weedogit frugal boot most any distro

[wiak]

Now that WeeDog is in the process or being re-developed/re-branded back to original project name FirstRib, it is no longer being discussed or new downloads made available via the Puppy Linux forum. If you remain interested in any of the FirstRib/ex-weedog releases, for now you should login to https://firstrib.rockedge.org/ and some of the older utility and build scripts will be made available to you. Other parts of the build system will only be made available, either at that location or site yet chosen, only after the next FirstRib dev version changes have been made, which may take a while because of other circumstances out of my control.

Find LATEST weedogit script to auto-build "weedogged" flexible frugal installs of many distros attached to this first thread post per usual

Changes:

LATEST: progname="weedogit.sh"; version="021"; revision="-rc2" #Revision Date: 26Aug2022

# NEW: Mabox Linux, Sparky Linux (many variants)

See here for Mabox live fix: https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic. ... 351#p65351
User/Pass for Sparky are root/root and weedog/weedog (root user login is a bit weird)

Now the automated grub_config.txt provided stanzas include option of using detected UUID or detected LABEL. Works fine in my tests with grub2 (label won't work if no label of course, and will confuse system if two fs with same label...), but don't know if the grub4dos menu.lst LABEL stanza works or not since I don't have grub4dos on my machine to test it.

THIS IS A MAJOR NEW VERSION RELEASE. Main change is that majority of upstream distro URLs are now auto-scraped from the web. This is experimental and the web-scraping is simplistic and could do with improvement. In practice, around one third of the current handled distros still need their download URLs manually updated (like previous weedogit releases) when required. I found these too difficult to quickly/reliably/easily auto-scrape. Feel free to provide scraping recipe if you can work some out for these... or improved scrape code for the others. If auto-scrape ever fails, you can still use manual URL assignment as per previous weedogit.sh releases.
# Currently the below following continue to need manual URL updates: Pop-os, Zorin, Garuda Sway,
# tinycorelinux, Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Linux Lite, Kodachi, 4MLinux, Xubuntu, Lubuntu

Also, the grub-config suggestions have been automated such that the suggested grub stanzas should work without alteration - the bootdir name (whatever you choose to use) of the directory you run weedogit.sh from should now be correctly auto-placed in the grub config stanza as should the actual UUID of the partition you have that bootdir stored in at time of the build.

# linux-lite, bunsen-lithium LXLE-Focal,
# tails-amd64 (part working only - ctrl-alt f2 to commandline login root:root; reboot -f to restart),
# Debian-live, Regata_OS (password is blank, can: sudo password root to user:pw root:root),
# Kodachi, SysLinuxOS, 4Mlinux, austrumi
# Fedora Rawhide,
# FOR LOGINS user:passwords: check distro websites or try weedog:weedog or root:root

Previous also included:
# re-wrote KL_vdpup section such that it now works as a general purpose choice to weedog most any Pup simply
# by changing URL01, distro01 name, and subdirectory01 name (see lines 20-24 for howto). Default is KL_vdpup since my only reason for
# including that originally was to avoid frugalify which didn't support frugal installs in subdirs nor some other traditional Puppy features.
# The weedogged pups are just for fun and experiment though. You would need to modify some small Puppy system scripts for better KL use.
# e.g. Currently KL_Pup shutdown process is a bit iffy - at final prompt, you sometimes need command: poweroff
# You can easily modify folder contents 09WDLfork_vdpup to fix the above (its higher layer than 08puppy... so replaces original script versions).

NOTES:

Fedora Rawhide (Rolling release - includes GTK 4.x.x I think)
For various details: https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=fedora

You can use nmtui to connect Fedora cmdline to wifi (or other connection). However, you may first need to track down your wifi firmware .ucode and put it in 08firstrib_rootfs/usr/lib/firmware
Once you have a connection (e.g. via command nmtui) you can install X and desktop, for example, with dnf filemanager command:

Code: Select all

sudo dnf groupinstall "Xfce Desktop"

(actually you don't need sudo since logged in as root anyway...)
then use startxfce4 to start it up (see attached for the result - it is pretty much complete actually).

By the way, you can check available group packages with command:

Code: Select all

dnf grouplist

Best to consult a Fedora dnf package manager tutorial though the Xfce Desktop install does provide a GUI for package management.

Fedora doesn't provide any kind of static package manager build system (unlike Void Linux), nor I believe any Debian-type debootstrap mechanism... rather, the root filesystem core that I'm using is ready made tar.gz by Fedora itself for docker image I believe so that just needed downloaded and untarred. In fact, even better, someone else has written a small script to find latest tar.gz of that, so I just employ their script.

Austrumi (uses FVWM plus tint2)
For various details: https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=austrumi

I hacked austrumi to get lang_en added to end of grub2 kernel line to work. Should work with other languages too per austrumi docs (en, es, fr, gr, hu, it, lv, ru, uk), but the WDL version doesn't have user austrumi. Logged in user is root with password austrumi; as set up it logs in automatically as root to desktop. I left the austrumi 08filesystem uncompressed since it wasn't able to read from sfs root_filesystem for some austrumi driver-related reason I imagine.

weedogit uses uncompressed 08 filesystem for WDL_4ML and I've included all its provided extra modules and firmware (so works on many more systems) so could be made much much smaller if you wanted to manually play with the result (e.g. use mksquashfs on that and cut down on the firmware particularly to suit your own machine). End result could truly be Puppy-size, and similar look and feel (JWM but with PCMANFM). Being weedogged the result has full persistence and all the WDL initrd RAM and other overlayfs flexibility. First boot is slowish and once questions answered re passwords and so on they won't be asked again (since persistent). Tested install of GIMP and Libreoffice and went fine (Start Menu - extensions ...).

tails-amd64 does boot to GUI but won't go further and won't let you directly shutdown from there. You can however drop to commandline by pressing Ctrl-Alt-f2 and then login to commandline terminal with user:password root:root or normal user weedog:weedog. You can then restart your system with command: reboot -f. I have no idea at this stage how to then restart GUI desktop but including the build anyway so that can be tried by others or looked further at by myself.

