Some questions about using KLV-Airedale

[AlexOceanic]

Hi All

I've just tried the "KLV-Airedale-rc10.1 with Void Linux Kernel 6.1.8_1" release of KLV-Airedale for the first time and really like it - very intuitive so far (especially seeing as its the only Linux ISO that would boot from USB where Kali and Fedora were both failing!)

I just wondered if I could ask a couple of questions please?

Can you advise which distro its built on and whether you could point me to the Slackware and/or Arch versions if they exist please?

I'm also hoping to run Blender and some 3D printer slicing applications on it and wondered if I'll actually get better response/file processing/rendering times by running it from RAM rather than the old HDD (non SSD) that I have despite sacrificing a certain amount of RAM (of the 8 GB I have) to the OS?

Is there a "dark" theme you'd recommend for the system windows? I've added the dark theme to Mozilla and found the screen tint app which helps but I'm a night owl and it felt a bit like squinting into the sun last night before I found this

Although it sounds like I'll probably end up using an instance of Puppy on USB with persistent storage - I'd also like to setup a dual booting system with Puppy alongside Win 7 (currently have dual booting with GRUB2 and Win7/Fed 36) as I've had issues with booting from USB recently and am hoping the Puppy install might overwrite whatever issues have been caused in GRUB2/MBR or wherever in the currently installed Fed 36 partitions - possibly to do with encrypting the HDD partition on a previous Kali install and/or failed attempts to update my NVIDIA Optimus GPU (GT550) on Kali and then Fed 36 - I'll take a read through the various guides you have first though but if anyone has any general comments on the pros and cons of what I'm planning then that would be much appreciated.

Many thanks

Alex

[mikewalsh]

@AlexOceanic :-

Hallo, Alex. I see you found your way here, then. to the "kennels"..!

Like I said, I don't understand very much about the various different modes KLV will run in. The guys should be able to expand on what the different modes are and how it all works. Be patient; someone will be along soon.

I'm still something of a 'traditional' Puppy user myself, though I try to keep up with the newer developments.

Nice to have you onboard.

Mike.

[AlexOceanic]

Cheers Mike and thanks again for the heads up on this distro!

Really looking forward to exploring it and seeing what this puppy can do (sorry )

Alex

[mikewalsh]

@AlexOceanic :-

Don't worry if you have to wait a while. We're like every other forum on t'internet.....we get quiet spells, we get busy spells. Too many folks regard forums as 'help-desks', and appear to think there's somebody "manning the lines" 24/7! They forget that everybody on the various fora are all strictly volunteers, and DO 'have a life' outside of them.....

Ours is a relatively small community, but we'll get ya 'sorted'. Be patient.

Mike.

[rockedge]

@AlexOceanic also welcome to the kennels!

KLV-Airedale-rc10.1 has the full name Kennel Linux Void Airedale Release Candidate 10.1 but we call it KLV for short. KLV is built from Void Linux which uses a rolling release model and uses and is fully compatible with Void Linux's upstream repositories.
This is a good link to check for packages : https://voidlinux.org/packages/

KLV is built using @wiak's FirstRib build system that can construct these distro's using a recipe file called a PLUG file. There is a lot more to it and quite of bit of information scattered around this section of the forum and also in the old forum. wiak should be around soon to help point out the places to look.

The Kennel Linux series includes 2 other current distro's. KLA (Arch Linux) and KLU-jam (Ubuntu Jammy Jellyfish) they are named with KLA also really showing excellent performance and is also fully compatible with the upstream Arch repositories.
This is the current topic thread -> viewtopic.php?t=7293
and another KLA option and information -> viewtopic.php?p=82743#p82743

We are pleased that KLV is meeting your expectations. The FirstRib project is in full swing and is the common denominator between KLA, KLU and KLV.

The Kennel Linux idea comes from the fact that KLV is not a Puppy Linux at all but is infuenced and inspired by the many Puppy Linux's built from the woof-CE build system. It is named so because we were "borrowing" technology from Puppy Linux's, DebianDog, FatDog and tossing all the best stuff in. Like all of the portable applications created for Puppy Linux, almost all of them seem to work in KLV.

