antiX-forum

Hello Erie

Your preview looks great !
I have Xfce on a old AMD K6 running under Debian, and I used it also on Redhat based workstations.

I had eeeXubuntu on my EeePC, but the project is discontinued, and with the rolling releases of Ubuntu's... I looked elsewhere and found antiX.

My question: how would you release the Xfce version of AntiX ?

(since we are in the "Install to usb stick" thread, I'll say that I suspended, at the moment, the development of the script;
I am looking for the best way to have a portable GUI, usable at least in antiX and Mepis, not relying on specific tools, nor requiring packages not found in the base distro)

What I did/ am doing is used the remaster.sh script(already installed) and stripped out what I don't want/need and added xfce. Right now I am working on changing over some defaults that were meant for fb/icewm but will not work with xfce. Mostly simple stuff but a lot of editing. I am also working on a default theme that will be recognized as antix. I don't want to stray too far from anti's ideals but I really like the xfce desktop and if others feel the same way than the effort is worth it.

Thank you eriefisher for your answer, and for your pictures. Here in Toulouse,France it was all a mess last with car traffic because we had two centimeters of snow!

Here is a prototype of the GUI for antix-iso2usb. Built with glade.
I have all the code to write (callbacks). In sidux they have a start-up shell script that calls a binary (C code) that loads the glade file and implements the callbacks, collect the user input and then calls the scripts that does the hard job...
I would like to have a python script, and a shell script...

Looking forward to trying it. Use the upload link from earlier if you need, just post the link.

Uploaded to savefile.com

http://www.savefile.com/files/1967678

It's a screen shot.
The program: 4 lines of python just to load the glade file. All the callbacks have to be written

Here is lagopus's image.

A screenshot

Uploaded the file

http://www.savefile.com/files/1985627

Untar and run:
python ./antixusbgui.py

I don't know why, but running:
./antixusbguy.py
in antiX, I got a "bad interpreter" error (that works in Mepis-8 - though in Mepis you should install gtk.glade )

The gui is not yet functional, the command line (that launches the antix2usb.sh script) is not completed.
(you wouldn't break your sda disk )
The antix2usb.sh script should be re-written to accept more options: partitioning remaining space, optional grub menu entry...

Your comments are welcome

Yves

Nice looking app! Would you say that it is at least at a stage where it can be tested out? If so, I'd like to give it a try some time soon.

lagopus,

great work on this.

A couple of comments.

Format the device has 2 options, ext2 and ext3. Should there be a third ie vfat?
Space left says vfat (nice) is that FAT16 or fAt32 or should there be both?

The Options section.

The grub entry part is nice, but users may be confused with the Additional entry ie not knowing what it is about.
Maybe a better title for it? Or Additional boot options?

Very minor points from me.

For those that need it, here is the iso2usb.sh Readme file.

Code: Select all


***
Sidux has a very well documented page about installation of sidux on a USB-device:
http://manual.sidux.com/en/hd-install-opts-en.htm
***

The archive contains the iso2usb.sh script for antiX, and a copy of the original
sidux script: fll-iso2usb.sh

To run the script (iso2usb.sh):

On your everyday system (I use Mepis-M8), where you have already downloaded an antiX
iso file, say antiX-M8-public-test1.iso (other versions should work):

Run the script, as root:

======================================================================
# ./iso2usb.sh -I ~/My-Downloads/antiX-M8-public-test1.iso -D /dev/sdc
======================================================================

of course you will change the device arg name /dev/sdc to the device name under
which **your** device appears.

You may want to use the option -d (--debug) to collect some more information on
what happens. The -x option traces also shell commands execution (set -x).
A log file is written under /tmp/iso2usb.log

Tested:
=======
1) The script, run from Mepis-8, writes correctly the USB device.
My target system (eeePC 701) boots correctly from the USB-thumb.