The Debian-live iso used for WDL_debi does not include much firmware (e.g. no wifi firmware for my test computer). You'll likely need to add additional firmware by yourself or use one of the bigger Debian-live release isos- available.

Script is organised to make it easy for script user to maintain the ever-changing upstream URL for the distro(s). When you inevitably eventually need to do so, simply open the script in your favourite editor and change any out-of-date distro URL to the current downloadable one. You will find the distro URLs all listed near the top of the weedogit.sh script (lines 13 to 31). You will need to visit distro download site to ascertain current distro URL whenever you need to do that.

I haven't tested this latest script much at all so if not working just let me know or it will likely stay as it is.

Weedogit is now re-packaged so weedogit-latest.sh will always be the latest version. To see what version you have you can now use command: ./weedogit-latest.sh --version

handles frugal install of 19 distros and sets passwords (via upper_changes folder) for some of the ones that need that (with root/root and weedog/weedog as passwords when relevant).

Note: weedogit.sh now has a sibling: pupit.sh

I also personally use weedogit.sh as a kind of scripted HowTo illustrating various snippets of shell code used for working with the component parts of Linux distros, even 'howto use overlayfs mounts' (so acts as an addition to the cherrytree notepads I rely on for my 'memory')

Find DOWNLOAD attached to THIS post
(just remove the dummy tar and make the script executable and simply run it in the empty folder you want to boot from - or if you already have the upstream iso, include it in same boot from folder and it won't need downloaded again).

See changes/announcement post for more details - https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic. ... 179#p51179

New WeeDogIt distros added:

massOS. I've not tried this one myself, but @Keef sent the relevant url and case section code lines for this one; hope I put it all in the script correctly. Didn't set any password for root/root or weedog/weedog; let me know if I should have included setting these.
Bodhi Linux standard version. (login user/passwords root/root or weedog/weedog, but by default only goes to desktopGUI as weedog. However, see 'trick' in 'changes/announcement' for logging to desktop as root)
tinycorelinux64. (login user "tc")
===================================================================================================

For the sort of thing weedogit.sh can do, see here: https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic. ... 075#p50075
and here: https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic. ... 926#p49926

If you want to try a few more persistence modes (e.g. save to RAM only), see here: https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic. ... 221#p50221

Currently auto-WeeDog frugal installs 19 alternative distro variants However, I've only tested the first 4 so needs feedback if you want fixed or additonal distros added.

There have been a few HowTo boot external to this forum distros using WeeDogLinux generic initrd and thus turn these distros into typical overlayfs frugal installations in their own subdirectories with various copy2RAM and w_changes save persistence mechanisms (as exemplified and the same as current KLV-Airedale).

weedogit.sh (weedogitN.sh) script is my attempt to write a bash script that does all the work (albeit for a limited number of distros).

NO GUARANTEES - IT IS A SCRIPT THAT AUTOMATES COMPLEX COMMAND LINES -USE AT YOUR OWN RISK - READ ALL INSTRUCTIONS CAREFULLY FIRST IF YOU DO USE IT - take a look at the script itself is often a useful check (works fine for me).

Just copy it into an empty directory, make it executable (e.g. chmod +x weedogit.sh) and run it from that empty directory (which is intended to be the directory you then use grub to boot from). If you already have the iso for the distro, put it in same directory as weedogit.sh and it will be used (otherwise weedogit.sh will download it for you).
NOTE WELL THOUGH: IF ISO IS PRE-DOWNLOADED IT MUST BE STORED WITH IDENTICAL FILENAME AS IN UPSTREAM DOWNLOAD URL for weedogit.sh to recognise it.
You can find the download url weedogit.sh uses by simply looking inside the simple (albeit growing longer) script - each distro is in its separate case statement section and each download url is shown in a comment statement near the top of the relevant distro section. So to run weedogit.sh simply enter command:

Code: Select all

./weedogitN.sh

where N is the version release number
===========================================================================

My favourite by far is the becoming extremely popular (at least according to Distrowatch) EndeavourOS, which is an Arch Linux based distro that uses XFCE. I find it very fast (way better than Manjaro XFCE in my opinion). Indeed it is so good I will probably not bother ever providing a new version of WDL_Arch64 - I simply cannot compete...

NOTE1: if you don't already have a copy of the iso of interest put into that 'emptydirectory', weedogit.sh will wget it for you, but it will notice if it is already there so not bother in that case...
These isos are around 2 GB in size usually, so be patience, the download takes a while and weedogit.sh has a lot of big files to extract from the iso thereafter during its frugal install build - that takes time (though fetching the iso is by far the longest wait...).

Once weedogit.sh has completed the install it will print templates for grub.cfg (and menu.lst) types of grub configuration. Just copy them into you own grub config file and modify to point to the name of the directory you did the install in and also use your the appropriate UUID for your own installation (blkid will give you the necessary uuid value for the partition you installed into).i

NOTE2: Since downloading such big isos takes so long, I am not planning to test the other distro choices out myself. If you want me to fix the script (should anything not work) you will need to have tried it yourself and provided me with the details. It is a simple script - I simply cut and paste code rather than create complex functions to save lines of code - so you should be easily able to maintain it yourself (and tell me the fixes I need to make) since most issues are likely to be with wrong or changing upstream url information and similar. Overall, I am just using this script myself now and any maintenance I bother uploading will depend on if anyone is using it - you don't need to! But if you do, would be useful maybe for others if you provide feedback and fixes.

If you already have the iso for the distro, put it in same directory as weedogit.sh and it will be used (otherwise weedogit.sh will download it for you)

NOTE WELL: DISCLAIMER for when trying GARUDA - it's fine except DO NOT choose to PARTITION/INSTALL - CANCEL OUT OF THAT

Now that WeeDog is in the process or being re-developed/re-branded back to original project name FirstRib, it is no longer being discussed or new downloads made available via the Puppy Linux forum. If you remain interested in any of the FirstRib/ex-weedog releases, for now you should login to https://firstrib.rockedge.org/ and some of the older utility and build scripts will be made available to you. Other parts of the build system will only be made available, either at that location or site yet chosen, only after the next FirstRib dev version changes have been made, which may take a while because of other circumstances out of my control.