Any questions you have we'll do our best to answer. There is almost always a solution coming from this community.

@wiak @Sofiya and @geo_c can bring much more to the table and I think they'll check in here and put in a few good words.

[rockedge]

There is a rc11, I just have not made an announcement yet. I wanted to mention that the save/persistence folder called upper_changes can be copied from rc10.1 to the rc11 system so you don't have to redo any customization.

Or just use OctoXBPS package manager GUI to do a system update/upgrade.

Another method would be in a terminal run the command xbps-install -Suy

This will put rc10.1 at the same state as rc11. @geo_c has done quite a bit of experimenting with layering system saves and changes and can point to the right information as one gets deeper into it.

Is there a "dark" theme you'd recommend for the system windows? I've added the dark theme to Mozilla and found the screen tint app which helps but I'm a night owl and it felt a bit like squinting into the sun last night before I found this

Many many themes for the XFCE4 desktop. But brightness and color temperature can be altered easily either with the brightness control on the bottom panel or form the Applications menu under Other->Display Control.

I have run Blender nicely in KLV which is very RAM friendly and efficient. I am no Blender guru though and just do the most basic things.

[geo_c]

Is there a "dark" theme you'd recommend for the system windows? I've added the dark theme to Mozilla and found the screen tint app which helps but I'm a night owl and it felt a bit like squinting into the sun last night before I found this
Alex

I'm a fan of theme choices, so I developed a portable collection of themes with scripts that create symlinks to the theme folders in the OS so that the persistence/save folders don't get bloated with themes.

I call it "tbox" and here's a link to the forum thread: viewtopic.php?t=7229

Basically if you have space on the drive where you installed KLV-airedale, then all you need to do is follow the instructions in the thread and download and unzip the tbox to /mnt/home as outlined in the forum topic, then run the KLV-CONTROL-PANEL script. It will link a whole collection of gtk themes and Xfce window manager themes.

Using the tbox allows you try out a large number of themes, and if you don't want to store the entire tbox on your drive, you can delet all the themes you don't want.

It's also possible to just use the tbox as a library and manually install the themes instead of using the KLV-CONTROL-PANEL link script, but from my experience the Xfce Appearance theme installer wants to use compressed archives, so it might be necessary to zip or tar the theme you want to use before trying to install using the Xfce installer.

Check out the tbox forum topic and let me know if you have questions.

[AlexOceanic]

@AlexOceanic :-

Don't worry if you have to wait a while. We're like every other forum on t'internet.....we get quiet spells, we get busy spells. Too many folks regard forums as 'help-desks', and appear to think there's somebody "manning the lines" 24/7! They forget that everybody on the various fora are all strictly volunteers, and DO 'have a life' outside of them.....

Ours is a relatively small community, but we'll get ya 'sorted'. Be patient.

Mike.

No that's fine - I'm amazed people still help noobs at all when some don't even bother saying "thanks" when their issue was resolved these days (or am I just getting old and crotchety? lol). I certainly don't "expect" help and am very grateful when someone takes the time and effort to do so.

The urgency is off now that I have a working Linux distro again too (although this is the same session from last night and I suspended it overnight just in case it was a "one off" and it didn't reboot from USB (as was the case with some others although I think that was more about ISO writers, formats and possibly missing boot flags now). I think I might do what I need to whilst the going is good though and delete the Fed 36 partitions with Disks or during the Kennel/Win7 dual boot install to the HDD to hopefully fix any potential GRUB2/MBR errors). I'll be glad when I finally can be rid of Windows altogether but keeping my training wheels on for a little longer just in case for now.

Once all is stable then I'll look at getting the proper GPU driver and seeing how Blender runs on the USB vs on the HDD and go from there!

Where I work on the assumption that my system is probably compromised - my intention was always to find a distro I liked, create a clean install with all the apps I use and then create a disk image of that with a separate area for saved data - I could then reflash the disk image onto the HDD on a weekly basis so at least I'd reduce any data being stolen.

From what I'm starting to understand about Puppy/Kennel, it seems that's similar to how they run anyway with read only system files and shared data storage so I could just put a backup onto a spare USB when upgrading or doing system changes to revert to if anything goes wrong (or I can still create the clean install with usual apps and save that somewhere too I guess).

