DebianDog - Jessie (21 June 2017)

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Belham

#841 Post by Belham »

rufwoof wrote:
"Absulute"?........lol
That's how it was spelt on the web pages, I was just highlighting the error.
now I think I can finally understand how the ridiculousness of the Brexit vote
Brexit is going well IMO. Just need to ensure that whoever does drive it through does so in a appropriate manner. Controlled borders opens up greater wealth sharing around internally - will raise the living standards of many who have endured years of downside wage pressures to again having sufficient income to provide for their family.

The Swiss recently voted on whether each adult should receive US$2800/month, but rejected that as the EU is insisting its earlier border control vote cannot be implemented (such a handout would become a migration magnet). OUT and we'll be better positioned to drive through such wealth sharing. Sadly the benefits of robotics/technology hasn't been for the benefit of all, instead just widened the wealth gap. In the forward deflationary era (over-capacity, where China can export the likes of steel at below cost) and a third of global government bonds having negative real yields, globalisation/open borders will either need to see declines (look after domestic population as a priority over others), or see continued decline/hardship. Brexit is a step in the right direction that in years to come we'll look back like the Pound and be glad we didn't adopt the Euro.

The UK has one of the worlds most soundly structured debt and around $60Bn of that has been in effect wiped out by a declining pound. That will also make the transition away from importing from the EU (a 100B/year Euro deficit trade activity) into the UK less attractive, which will help the UK economy further as that's instead sourced locally or from the rest of the world. It also helps offset the negative effects of the 1 trillion/year Euro's that the ECB is printing to float the EU, a ponzi system that sooner or later will break and the less interconnected into that the UK is the better.

There is nothing that you wrote that I disagree with.

(Update: 9 Jul 2016, 13:03)
(apologize, Fred, rufwoof and all, for getting off topic a bit , following rufwoof's lead and deleting the politico-talk and focusing on DD :D )

Ok, enuff political stuff..........let's talk DebianDog: I read your posts where you talk about loading the sfs. Do you boot DebianDog pristine every time, and then load your sfs with all your data and stuff in it, so that you always have the choice to run either "fresh/pristine" and/or "with your stuff"?? Also, when you update DebianDog, do you do it in the "fresh/prisitne" or do you do it after you load the sfs, or does it even matter?? I am slowly coming to realize, like you and others have talked about on here, that it is really nice how updates are so easy in DebianDog versus what I have to do to keep other puppy distros up to date.
Last edited by Belham on Sat 09 Jul 2016, 11:03, edited 2 times in total.

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fredx181
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#842 Post by fredx181 »

Hi Rufwoof, Belham,

Thanks for the positive replies!
rufwoof wrote:Looking great Fred. Doesn't feel right pointing out a tiny error against such a great effort ... but for completeness I did spot typo's on the DebianDog Jessie 64 page

Specifications:
Build from an absulute minimal Debian-Jessie amd64 full install.
....
Ah, that's the kind of feedback I like, typo's are corrected now.

Fred

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rufwoof
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#843 Post by rufwoof »

Belham wrote: you talk about loading the sfs. Do you boot DebianDog pristine every time, and then load your sfs with all your data and stuff in it, so that you always have the choice to run either "fresh/pristine" and/or "with your stuff"?? Also, when you update DebianDog, do you do it in the "fresh/prisitne" or do you do it after you load the sfs, or does it even matter?? I am slowly coming to realize, like you and others have talked about on here, that it is really nice how updates are so easy in DebianDog versus what I have to do to keep other puppy distros up to date.
Hi Belham

I boot using grub4dos. Periodically after a fresh reboot I run
apt-get update
apt-get upgrade
apt-get clean

and if any changes did occur then I run save2flash to preserve those updates. At all other times I never save. So each reboot is pristine with updates applied.

I store all docs etc outside (backed up separately) on a separate HDD/partition. I have osmo calendar/diary etc sym linked out to the same area as those docs etc. So the core configuration of DD more or less remains the exact same, excepting when updates occur.

So I can trash the system trying things out, and a reboot has me back to fresh again.

I was leaving 01-filesystem.squashfs as the only sfs being loaded and all changes being preserved in the /live/changes folder, but more recently remastered a new 01-filesystem.squashfs using MENU, ACCESSORIES, REMASTER-DOG. I've since changed that to use no compression so 01-filesystem.squashfs is bigger (around 1.6GB instead of 600MB when compressed), as that runs through remastering quicker. That leaves /live/changes empty. So the same apt-get upgrade... type commands, followed by a remaster to create a new 01-filesystem.squashfs and empty the contents of /live/changes (I create a new folder and just drag all of changes folder content over to that to move it all out, and delete that folder at the next reboot ... as I think deleting the contents of /changes whilst still running could cause problems).

