Porteus

2015-05-04
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Porteus-logo.png

Linux distributions + Slackware >

(on Wikipedia)
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=Porteus
porteus.org

Although installable to a hard drive, this is generated as a LiveUSB distribution.

Fail - It "works" and its impressive for the areas it works with, but it fails on a whole lot of fundamental things, with disk space issues and module loading issues. I'd rather just use Slackware and a specialized distribution on a USB stick for emergency stuff.

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Table of Contents [hide]

2016-11-07 - CINNAMON-v3.2rc5-i586 ∞

http://porteus.org/porteus-mirrors.txt

http://www.porteus.org/component/content/article/10-tutorials/installing/114#USB-Windows

Putting Porteus on my stick worked once but I hard powered-off in the start of my first bootup and thereafter could not get the thing to work. It would hang just after an attempt at booting into anything. I would only get two lines of bootup.

I tried putting it back on a USB stick from Linux, and that didn't change anything.

2016-10-30 - Porteus-LXQt-v3.1-i486 ∞

  • Editing /boot/syslinux/porteus.cfg is easy for setting up multiple modules directories or a savefile.

    • a savefile, copy2ram, modules, etc.
  • I made a savefile, it was easy. I even made an encrypted one and it asks for a password on startup.
  • It's easy to merge modules to include its dependencies.
  • usm -u all runs out of space! no space left on device
  • I didn't try disabling the autologin, but it seems easy enough to do.
  • Using a savefile makes rebooting significantly slower - it's not supposed to keep changes in memory and flush them down onto the usb stick on reboot, it's supposed to be actively using the savefile. What the hell is going on?

  • Can autoloading modules be kept in an encrypted savefile?

    • No, it's all good cheat of changes=EXIT to be bad..
    • I have no idea what that note means..
  • Can I mirror USB contents to a hard drive? Apparently not. =/
  • Is mirroring doing checksumming? (RAID 0) - I don't believe so.

  • Geany needed to chown guest:guest ..

    • Are all modules being set up in this way, or do I need to edit mine?
    • I ended up editing my permissions to use my existing data.
  • I wondered if I could move and symlink /tmp/usm and other critical directories, but that was awkward. So was binding but I had no alternative to solve this fundamental issue.
  • Limited RAM use is fixed with the RAMSIZE=100% cheat. But I think this would be a bad idea because that "missing" RAM was used for temporary storage space. Was this actually working, because I shouldn't have been running out of "disk space" if it was using a ramdisk.
  • Are extramodules loaded in order? No. It appears to be all specified directories mixed together and then the results are loaded in alphabetical order. Ouch.

  • Slackware upgrade modules are broken.

    • TODO - grab the proper non-upgrade ones? I can't usm` use slackware current?
  • How do I view module loading errors after the fact? dmesg?
  • Lock down guest?
  • Add a user - done easily
  • activate / deactivate for modules.
  • The USB stick's boot/docs/ documents should have Windows line endings.
  • /boot/docs/cheatcodes.txt has a note to be able to use UUIDs (and other stuff)

  • I may be able to use Btrfs at some point.

2016-10-25 - Porteus-LXQt-v3.1-i486 ∞

  • Their website uses a tiny font.
  • The website has little typos here and there.
  • The tutorials, e.g. http://www.porteus.org/tutorials/9-modules/ are not organized at all. It's very difficult to navigate because there is no list / table of contents and posts must be scrolled through to find earlier entries.

  • The website has broken links sprinkled around.

--

--

  • changes-time - copies all files that have been added or modified on your system over a specified period of time.

  • mloop - a great tool by brokenman for mounting modules/iso/dat files on a loop device. e.g. mloop mycustom.iso

Modules ∞

http://www.porteus.org/tutorials/9-modules/

# Update the package manager
\usm  -u usm

# Update the databases
\usm  -u all

--

Can use slackyd and then txz2xzm to turn them into modules.

--

  • save-changes - dump whole changes from the live session into a module

  • update-module - searches your system for changes that have been made to the files from a specified module, and updates the module with those changes.

2016-10-14 - Porteus-LXQt-v3.1-i486 ∞

USB preparation ∞

(source)

  1. Download Porteus ISO (Porteus-LXQt-v3.1-i486.iso)
  2. Insert the usb drive
  3. Format the usb drive
  4. Remember the usb drive's drive letter (e.g. E:)
  5. Install 7zip
  6. Right-click Porteus-LXQt-v3.1-i486.iso > 7zip > extract to Porteus-LXQt-v3.1-i486
  7. Copy the contents from Porteus-LXQt-v3.1-i486 to the root of the USB stick.
  8. Browse to the flash drive, to the boot directory.

