unruh

That is the default, in the wizard. But not on command line. mklivecd also needs to work on an installed system!

Hint: there is a howto page, when you open a browser. :D

I would suggest that --root=/union be made the default for all cases. This is to try to idiotproof it since if that default is wrong in the case of an installed system, /union almost certainly will not exist and an error message will be gtenerated letting the preson know of the bad (in his case) default. On the web page, a line like

Note that --root-/union must be used for creating a new liveCD from a live installation.

As it is the only line where --root=/union is mentioned looks just like an example, rather than a crucial necessity, espeicially as most people have no idea what it means.

Thanks

And now trying that CD, I find that the links are there but they point for example bin-> /union/bin. Note that initial / on the union directory. Of course /union does not exist. It is /initrd/loopfs/union.

I think that /usr/share/mklinecd./rc.sysinit should just assume that the base in /initrd/loopfs/union, and NOT /initrd/looprs, and get rid of those silly links.

Ah, of course. You have set up the new union file system on /union, and have set up all of the usual / directories to point to /union. But that means when the squashfs file system is set up, it uses that same structure, and all of the links point to /union. This means thay they become defunct when the / filesystem is mounted on /initrd/loop.

Ie, either those links have to be made so that they point to union in a relative manner, or the rc.sysinit has to be redesgned so that it refers to /initrd/loopfs/union.

There is also the danger of a successively receeding set of directories as people make more and more children. Ie, this filesystem will now be mounted on /union, so you will have /union/union and so on with deeper and deeper sets of links.

Anyway, that gives me a cheap out. I can just make all those links be relative instead of absolute, and at least my upgraded system should worll.

All this was so I could test out some laptops to see if they would run linux. Yee gads, my stubborness gets me in trouble at times.

And now I found that I should have used the --root=/union flag in mklivecd all along. Perhaps that should be made the default. Oh well. What a way to waste a day.

thanks again for making this available. Despite the long learning curve, it is a very very useful piece of software.

Just made a new image, and looking in livecd.sqfs, all of the directories are actually links inot union. Ie, there should be alink from

/initrd/loopfs/lib to /initrd/loopfs/union/lib, but it sems that all of those links have disappeared.

(Why was it set up that way?)

OK, it just booted from the cdrom, but lets loook.

Making extra nodes:												OK
Loading basid cdrom modules for Kernel 2.6			 OK
Starting USB support												  OK
Probing USB devices												  OK
Starting udevstart													   OK

Searchinf for the loop image								 /dev/hdc
DISK mounted																OK
Loading compressed loop module							Loaded
Mounting loop image on /initrd/loopfs						 OK
--Exiting LINUXRC---------------
---MKLIVECD RC.SYSINIT______________
/etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit:/etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit:548: /initrd/loopfs/bin/sed: not found
/etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit:/etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit:548: /initrd/loopfs/bin/cat: no found
setting up UNIONFS
find:/initrd/loopfs/lib/modules/2.6.17-14mdv/kernel: no such file or directory
BusyBox v1.1.2 (2006.12.14-05:46+0000) multi-call binary

Useage: cp [ OPTION] .... SOURCE DEST

insmod: can't read 'unionfs.ko': No such file of directory
Failed to load unionfs module
 Loading /initrd/bin/ash

Now, that sure looks like it cannot find union.fs

Using ash I find that /initrd/loopfs has in it

changes swap union

Under union there are

bin lib etc poweroff sbin var boot home opt root usr

Ie, it seems that while it is looking in /initrd/loopfs/lib/....

the files are actually in /initrd/loopfs/union/lib......

When I installed the new kernel, I simply installed it using rpm. I have no idea where that "union" came from.

PS: I made the new livecd with the command

mklivecd --kernel=2.6.17-14mdv --tmp=/mnt/hda8/cd /dev/sda2/live14.iso

after I had installed the new kernel and had installed the new madwifi modules and new alsa modules.

There is no options (with the mklivecd scripts) to boot more than one kernel.

 

But you can install a second kernel on the running live system, and then tell the mklivecd build command to use this second kernel for building the new iso.

 

example:

mklivecd --kernel 2.6.21-2mdv

OK, I am trying to set up a new kernel livecd. And it is a mess. I have set up a new kernel 2.6.17-14mdv with new alsa and madwifi.

But the new live cd is failing because it cannot find unionfs. Now Mandriva 2.6.17-14mdv HAS unionfs (in /lib/modules/2.6.17-14mdv/kernel/fs/unionfs/unionfs.ko.gz) but apparently the script does not find it. Also since the unionfs is crucial to the operation of the livecd, as is squashfs, the script creating initrd should surely check to make sure that they are actually there. Making a livecd takes about an hour. and finding that at the end of thetime the created cd is totally uselss is frustrating. How do I make sure that unionfs and squashfs actually make it into initrd?

And if from ash I try to insmod /initrd/loopfs/union/lib/moduels/2.6.17-14mdv/kernel/fs/unionfs/unionfs.ko.gz it tells me that it is an invalid module format (I assume it is because it is gzipped).