[mikewalsh]

@wiak :-

Just tried out the Manjaro KDE install, Will. Works nicely!

Had a slight kerfuffle on the initial couple of boots. A few lines in, there was a line starting with "Probing EDD"......which it appeared to get stuck on. Second time round, I noticed (in brackets) it said "edd=off to disable", so I took a punt, re-booted into one of the Pups, brought up menu.lst, and added

Code: Select all

edd=off

.....to the end of the kernel line. Bingo! That fixed the boot issue....

------------------------------

Question:-

I take it, since this is booting the "Live ISO", that the Manjaro ISO needs to remain where it is? Or can that be removed after the initial run?

I plumped for KDE, 'cos I haven't used it since I tried Kubuntu 14.04 ('Trusty'-based) way back during my distro-hopping days, 7 or 8 years ago. I recall I had quite a lot of fun customizing the thing, since you can modify just about everything to the nth degree....

I'll see how I get on with it. Excellent work, BTW..!

Mike.

[wiak]

Yes, thanks for reporting about that edd=off optional grub linux kernel-line parameter @mikewalsh. Nothing itself to do with WDL initrd boot mechanism but to do with the kernel Manjaro is using and, as you've pointed out, required for booting on some machines.

Question:-

I take it, since this is booting the "Live ISO", that the Manjaro ISO needs to remain where it is? Or can that be removed after the initial run?

You can delete the iso once the weedogit.sh frugal install build is completed Mike (though always best to test the installation boots successfully first in case you need to try again and saves re-downloading the iso for more build attempts; weedogit.sh notices if it is already downloaded and doesn't re-download in that case). The weedogit.sh process automatically extracts all the parts out of the iso needed to make a proper frugal install so the iso is not needed at all after that so saves a lot of space just to delete it, which I myself usually do (I don't do that automatically in the weedogit.sh script in case anyone wants to keep it for other purposes). Same comment applies to all the other distro installs catered for by weedogit.sh.

Yes, the result looks like a live boot of the original iso (but it isn't - it's a proper frugal install using WDL initrd overlay save persistence and so on - just like method employed by KLV-Airedale so many of same portable sfs addon tricks should work just like they do with KLV-Airedale).

So the resulting install is a complete (WDL initrd controlled frugal) install. Ignore that popup window regarding making a full install - it isn't needed; perhaps you can find where Manjaro's boot procedure starts that up - would be nice to disable it since not important, useful or necessary in this WDL frugal installation.

That Manjaro KDE Plasma is certainly pretty fancy. But, personally I am really impressed with EndeavourOS XFCE, which is extremely fast and resource efficient on my machine. Still, very interesting to play with Plasma - I use Okular a lot on my other distro - some of these KDE apps are very nice and polished (and if you have one installed, you already have most all KDE libraries installed with it, so doesn't cause as much bloat as someone might imagine).

PREVIOUS weedogit.sh script attached to this post for a backup in the unlikely event the first post attached newest version proves dodgy:

[rockedge]

@wiak While working a bit on KLV-Airedale I just ran the weedogit script. It took 18 minutes to build the Weedogged EndeavourOS. I added it to the menu.lst and will give it a drive soon.

[AndresC2]

Hi Wiak

thanks you for wiakwifi !!
is simple and works very fine.

My WIFI is open or Open Networks (no private key).

I change some lines in your script for connect with,
wifi open networks or free.

the password is NONE for Open Network or Free Network.

remove dummy tar and make executable chmod +x wiakwifiopen.sh

If WIFI is open networks or FREE in public zone or home,
this script will work very well.

thanks you

wiakwifiopen.sh.tar

remove dummy tar and make executable

(2.65 KiB) Downloaded 125 times

[wiak]

Hi Wiak

thanks you for wiakwifi !!
is simple and works very fine.

My WIFI is open or Open Networks (no private key).

I change some lines in your script for connect with,
wifi open networks or free.

the password is NONE for Open Network or Free Network.

remove dummy tar and make executable chmod +x wiakwifiopen.sh

If WIFI is open networks or FREE in public zone or home,
this script will work very well.

thanks you

wiakwifiopen.sh.tar

Thanks, AndresC2, but... you seem to have posted your wiakwifi variant to the wrong thread. This thread is for weedogit.sh, which is a simple script for trying out "Other DIstros" via a WeeDogged frugal install. Nevertheless, I'm sure your wiakwifi mod for open networks will prove very useful and I'll take a look at it for future releases. Thanks.

[backi]

@wiak wrote:

If you already have the iso for the distro, put it in same directory as weedogit.sh and it will be used (otherwise weedogit.sh will download it for you)

Does not quite understand .How is it accomplished?
Downloaded Bodhi Linux (bodhi-6.0.0-64.iso).Did put it in the same Directory as weedogit.sh.
How to proceed further ?
Need some Advice .......

Thanks in Advance !

[wiak]

@wiak wrote:

If you already have the iso for the distro, put it in same directory as weedogit.sh and it will be used (otherwise weedogit.sh will download it for you)

Does not quite understand .How is it accomplished?
Downloaded Bodhi Linux (bodhi-6.0.0-64.iso).Did put it in the same Directory as weedogit.sh.
How to proceed further ?
Need some Advice .......

Thanks in Advance !

Bodhi Linux is not one of the distros yet included in weedogit.sh, backi. I will look into including that in later release - maybe next release.

As I mentioned, though I have now included several distros for WeeDogging by weedogit.sh script, I have as yet only had time to test a few. It is not actually a lot of work for me, but it does take a lot of iso download time for me (and I have very slow broadband). Once I have fast fibre broadband here in one month's time (estimated) then it will become easy for me to test.

