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Archive for May, 2010

Grub2 problems?

May 27th, 2010 joostruis Comments off

Here is a quick checklist of things you can try.

I still have grub 0.xx how can I use grub2?
If you are using an older Sabayon install like 5.1 or earlier, grub might have been updated as a package, but it still would not be installed to the master boot record. You will have todo that manually if you want to switch over to grub2!

grub2-install /dev/sda

Will install the newer grub to the MBR, from here you need to generate the /boot/grub/grub.cfg
MIND THIS: grub2 does NOT use /boot/grub/menu.lst or /boot/grub/grub.conf anymore!!

To generate your new cfg file as root issue this command:

grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

I have grub2 but it does not work from my external USB drive!
If you use grub2 from your USB MBR you want to add these flags to the kernel line in /boot/grub/grub.cfg
doslowusb scandelay=10

or even better would be to add them here:
/etc/default/grub
in GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=”"
and then regenerate you grub.cfg (grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg)

reason this is better is because whenever entropy automatically triggers the grub config rebuild script your direct edit on /boot/grub/grub.cfg will be lost.

I have grub2 and it boots fine , but my bootsplash image is corrupted!
Add this to your kernel boot line:
vga=791

Hope it helps.


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Sabayon 5.3 Progress, Get Involved with Testing, Bumps

May 27th, 2010 wolfden Comments off

It must be about time for an update, tough to blog when summer is here.  5.3 is in the works and is at a RC2 status.  Some of the changes include bug fixes of course, btrfs support, mono removed from grub and installer fixes.  Keep in mind that btrfs is very young in development and should not be used in a stable environment.  I did try it out in a virtual box setting and it seemed to work good for the little bit of time I worked with it.  Mitch follows the progress of it and has been a good source for information.  It sounds like in kernel 2.6.36 things will even be better for btrfs.  I’ll have to try and keep an eye on it myself, seems promising.

We do have on the public mirrors a weekly build that anyone can download and test.  We do have a special forum section setup for discussion, reporting, etc.  You can also use our dev-ML to report stuff.  You can also use our bugzilla, just make the proper selection when reporting.  When reporting, please give as much information as you can, including any and all logs, version and how to reproduce.  If we don’t get enough information we have to dismiss the report, which is frustrating to the devs and to the users.  If you are interested in helping the community and devs, this is a great opportunity to test and report.  We started out with daily isos for testing, but it consumes a lot to do that, so we decided to go weekly.  It sounds like every Sunday at 5AM, (GMT+1, currently UTC+0200) a new iso will be available.  If things change, we will let yas know.  I do hope to see more users testing these isos.

Seeing people having problems with boot splash disappearing after updates.  Fabio reports it’s an upstream bug and simply need to do”

equo update && equo install lvm2 && reboot
<after reboot>
equo install linux-sabayon && reboot

I hope that fixes that issue.  As far as seeing a red, green, deformed image on boot, we are still looking at that as it only seems to effect some.  I have not seen this problem on my machine.  Joost has it happening on his machine tho.  Nvidia vs. ATI, corrupt image or simply aliens running amok.  I don’t know, but sooner or later it will present itself.

Core-cd ran into a problem when anaconda dropped support with the text installer.  Some of the solutions we are tinkering with is a light weight wm like flux to boot into and run the gui installer or try to patch it so it can work like it use to.  I haven’t had time to try out a weekly core-cd test iso lately, but it sounds like flux is what we are using on it right now.  As far as I know and assume, it doesn’t actually install flux when the install is done, but I could be totally wrong on that.   We will have to see what happens with this little adventure.

A few days ago there was a bump in virtual box and some seem to be having issues running it.  I can not reproduce the issue myself.  I’ve been suggesting equo install virtualbox-modules virtualbox-bin && reboot and it works for some.  If that don’t work than I am wondering what kernel you are using.  Remember kernel upgrades are not automatically pulled, you have to tell equo to install the latest kernel.  You should be able to do this simply with equo update && equo install linux-sabayon && equo upgrade.  The last part is important to pull the matching modules/drivers or if you know which modules/drivers you have, you can install just them.  If you don’t reinstall the drivers/modules after a kernel update, you will have a bad experience upon reboot. The latest kernel in entropy is 2.6.33 and 2.6.34 is being worked on.

A quick note about entropy.  It’s important to always make sure you have the latest entropy.  When you see the message that there is a new entropy version and it’s important to install that first, it’s not kidding.  You can solve a lot of issues by making sure you always have the latest entropy.  If you want, you can simply remember to do equo update && equo install entropy equo sulfur && equo upgrade once a day. You can’t go wrong and than you will always have the latest entropy before doing updates.  If you find entropy a bit aggressive on packages being pulled, try the –relaxed option, for example:  equo install foo –relaxed  That should pull lesser packages and if you are still not happy, try –nodeps like equo install foo –nodeps.  Note that  – is two hypens, sometimes on wordpress the hypens look like one.  Hopefully that will help some out.