Yes, pretty weird. And annoying because the system is not cleanly unmounted. Looks like the xserver can't be stopped.

Not clear what you mean by "not cleanly unmounted" The system itself is not on any disk. If you have other partitions from real disks mounted you could just unmount them all. and then just switch off the machine. There is nothing that can be harmed is there?

Eg, on the default

for i in /mnt/*

do

umount $i

done

should do it. Then just switch off.

I have already burned MCN live Toronto.iso onto a cd. How do I transfer the files from the cd to the computer exchanging them with the ones you mentioned?

You do not need to install toronto. If you have the toronto iso on your system ( let me assume youcalled it Toronto.iso) you just need to do the following as root

mkdir /mnt/toront

mount Toronto.iso /mnt/toronto -o loop

mkdir /mnt/toront-files

mount /mnt/toronto/livecd.sqfs /mnt/toronto-files -o loop -t squashfs

Now you will have the full set of files from the livecd under /mnt/toronto-files

You will be able to copy the relevant files from the appropriate place under /mnt/toronto-files

If you mount the CD onto /mnt/cdrom, then again you can loop mount the livecd.sqfs as above and get the files.

well see when the original issue started. where the image jumped fom 3.1 to 4.4 gb there were no old iso's. It was only after I posted the original that I tried another master and didnt delete it,

But you do not know what you had then and furthermore, when you ask for help you give contradictory answers. That makes it very very hard to help you.

Your /home directoy contains 2.5G of stuff. That is a HUGE home directly.

What I would guess is that when you erased stuff, it ended up in your unemptied wastebacket in /home/midwavex/tmp.

However to see what is going on we need to see what the size of the directories are in your home directory.

du --max-depth=1 /home/mindwavex

will tell you what the size is of each of the subdirectories. Find the big ones. Erase what should not be there. Get your home directory down to a few MB, not GB.

Also what is the output of df?

If anything, don't use the 2.6.17 config. It's so horribly dated (why are you still using that guys? it's over a year old), it won't work all too well with 2.6.22.

2.6.17 is what Mandriva uses in 2007.1 They have no newer kernel. And apparently the 2.6.21 kernel used in cooker has changed too many things to be useable with MCNLine, as above.

I am sure not going to go through a later kernel and fill in all of the approx 2000 almost incomprehensibel options. I have better things to do with 5 hours of my time.

If you have some useful suggestions as to how I can make a kernel that the mac80211 module can be compiled on and that will work with MCNLive I would love to hear them.

As a followup-- the reason I want the 2.6.21 or 22 kernels is because I vaguely remember reading that the iwl wireless drivers and the mac80211

subsystem required the new kernels. Do you know if that is true, or can they be compiled for the 2.6.17 kernel and work?

Thanks

i

A cooker kernel btw won't work. They are now using a modulair IDE kernel. The mklivecd scripts are not yet prepared to boot such a kernel on a live system.

If you can find a backported MDV kernel in the official 2007.1 repos, in contrib/backports, then maybe.

But it will break most likely more stuff, ndiswrapper, fuse, wireless drivers. I don't know.

Not sure what you mean. Do you mean that the ide drivers are now placed as modules, rather than compiled into the kernel, and that this causes problems?

Also not sure why the more recent kernels would break other stuff. Has the kernel really changed that drastically with the 2.6.2x versions/

Thanks for your attention, Anna (and all).

 

Question 1: I was unclear, shame on me. Let me try with an example: let's assume that I want to get rid of an application that I launch clicking on an icon named Word; which is the name of the module that I have to remove with Rpmdrake ? It's not enough to say that I have to look for modules that have "word" in their name !

Mandrake users rpm, which has some nice featers. for example, if the program that that icon is running is /usr/bin/donaldduck (right clock on the icon, select properties and application, and look for the file name it runs) then

rpm -qf /usr/bin/donaldduck

will tell youwhich package it was installed from.

Then just do

urpme dduck

( or whatever that package name was.) Now if it tells you that it needs to uninstall 20 other packages which depend on this one, you might want to think again about uninstalling it.

Question 2: you're telling me that everything is based on experience :-( Ok. Is there an application able to spot the orphan modules (In MS there a similar application able to spot the orphan dll files and, I believe, Debian has also something like that).

No idea what you mean by orphaned. If you use rpm, and make sure that you uninstall using rpm or urpm, then you will not have orphaned files.

I answer then to the clever note that you added: for my part I aim to shrink down MCNLive because I would like to have on a USB pen only OpenOffice, Firefox and as much space as possible devoted to documents.

You could remove all of kde and install some lightweight X windows manager instead.

Hi...

IPW2200 appears to be somewhat of a bugaboo with MANDRIVA based distros, for say 12/18 months I have been going thru these wifi pushups!! Please tell me [and 100/1000's others] how to fix this problem - once and for all

Every Mandriva-based distro I have used has had wifi probs ... Every notebook/laptop/smartfone/etc has wifi or can accept suitable card.

Its like Color - a must have.