I have never yet tested any of the MX distros. Main problem I find I'm facing is that some reach the graphical login prompt but want a user/password, and I don't know what they are...
I managed to hack into Zorin-16 Lite easily enough, but neonKDE (which I am currently working on) refuses my hack trick. I do know a long-hard way to change password in the neonKDE root filesystem sfs (meaning I first have to uncompress it, do the password fix in a chroot and then recompress it again - I could do that in the weedogit.sh script, but that takes ages to uncompress/recompress so I'm trying to find a better hack method via simple changes in upper_changes persistence folder - I have idea how to do that, but working on it just now to see if it works).

For the moment, it is best to try one of the already successfully tested weedogit.sh distro installs. For example: EndeavourOS; just to get a feel of how to do it (and with success...).

As far as how to do it, you just need to create an empty directory from which you will later want to boot from (say we call it WDL_endeavOS, for example) and then simply copy the weedogit.sh script into there, make it executable, run it, choose 3 (for EndeavourOS) and accept the default current release number (21_5) and the script will then automatically download the EndeavourOS iso and prepare the whole frugal install inside that WDL_endeavOS directory.

If you have already manually downloaded the EndeavourOS iso you just need to copy it into the WDL_endeavOS directory alongside the weedogit.sh script - it will then be used by the weedogit script without downloading it again...

After that you just configure your grub to boot the vmlinuz/initrd.gz that weedogit.sh puts in there. A template for either menu.lst or grub.cfg is provided in the file grub_config.txt that you will see at that time in there too (of course you have to change the UUID of that template to your own system partition UUID and so on for grub to find it).

Okay, back to my current problemo of hacking neon login password to work!

But yes, I think this system has more potential than people at first realise - though once you try it (on a distro that works) I think its usefulness becomes obvious, so yes I can imagine it would be useful to know about for people not currently viewing Puppy Linux forum (could potentially attract new members from users or potential users of these 'Other Distros').

[backi]

Hi @wiak !
Seems i did understand something wrong. Not really important for me.
Keep cool!
There is no need to put yourself under Stress/Pressure.
You are doing a Hell lot of Work.

Thanks..... for your never ending Engagement

[Geek3579]

I am very impressed with the weedogit script. EndeavourOS worked perfectly. What a fabulous extension to the Puppy Linux concept!

The acid test for me was MX-Linux, as this is my preferred OS after Puppy Linux. So I installed Fossapup64 onto a clean 32GB USB 2.0 using STICKPUP, shrunk the FAT32 boot partition to ~650MB using GParted and created an ext4 partition to fill the rest of the drive for multiple Weedoged OSes. While doing this I copied the UUID information for the ext4 partition which was later assigned to the variable MYUUID in the GRUB menu.

I then made a folder for MX-21_x64 in the ext4 partition and copied a separately downloaded ISO into this folder. I then ran the WEEDOGIT shell script but it did not seem to pick up the existing ISO, either going through to the menu or ending on null entry. Not sure how this feature is meant to work.

I then ran the script again and selected distro8="MX-21_X64 XFCE” - the standard MX installation.

It downloaded the ISO and installed the frugal files in a reasonable time. I then added the following addition to the GRUB script in the Fossapup64 grub.cfg file as per the suggestion in the weedogit.sh script, with a little tweaking -

MYUUID=ffc6b335-c0a1-44df-bcea-0f503488d464

menuentry "MX-21_x64 FRUGAL " {
MYOS="MX-21_x64"
search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set $MYUUID
echo "Loading vmlinuz"
linux /$MYOS/vmlinuz w_bootfrom=UUID=$MYUUID=/$MYOS fwmod=usrlib
echo "Loading initrd.gz"
initrd /$MYOS/initrd.gz
}

I am delighted to report that MX-Linux booted successfully.

However, I could only boot into root user, using the other option login with ID/PASSWORD as root/root. The suggested user demo/demo login did not work for me. Root access limited usage a bit, as certain apps including the Package Manager only ran under a user login other than root, even though it required root permission to run! So I added a new user the only way I could, in the terminal: sudo adduser <newusername> which created a new user with password which worked well on reboot, allowing me to run VLC and MX-Package Manager.

I also found that Pulseaudio was not running, so a tweak in the CLI: pulseaudio got things fixed.

Finally, the installation needed updating/upgrading, which, while taking some time and producing a few error lines, seemed to be otherwise successful.

In addition, all changes made seemed to be saved on reboots making the experience a very positive one and I now look forward to other OSes being added to the menu !

[wiak]

I then made a folder for MX-21_x64 in the ext4 partition and copied a separately downloaded ISO into this folder. I then ran the WEEDOGIT shell script but it did not seem to pick up the existing ISO, either going through to the menu or ending on null entry. Not sure how this feature is meant to work.

weedogit.sh script downloads iso from its official download site using wget -c command. That means if the iso has already been manually downloaded before and stored in the same directory as the weedogit.sh script it will not be downloaded a second time. But, the name of the iso MUST be exactly the same as the name used on the official download site; if you renamed it, wget -c 'official download url' will not recognise that it is already downloaded. Otherwise, it will definitely not download the file if it already exists with the same name as weedogit.sh script knows it by.

You could in fact check inside the weedogit.sh script. Each distro is installed via a case statement paragraph and near the top of eash distro section you will see the actual url download for the iso listed (as a comment). You could therefore manually download the iso if you wish by simply opening a terminal (at directory where weedogit.sh is) and using command:

Code: Select all

wget -c <whatever the url is>

But you absolutely don't need to do that first, since weedogit.sh will download it as part of it automatic process if it hasn't yet been downloaded.

Personally, I do tend to manually download first (using wget -c) for the simple reason that I can stop a download part way through (using ctrl-C) and when I run the same wget -c command later the download resumes where it left off (I have slow internet so that procedure is pretty handy for my situation).

[wiak]

In addition, all changes made seemed to be saved on reboots making the experience a very positive one and I now look forward to other OSes being added to the menu !

