Official Woof-CE Puppy Linux build system

[bigpup]

Link to Woof-CE
https://github.com/puppylinux-woof-CE/woof-CE

[Clarity]

Instructions for "Building A Puppy Distro" are here.

Easy

Emjoy!

[RSH]

Hi.

The current Woof-CE build system doesn't seem to work properly at the moment.
I created a Noble Puppy and a Jammy Puppy for comparison using the current Woof-CE.
In both cases the created ISO was at 71 Mb only.
It did not include the base sfs or any of the ?drv sfs files.

I had to create them manually from the directories in sandbox3.
Another annoying thing I found is: in both builds the fdrv was much bigger
compared to the base sfs.

Jammy = 388 Mb
Noble = 472 Mb

Base SFS Jammy = 301 Mb
Base SFS Noble = 321 Mb

What's the problem there with Woof-CE?

[rockedge]

I had these same problems but I did something to fix it which I'll have to look back at to find out what I did exactly. The fdrv is not being finished correctly and are you building the bdrv that will contain the APT package manager and Synaptic? It has to be enabled in the _00build.conf.

This I experienced several times where the kernel did not complete or given a choice to select one instead I had to add one manually by adding it to the woof-out.

When the ISO is not made something has gone wrong. There are some posts floating around where I detailed some of this. And when there is no finished ISO the script that trims the firmware in the fdrv has not run. I had woof-CE crash because of problems downloading the firmware packages to construct the fdrv in the first place.

@RSH I will have to look back in history as to what I did to finally build a new Bookwormpup64. No problems building a Fossapup64-9.6

[RSH]

@rockedge

I was building it using my ArtStudio64, Woof-CE created from Bionic.
The ISO was created, but that's all inside.

Jammy-ISO-Content.jpg (25.01 KiB) Viewed 1374 times

Yes, I saw the message about building the bdrv.
It said something like debootstrap missing and building without apt.
But then there wasn't a bdrv.

It has to be enabled in the _00build.conf.

It is enabled by default, but did not build.

# build bdrv? yes/no
BUILD_BDRV=yes

...the script that trims the firmware in the fdrv has not run

Is it possible to run this separately?
If so, what's the name of the script?

Also, I can't recall when it happened, but there was a GUI message telling me there's no network found.
The build process stopped and continued after exiting the GUI.
Though, I was connected to the web during the whole process.

[RSH]

A general question!

What's the oldest Puppy possible to use to build e.g. Noble Puppy?
Could it be build e.g. using Tahr64?

[dimkr]

woof-CE is very sensitive to the OS you use to run it and some build configurations won't work in some build environments.

If you don't change anything and just run the noble64 configuration as is, maybe it would be better for you to download the last automated build: https://github.com/puppylinux-woof-CE/w ... 9531975453

Or, run woof-CE in a clean build environment on GitHub: https://github.com/puppylinux-woof-CE/w ... -on-GitHub

Once you're comfortable, you can start changing things without having to learn git or prepare any local setup: https://github.com/puppylinux-woof-CE/w ... ibutor-101

[RSH]

Ok, there it is again:

Code: Select all

Now building sandbox3/bdrv
WARNING: debootstrap is missing. Press ENTER to continue build without apt support or CTRL-C to abort the build:

And the network message:

NoNetwork.jpg (18.67 KiB) Viewed 1356 times

[dimkr]

I think that trying to run current woof-CE on a distro derived from Ubuntu 18.04 is a waste of your time. It's too old for anything, it can fail in so many ways. Even if most of the build process runs fine, it will fail close to the end because your mksquashfs is too old to understand -comp zstd, and you won't get a working bdrv because your debootstrap is too old for Ubuntu 24.04.

[RSH]

I think that trying to run current woof-CE on a distro derived from Ubuntu 18.04 is a waste of your time. It's too old for anything, it can fail in so many ways. Even if most of the build process runs fine, it will fail close to the end because your mksquashfs is too old to understand -comp zstd, and you won't get a working bdrv because your debootstrap is too old for Ubuntu 24.04.

But what's the sense of building a Noble Puppy when a Noble Puppy is needed for full success?
Doesn't this mean, there's always trouble to create the newest possible Puppy by
using a previous version?

[dimkr]

But what's the sense of building a Noble Puppy when a Noble Puppy is needed for full success?

Ubuntu 22.04 should work (that's what the automated builds on GitHub run on), and I believe BookwormPup64 is new enough as well, but definitely not 20.04 (or anything derived from it) or older.

Generally, the thumb rule is that debootstrap should be able to bootstrap x+2.04 if you're running Ubuntu x.04 (next LTS), and debootstrap on either Debian or Ubuntu should be able to bootstrap then-current releases of the other distro.

[RSH]

Ok,

I tried to build a new one. This time using Jammy Puppy to build the Noble Puppy.
It still doesn't find debootstrap, so no bdrv available.
Though, it has created the devx, fdrv and base sfs.
However, the fdrv is still at huge size 472 Mb.
And this time it did not create the ISO.

I'm confused...