Looking forwards to getting into it!

Alex

[AlexOceanic]

@AlexOceanic also welcome to the kennels!

KLV-Airedale-rc10.1 has the full name Kennel Linux Void Airedale Release Candidate 10.1 but we call it KLV for short. KLV is built from Void Linux which uses a rolling release model and uses and is fully compatible with Void Linux's upstream repositories.
This is a good link to check for packages : https://voidlinux.org/packages/

Thanks for all that info Rockedge and they seem to be great systems you're all pioneering here.

I've got a few gripes with Debian and Ubuntu so would rather stay away from them if at all possible - I need to understand more about Void and either use that or the Arch based versions by the sounds of it.

That's very kind of you to help me get started and I'll try to keep questions to a minimum until I've read the beginner guides etc.

My main objectives at this stage are:

- Set up KLV or KLA on a 32 or 128 GB USB with persistent storage that I can use as a daily driver (unless I see better performance when installed on HDD)
- Amend my current dual boot system with Win7/Fed36 to Win7/KLV which I'm hoping will resolve any potential issues with the MBR - I saw an error reported that the MBR had the first 32 sectors overlapped or something

Let's see how I get on!

Alex

Minor feedback
- the brightness controls don't seem to have any effect currently either from the toolbar or elsewhere but this might be because I haven't installed the proper GPU driver yet
- the screen backlight and colour temperature work well in "Display Controls" though as a mitigation
- the keyboard seemed to revert to US after I'd set it to UK yesterday and then suspended the system overnight - I've deleted the US keyboard now so probably not an issue for me but maybe it needs a tweak to put the last selected keyboard at the top of the list for the system to use perhaps?
I installed the first option (RAM0 I think it was) onto my usb stick from the GRUB4 menu and have been running this live instance from RAM I believe if that helps

[AlexOceanic]

Is there a "dark" theme you'd recommend for the system windows? I've added the dark theme to Mozilla and found the screen tint app which helps but I'm a night owl and it felt a bit like squinting into the sun last night before I found this
Alex

I'm a fan of theme choices, so I developed a portable collection of themes with scripts that create symlinks to the theme folders in the OS so that the persistence/save folders don't get bloated with themes.

I call it "tbox" and here's a link to the forum thread: viewtopic.php?t=7229

Basically if you have space on the drive where you installed KLV-airedale, then all you need to do is follow the instructions in the thread and download and unzip the tbox to /mnt/home as outlined in the forum topic, then run the KLV-CONTROL-PANEL script. It will link a whole collection of gtk themes and Xfce window manager themes.

Using the tbox allows you try out a large number of themes, and if you don't want to store the entire tbox on your drive, you can delet all the themes you don't want.

It's also possible to just use the tbox as a library and manually install the themes instead of using the KLV-CONTROL-PANEL link script, but from my experience the Xfce Appearance theme installer wants to use compressed archives, so it might be necessary to zip or tar the theme you want to use before trying to install using the Xfce installer.

Check out the tbox forum topic and let me know if you have questions.

That's great - thanks again

I'll definitely check all of that out once I'm up and running - I don't want to spend time making any changes until I know they'll be saved

[rockedge]

From what I'm starting to understand about Puppy/Kennel, it seems that's similar to how they run anyway with read only system files and shared data storage so I could just put a backup onto a spare USB when upgrading or doing system changes to revert to if anything goes wrong (or I can still create the clean install with usual apps and save that somewhere too I guess).

Exactly. That is a real strength of these distro's. Some will remaster the base OS and merge in the customization and create a version that is also read only and persistence storage would be small. There are many roads to the same outcome and personal choice counts. You pretty much can make anything out of these distro's that you want....larger, smaller read/write or just read-only the limit is the imagination.

Let us know how you progress

[geo_c]

I installed the first option (RAM0 I think it was) onto my usb stick from the GRUB4 menu and have been running this live instance from RAM I believe if that helps

I think this may be why your keyboard settings weren't saved. You may have to use the "save2flash" utility when running RAM0. I always run a normal install meaning save to persistence (upper_changes) happens on the fly, so that's why I'm not 100 percent certain, but it seems likely.