I also really recommend those who are interested in running distros installed via weedogit.sh to try out @rockedge KLV-Airedale release. That KLV distro uses same WDL init so if you learn how to use KLV-Airedale, the same 'tricks' apply to these weedogit distros (and KLV-Airedale includes lots of nice utility apps added by this forum community, including by fredx181, most of which could also be extracted and used with any weedogit.sh installed distro). So KLV-Airedale is also a nice wee distro to practice on and experiment with for learning all the different save persistence. optional in-RAM-modes, and layering modes that WeeDogged distro provides (especially since the contributors to that KLV-Airedale thread provide a lot of information and user help).

[rockedge]

So while doing the wife's laundry I am playing around with w_change=RAM0 mode with a "weedogged" EndeavorOS to test out the 2 scripts from @rufwoof written for an early FirstRib-Void project to save the current /upper_changes on demand. This first script save.sh will take the most current /upper_changes and create a /31changes.sfsand if run again, will create /32changes.sfs and so on and so forth.

These will all load again at reboot.

At this point one may end up with multiple /XXchanges.sfs files allowing for easy rollbacks, but this can become messy, that is where the 2nd script merge_changes.sh comes in handy. This script will merge all the /XXchanges.sfs files into /30changes.sfs (the 30 is hard-coded in the script and can be altered. I chose 30 as the start layer for the /upper_changes merges)

So what ends up is an empty /upper_changes with these contents stored in /30changes.sfs.

These scripts are still in a rough draft form, so no safety nets and should be considered EXPERIMENTAL. These hopefully will be improved upon and maybe some GUI can be an option. They have benn proven to work in KLV-Airedale but used with caution as mentioned earlier.

These 2 scripts should do the same for any weedogit distro started with w_changes=RAM0 mode on the kernel command line.
I use them with a .desktop file on the desktop and or in the menus

NOTE: In both scripts change line 4 to match your frugal install directory

save.sh

Code: Select all

#!/bin/sh
# save.sh utility by rufwoof
#
cd /mnt/sdb1/KLV-Airedale-alpha6-RAM2
# Create a sfs of upper changes in ram so that changes persist across reboots
# nnchanges.sfs where nn is 02, 03 ... etc.  Starts from 02changes.sfs as
# 01.. filename is reserved for the main sfs layer filename

NEXT=1
for nextlayer in `ls *changes.sfs | sort -V | cut -c1-2`; do
       	if [ "$nextlayer" -ge 0 ]; then NEXT=$nextlayer; fi
done
NEXT=$(expr $NEXT + 1)
NEXT=$(printf "%02dchanges.sfs" $NEXT)  # add leading 0 if 2 to 9
mksquashfs /mnt/layers/RAM/upper_changes $NEXT -comp lz4 -Xhc -e var run mnt

NOTE: Last line moves and names the merged SFS files. Change this to suite

merge_changes.sh

Code: Select all

#!/bin/bash
# merge-changes.sh utility by rufwoof
#
cd /mnt/sdb1/KLV-Airedale-alpha6-RAM2
# Merge multiple xxchanges.sfs into one (02changes.sfs and all prior NNchanges.sfs
# changes sfs files are removed once merged)

# format of what we're looking to achieve .. (note that c is the lowest (first)
# i.e. should correspond to 02changes.sfs, b is the next lowest (03changes.sfs)
# and a is the highest (04changes.sfs)) ...
#    mount -t overlay overlay -o lowerdir=/mnt/L/a:/mnt/L/b:/mnt/L/c /mnt/L/m
# As we're mounting read only (to create a sfs from) we don't need upper or work
# Note that we mount each NNchanges.sfs to a mount point named the same
# i.e. /mnt/L/NNchanges.sfs, which are all merged into /mnt/L/m ... and
# we use that /mnt/L/m to create the new 02changes.sfs 

mkdir /mnt/L 
mkdir /mnt/L/m
unset lower

for addlayer in `ls *changes.sfs | sort -Vr`; do # sorted in reverse order
	[ -z $lower ] && lower=/mnt/L/${addlayer} || lower="${lower}:/mnt/L/${addlayer}"
	mkdir -p "/mnt/L/$addlayer"
	mount $addlayer /mnt/L/$addlayer
done
sync
mount -t overlay overlay -o lowerdir=$lower /mnt/L/m
mksquashfs /mnt/L/m CHANGES.sfs -comp lz4 -Xhc
sync
umount /mnt/L/m
umount /mnt/L/*changes.sfs  # release all mounted sfs's
sync
rmdir /mnt/L/*changes.sfs
rm -rf /mnt/L
rm *changes.sfs
mv CHANGES.sfs 30changes.sfs

Screenshot(14).png (35.99 KiB) Viewed 5588 times

If anyone tests it and gets it to work please make a report!

[wiak]

Please note the disclaimer I put on the now available new weedogit.sh regarding use of Garuda (which is an interesting Wayland with Sway version):

NOTE WELL: DISCLAIMER for when trying GARUDA - it's fine except DO NOT choose to PARTITION/INSTALL - CANCEL OUT OF THAT

I don't want anyone deleting their existing distro partitions by accident! Please remember that all these distros give opportunity to make normal full installation, which is not what we generally want so just be careful to cancel out of Garuda initial install screen and all is fine with testing it.

Per usual, the new weedogit.sh script (16 distros) is at first post of this thread.

[Keef]

I saw this new distro on Distrowatch https://massos.org/ so thought I'd give it a spin.
Had a fiddle with the script, and much to my surprise (with myself, not the script) it worked, and it booted successfully and saved changes.

This is the main part of the additions:

Code: Select all

17)	distro="massos"
		subdir="$subdirectory17"
		arch="x86_64"
		default_release="2022.02.2"
		_release "$2"
		# https://github.com/MassOS-Linux/MassOS/releases/download/v2022.02.2/massos-2022.02.2-x86_64.iso
		wget -c https://github.com/MassOS-Linux/MassOS/releases/download/v2022.02.2/${distro}-${release}-${arch}.iso
		echo "Extracting large files from iso. Please wait patiently ..."
		sync;sync
		mount ${distro}-${release}-${arch}.iso /tmp/weedogit/miso
		echo ${distro}-${release}-${arch}
		cp -a /tmp/weedogit/miso/LiveOS/squashfs.img 08filesystem.sfs

I had a bit of a problem initially with the script exiting after making a selection. It turns out I had put my new entry above the comment, but after the printf statement.

