Stuff that has not yet gone into the official build.
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Sid, Refracta and Refracta-tools

Thu Jun 20, 2013 9:04 pm

Here's a (unofficial) Sid image based on the newest refracta; current sid at the filename's date:

http://exegnulinux.net/refracta/iso/

Built by extracting the newest refracta iso, dist-upgrade in a chroot then a new iso made. A few tweaks in .config for what was different in sid. Everything seems to work. Maybe it will get updated sometimes.

The script used to do the job is posted at the same URL.

Maybe this thread could also be used for general sid discussion. I don't have much time for "testing", I seen before stuff that's disfunctional sit there unfixed for too long.

Re: Sid, Refracta and Refracta-tools

Thu Jun 20, 2013 10:36 pm

That's way cool. Thanks.
Downloading.

Yes, i don't see much sense in testing myself. stable or unstable for me.

Re: Sid, Refracta and Refracta-tools

Sun Jun 23, 2013 7:31 pm

I got weird fonts. Perhaps that is called alphabet. Or system language.
I partly got the usualy fonts/alphabet (arabian?: a b c and such), but partly a strange one (perhaps farsi, it sure is written right to left, not left to right, like we do. Same for desktops, etc).
Too make it short:
http://mg.viewskew.com/mgoblin_media/me ... _scrot.png
after login in. "dpkg-reconfigure locales" corrected it.

Re: Sid, Refracta and Refracta-tools

Sun Jun 23, 2013 9:01 pm

yes I saw that too .. but only if no locale is set at boot (maybe some bug in locales, it should then default to en_US.UTF-8). Here is used:

Code:
config=locales locales=en_GB.UTF-8

Re: Sid, Refracta and Refracta-tools

Tue Oct 01, 2013 9:53 pm

Quite a struggle getting my latest sid image down from 730 MB, using essentially the same package list as Refracta 7 like before.

Although I don't have live-build installed I had a look in the "hooks" part in the source package. Here's a summary of what I picked out that refracta Snapshot doesn't do. (*don't* perform these actual commands unless you're in a chroot!)

Code:
# Reset generated file
cat > /(etc)/adjtime << EOF
0.0 0 0.0
0
UTC
EOF

# Remove backup files
rm -f /boot/*.bak
rm -f /boot/*.old-dkms
rm -f /(etc)/apt/sources.list~
rm -f /(etc)/apt/trusted.gpg~
rm -f /(etc)/passwd-
rm -f /(etc)/group-
rm -f /(etc)/shadow-
rm -f /(etc)/gshadow-
rm -f /var/cache/debconf/*-old #3.8 MB
rm -f /var/lib/dpkg/*-old

# This removes dbus machine id that cache that makes each system unique.
rm -f /var/lib/dbus/machine-id

# Remove GNOME icon cache.
# 61.7 MB!
rm -f /usr/share/icons/*/icon-theme.cache

# This removes openssh-server host keys, they are regenerated by live-config
# on system start.
rm -f /(etc)/ssh/ssh_host_*_key /(etc)/ssh/ssh_host_*_key.pub

# This removes byte-compiled Python modules to save some space.
# 14 MB here
find /usr -name "*.pyc" -print0 | xargs -0r rm -f

Some more I worked out for myself that can go:

Code:
/var/lib/aptitude/*.old
/var/lib/apt/*~
/var/lib/apt/cdroms.list
/(etc)/blkid.tab.old
/var/lib/mlocate/mlocate.db

In iceweasel profile:

Code:
cookies.sqlite
places.sqlite
urlclassifier3.sqlite

Other thing was, delete from clamav directory main.cld and daily.cld and run freshclam. The new files (.cvd) were much smaller than the old, updated ones. Replaced brasero with xfburn (less deps). Fixed fonts issue by setting locale to en_US (cmdline can override that)

Maybe I got some of this wrong and not finished testing it yet.but.. the image is now 697 MB!