And because of that every manufacturer believes that they can tweak their system. They will change the drivers and include them in thier Windows which comes with the machine, and make it work. But it makes the linux driver writers lives hell.

I just loaded PCLOS 2007 on another Vaio notebook - sans wifi - again - this time right out of the box !!

Occasionally there was a glimmer, but on reboot it inevitably goes away .. Try ICS for a real exercise in futility ...

Uh, if there is a glimmer of hope, you need to know what you did to get that glimmer. The computer cannot remember unless the info is put into the appropriate file. In your case probably /etc/modprobe.conf

IF the command

iwlist s

gives you output from some wireless access point, then your driver is working. It is not a wireless problem ( probably) It is a configuration problem

Does the command

ifconfig

list eth1 as a device?

Does iwconfig list eth1?

If they do then as root run

ifup eth1

Does it say it is asking for and address via dhcp?

[root@localhost mindwavex]# du -s /home/mindwavex

2.4G /home/mindwavex

That is really huge. You need to figure out what part of that you really need.

du --max-depth=1 /home/midwavex

would help show where all that stuff is being stored.

Note that you may have a bunch of junk in /home/mindwavex/tmp

Also do du -s /*

Uh ah, the output can't be /dev/dsa1 * and /dev/sda1 .

Of course not, mistype, sorry.(Yes, I know, the problems of typing rather than cut and pasting

Anyway, I now tried creating it on yet a third system, ( Panasonic toughbook laptop) and this time it worked and I managed to boot from the usb stick( well from CD

since the bios cannot boot from usb--it is about 3 years old) . So it seemed to be a problem on both of those usb ports.

Yes, it did drop me down to the shell after trying to boot from the usb. Ie, in both cases I had to boot from the CD and select the "Boot from usb" option since all

of my systems seem to be too old to handle usb boots.

Seems a lot of the old usb stuff was junk.

Sounds good. will try it. I assume you meant /lib/modules/nameofdirectory

eg

/lib/modules/2.6.21-4mdv/

in my case

(By the way, on istalling this kernel from cooker, the claim was that there was a conflict with the drakxtools-backend on 2007.1

I finally installed --nodeps, assuming that kernels are kernels, but does anyone know if this conflict is serious?

Thanks

He compiled his own kernel, not a Mandriva kernel. That's why.

I thought he said that he compiled the Mandriva 2.6.21.4mdv which I assume is from cooker, which should contain squashfs and unionfs.

I am confused by the previous comment that one can have more than one kernel available to boot from. Where would this arise in the boot process of MCN-- ie where could you select the appropriate kernel. Does MCN use lilo or grub to set up the boot process from the usb or cdrom?

I too would like to set up a new kernel, so I can use this to test various laptops I am thinking of buying. but some have for example the intel 4965 wireless chip which I believe only has support from the iwl driver, which only works with the later kernels.

Ie, how does one set up MCN to boot from an alternative kernel?

>Did you use the menu item: Create Live USB?

Yes.

Did you get any errors?

No

Please do the following. Start the Live CD - without plugged usb stick.

 

Wait until you are in KDE. Plugin the stick. Wait two seconds.

Open a terminal. And type:

 

su
fdisk -l

 

Post the output here. Copy & paste, don't type it, please.

Difficult to do since that output is on another computer.

 Device   Boot	  Start		   End			Blocks			   ID	 System
/dev/dsa1  *			1			  500			991969			 b	   W95  FAT32
/dev/sda1			  501		   1015		  1021760		   83	  Linux

PS: you can't "write the iso to the device" - or, I don't understand what you mean.

I meant writing the system to the stick using MCN menu item

It does not matter on which computer you setup the usb stick.

The question was whether or not there was something wrong with the USB port on the computer.

I tried on different machines to rule out that possibility.

I have just treid to create a USB Live Toronto version using the menu item in the Toronto desktop which I booted up from CD. After a lengthy usb write I tried to boot from it. Since the laptop is a bit old I had to use the cdrom and choose the "boot from usb" item. The first time I got a

bad loopback -- trying to run it by hand, it said that the FAT system was corrupt. I then erased and reinstalled to the usb using the menu item. Booting the usb using the Cd again, I got that it could not load the unionfs module -- bad module error message.

Now it is possible that the usb stick I have (GTX 2GB ) is defective, but I just tried writing the whole MCLive iso to the device, and the md5 sum checked out fine. Ie, it seems that the device works at lease with that one brief test (Ie, writing 400 MB to the device is fine, but that the writing to the usb via the mklivecd is defective twice seems a bit weird. (Mind you I didi this test on a different machine than the one I tried to install from.

Has anyone else been having trouble with Toronto? Is there anything someone can guess I am doing wrong?

wyoming, am I right that you are using MCNLive as a base system, and the included mklivecd scripts to create the new live cd?

 

Then you need at least the following modules/patches:

 

squashfs, bootsplash, unionfs

 

In addition it is very important, as tyme already adviced, that you use the 2.6.17-13 kernel config.

Aren't squashfs and unionfs a part of the normal 2.6.17-13 kernel in Mandriva? Ie, why do they need to be added?