My 64 bit machine blew up some months ago and as a temporary measure I switched over to a old Celeron 32 bit machine. I have another 64 bit 4 core PC behind me just gathering dust as I haven't yet got around to switching over to that. Frankly DD runs so well as-is I've had no real need/urge to make a change yet. I may very well leave it until Stretch (next stable Debian) version is released as the current stable and then switch over to 64 bit then.

I don't load any other sfs's. I have a couple sitting in /live with a .X filename suffix that I added so they don't get loaded (devX etc.) and avoid other non debian sfs's as Toni said that could break the package database. So I only load programs via synaptic (or apt-get). Older versions of those programs in most cases, but a extensive library of stable versions. Mostly I just use Libre, Iceweasel and PDFeditor (which is one program I did import from outside - a great little PDF editor IMO) and Skype. DD-Jessie brings to me the best of puppy and the best of Debian. Optional persistence with a solid upgrade/update of sound/stable programs/system. Nice knowing that when I do online banking that a reboot has a factory fresh browser and system running.

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#844 Post by rufwoof »

Last edited by rufwoof on Fri 08 Jul 2016, 22:53, edited 2 times in total.

dancytron
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#845 Post by dancytron »

rufwoof wrote:
Belham wrote:There is nothing that you wrote that I disagree with. In further, I wholeheartedly believe that, as structured by the Eurocrats in Brussels, the free movement of people across the European Union is simply unfair and unsustainable when you have member states of that union taking on tens of thousands of refugees, and then holding other EU nations hostage in demanding they take their share. It needed drastic reworking, plain and simple.
Unilateral actions by Germany is common. It wants control over Europe always has, always will. Brussels headquarters will soon move back to Berlin now that the UK is leaving. As you say we're no longer a empire, just a island. Distancing ourselves and enough military deterrent to protect own own shores is adequate, leave Europe to explode whichever way it sees fit (financially, military). Emulate Switzerland, don't become military involved and just broker between both sides. If anything the UK is heading more East, given that Obama has done little for UK/US relations. Corbyn (opposition) have a swelling number who believe in greater wealth redistribution, QE for the people he's called it. 2020 UK General Elections are likely to see massive support for Labour (our red, your blue) and quite a extreme version of that. Moscow/Putin has noted in the past that their former Union State members had far less interference from the centre than does the EU. There's potential for that union to be rekindled, and with the UK as a member along with controlled migration other EU states (and applicants) might consider that to be a more viable alternative to the German (EU) choice.
Wrong thread??????????

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#846 Post by mcewanw »

Yes, I thought I had accidentally stumbled into "Off Topics" thread. Please let's keep DebianDog clean of politics etc. Main thing just now is the great new website Fred has created. Problem with websites is usually that of keeping them dynamic in content since we need to ensure the content is always updated with website well-maintained. The site certainly looks pleasing to the eye and nicely organised indeed.

William
github mcewanw

learnhow2code

#847 Post by learnhow2code »

why (iyo) debian dog over debian itself?

what is it about dd that makes it the right distro for you?

note that i met iguleder before i came back here, i know and admire some of his work.

still curious what it is to puppy users, what made you choose dd.

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#848 Post by rufwoof »

why (iyo) debian dog over debian itself?
Actually starting to wonder about that myself.

Just downloaded the xfce live CD from Debian Live opened the ISO with the filemanager and copied the live folder to a newly created /DEB folder on by main HDD sda3 ext3 partition (hd0,2) Edited my grub4dos to :

# menu.lst - grub4dos
color white/blue black/cyan white/black cyan/black
timeout 1
default 0

title DebianLive686
#find --set-root /DEB/live/vmlinuz2
root (hd0,2)
kernel /DEB/live/vmlinuz2 boot=live persistent live-media-path=/DEB/live/ config
initrd /DEB/live/initrd2.img

and its booted fine. Haven't figured out how to actually save yet (I think you just create a ext2 partition with a "live-rw" partition name). root password was required to run apt-get, didn't know what it was at first, but then found out you just run

sudo passwd root

and then enter a password
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mcewanw
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#849 Post by mcewanw »

dd instead of debian? For me, it is the flexibility added to what was a minimum dd core. So not only easy to download, but given several flexible boot options and tools (remaster tool and debdog-install being particularly nice). Also of course, the Puppy stance of being able to run dd as root user by default. And then there is the easy choice of save or no save at shutdown - the list goes on. Yet, it IS also pretty much full multiuser Debian compatible - so using DebianDog (and others in same family) is all plus.