[wiak]

I installed the first option (RAM0 I think it was) onto my usb stick from the GRUB4 menu and have been running this live instance from RAM I believe if that helps

I think this may be why your keyboard settings weren't saved. You may have to use the "save2flash" utility when running RAM0. I always run a normal install meaning save to persistence (upper_changes) happens on the fly, so that's why I'm not 100 percent certain, but it seems likely.

1. Personally, I recommend w_changes=RAM2 mode. That allows you to shutdown system without saving any changes, or gives chance to use save2flash which saves all your changes to persistent savefolder (or savefile if using that instead).

2. Alternatively, I don't use any grub w_changes line at all. Not using w_changes argument is the same as using w_changes="" or w_changes="media". All these are the same mode. The result is that all changes you make are immediately also being written directly back to the save folder or file (i.e. constant save persistence). Has the advantage that if you are working on computer and have power failure at least everthing up to that point has been saved.

3. Very occasionally I use w_changes=RAM0. That mode doesn't care if you have a save folder or save file or not - it ignores it anyway, the save folder simply does not get mounted or used, which also means that you can't use save2flash to write back to it (you need RAM2 mode for that). It is actually possible to write a savefolder from RAM0 mode, but that requires a special utility to be written or a suitable rsync command, but I won't go into that here. I believe rockedge has experimented with similar. But overall, RAM0 means no save persistence at all.

4. Don't use w_changes=RAM1. That was an early simple save persistence mechanism and used more RAM. The popular w_changes=RAM2 mode has superseded it. I have kept RAM1 mode inside the initrd just in case I need it for a special purpose, unlikely though that may be.

[wiak]

I forgot an important point in response to what was already written and asked in this thread:

Neither w_changes=RAM0 (for no persistence at all) or w_changes=RAM2 for save on demand mode, mean that anything is being loaded or copied into RAM (the old RAM1 method did copy save folder contents actually into RAM but neither RAM0 nor RAM2 modes do). Rather, when using w_changes=RAM2 mode the save folder or save flle is simply mounted, but stays on its external media disk - that just means the external media save folder can be accessed via that mount point - nothing is copied into RAM. What does happen when RAM2 mode is being used is that NEW work (session work/changes) ARE only held in RAM storage until save2flash operation is used to rsync that RAM session back into the savefolder or savefile (i.e. save2flash merges the session changes back to save persistence storage).

One of the other distros discussed on this forum, Puppy Liinux, by default does copy its squashed filesystems actually into RAM prior to using them. But that is wasteful of RAM. Current KL distros are all based on FirstRib distro designs - these are not Puppy Linux distros at all, nor derived from that distro so please do not call them "Pups" - they are not. Wrongly using the distro name 'Pup' does cause confusion on technical matters. Puppy Linux is just another distro (obviously the original here - years old) of which several are discussed on this forum.

It is nevertheless possible to copy all the KL squashed filesystems into RAM prior to usage if you really wanted to, but aside from the delay caused by such copying and the RAM wasted doing so I do not recommend it. If you insist on copying to RAM then that has nothing to do with RAM modes. Rather you indicate your wish to copy to RAM by adding the argument w_copy2ram on the grub kernel command line. Thereafter all sfs filesystem components would be copied physically into RAM prior to being used - wastes RAM and has only one advantage being for the case of very slow boot media. In practice it just wastes RAM since even usb2 media is fast enough for KL distros and old computers with old slow hard drives have very little RAM so can't afford to waste it! So I recommend NEVER using the argument w_copy2ram in practice, unless you want to waste RAM...

[AlexOceanic]

@AlexOceanic also welcome to the kennels!

We are pleased that KLV is meeting your expectations. The FirstRib project is in full swing and is the common denominator between KLA, KLU and KLV.

The Kennel Linux idea comes from the fact that KLV is not a Puppy Linux at all but is infuenced and inspired by the many Puppy Linux's built from the woof-CE build system. It is named so because we were "borrowing" technology from Puppy Linux's, DebianDog, FatDog and tossing all the best stuff in. Like all of the portable applications created for Puppy Linux, almost all of them seem to work in KLV.