Categories: Development Tags:

Press Release: Sabayon Linux x86/x86-64 daily ISO images

May 11th, 2010 Ian "Thev00d00" Whyman Comments off

After several weeks of testing and ironing, we are happy to announce the public availability of daily (or nightly if you prefer) Sabayon Linux (Standard and CoreCD editions) ISO images. The aim is to improve packages and general system functionality testing during releases lifecycle by providing always up-to-date installable LiveDVDs/LiveCDs.

Our stable releases are just “snapshots” of these ISO images, so you will be able to know (and report) about possible hardware, software issue before a new version is published.

Features of Sabayon DAILY ISO images:

  • Up-to-date packages (ISO images are built every night)
  • Featuring the new Anaconda Installer port
  • Speed improvements over 5.2 ISO images
  • Fully compliant with our rolling-distro philosophy, keep looking ahead

Minimum Requirements

See respective Press Releases. Got a PC, keyboard and monitor? That’s enough!

Warning, this is the bleeding edge of bleeding edge, do not use them on production systems.

ISO file names do not expose a timestamp directly, but RELEASE_DATE_DAILY does, as well as ISO boot menu and BUILD_INFO inside the ISO image filesystem.

Download sources

Our Mirrors Page:

  • NOTE 1: files are inside iso/daily directory
  • NOTE 2: these ISO images are moving targets, make sure to check them against respective .md5 files.

http://www.sabayon.org/download

(Seems this never made it to planet so posting it here for reference, very cool imo)

Categories: Development Tags:

Create your own spinoff!

May 8th, 2010 joostruis Comments off

If you are in a small company or simply in a situation where you want to install a preselected list of programs then why shouldn’t you just grab SabayonCore modify the ISO so it will have anything you want and burn that to a disc. Or maybe you want to create your own Sabayon based distro and fork it a bit? Yes you can!

The tool we have in stock to achieve this is called molecule.
First install molecule (equo install molecule)

Then grab an example spec file.

All I can say is that if you want to start something based on the CoreCD you want to have a look at this spec file:

http://gitweb.sabayon.org/?p=molecule.git;a=blob;f=examples/specs/5-x86-g-remaster-add-games.spec;h=5623f42dee8595990663ad2e72697cafd9ce9143;hb=29d45a193430bc8afbda65d0cf10f692144f5f70

(also found in /etc/molecule/examples)

Since I am for now only looking into a 64bits mastered ISO I’ve commented out:

# pre chroot command, example, for 32bit chroots on 64bit system, you always
# have to append "linux32" this is useful for inner_chroot_script
# prechroot: linux32

Next I point to where My ISO I want to remaster is:

# Path to source ISO file (MANDATORY)
source_iso: /home/joost/Sabayon_Linux_CoreCD_DAILY_amd64.iso

Now where does this all go:

# Destination directory for the ISO image path (MANDATORY)
destination_iso_directory: /home/joost

Tell molecule to update that ISO before installing anything (that is the next point in line)

# Determine whether repositories update should be run (if packages_to_add is set)
# (default is: no), values are: yes, no.
execute_repositories_update: yes

Tell it to add packages (in this case my set @lxde)

# List of packages that would be added from chrooted system (comma separated)
packages_to_add: @lxde

Ofcourse you can add as many packages here as you want!

I can imagine this does not actually give the perfect result yet.
In my example I use the @lxde set and it contains the gdm login manager by default. On CoreCD chroot there is actually nothing that triggers this to auto start. We also need to configure a file called /etc/conf.d/xdm and set it to use gdm.

Here an example snip. how thats done:

Make it use gdm:
sed -i 's/DISPLAYMANAGER=".*"/DISPLAYMANAGER="gdm"/g' /etc/conf.d/xdm

Make xdm startup automaticly (and thus load gdm)
rc-update add xdm

so I created inner_chroot_script_after.sh
#!/bin/bash
# Use gdm by default
sed -i 's/DISPLAYMANAGER=".*"/DISPLAYMANAGER="gdm"/g' /etc/conf.d/xdm
# automaticly start xdm
rc-update add xdm
# to be sure, cleanup
equo cleanup

All these commands should be put in a file, and we point our specs file to trigger it from within the chroot like this:
# Inner chroot script command, to be executed inside destination chroot after
# packages installation and removal
inner_chroot_script_after: /home/joost/inner_chroot_script_after.sh

Now run molecule and make it all happen:
molecule sabayon-lxde-amd64.spec

Keep in mind I cannot guarantee anything YET, but it should give you a head start.
Also note that this is a strategy used where we take an excisting iso and modify it basicly. Much more advanced things ARE possible but lets start here rite?


Categories: Uncategorized Tags:

Macbook 5.2 and latest alsa

May 6th, 2010 joostruis Comments off

Well I patiently waited for this and it now finally seems to work!

Just add:
options snd_hda_intel model=mb5

in this file: /etc/modprobe.d/alsa.conf

Reboot and there it is.


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