Certainly, full Linux Mint is nice, full Debian, full Ubuntu - probably too, but soon I start to miss the Puppy-like flexibility added by DebianDog (including easy pet2deb, apt2sfs, load sfs, so on... and more). Size may be one of the important advantages of DebianDog, but not the main one I think - modern computers have tons of resources and even quite old machines now often have more than enough.

Is DebianDog perfect? No such thing, I'd say, but that's one of the reason for threads like these: to find out what is wrong or could be better or what extra is desired - that is a part of what these threads are for. What I don't think they are for is negative criticism or for negatively commenting or otherwise trying to put down other distributions (including Puppy Linux itself), which all have their own plus points anyway.

William
github mcewanw

Belham

#850 Post by Belham »

rufwoof wrote:
Belham wrote: you talk about loading the sfs. Do you boot DebianDog pristine every time, and then load your sfs with all your data and stuff in it, so that you always have the choice to run either "fresh/pristine" and/or "with your stuff"?? Also, when you update DebianDog, do you do it in the "fresh/prisitne" or do you do it after you load the sfs, or does it even matter?? I am slowly coming to realize, like you and others have talked about on here, that it is really nice how updates are so easy in DebianDog versus what I have to do to keep other puppy distros up to date.
Hi Belham

I boot using grub4dos. Periodically after a fresh reboot I run
apt-get update
apt-get upgrade
apt-get clean

and if any changes did occur then I run save2flash to preserve those updates. At all other times I never save. So each reboot is pristine with updates applied.

I store all docs etc outside (backed up separately) on a separate HDD/partition. I have osmo calendar/diary etc sym linked out to the same area as those docs etc. So the core configuration of DD more or less remains the exact same, excepting when updates occur.

So I can trash the system trying things out, and a reboot has me back to fresh again.

I was leaving 01-filesystem.squashfs as the only sfs being loaded and all changes being preserved in the /live/changes folder, but more recently remastered a new 01-filesystem.squashfs using MENU, ACCESSORIES, REMASTER-DOG. I've since changed that to use no compression so 01-filesystem.squashfs is bigger (around 1.6GB instead of 600MB when compressed), as that runs through remastering quicker. That leaves /live/changes empty. So the same apt-get upgrade... type commands, followed by a remaster to create a new 01-filesystem.squashfs and empty the contents of /live/changes (I create a new folder and just drag all of changes folder content over to that to move it all out, and delete that folder at the next reboot ... as I think deleting the contents of /changes whilst still running could cause problems).

My 64 bit machine blew up some months ago and as a temporary measure I switched over to a old Celeron 32 bit machine. I have another 64 bit 4 core PC behind me just gathering dust as I haven't yet got around to switching over to that. Frankly DD runs so well as-is I've had no real need/urge to make a change yet. I may very well leave it until Stretch (next stable Debian) version is released as the current stable and then switch over to 64 bit then.

I don't load any other sfs's. I have a couple sitting in /live with a .X filename suffix that I added so they don't get loaded (devX etc.) and avoid other non debian sfs's as Toni said that could break the package database. So I only load programs via synaptic (or apt-get). Older versions of those programs in most cases, but a extensive library of stable versions. Mostly I just use Libre, Iceweasel and PDFeditor (which is one program I did import from outside - a great little PDF editor IMO) and Skype. DD-Jessie brings to me the best of puppy and the best of Debian. Optional persistence with a solid upgrade/update of sound/stable programs/system. Nice knowing that when I do online banking that a reboot has a factory fresh browser and system running.

Rufwoof,

Hmmm....I gotta try what you do. I always pull my hair out when I am upgrading any other puppy distro, and I do something wrong or I mess something up, only to end up frustratingly cursing myself & wiping that puppy partiton---which of course takes all my docs/files/settings/changes for that particular puppy with it (of course I try to back them up first, but it is a pain). I've got to teach myself "symlinking" to another partition, and also better understand the saving or not at shutdown. Thankfully, I've played around with grub4dos for quite awhile now, so when you posted in another msg about trying the Debian Live and what you wrote in the menu.lst, the light bulb went off and I was like "hey, I understand what he's doing" and then the putting stuff on another partition with symlinks suddenly made sense. If I get messed up with the symlinking, hope you don't mind if I post asking questions. Thanks again.

