Progress, useful test build/boot notes & TODO
I wrote on my blog today about getting re-involved, what we've been
doing lately, some notes about test building and booting official live
images, and a pointer to the TODO on the wiki Iain wrote and I've added
some items to. I hope this is useful/inspiring to users and developers
alike.
http://syn.theti.ca/2015/11/24/debian-live-after-debian-live/
Debian Live After Debian Live
Get involved
After this happened[0], my next step was to get re-involved in Debian
Live to help it carry on after the loss of Daniel. Here’s a quick
update on some team progress, notes that could help people building
Stretch images right now, and what to expect next.
Team progress
* Iain uploaded live-config[1], incorporating an important fix,
#bc8914bc[2], that prevented images from booting.
* I want to get live-images ready for an upload, including
#8f234605[3] to fix wrong config/bootloaders that prevented images
from building.
Test build notes
* As always, build Stretch images with latest live-build from Sid
(i.e. 5.x).
* Build Stretch images, not Sid, as there’s less of a chance of
dependency issues spoiling the build, and that’s the default
anyway.
* To make build iterations faster, make sure the config is modified
to not build source & not include installer (edit auto/config
before ‘lb config’) and use an apt caching proxy.
* Don’t forget to inject fixed packages (e.g. live-config) into each
config. Use apt pinning as per live-manual, or drop the debs into
config/packages.chroot.
Test boot notes
* Use kvm, giving it enough ram (-m 1024 works for me).
* For gnome-desktop and kde-desktop, use -vga qxl, or else the
desktop will crash and restart repeatedly.
* When using qxl, edit boot params to add qxl.modeset=1 (workaround
for #779515[4], which will be fixed in kernel >= 4.3).
* My gnome image test was spoiled by #802929[5]. The mouse doesn’t
work (pointer moves, but no buttons work). Waiting on a new kernel
to fix this. This is a test environment related bug only, i.e.
should work fine on hardware. (Test pending.)
* The Stretch standard, lxde-desktop, cinnamon-desktop, xfce-desktop,
and gnome-desktop images all built and booted fine (except for the
gnome issue noted above).
* The Stretch kde-desktop and mate-desktop images are next on my list
to test, along with Jessie images.
* I’ve only tested on the standard and lxde-desktop images that if
the installer is included, booting from the Install boot menu
option starts the installer (i.e. didn’t do an actual install).
Coming soon
See the TODO[6] in the wiki. We’re knocking these off steadily. It
will be faster with more people helping (hint, hint).
0. http://syn.theti.ca/2015/11/09/the-passing-of-debian-live/
1. https://tracker.debian.org/news/727349
2.
http://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/debian-live/live-config.git/commit/?id=bc8914bccdbf10c60ec647678ec68672fc031f63
3.
http://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/debian-live/live-images.git/commit/?h=debian-next&id=8f23460506cf1cf426350d8ab98a873a55badbc9
4. https://bugs.debian.org/779515
5. https://bugs.debian.org/802929
6. https://wiki.debian.org/DebianLive/TODO
Ben
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