Any questions you have we'll do our best to answer. There is almost always a solution coming from this community.

@wiak @Sofiya and @geo_c can bring much more to the table and I think they'll check in here and put in a few good words.

Hi Rockedge

So I've had a read through the guides and have a couple of questions around installing KLV if you'd be kind enough to take a look please?

I'm currently running a RAM0 session from an ISO of KLV on my USB stick, burnt in Fed 36 using Gnome Disks "Restore" function on a totally wiped USB which presents on Disks as an 824 Mb partition with KLV on it (NTFS, MBR, ISO not mounted) plus 61 Gb of unallocated space.

When I tried using Disks to create a 30 Gb NTFS partition for this current session to use as a save file that I believe I'll select when I reboot/shutdown, it gave an error per this screenshot.

I also found:
- none of the Terminal apps would open
- I downloaded Frugalpup-30.pet to get the Stickpup app but was unable to open and I couldn't find either of these apps via the (Ubuntu repository?) software package manager whereas I could find other apps like tuxcart etc.

Can this ISO of KLV on this USB have persistent save or is the whole USB classed as an unalterable ISO now?
Given I'm seeing 29 GB of unallocated space I think I just need to use Disks (on Fed36 if unable to on KLV currently) to create an NTFS partition?
Do I need to use another usb stick, create a 2GB and a 29GB NTFS partitions and just place KLV in the 2GB partition?

Regarding my HDD, can I:

Use Disks to delete the three Fed 36 partitions sda4,5,6 (leaving sda1,2,3 as Win 7) then create a fourth sda4 partition of 2GB and a fifth sda5 of 170GB (roughly the size of the Fedora main partition) and either flash an ISO to sda4 or just copy and paste the files contained in this ISO of KLV on the USB directly into sda4?
(I could do that using Disks/Fed 36 before I wipe it or even Win7 if need be)

I'm not sure which process then creates a GRUB4 partition with Win7 and KLV as boot options to overwrite the existing GRUB2 partition pointing to Win7/Fed36 (which will have been deleted).

Any thoughts on what I'm doing wrong?

Thanks

Alex

[img]file:///root/Pictures/screenshots/Screenshot_2023-02-27_23-32-06.png[/img]

[wiak]

Many on this forum will not be familiar with Gnome Disks Utility (Disks as you call it) since many here tend to use lighter desktop environments. I am in that category. However, Gnome tend to produce some pretty good software that can often be used without much bloat without needing full Gnome Desktop, and I have included some Gnome software in my distro releases. I have never used 'Disks' but I am in KLA-XFCEbase frugal installation at the moment and have installed it, which was only a 1.38MB download on my system (7.66 MiB installed) so not bad at all. I am now trying it out in order to answer your questions. Thus far:

1. From my running KLA-XFCEbase distro I have used Restore from Gnome Disks utility to install KLV-Airedale to my empty 4GB flash drive.

2. I note that it has been installed by Disks Restore as an ISO 9660 filesystem, which means that partition will be read-only, which is not the best arrangement since we'd prefer a Linux partition type, such as Linux ext4, such that we can put a save folder on it.

3. I note also that the remains of the usb stick (over 3GB) has been formatted by Disks Restore as HPFS/NTFS, which again, from a Linux point of view is not very useful since that will not support Linux symbolic links and could only therefore be used with a savefile (that itself has been formatted using a Linux format) and not a save folder. Personally I would always prefer to use a Linux formatted partition with a save folder rather than use a savefile unless I had no choice. It is just easier to use Linux format in the Linux world, despite Linux being able to read and write to NTFS partitions.

I need to reboot and try the system out now, but I'll report back later with suggestions on how best or better to proceed once I understand what Gnome Disks is capable of.

EDIT: In fact turned out Disks formatted the whole usb stick as read-only ISO9660. I thought it said it was only doing the KLV part as that and the rest NTFS, but I must have misunderstood what it intended. Anyway, that iss not very useful except for RAM0 mode, which you have been using. I'll post again once I can suggest better install procedure.

wiak

[wiak]

You say you have grub2 already installed to a partition on the hard drive. Which partition. i.e. where is it, and which partition is Fedora installed on? Is that a full install (I presume it is)?
Also I am confused. On one hand you are talking about a usb with 61GB unallocated (was that 61GB usb already partitioned prior to Disks Restore being applied to it and, if so, what kind of partition table, GPT or msdos style?), but then in different breath your are saying 29GB unallocated, so I'm finding it difficult to understand where and what everything is.