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#851 Post by rufwoof »

Try as I might I just cannot get a livecd debian to preserve changes (persistence).

Created a dedicated partition and allocated a label of 'persistence' to that ext3 partition, created a persistence.conf in that containing / union .... but nothing I do seems to preserve changes across reboots.

Using grub4dos and extracted copy of the live folder from the ISO to /dev/sda3/DEB

# menu.lst
color white/blue black/cyan white/black cyan/black
timeout 1
default 0

title DebianLive686
#find --set-root /DEB/live/vmlinuz2
root (hd0,2)
kernel /DEB/live/vmlinuz2 boot=live persistent live-media-path=/DEB/live/ config
initrd /DEB/live/initrd2.img

HELP! Really like KDE version of Debian 8. Just so annoying that I can't get it to save changes.
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#852 Post by fredx181 »

Hi rufwoof,

Try changing "persistent" to "persistence" on your boot command line.
For the rest I think all you did is good, so should work then.
Also check if you have at least one empty line after / union in persistence.conf (might be important).

Fred

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rufwoof
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#853 Post by rufwoof »

fredx181 wrote:Try changing "persistent" to "persistence" on your boot command line.
For the rest I think all you did is good, so should work then.
Also check if you have at least one empty line after / union in persistence.conf (might be important).
That was it thanks Fred. Working fine now. I had already appended a empty line to persistence.conf and chown'd it to user ... from reading around. Not much in the way of information that I could find.

KDE is nice. Ahead of Cinnamon from the different ISO's I've tried. Surprised to see KDE work so well on this dated PC. I did unsquash the filesystem.squashfs and remade it with no compression i.e. -noX -noI -noF -noD mksquashfs parameters, so that may have helped. Lots of compositing effects such as a bouncing icon next to the mouse when a program is loading. Liking what I've seen so far.

The XFCE version had a tick box prompt asking to save or not at exit, but so far I've not found similar in KDE. Would be nice to not have to save each time as otherwise its just like a full install. I don't know if just running wmpoweroff from a terminal might circumvent saving?

Thanks again Fred. Can now at least preserve configuration changes etc.

EDIT: Running the XFCE version now. Even if you uncheck the 'save' option at reboot it still saves. I think you can change the persistence.conf file to actually specify which folders to make persistent rather than using the FULL persistence option of / union

Loads of updates were applied on top of the XFCE ISO content. One was that iceweasel seems to be more realigned back with Firefox again now. Nice icon for that. Liked it so much that I've dropped it in as the wallpaper.
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#854 Post by fredx181 »

rufwoof wrote:The XFCE version had a tick box prompt asking to save or not at exit, but so far I've not found similar in KDE. Would be nice to not have to save each time as otherwise its just like a full install. I don't know if just running wmpoweroff from a terminal might circumvent saving?

.....

EDIT: Running the XFCE version now. Even if you uncheck the 'save' option at reboot it still saves
Yes, it doesn't have the porteus-boot 'Dog Magic' :)
Boot method is probably similar as DD live-boot v3:
https://github.com/DebianDog/Jessie/wiki/Live-boot-3

I think the XFCE 'save or not' option just saves (or not) some user-session settings (although I honestly do not know what exactly), anyway it's very different from porteus-boot EXIT=/...

Fred

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#855 Post by rufwoof »

fredx181 wrote:I think the XFCE 'save or not' option just saves (or not) some user-session settings (although I honestly do not know what exactly), anyway it's very different from porteus-boot EXIT=/...
I've just re-done Debian KDE from afresh, installing skype, setting up the sound, installed masterpdfeditor ... etc .... and applied the 48 odd system updates that it automatically prompted to do. Set it up much how I like it with the correct UK locale etc ... and then created a squashfs of the persistence partition (changes). I then aufs mounted both the filesystem and that changes squashfs and created another squashfs of the merged pair. Emptied the contents of the persistence partition other than the persistence.conf file and replaced the original ISO's filesystem.squashfs with that new merged one, rebooted and it's all good. 2.2GB filesystem.squashfs filesize when compressed using lzo level 1. KDE is a bit like e17, but even more compositing. Running well on this old single core Celeron.