If you list the content of the USB key, after mounting it, you should have:
<<<============================================================================
# ls -R /media/antiXUSB
/media/antiXUSB:
antiX-M8-rc2.iso  boot  boot.catalog  cdrom.ico  lost+found  version

/media/antiXUSB-1/boot:
grub  initrd.gz  memtest  vmlinuz

/media/antiXUSB-1/boot/grub:
default     e2fs_stage1_5  iso9660_stage1_5  menu.lst  minix_stage1_5     stage1  xfs_stage1_5
device.map  fat_stage1_5   jfs_stage1_5      message   reiserfs_stage1_5  stage2

/media/antiXUSB-1/lost+found:
>>>============================================================================

...and for menu.lst:
<<<============================================================================
# cat /media/antiXUSB-1/boot/grub/menu.lst
default 0
timeout 10
color cyan/blue white/blue
foreground ffffff
background 003f7d
gfxmenu /boot/grub/message

##ISO boot
title antiX (LiveUSB)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz nosplash vga=791 fromhd=UUID=4b081ee3-8d07-483a-8ca2-f73e0c595ad6 fromiso=antiX-M8-rc2.iso aufs
initrd /boot/initrd.gz

title antiX-memtest (test system memory)
kernel /boot/memtest

>>>============================================================================

Note:
I think the "fromhd=UUID=the-uuid-of-your-device" is not supported as a valid
kernel line option: when booting from the live-USB, a long list of devices are
scanned (maybe devices fetched in /sys/blocks ?) before the iso file is found in
/dev/sdX1 partition. It is not really time consuming, but gives a ugly output.

2) Also tested:
From the live-USB I got, after transferring the script, run the command:

==========================
# ./iso2usb.sh -D /dev/sdx
==========================

...without giving the name of the iso you booted on
(really you may ask what it is worth, since you already got it...)
you get a second antiX "fromiso" USB-thumb drive

To test:
========
1) run the script from a live antiX CDrom
2) test the additional option to the command line, appened to the kernel line
in menu.lst
3) test the -n --noformat option for installing on an already formatted bootable
   partition


My todo list:
=============
1) add an option vga=xxxx that will supersede the default
2) add a second menu.lst entry for booting in quiet mode
3) build a second partition ext2, ext3 or vfat on the space left, and give the
   size of the install partition as argument of the command line
4) write a GUI

Bug reports, suggestions are warmly welcome

Yves



I just open unetbootin - a 1 min download http://lubi.sourceforge.net/unetbootin.html
scroll to the iso file then select usb as target. and within about 3 min it's installed.
good work on your script though. I just found it.. next time Ill try it

This sounds like a great idea lagopus, I'd love to install antix onto my flash drive and use it at work as a biology workstation.

I've heard a lot about unetbootin, but I heard that you can't use the flash drive to transport files between different computers (in other words, what flash drives are normally used for). I'd like the ability to have a little bit of fat-formatted space for this purpose.

The gui looks great, can't wait for the functional version.

joe_pacific:

Uploaded for you:

http://www.savefile.com/files/2007460

Use it the simple way:
# ./antix2usb.sh -I /home/joe/Downloads/antiX-M8.iso -D /dev/sd?
(-I like in Iso)

see the README file and have a look at the options:
# ./antix2usb.sh -h

I was on the point to upload a test1 version of the GUI, but discovered a subtle bug...

i get an error when i try to make the live usb for the latest antiX 8.2 test1 :

mktemp: cannot make temp dir /tmp/install-usb-key.XXXXX: Invalid argument
mktemp: last six characters of template must be XXXXXX
Error: ISO file doesn't fit in partition

any idea ?

this is the output of a second try with a size of 800 set:
./antix2usb.sh -s 800 -I /home/ICE-M/Files/antiX-M8.2.iso -D /dev/sdb
Device USB2.0 USB 2.0 detected at /dev/sdb

Continue? (y/n) y
mktemp: cannot make temp dir /tmp/install-usb-key.XXXXX: Invalid argument
mktemp: last six characters of template must be XXXXXX
Prepare partitions on /dev/sdb, file systems: ext3 antiXUSB, vfat antiXData ?
Continue? (y/n) y
Preparing partitions on device /dev/sdb fs1=[ext3] fs2=[vfat]
Clearing partition table
Creating partition /dev/sdb1 fs: ext3 label: antiXUSB
Creating partition /dev/sdb2 fs: vfat label: antiXData
Creating file system on /dev/sdb1
Creating file system on /dev/sdb2
Prepared bootable partition: /dev/sdb1 label: antiXUSB
Prepared data partition: /dev/sdb2 label: antiXData
Mounting /dev/sdb1 on temporary mount point
mount: mount point does not exist
Error: Failed to mount /dev/sdb1 on

maybe it has something to do with policykit?