tweaks.. font sizes, custom icon theme (xquisite), general theme (greybird-mac, as refracta-wheezy) semi-transparency panel and lxterminal .. it's all looking and running very nicely.
!! htop reports 71MB RAM usage
pm-suspend works (and resumes)
xfburn is installable at ~14MB .. forget brasero (gvfs)
Congrats to fsr for this fine achievement.

dzz
  Posts: 647
  Joined: Wed Apr 27, 2011 11:53 am
  Location: Devon, England

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### Re: Proto-Refracta Jessie with sysvinit

by dzz » Sat Nov 15, 2014 2:07 am

I want to edit the menu.. However:

Code: Select all
  `jessie-sysv:~$ obmenu
  Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/obmenu", line 617, in <module>
  app.init()
  File "/usr/bin/obmenu", line 521, in init
  self.menu.loadMenu(self.menu_path)
  File "/usr/lib/pymodules/python2.7/obxml.py", line 153, in loadMenu
  self.dom = xml.dom.minidom.parseString(fil.read())
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/xml/dom/minidom.py", line 1928, in parseString
  return expatbuilder.parseString(string)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/xml/dom/expatbuilder.py", line 940, in parseString
  return builder.parseString(string)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/xml/dom/expatbuilder.py", line 223, in parseString
  parser.Parse(string, True)
  xml.parsers.expat.ExpatError: not well-formed (invalid token): line 37, column 64`

what does this mean? (manual edit of ~.config/openbox/menu.xml does not behave as expected either)

dzz
  Posts: 647
  Joined: Wed Apr 27, 2011 11:53 am
  Location: Devon, England

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