  9. Right-click Porteus-installer-for-Windows.exe > run as administrator

Boots just fine!

Thoughts ∞

  • I wanted to use both the "fresh" option and the copy-to-ram function. To do this, I had to go to the "fresh" option, press tab, append copy2ram, and press enter.
  • Jesus fuck it's fast.
  • Fuck, why do people insist on using PCManFM?
  • The default root pass is toor, which I thankfully knew from my earliest Slackware days.. I think.
  • TODO - confirm - It appears to only see 3GB of my ram.
  • Can I choose to throw away a session even if I booted into a persistent one? Not as-such. There is a way to have all data to be written instead saved in memory and written on power down. In that case, perhaps just hard powering off would throw away the data.
  • At first I thought it had no Btrfs support out of the box, but it can read and write btrfs, but is missing mkfs.btrfs and any other utilities.

  • No eCryptfs support, and none of the repositories it uses have it.

    • TODO - I guess I'll have to import it from my efforts elsewhere. Perhaps I ought to be the one to support this, but how does everyone else do encryption if they don't use ecryptfs?
    • TODO - I think the smart thing to do in the long-term is to pursue the encryption that other Slackware users use. -- See README_CRYPT.TXT - consider cryptsetup / LUKS. Also consider Steganography of the key in some unencrypted file.
    • TODO - test - Hey wait, apparently ecryptfs IS supported: announcement
  • When downloading a package, the manager offers to open the modules directory, but nothing happens when I say yes.
  • TODO - While /tmp/usm/ has modules, and I can copy to the USB's /porteus/modules/, these files vanish on reboot. I guess this is a persistency issue.
  • Rebooting is hella-fast!
  • Can merge modules, combining dependencies!
  • geany-plugins spell check complains about 'enchant'. I see I can get an 'enchant' module, but this does not resolve the problem. geany-plugins needs to be modified to include this sub-dependency. There was another such problem with some other plugin, but I didn't note its name.
  • TODO - learn to bundle modules. Can I bundle all of my preferred modules? Is that even interesting? What about sub-modules, where I have modules a,b,c but module c has several modules within it?
  • TODO - zsh .. isn't in any repository! What?!

  • TODO - test Nano

More thoughts ∞

  • FIXME - Confirmed that only 3GB of memory is seen.
  • Automatically uses my swap, even if booted into copy2ram.

  • cryptsetup exists (LUKS)

    • cryptsetup / man cryptsetup

  • I had Chrome bundled into my ISO.

    • Having downloaded a file, and when viewing the downloads tab, 'show in folder' and 'open downloads folder' opens qmmp. I would expect pcmanfm.
  • SMPlayer doesn't have control-q to quit.. sigh.
  • The package managers' final open packages folder .. NOW works. I don't understand.. this seems inconsistent. Maybe it's because I neglected to install the package manager upgrade before. I assumed that updating it would.. update it, and not require me to find its download location and install/update it myself.
  • Double-clicking on an mp3 only queues it, and it doesn't start playing if the playlist was empty as with a fresh instance.
  • qmmp plays video via MPlayer.
  • rm doesn't prompt. Why the fuck can't distributions DO THIS RIGHT?

  • The "start menu"'s "Lock Screen" assumes XScreenSaver exists.

TODO - Persistence on a FAT32/NTFS formatted USB drive ∞

 

(source)
If your flashdrive is formatted with a Windows filesystem (e.g. FAT or NTFS), none of the changes you make to your system will survive between reboots (Porteus will default to "Always Fresh" mode). If you would like to save your changes, you can create a '.dat' file container for this purpose. See Appendix B below for more information about this very important feature, which is required for saving your changes to a partition formatted with a Windows filesystem.

--

(source)
TODO (this has to be done within Porteus)

2015-05-08 - Porteus 3.1 FINAL ∞

http://www.porteus.org/info/tips-and-tricks.html

  • Cheatcodes are passed to the system by pressing TAB at the boot menu.
  • boot option (implemented by a cheatcode) called copy2ram
  • To enable a firewall in Porteus open 'Porteus Settings Centre' and click on the 'Security settings' box. Here you can find a firewall with some pre-definied settings.
  • changes-time - copies all files that have been added or modified on your system over a specified period of time.

  • save-changes - dump whole changes from the live session into a module

--

Initial setup ∞

I was directed to http://build.porteus.org/

Copying to a USB stick

http://www.porteus.org/component/content/article/10-tutorials/installing/114-official-porteus-installation-guide.html#USB-linux

  • Insert the USB key.
  • Unmount it if it's auto-mounted.
  • Set up everyday partitioning

  • Format it vfat.

