Slitaz 4.0 LiveUSB writefs

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Slitaz 4.0 LiveUSB writefs

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Started 11 years ago by msersen
Latest reply from Paul
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msersen

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Hello friends. Although I have been following along with Slitaz for the better part of 2 years, this is the first time I have come to the forums asking for help. That said, please go easy on me 8^) I have searched and searched and tried many things before coming here.

1st, my setup.
- msi a5000 laptop
- Intel Pentium processor
- Dual boot Windows 7 / Ubuntu (should not matter because live Slitaz)
- Slitaz 4.0 running live from sd card (sdb1)
- I installed the ISO onto the sd card from a live instance, booted from cd.
At this point, everything works fairly well. The only exception being that I have to press [Ctrl+Alt+F7] for X to display... but that's only a nuisance.

What I am writing to ask is why I cannot get tazusb writefs (or any other utility) to save my installed apps and/or my system settings to usb? I've tried it every which way from Sunday but I cannot seem to get it to work. I have tried it at the command prompt with su root. I have tried it from the desktop by right clicking and selecting writefs from the context menu. I have tried it both with compression, and without. I have delved into other areas such as cooking, and tazlito writeiso but nothing seems to work. Basically, I am looking for a "doh! you missed something simple" or "your overcomplicating this". It just seems like it "should be" cut and dry. I have run the commands, and they do save files from my user directory (/home/tux)... Unfortunatly that is as much as I can get to persist between reboots.

These are the simple changes I want to "persist"
- tazpkg get-install gimp
- tazpkg get-install blender
- I also edited /etc/network.conf, with my wifi ESSID and encryption key stored.
Neither the installed apps or the system settings will persist!

Also, I have checked the /home/boot directory after running writefs. The rootfs1.gz file does change after running the command. Which goes to tell that /home is mounted to the sdcard.

I have also tried ext2 and ext3 file system types, with no luck :-(

I hope that is enough information to get someones attention towards helping.

Thanks in advace and happy Sunday :-)
Posted 11 years ago #
Paul

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Hi msersen

Could you report this on the bug tracker?

http://bugs.slitaz.org/

Thanks

Posted 11 years ago #
msersen

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Certainly. Thanks for the pointer Paul.

Posted 11 years ago #
mojo

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Hi msersen,
What are you using as the bootloader for slitaz?
What is the kernel and initrd boot stanza of the slitaz bootloader?
The compressed file system made with tazusb writefs gzip which has your installed programs and configs is called rootfs.gz, not rootfs*.gz
The bootloader has to point to initrd rootfs.gz to boot your programs and configs
If given a valid UUID for home= partition for the SD card rootfs.gz should be located at /home/boot
If you designate a wrong home=sdXX or home=hdXX of a valid partition of another drive connected to the same hardware it will write rootfs.gz to that location instead of where you expect it.
If a valid home= is not given the rootfs.gz is written to / which is running in memory,if you don't manually copy it to a drive before you shutdown the computer it's lost.

Posted 11 years ago #
msersen

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mojo, I have grub installed as a bootloader, although I am catching POST before my bootloader runs (I think). I am not familiar with stanza but I can answer at least one of your questions. I'm fairly certian my home partition is setup correctly. If I look in /home/boot/extlinux/extlinux.conf it reads "home=aae0fcaf-8612-4519-b109-0f94...." (I shortened the md5, but I hope that is sufficient). I had the /home issues earlier on, and managed to fix that up. Like I said; When I use writefs, it appears to write a new file inside /home/boot/ (evident by the timestamp of the newly written file). Oh, and you are correct, it is not rootfs*.gz, I was incorrect. I see now, when I run the command, it updates rootfs.gz (only). Sorry for the confusion! I will Google stanza, it sounds like that may be a clue to my confusion. Thanks for the pointers. I'll dig around.

Otherwise, I have managed to get some settings to persist. I noticed inside /etc/init.d/bootopts.sh/ (lines 130 - 138) the comments mention placing packages into /home/boot/packages. Then I noticed I did not have such a directory! So, I added it, and quickly added some pkg's inside of it... fortunatly this works, but it does not handle the dependencies of said packages... So, it was only partially sucessfull. Ultimately I was more sucessfull by running tazpkg repack-config from within /home/boot/packages. This apparently saved some system settings to config-1.0.tazpkg which now runs on boot, restoring my wifi settings from the previous session! Also, the x-server is now defaulting to F7 :-)

Posted 11 years ago #
msersen

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More about the /home/boot/packages folder... Im not sure if we are expected to create that directory or if it should have been created with the FS? It would be nice to automate tazpkg repack-config within this folder, it seems to fix my issue with some system settings. I hope that helps some other folks!