I get the impression that the usb stick that has 29GB unallocated was already partitioned as msdos type and you now have ISO9660 format with KLV-Airedale on it occupying partition one of that being a bit less than 900MiB in space. I 'think' you are saying you have an already made second partition there, which is the unallocated part; if so, it would be somewhat better to make that ext4 Linux format rather than NTFS, so you can put your save folder there - however, it is easier if both the frugal install AND the save folder were kept on same device - depends what you want so, yes, precise information concerning everything including where grub already is would be required to work out how best to arrange matters. If you really do need NTFS for some reason we will have to work with that, but let us know and why please.

If you can keep your current grub2, which presumably is used to dual boot between Windows and Fedora, then that would make life much easier since getting grub2 installed appropriately is actually the hard part and doing so really needs very precise info about individual system current arrangement.

Whilst that Gnome Disks program offers ability to format (as ext4 or NTFS I notice), most of us, as I said, won't have that program, so we may later be best to outline howto make the install using the likes of gparted instead, which tends to come with distros here by default. Admittedly that Gnome DIsks utility looks very nice and does indeed remind me of Windows Disk Manager program.

There is no easy answer, however, to installing grub2... or we would already have detailed that. The other distro you mentioned, Puppy Linux, does have a couple of grub2-related install utilities - FrugalPup comes to mind, which is generally used to install Fossapup as far as I know (there is another such utility called grub2config, but I've never used it and rockedge included an older grub4dos install utility, but I'd say best to use grub2 and GPT partition table if for hard disk at least, and maybe also best for usb stick rather than msdos partitioning) - no matter what distro is installed first doesn't really matter as long as grub2 is successfully part of that installation. You can always later remove any distro not wanted as long as you keep the 'dual-boot' working grub2 install to your hard drive - everything thereafter becomes very easy really.

NOTE: I haven't actually used this, but the KLV iso was, I believe, made as a hybrid iso so should have grub4dos booting out of the box when written to a usb stick with the likes of simple but dangerous program called 'dd'. Maybe Gnome Disks achieves similar - I had to go out so haven't tested the result yet.

EDIT: I'm just writing these notes as I do things so not very specific yet, sorry. Have now tried booting after writing ot my usb stick partition 1, but it wouldn't boot. I'll quickly try with 'dd' in case the iso is not in fact working as a hybrid bootable iso, but then again, I know Ventoy boots it okay so feel that it must be. Just don't know how Gnome Disks does its restore.

[wiak]

Okay, I suspect I know what you have done using Gnome Disks. I think you have restored the hybrid iso KLV-Airedale to the first partition of an already msdos partitioned usb stick. The result will be like using 'dd' to a partition, and the size will be that of the iso image so just under 900MiB. Problem is that is ISO 9660 format, which is read-only. Yes, that could then be booted using RAM0 mode via an already existing grub2 (from your Fedora install).

You 'could' arrange save persistence therafter to some other partition - but best to make that ext4, say, rather than NTFS which would only work with savefile and not the preferred savefolder. i.e. you 'could' format the second currently (I think) unallocated partition on your usb as ext4 and then use a grub2 kernel line argument to tell KLV to use that partition for w_changes (i.e. save persistence). Unfortunatly, that is more complicated than simply doing a normal frugal install to an ext4 read/writable partition in the first place rather than ISO 9660!

Also, your usb stick will not boot by itself (without the Fedora grub2 current arrangement) when restored to a first partition like that. Rather you'd need to write it to the raw disk (e.g. /dev/sda and not /dev/sda1) if you want the hybrid iso grub4dos included part to boot (without needing your Fedora grub2). That's what I 'believe' the overall current situation is anyway. Let me know if I have it wrong.