It's best to not use vfat or another Windows filesystem unless you need to access it using Windows (etc).

*NOTE* If your flashdrive is formatted with a Windows filesystem (e.g. FAT or NTFS), none of the changes you make to your system will survive between reboots (Porteus will default to "Always Fresh" mode). If you would like to save your changes, you can create a '.dat' file container for this purpose. See Appendix B below for more information about this very important feature, which is required for saving your changes to a partition formatted with a Windows filesystem.

Anyhow.. on with the installation..

drive=sdb1
\sudo  \mkdir  --parents  /mnt/porteus
\cd  /mnt/porteus
\sudo  \mkdir  porteus  $drive
\sudo  \mount  -o loop  /path/to/Porteus-LXQt-v3.1-x86_64.iso  ./loop/
\sudo  \mount  /dev/$drive  ./$drive/

# Ignore the "failed to preserve ownership" messages that appear with certain filesystems.
# As of Porteus version 2.0, you can place "loop" and "porteus" inside a subdirectory and your bootloader configuration file will be adjusted automatically to boot from that location.
\sudo  \cp  --archive  ./loop/boot/     ./$drive/
\sudo  \cp  --archive  ./loop/porteus/  ./$drive/

\cd  ./$drive/boot/
\sudo  \sh  ./Porteus-installer-for-Linux.com

.. it failed.

Installing Porteus to /dev/sdb1
WARNING: Make sure this is the right partition before proceeding.

Type 'ok' to continue or press Ctrl+c to exit.
ok
Flushing filesystem buffers...

Using extlinux bootloader.

Installation failed with error code '3'.
Please ask for help on the Porteus forum: www.porteus.org/forum
and provide the information from /mnt/porteus/sdb1/boot/debug.txt

Exiting now...

Trying again as ext2.

http://www.porteus.org/component/content/article/10-tutorials/installing/114-official-porteus-installation-guide.html#USB-linux
The extlinux bootloader will be installed on devices that are formatted with ext2/3/4, FAT16/32, ntfs and btrfs filesystems. LILO will be installed on partitions formatted with any other filesystem. 

\sudo  \mkfs -t ext2  /dev/sdb1

Running experience ∞

  • Beautiful bootup screen!
  • Perfect textmode resolution/font
  • Coloured bootup
  • There's a blackscreen for some time before X starts.

  • Unbearably slow without copy2ram.

    • Perhaps this is because I used ext2. (update: no, that usb stick sucks)
    • Firefox, when it gets around to starting up, can't even reasonably open a web page.
  • They accidentally include PCManFM instead of SpaceFM.
  • (LXQt) Uses Openbox! Yay!
  • Btrfs support out of the box.

  • USM - Unified Slackware package Manager

    • I cannot use the GUI, and I have no clue what might be wrong. I updated everything, but I cannot search. There is no feedback when I try, and I never get any search results.

  • There's no sudo! Oh hell, that's bad isn't it?

    • I could almost certainly install it myself.
usm -g vlc

HOLY FUCK it's annoying! The list of dependencies is ridiculous! I stopped giving a fuck about selecting them, and then aborted the entire affair. Screw that.

usm -g htop works (htop)

usm -g spacefm also works! (SpaceFM)

eCryptfs doesn't exist by default, but there might be a way to make it work. I fucked around with https://packages.debian.org/wheezy/ecryptfs-utils

  1. Download a .deb
  2. deb2xzm or "open with" using PCManFM.

  3. Double-click the .xzm with PCManFM. I don't know how to do this via the commandline.

I did the main ecryptfs and its library, but ended up giving up on re-packaging the entire affair. If I wanted to get into this, I'll do that work. I'd only use this distribution if I can get it all working. update - I did some work with Slax, see eCryptfs on Slax.

\usm  -g  nano
/usr/share/usm/funcpackageGet: line 102: declare: 412K: value too great for base (error token is "412K")

.. and this alone is enough to make this distro fail.

Packages ∞

Uses a nice everything-in-that-file method.

Building a package:

File managers (caja/thunar/dolphin/pcmanfm-qt) have extra service menus specific to Porteus only. All you need to do is right click on a certain file type to get an option for an extra action:

  • folders: you can build a Porteus module from it
  • modules: you can extract it to a folder; mount it to a folder (same function as 'mloop' utility)
  • tgz/txz slackware packages: you can convert it to xzm; install/uninstall directly to/from live system
  • rpm packages: convert to xzm

  • deb packages: convert to xzm

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