Code: Select all

*) printf "$progname ${version}${revision}\n"; exit 0;;
		# note: users are invited to add additional distros above!

Mainly my own fault for not looking closely enough.

[wiak]

I saw this new distro on Distrowatch https://massos.org/ so thought I'd give it a spin.
Had a fiddle with the script, and much to my surprise (with myself, not the script) it worked, and it booted successfully and saved changes.

Thanks for doing that Keef. Yes, it is just a matter of cloning existing distro section (from case statement choices) and, after opening new iso to find which sfs files are required, overwriting some old details with new ones. Good that you tried that and had success (which I was hoping some enterprising dev-experienced forum members would do.

I'm currently working on including a few other distros (including a crazy tinycorelinux far-from-perfect weedogit attempt - upstream TCL works totally different to other distros so needs unique code to make it work even kind of...) so in next release I'll also include the section from you for that new distro you found.

minor alteration for future releases:

Code: Select all

wget -c https://github.com/MassOS-Linux/MassOS/releases/download/v${release}/${distro}-${release}-${arch}.iso

What you have already is fine of course. Above small alteration just allows the user to manually enter new release date if it comes prior to weedogit script being updated.

cheers, wiak

[wiak]

NEW VERSION(now v5) 01March handles frugal install of 19 distros and sets passwords (via upper_changes folder) for some of the ones that need that (with root/root and weedog/weedog as passwords when relevant).

See first post in this thread for download: viewtopic.php?p=50074#p50074

Change: for Bodhi distro I put weedog in sudo group since can't login as root by default, but see 'trick' below.

New WeeDogIt distros added:

massOS - I've not tried this one myself, but @Keef sent the relevant url and case section code lines for this one; hope I put it all in the script correctly. Didn't set any password for root/root or weedog/weedog; let me know if I should have included setting these.
Bodhi Linux standard version (login user/passwords root/root or weedog/weedog, but only goes to desktopGUI as weedog) - as mentioned by @backi as a distro he is interested in.
EDIT: For some reason, root/root isn't working for Bodhi so I don't know the root password, but weedog can sudo, and also see trick below to use root with desktop.
EDIT2: Trick for logging in as root to Bodhi desktop: In boot from folder, whilst booted into a different Linux distro, go to upper_changes/etc and directly edit the passwd file, and remove the 'x' just after root user name, so entry becomes root::blablabla. On next reboot of Bodhi you can login (without password) to desktop as user root.

tinycorelinux64 (login user "tc"): This was a tricky one since TCL itself is a very unique distro in terms of its default operation. So KL_TCL is very different indeed in operation from actual tiny core, but uses same core filesystem and default tcz files. I overlay these with a few tc-config changes to make it work as an overlayfs distro via WDL initrd, so really it is a fork. Result is that it starts out looking and feeling like TCL official, but being different underneath altogether (in major way) the TCL Applications package manager cannot possibly work of course. You can add new tcz apps manually tho (but need to fetch deps yourself) and have additional work for that since tcz apps usually contain post-install script, the contents of which you need to include in the 09WDLfork_TCL/usr/local/bin/tc_installed.sh script (that's the 'trick' I used to make this crazy idea work at all). This mechanism could definitely be polished and automated and a brand new KL distro created, but I won't likely do more with it myself. Fun to play with though. Both TCL and Bodhi are relatively small downloads and quick builds.

For the sort of thing weedogit.sh can do, see here: viewtopic.php?t=5206&p=50075#p50075
and here: viewtopic.php?p=49926#p49926

[backi]

Hi @wiak !

Tested the Bodhi Linux according to your Advises.
Could manage to boot to Desktop (as Root)........but.....somehow the whole System stops and there is some strange flickering periodically every few Seconds.....and the whole OS is unusable/non manageable.
Maybe it is Hardware related......i have no Clue.
I do not really necessarily need it (Bodhi Linux).

So i don`t expect (from you) to find a Solution for it......just am asking myself if it is worth all the Trouble/Stress and Work.
It seems to me you are working yourself to Death.

Nevertheless....thanks for all your hard Work.
Just slow down and relax a bit...Mate.

Best Wishes!

[wiak]

Hi @wiak !

Tested the Bodhi Linux according to your Advises.
Could manage to boot to Desktop (as Root)........but.....somehow the whole System stops and there is some strange flickering periodically every few Seconds.....and the whole OS is unusable/non manageable.
Maybe it is Hardware related......i have no Clue.
I do not really necessarily need it (Bodhi Linux).

Bodhi does work fine on my computer backi. So does sound like hardware-related. All weedogit does is use WDL initrd to boot official Bodhi - after that it switches main rootfilesystem over to official Bodhi itself so any error in Bodhi running shouldn't be anything to do with weedogit in practice I'd say. Of course if someone else finds same issue I'll investigate, but since you yourself don't need it just now anyway I'll 'take it easy'!

[wiak]

weedogit.sh now has a sibling: pupit.sh

Not sure if pupit.sh is very useful since manual frugal install of Pups is pretty simple since no initrd manipulations required (unlike in weedogit.sh).
However, there are so many Pups that I often struggle to find all there forum locations so maybe helpful to have so many of them in pupit.sh
Trouble is that aside from the Mainline official Pups, some of the rest are published on the forum under Puppy Projects, or a subcategory of that, or Puppy Derivitavies or a subcategory of that, which turns out to be quite a combination of possible locations.
Note that pupit DOES NOT produce a weedogged Puppy variant - rather, it automates a normal pure Puppy frugal install with Puppy's own initrd and normal component parts.

vanilladpup is not included in the list since current version down not support psubdir frugal install usage.