EDIT: 2 more places (~ 7 MB):

Code:
/var/backups/*.gz
/var/backups/*.bak

The image is posted here: http://exegnulinux.net/refracta/iso/ but please note it is *unofficial* *experimental* and tested only as far as it boots and runs for me.

Re: Sid, Refracta and Refracta-tools

Thu Oct 03, 2013 10:58 am

For your info:
Your iso saved my life where each and every other debian based distro (including default refracta minus ubuntu/mint/other-crap).
The reason might be the newer kernle, but i simply don't know (it was a graphics/black-screen-of-no-nothing problem, aka: no boot at all).

Re: Sid, Refracta and Refracta-tools

Fri Oct 04, 2013 5:58 pm

Thanks, dzz. The latest i386 iso is too big to fit on a CD, so this is helpful. I added most of the things you listed to the excludes file, and I should know in a little while if the image has shrunk enough. There were a few things I didn't add:

the python modules - won't removing them break something?

mlocate.db - won't that cause updatedb to run every time you boot into a live session? I stopped disabling updatedb in the last version of snapshot (9.0.9-4).

backup copies of passwd, group, shadow and gshadow in /etc - they're small.

The openssh-server host keys were already added in the last version of snapshot. Note that new keys will only be generated on boot if you add 'config=openssh-server' to the boot cmdline. That piece has been added to the boot menu (live.cfg) in 9.0.9-4. (I have ideas about changing this in the next (sid) version of refracta.)

I forgot to do the clamav database and didn't do anything with the dbus machine id or adjtime file. Those things might get added to snapshot.

Edit: 'ls -lh' shows the iso as 707MB. That's down from 719.

Re: Sid, Refracta and Refracta-tools

Sat Oct 05, 2013 12:47 pm

nadir, good to hear that image was useful for you! Maybe just newer kernel or xorg sorted the problem.

Main reason for posting it was in hope it would help official Refracta.

It just got updated. Main reason, gtk-youtubeviewer-antix was found to be broken, probably because of newer perl stuff. I looked at antix repo but didn't see a newer one.

I built a deb for sid from the latest source https://code.google.com/p/trizen/ and posted it here: http://exegnulinux.net/refracta/experim ... 0_i386.deb

It works (one new dep, libdata-dump-perl)

The latest package list is posted (with the iso but as a separate text file), that might be useful to compare with other sid images.. fsmithred, a diff against yours would be interesting to see.. only 8 (squashed) MB to go!

I still got grub-pc on hold because http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=709808.

I don't know if anything at all I did to trim size was the right thing to do. Only testing will tell, 20 seconds to (live usb) login and all running nicely so far is a good start . I don't know much about python, I'm just assuming those "byte-compiled" modules are not essential or get regenerated.. and if live-build can sack them so can I.

Updatedb was observed to not autorun in live boot of this image (manual run worked, took ~2 seconds)

The backup files might be small but (rightly or not) I'm on the case of *anything* that does not need to be there (without interfering with deb package files)

Other good news: the initrd hack post2283.html?hilit=intrd#p2283 still works, I can boot a single partition usb with persistence (including luks). The device is writable, I can save files like logs or other info to it and edit boot menus on-the-fly, persistent or not.

BTW I am not using refractasnapshot for this (script used is also posted with the iso)

Re: Sid, Refracta and Refracta-tools

Sat Oct 05, 2013 5:49 pm

"pyc files are generated via dpkg postinstall triggers...
If they are deleted, apps which would have made use of them will still run... but performance suffers."
(found the above when I researched pyc files)

Re: Sid, Refracta and Refracta-tools

Sat Oct 05, 2013 9:36 pm

Here's the diff on the package lists, but it's comparing wheezy to sid. Mostly version changes.
http://distro.ibiblio.org/refracta/misc ... 131004.txt

I tried excluding a few more things and got the iso down to 687MB. Will have to replace the iso that's up there (at sf) now. Also needed to correct a few other things, like turn off numlock (again.)
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