So I more or less have a clean/empty 'savefile', ready for further changes, where the base system is a pristine Debian KDE with all desired changes and updates applied. XFCE was snappier but not as nice looking (also had problems with getting sound to work with skype). KDE has many nice features, like changing the panel brings up another panel where you can drag the panel height up or down to how you like it. There's a nice bouncy tiny icon that runs next to the mouse pointer showing when things are loading such as a firefox icon when you first click on firefox.
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Debian KDE desktop icons

#856 Post by rufwoof »

In KDE you can drag/drop icons from the likes of /usr/share/applications onto the desktop. To then move the icon you hover over it and 'grab' the vertical bar control to drag the icon around the screen to where you want it to be, and then 'drop' it there. Part of those controls include a resizing drag type effect, so you can adjust the size of each icon independently. In the attached image for instance I've grabbed the top control in the vertical bar that pops up along side the icon when you hover over it and I'm dragging it up and to the right to enlarge the leafpad icon.

Weird to figure out how to drop/move icons around the desktop, but neat once you have.
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#857 Post by rufwoof »

Does DebianDog Jessie have any protections against massive amounts of updates occurring and not running out of space?

I ask because after wrapping freds script/modules for porteus boot around Debian Jessie, the massive subsequent amount of updates resulted in running out of space. I had to install zram, uninstall libre and I also set up a swap partition in order to get the updates to run through in the end.

My thinking is along the lines of when the next release occurs and a apt-get dist-upgrade (or whatever the command is) in DD Jessie could result in failures due to there being too much stuff to change ???

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#858 Post by fredx181 »

rufwoof wrote:Does DebianDog Jessie have any protections against massive amounts of updates occurring and not running out of space?
Assuming you mean when using EXIT:/ boot code, No, it's just the same as DebianLive using porteus-boot.

There's a disadvantage using the EXIT:/ boot code, the changes are written to tmpfs, in /mnt/live/memory/changes

I have 2G RAM, the total space in /mnt/live/memory/changes is 60% of total RAM, so only 1204M space to install/upgrade.

Code: Select all

df -m
Filesystem     1M-blocks  Used Available Use% Mounted on
tmpfs               1003     3      1001   1% /mnt/live
devtmpfs             996     0       996   0% /dev
/dev/sda1          22535 17731      3644  83% /mnt/sda1
tmpfs               1204    23      1182   2% /mnt/live/memory/changes
aufs                1204    23      1182   2% /
/dev/loop0           373   373         0 100% /mnt/live/memory/images/01-filesystem.squashfs
....
....
So for those having a real small amount of RAM, save on exit is not recommended, I'd say.

The default (for porteus-boot) is 60%, but you can increase it to e.g. full by adding to boot code:

Code: Select all

ramsize=100%
I mostly use EXIT:/ , but when I plan to install really a lot, I reboot without the EXIT: part. (installing goes slower then, specially on USB)
(BTW, then afterwards you can use EXIT: again for the same changes folder/savefile)

EDIT: Not real protection, but DebianDog gives a (gtkdialog-splash) warning when running out of space.
The "freechk" script in ~/Startup does that.

Fred
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#859 Post by rufwoof »

Now that you outline it Fred that makes perfect sense. Don't know why I didn't think of just using overlay boot mode myself (instead I uninstalled Libre first and installed zram to get through the ISO to latest round of updates :( )

I've 2GB ram as well

Code: Select all

root@live:~# df -m
Filesystem     1M-blocks  Used Available Use% Mounted on
aufs                1214    28      1186   3% /
tmpfs               1012     3      1009   1% /mnt/live
devtmpfs             993     0       993   0% /dev
/dev/sda4         105276  9263     90660  10% /mnt/live/mnt/sda4
tmpfs               1214    28      1186   3% /mnt/live/memory/changes
/dev/loop0          1568  1568         0 100% /mnt/live/memory/images/filesystem.squashfs
/dev/loop1             2     2         0 100% /mnt/live/memory/images/porteus-boot.squashfs
tmpfs               1012     1      1012   1% /dev/shm
tmpfs               1012     9      1003   1% /run
tmpfs                  5     1         5   1% /run/lock
tmpfs               1012     0      1012   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
tmpfs                203     1       203   1% /run/user/0
I have noticed the distinct difference in speeds in running Porteus (changes stored in memory) and using a Persistence partition (changes written to disk). Porteus mode is great for speed.

Pelo

But at home, a really did not have problems to install it.

#860 Post by Pelo »

"It is not Puppy linux and it has nothing to do with Puppy based on Debian.
Downloading DebianDog be ready to learn different package manager and different system setup in Debian manner."
The real Puppy Debian are Pupjibaro Wheezy and Jessie. But at home, really i did not have problems to install DebianDog. Other debianist disagree.

I want to remember that from time to time, You can use DebianDog, once installed, for some nice applications not yet running with Puppy (not compiled)

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