Note also: I don't know if most entries work. I only had a chance to try a couple. Up to you users to let me know. Also, there are many other great Pups out there, but I ran out of effort trying to track them down and include them. No offence intended. I invite you to add others yourselves and provide me with the relevant pupit.sh case statement code involved. Also, urls will need updated now and then as these and release versions do sometimes changed. I do not myself intend maintaining this script longterm - hopefully the forum community can do that if they find the script useful. Should do a ddogit.sh script some day I suppose...

See first post of this thread for download of either or both: http://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.p ... 074#p50074
Hardly tested so should be considered an alpha and only feedback bug reports will fix that.

EDIT: Currently posting from @josejp2424 DevuanPup64 LXDE by the way: viewtopic.php?p=26799#p26799

[wiak]

NEW VERSION(now v7) 14March: Main change is that the script now always uses the latest version of WDL initrd.gz (which has had a lot of improvements recently). Note that if you downloaded prior to this announcement, download again since I've updated some (maybe not all) of distro iso url details.
HOWEVER:
If you notice ANY further distro repo url changes (or errors on my part), and want weedogit script updated accordingly you should give me the update url changes (etc) via feedback to this thread or I'm unlikely to update in that way. Fact is I am unlikely to keep this script updated but easy to do it yourself after you study the script (simple) and try it... It is mainly just the distro url in the relevant 'case' statement that needs fixed and a couple of related variables just above that (the rest of the script I do maintain).

I haven't tested this latest script much at all so if not working just let me know or it will likely stay as it is.

Weedogit is now re-packaged so weedogit-latest.sh will always be the latest version.[/color] To see what version you have you can now use command: ./weedogit-latest.sh --version

[wiak]

Don't try and use the latest weedogit script with an iso you already downloaded some weeks ago - that won't work because weedogit is updated to expect latest iso version and revision. If you want to use weedogit to install an older downloaded iso you'd have to use a weedogit from that time... if there was one that is. Pretty much all the isos that original weedogit would install have since been updated upstream and weedogit latest modified accordingly.

Fact is, isos get updated all the time and I am not maintaining weedogit on that basis (would have to change it every day sometimes!). Best you learn to modify the script yourself if you use it. Yes, I can simplify some of the iso details, but not all, so that needing regular maintenance issue is not going to go away. Weedogit is just a 'recipe' and not a one-off product that will work forever with any old iso you may have - not at all.

[mikeslr]

waik, my apologies if it might have gotten lost among the other thoughts I included. But the important part of my email was that there was something wrong with your March 174* script. It does not produce a functioning operating system, apparently because it fails to decompress the ISO.

comparison-of-results.png (66.31 KiB) Viewed 5746 times

I don't claim to be proficient in bash-scripting primarily because parts of it (e.g. awk, sed, others?) are not 'human-readable'. When such aren't present I can read and understand scripts. What I do understand are systems, at least enough to know when they do not do what they are supposed to.

As shown in the above screenshot, the panel on the Right was produced when your March 174*th script was run in an effort to weedog the latest manjaro-xfce. As indicated it successfully downloaded version 21.2.4 but did not create the 'sfses' shown in the left-panel.

The functioning system shown in the left panel was created by using your Feb 174*th weedogit.sh after renaming the (already downloaded) manjaro-xfce-21.2.4...etc.iso to manjaro-xfce-21.2.2...etc.iso. [The date of issue born by each ISO was also changed]. The February 174*th script specified 21.2.2 +publication date at lines 194 and 198.

In case you've already deleted it from storage, I've also attached a copy of the February 174*, 2022 weedogit.sh script. Remove the false '.gz'.

weedogit.sh.gz

(16.53 KiB) Downloaded 89 times

-=-=-=--
Edits: Originally this post showed the dates of my downloads. Corrected to show the internal date given on line 2 of the scripts.

[wiak]

waik, my apologies if it might have gotten lost among the other thoughts I included. But the important part of my email was that there was something wrong with your March 174* script. It does not produce a functioning operating system, apparently because it fails to decompress the ISO.

thanks Mike. I probably made a mistake with the manjaro iso mount line (haven't had a chance to look yet). At the time I 'updated' that latest weedogit the previous weedogit was hardly working for any distro anymore at all because all the iso urls had changed. I thus manually checked new iso urls and attempted to put the new url details into weedogit before uploaded. I no longer had time to check every distro actually worked (only checked newest iso seemed to be downloading but always cancelled out of the download to save hours of time...) - actually completing each and every build would be too onerous for me now as you can imagine. From your comments I expect therefore I got the new iso url correct but messed up in the following lines where it is supposed to be mounted prior to extracting the necessary frugal install bits and pieces (including the main sfs files).

I'll take a look today and upload another one in next day or two (I have a plan to simplify the url inclusion part slightly so I don't need to work out separate variables for distro, version, and so on, which, as it stands just makes updating harder than it needs to be without any real benefit it turns out.

EDIT1: noticed the last weedogit script wouldn't work correctly with Manjaro xfce now anyway since they have updated their iso again so now script needs modded for version 21.2.5 (the current script would only work correctly, if at all, with version 21.2.4 since that was the iso that was current when I last updated weedogit script.
EDIT2: Yes, indeed, I see the mistake in current weedogit script. For manjaro xfce it was only designed for: manjaro-xfce-21.2.4-minimal-220301-linux515.iso, which was the one current at the time. Unfortunately, I made a mistake a couple of lines down in coding:

Code: Select all

mount ${distro}-${release}-minimal-220123-linux515.iso /tmp/weedogit/miso

that should have been same date number as in manjaro-xfce-21.2.4-minimal-220301-linux515.iso. That is, should have been 220301 rather than 220123:

Code: Select all

mount ${distro}-${release}-minimal-220301-linux515.iso /tmp/weedogit/miso

Anyway, as I say, Manjaro xfce now up to overall version 21.2.5 now (and different date also) so will put new details in soon to come new weedogit.sh. I have to say that such errors are to be expected now unfortunately - I really cannot now test each and every entry so just put in my best attempt and hope users like yourself report back what mistake I made so I can fix and re-upload as soon as possible. Thanks again. (Expect errors in the new one to come too of course, but again I'll fix if user gives me exact error in similar fashion). The old Feb release of weedogit is irrelevant now of course since only works with no longer available isos.

