Refracta Development, Scripts, etc.
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Re: Uploaded daily (weekly?) build

Wed Dec 28, 2011 11:53 pm

snapshot-20111227_1524.iso tests good in vbox, menu is sorted. Tests good also on usb pen

BTW if you're lazy (me) you can just type config= it works the same as live-config=

re (again) refracta-configs:

I did say it's experimental. I came up with a better way of doing it and it got a complete re-write. (example: "config=refracta-lang lang=de" can now do the whole job ... with the new script ) But don't want to detract from finalising the release, it's working as-is and everything else in this snapshot looks really good.

I made a suggestion elsewhere for an "experimental" forum subsection to develop stuff like this, that always will have scope for improvement

BTW Non-US users should be able to set the clock to UTC by adding tzdata to config= || live-config= (comma-seperated from other,configs,no,spaces)

One (minor) usability annoyance is line_wrapping not auto-enabled in geany but that might be for a reason and just my preference (~/.config/geany/geany.conf : line_wrapping=false)

Re: Uploaded daily (weekly?) build

Thu Dec 29, 2011 3:22 pm

snapshot-20111227_1524.iso = refracta-606_20111227.iso

I renamed it. It's the official release, and it's subject to change.

My preference for geany is without line-wrapping, so I easily know if there's a line break or not. It helps when writing documentation that should not go off-screen in console mode.

After the holidays, I'd like to go through the refracta-configs script in detail. Don't know if I'll change any of it, but that's a possibility. We'll see if I get any inspirations.

Re: Uploaded daily (weekly?) build

Thu Dec 29, 2011 10:27 pm

My preference for geany is without line-wrapping, so I easily know if there's a line break or not. It helps when writing documentation that should not go off-screen in console mode.


Good reason I never considered to keep as it is.

Re: Uploaded daily (weekly?) build

Fri Dec 30, 2011 5:04 pm

If it's not too late and the squash will be built again, I need these (cli) tools to process usb pens, so another inclusion request:

pmount (mount arbitrary hotpluggable devices as normal user)
fuseiso (FUSE module to mount ISO filesystem images)
pv (monitor the progress of data through a pipe) i.e. a cli progress bar
mbr (write a mbr to a device) some new usb pens have syslinux-incompatible mbr and won't boot
Code:
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  fuseiso mbr pmount pv
0 upgraded, 4 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 181 kB of archives.
After this operation, 1,225 kB of additional disk space will be used.


so even less squashed and no extra deps

Re: Uploaded daily (weekly?) build

Sat Dec 31, 2011 5:21 pm

+1 for pmount as that is usually what I use to mount my partitions

Re: Uploaded daily (weekly?) build

Sat Dec 31, 2011 5:43 pm

I was going to include pmount, but then I remembered that it only works if you have the device listed in /etc/pmount.allow. Are you going to create that file on the fly when running live? Or should I include it with a big list of device names?

Re: Uploaded daily (weekly?) build

Sat Dec 31, 2011 10:46 pm

Code:
# /etc/pmount.allow
# pmount will allow users to additionally mount all devices that are
# listed here.


in other words, additionally allow non-removables which pmount does not do by default.

A script or console command can still pmount and pumount removables, in userspace dir or in /media, without requiring root, gui or listing in /etc/pmount.allow

fuseiso also, allows to mount an iso image as normal user

Re: Uploaded daily (weekly?) build

Sun Jan 01, 2012 4:26 am

I usually throw the following in pmount.allow

/dev/sda[123456789]
/dev/sdb[123456789]
/dev/sdc[123456789]
/dev/sdd[123456789]

Re: Uploaded daily (weekly?) build

Mon Jan 02, 2012 1:57 pm

this one-liner works to globally enable pmount;

(su)
Code:
echo "/dev/sd[a-z][0-9]*" >> /etc/pmount.allow


I never actually thought of using pmount like that, normally use it only for removables.

then simply (/dev/ is optional)
Code:
pmount sda6


This could be a really useful function in a live session, with only a basic fstab and no mountpoints in /media. It works on ntfs too (can't test vfat just now) Options like noatime are supported also

Persistent live usb really doesn't want fstab or /media modified because the usb may be used on different machines, pmount should solve that (mountpoints are removed after pumount) i haven't yet checked what happens to still-active pmounts at shutdown.

Whether that is a good default for a new installation is another matter...

Re: Uploaded daily (weekly?) build

Mon Jan 02, 2012 3:45 pm

I added the four requested packages, and I added /dev/sd[a-z][0-9]* to pmount.allow. These changes will show up in the next build, whenever that happens. As it is now, this will be carried over to an install, and all users will be able to mount and unmount all partitions. That's probably not a good thing. Possible solutions:
- add /etc/pmount.allow to the installer excludes file
- comment out the line in pmount.allow during installation, so that the end user can easily re-enable it if they want.
- add another question to the installer and ask what the end user wants to do.

I like the first option, but only because it's the easiest thing for me to do. The second option probably makes more sense. If I do it that way, there should be mention of it in the release notes. Third option makes the installation more complicated, and I'd rather not do that.
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