Posted 11 years ago #
mojo

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If your booting slitaz-4.0 on SD card with the orange slitaz boot menu you have to modify /home/boot/extlinux/extlinux.cfg to boot rootfs.gz packed by tazusb writefs.
1. Make custom the new default menu entry:
2. Copy LABEL core section,paste above,LABEL custom, remove rootfs*.gz,replace with rootfs.gz:
Another method of persistence other than to rewrite the rootfs before shut-down is to use /home/boot/packages and /home/boot/rootfs to auto-reinstall tazpkgs and files on boot.
Install a program in a live session,tazpkg downloads the program and all it's depends.
Before shutdown copy all tazpkgs from download cache to packages folder:
# mkdir -p /home/boot/packages
# cp /var/cache/tazpkg/4.0/packages/*tazpkg /home/boot/packages
Most custom configurations can be packed into a tazpkg:
# tazpkg list-config <= List configurations which will be packed into config-1.0.tazpkg
# tazpkg repack-config <= Pack configuration files into config-1.0.tazpkg
# cp config-1.0.tazpkg /home/boot/packages <= Move to /home/boot/packages to auto-install on boot
Custom files not included above go in /home/boot/rootfs
They must be in there parent folders within rootfs.
For example to install a file called test.txt in /etc
# touch test.txt
# mkdir -p /home/boot/rootfs/etc
# cp test.txt /home/boot/rootfs/etc
If a file exists with the same name and location it is overwritten with the custom file.

I prefer the /home/boot/packages method of persistence on older slow hardware that takes forever to tazusb writefs. There are limits as to how large the rootfs.gz can be depending on how much memory the computer has. If the computer runs out of free memory while writing/compressing(tazusb writefs gzip) the process fails or the rootfs.gz is corrupted and kernel panics on boot.
There are other methods of restoring config files covered in the docs I haven't tested yet.
Posted 11 years ago #
msersen

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Excellent info Mojo, thank you. I do believe I am using the orange boot menu. I'll give your instructions a go and see what happens. I knew there had to be an easy way to obtain a list of all of the dependencies for any given package. I was trying all kinds of crazy shell magic. the download cache folder makes my life that much more simple :-)

Posted 11 years ago #
msersen

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It's a success! Thanks again for the info. I will mark this as resolved.

Posted 11 years ago #
Paul

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Key Master

Hi

mojo can you lend a hand?

I've tried using the slitaz-4.0-core.iso (rootfs.gz) flavor thinking this would help solve some things. But I'm not getting a /home/boot folder.

Thanks

Posted 11 years ago #
mojo

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Hi Paul,
Do you have home=<uuid.of.home.partition>
As root:
blkid
Generates a list with a uuid number corresponding to each partition attached to the computer.
When I install to USB flash I use Applications/System Tools/Create a LiveUSB while running SliTaz Livecd.
If this doesn't clear things up:
Which bootloader are you using,and do you want /home on a USB flash drive or sata hard drive?
If you want /home on a USB flash drive are there other sata drives attached to computer?

Posted 11 years ago #
Paul

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Hi mojo

Still no dice. I've noticed that there's some differences between the /boot/isolinux/isolinux.cfg on the 4in1 ISO and the 4-core ISO.

4in1:

# Labels
LABEL slitaz
MENU LABEL SliTaz Live
kernel /boot/isolinux/ifmem.c32
append 192M core 160M gtkonly 100M justx 48M base noram

label noram
MENU HIDE
config noram.cfg

LABEL core
MENU LABEL SliTaz core Live
KERNEL /boot/bzImage
append initrd=/boot/rootfs4.gz,/boot/rootfs3.gz,/boot/rootfs2.gz,/boot/rootfs1.gz rw root=/dev/null vga=normal autologin

4-core:

# Labels
LABEL slitaz
MENU LABEL SliTaz Live
KERNEL /boot/bzImage
APPEND initrd=/boot/rootfs.gz rw root=/dev/null vga=normal autologin

I'm using home=uuid when I sed/change /append/APPEND/ on tazusb code for 4-core. I'm using extlinux.conf to boot on both and hoping for /home on a USB flash drive. I'll try hacking a different isolinux.cfg on 4-core, it may be just a case of :

# Labels
LABEL slitaz
MENU LABEL SliTaz Live
kernel /boot/bzImage
append initrd=/boot/rootfs.gz rw root=/dev/null vga=normal autologin

Posted 11 years ago #

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