Note that next release (once fixed after feedback) will maybe be my last since I honestly cannot keep up with updating the urls and testing them all over again. I will, however, slightly re-arrange the script such that the url detail for each and every iso covered is listed one after the other so user will just need to edit that part of the script (will be near the top of script) to make it work again hopefully (at the moment they'd have to go to the actual case statement section and change quite a few variables, which is admittedly tricky and painful. My hope also was that someone interested might end up producing a yad or gtkdialog frontend for the script (which is perfectly possible but such a GUI frontend would actually just be cosmetic since the iso urls will always need updated regularly in any case).

cheers, wiak

[wiak]

NEW VERSION(now v8) 28March: Script re-organised to make it easy for script user to maintain the ever-changing upstream URL for the distro(s). When you inevitably eventually need to do so, simply open the script in your favourite editor and change any out-of-date distro URL to the current downloadable one. You will find the distro URLs all listed near the top of the weedogit.sh script (lines 13 to 31). You will need to visit distro download site to ascertain current distro URL whenever you need to do that.

Download for weedogit.sh is per usual at foot of first post of this thread, here: viewtopic.php?p=50074#p50074

NOTE that I only briefly tested some of the optional builds, so needs forum member testing and feedback for any fixes to be made. In particular I tested ManjaroXFCE, EndeavourOS, Bodhi, KLV-Airedale, and (weedogged) VanillaDpup
.
Though I will be maintaining the core of the weedogit.sh script, I will not be maintaining the distro URL information - that's a job for the script users... though of course if I come across a change myself I will add that change during any maintenance I do. In practice, however, the script is pretty much complete for my own purposes so this may be the last major release upload though users remain encouraged to provide me with additional distros, for later inclusion, via user-tested code extracts (cloned/amended from existing in-script case statement sections)

[wiak]

NEW VERSION(now v8) 09April: Script is organised to make it easy for script user to maintain the ever-changing upstream URL for the distro(s). When you inevitably eventually need to do so, simply open the script in your favourite editor and change any out-of-date distro URL to the current downloadable one. You will find the distro URLs all listed near the top of the weedogit.sh script (lines 13 to 31). You will need to visit distro download site to ascertain current distro URL whenever you need to do that.

Download for weedogit.sh is per usual at foot of first post of this thread, here: viewtopic.php?p=50074#p50074

NOTE that I only briefly tested some of the optional builds, so needs forum member testing and feedback for any fixes to be made. In particular I tested ManjaroXFCE, EndeavourOS, Bodhi, KLV-Airedale, and (weedogged) VanillaDpup
.
Though I will be maintaining the core of the weedogit.sh script, I will not (often) be maintaining the distro URL information - that's a job for the script users... though of course if I come across a change myself I will add that change during any maintenance I do. In practice, however, the script is pretty much complete for my own purposes so this may be the last major release upload though users remain encouraged to provide me with additional distros, for later inclusion, via user-tested code extracts (cloned/amended from existing in-script case statement sections)

EDIT: Re-uploaded because I discovered too late that EndeavourOS had new kernel and alas no easy place to extract that from except under modules directory, which changes name so can't be auto-scripted (I needed to manually add new kernel name to the script but will amend in next version with a wildcard expression to find it).

[Keef]

EndeavourOS
After a bit of fiddling, I found that this works ok:

Code: Select all

mount "${URL03##*/}" /tmp/weedogit/miso
cp $(find /tmp/weedogit/miso -name "vmlinuz*") vmlinuz

or

Code: Select all

cp -a /tmp/weedogit/miso/arch/boot/x86_64/vmlinuz-linux ./vmlinuz

[wiak]

EndeavourOS
After a bit of fiddling, I found that this works ok:

Code: Select all

mount "${URL03##*/}" /tmp/weedogit/miso
cp $(find /tmp/weedogit/miso -name "vmlinuz*") vmlinuz

or

Code: Select all

cp -a /tmp/weedogit/miso/arch/boot/x86_64/vmlinuz-linux ./vmlinuz

Thanks Keef

[Keef]

I did this as a bit of an exercise really, (and I'm sure you could have done it in about 10 minutes if you felt the need), but I've made a function for getting the filesystem.sfs (regardless of it's name) - and the vmlinuz.

Code: Select all

filename="${URLxx##*/}"

_extractiso () {
    echo "Extracting large files from iso. Please wait patiently ..."
    mount "$filename" /tmp/weedogit/miso
    cp $(find /tmp/weedogit/miso -name "vmlinuz*") vmlinuz
    sqfs=$(find /tmp/weedogit/miso -type f -exec file {} \; | grep "Squashfs" | cut -d":" -f1)
    cp -a "$sqfs" 08filesystem.sfs
    sync;sync
    mount 08filesystem.sfs /tmp/weedogit/fsroot
   } 

It has had limited testing, but worked on three ISOs. Haven't tried it on a distro using multiple sfs, which will probably bugger things up without adding checks. Overcomplicated it at first, and the PATH was a real mess, but I think I've sussed it.

[wiak]

I did this as a bit of an exercise really, (and I'm sure you could have done it in about 10 minutes if you felt the need), but I've made a function for getting the filesystem.sfs (regardless of it's name) - and the vmlinuz.

Code: Select all

filename="${URLxx##*/}"

_extractiso () {
    echo "Extracting large files from iso. Please wait patiently ..."
    mount "$filename" /tmp/weedogit/miso
    cp $(find /tmp/weedogit/miso -name "vmlinuz*") vmlinuz
    sqfs=$(find /tmp/weedogit/miso -type f -exec file {} \; | grep "Squashfs" | cut -d":" -f1)
    cp -a "$sqfs" 08filesystem.sfs
    sync;sync
    mount 08filesystem.sfs /tmp/weedogit/fsroot
   } 

That could be very useful. In practice, at the moment, I don't trust automation so I tend to look inside iso manually just to double-check I have all the squashfs parts, but I'm probably being over cautious and your function would save that time.