[RSH]

Ok,

Again tried to build a new one. This time using latest Bookworm Puppy to build the Noble Puppy.
It still doesn't find debootstrap, so no bdrv available.
It has created the devx, fdrv and base sfs.
However, the fdrv is still at huge size 472 Mb.
And this time it create the ISO.

[dimkr]

Do you have the output of 3builddistro?

It still doesn't find debootstrap, so no bdrv available.

Did you install debootstrap?

However, the fdrv is still at huge size 472 Mb.

This is normal, it's built from Ubuntu firmware package and firmware selection is identical to Ubuntu's. Look at FDRV_INC in _00build.conf.

And this time it did not create the ISO.

Did you install syslinux-utils and xorriso?

[RSH]

If you don't change anything and just run the noble64 configuration as is, maybe it would be better for you to download the last automated build: https://github.com/puppylinux-woof-CE/w ... 9531975453

There is nothing to download on this site.

[dimkr]

There is nothing to download on this site.

Click on the 1 below Artifacts, you might need to sign in to see this.

[RSH]

Thanks.

I'm not yet registered to github...

[peebee]

And the network message:

You can suppress the firewall warning by bracketing the chroot as per:
https://github.com/puppylinux-woof-CE/w ... .conf#L183

[RSH]

Do you have the output of 3builddistro?

Did you install debootstrap?

This is normal, it's built from Ubuntu firmware package and firmware selection is identical to Ubuntu's. Look at FDRV_INC in _00build.conf.

Did you install syslinux-utils and xorriso?

What is the output of 3builddistro?
Did not know I would need to install debootstrap, syslinux-utils and xorriso.
There wasn't any information about it.
At least I didn't see it.

[dimkr]

Do you have the output of 3builddistro?

What did 3builddistro print to the screen while running?

[RSH]

Thousands of lines of code.

[dimkr]

Thousands of lines of code.

This is not code, it's just build output. If you don't have an ISO or it's somehow messed up, you probably have errors somewhere.

[jamesbond]

Thousands of lines of code.

Code: Select all

./3builddistro 2>&1 | tee /root/log.txt

Should keep all the output you see on screen to /root/log.txt

[jamesbond]

Again tried to build a new one. This time using latest Bookworm Puppy to build the Noble Puppy.
It still doesn't find debootstrap, so no bdrv available.
It has created the devx, fdrv and base sfs.
However, the fdrv is still at huge size 472 Mb.
And this time it create the ISO.

I built BookwormPup64 from inside BookwormPup64, using plain woof-CE (no customisation). I previously tried to run Woof-CE from non-Puppy OS, and it failed. Too many things to fix, so I gave up and instead run it on Bookwormpup64 insde qemu.

I hit the "unable to download kernel" problem, but as @dimkr pointed out, I just downloaded a kernel and put it under huge_kernel directory. I used ozsouth's kernel: viewtopic.php?t=11343

I saw the same error that RSH saw, asking about firewall etc, and ended up with no bdrv.
The ISO is bootable, however. The firmware image is about 110MB. The pup.sfs is about 396MB.
The ISO is bootable under BIOS and UEFI, so the ISO is good.

It didn't have apt-get however.

Not asking for fixes (though I welcome one), I'm just writing this as a reference for other puppy builders.

[RSH]

This is the log file of 3builddistro from using latest Bookworm to create Noble.

3builddistro-BW-log.tar.gz

(470.14 KiB) Downloaded 16 times

[rockedge]

I have seen all of these events occur during the last few attempts to build and the build I just attempted of Noble with F96-CE_4 as host had the firewall and some other errors before the assembly bailed out.

Did have success about 25% of the time and those were with Fossapup64 builds. Where the ISO was correctly populated, the latest fdrv SFS is 107 M in size, and the system boots.

@RSH I didn't find out about the debootstrap dependency until I ran some failed build attempts trying to assemble a Bookworm64. Later on read more about the process and it was indicated what the dependencies are but I had missed it.

[RSH]

Thanks.

I'm not yet registered to github...

I registered to github and downloaded the Noble build #7.
The fdrv is also at 472 Mb inside that ISO.

[rockedge]

@RSH you asked about running the fdrv trim script manually......I did manage to do this and it did work after some tweaks.

The script is in the woof-out in the kernel-kit directory -> /mnt/sdb1/woof-out_x86_64_x86_64_ubuntu_noble64/kernel-kit/firmware_picker.sh

[RSH]

@rockedge
When I'm trying to run this I get a message: unrecognised option

Examined the script, so I see.
I have to submit f as parameter.

Though, it stopped at:

Code: Select all

Extracting licences
Destination not block device or regular file

[dimkr]

Even if you get it to run outside of the normal kernel-kit build process, firmware_picker.sh is very broken, it will give you a very small fdrv but without lots of commonly used firmware. The way it determines what firmware is used by available drivers is very inaccurate.

I made the noble64 configuration use the untrimmed Ubuntu firmware package because it's big but at least works well and guaranteed to provide good hardware support. In addition, the default (that's what the automated builds on GitHub do) is to use the Ubuntu kernel, so it's a kernel+fdrv combination that's guaranteed to be compatible.