We can start from there. Best if you can keep your Fedora grub2 - otherwise we'll need to find some way of getting grub2 back on your system if you remove that Fedora arrangement. You probably want to remove Fedora itself by the sounds of it so we have to find a way of keeping or re-installing grub2 thereafter... Alas, that installation of grub2 is always the tricky part - installing the distro itself is almost trivial thereafter. The 'key' to keeping the Fedora grub2 arrangement is first of all knowing where everything is, and usually then keeping the Fedora /boot folder (or at least the grub2 related stuff in there) - the result is a bit messy but the /boot/grub/grub.conf can with care then be edited to work with any frugal installed distro and still, hopefully, be able to boot your Windows installation too. Isn't life easy?

Truth is, probably best to forget about Fedora altogether and use some system such as 'LICK' (search forum for info about that - I've never used it) to dual boot something like FossaPup with Windows. Thereafter, you should be able to remove FossaPup but still have the boot loader (hopefully it is grub2) and then frugal install of KLV-Airedale becomes trivial/easy. Sorry I can't help with LICK though and take no responsibility if that breaks anyone's system.

It is simply a fact that one matter we, in this KL/FirstRib corner, have yet to get round to is to provide installation utilities for grub2 booting and with dual boot capability with Windows. We would need a huge DISCLAIMER if we supplied such a utility since easy to break booting altogether! Personally, I tend to use a method like you have done via Fedora, though I tend to use official Ubuntu to effect dual boot with Windows, and then I use its installed grub2 (and remove most all of Ubuntu itself other than what I need kept for grub2 to work... so a bit messy really, but often gets over Secure Boot EFI boot difficulties that otherwise can cause extra problems...). The 'frugalpup' utility, forum member bigpup often recommends is fine if you don't care about dual-booting; otherwise LICK is often recommended, but that is only designed for installing Puppy Linux, not KL/FirstRib distros.

Easier if you just want to make a bootable usb stick with save persistence folder on it. More efficient and convenient if you want the (much trickier) dual boot with Windows on hard disk partitions arrangement though. Let us know.

If you don't know about this already, you need to get used to using the following really: https://psearch.puppylinux.com

A lot has been asked about similar booting matters for Puppy Linux itself over the years. Here is a 'not too old' thread: viewtopic.php?t=4382
The idea of using Fedora install, or my Ubuntu variant, is also suggested by mikeslr there, but using small AntiX, which sounds reasonable approach to me, and maybe safer than the grub2config method which is particular to Puppy Linux distro and may not apply so nicely for KL FirstRib distros (unless that utility is modified appropriately). As developers it might be a good idea to study how AntiX does it, if any good, and try to adapt their mechanism - I don't really like the Puppy Linux mechanisms (though haven't as I say tried LICK, which may or may not be 'safe'...).

Here is an AntiX forum discussion on same topic. Looks like, to me, that an initial AntiX install might be the best way to go at present for a small dual boot situation with Windows: https://www.antixforum.com/forums/topic ... windows-10
And once that is going you can simply configure the grub.conf to boot the likes of KLV or whatever. We probably don't have sufficient time to re-invent the wheel, though some in Puppy crowd try to, but AntiX method looks better to me (though I haven't tried it).

[wiak]

Alternatively, still thinking about AntiX rather than re-invent wheel with new utilities:

https://antixlinux.com/download

Live usb maker comes preinstalled on antiX and MX. For other linux distributions an AppImage is available for download from here (https://github.com/MX-Linux/lum-qt-appi ... g/19.11.02); However this currently is for 64 bit only. Once you have downloaded the package you must open your downloads folder, extract the package, and run the AppImage with root priveleges (to read/write/format/mount the usb). deb packages are also available for download through the antiX repos (https://antixlinux.com/antix-21-22-packages/) or the source code on gitlab. The helpfile or instructions for using live usb maker can be found here (https://mxlinux.org/wiki/help-files/hel ... usb-maker/

I will try this AppImage (46 MB download only - seems to be by MX Linux, not by AntiX itself), though not on my Windows hard drive (I can't afford to destroy it!). However, I don't know if this is just a Gnome Disks (or similar) alternative or if it handles grub2 dual boot install with Windows; if not I'll download and try AntiX install itself to see how it handles dual boot. Hmmm, seems not to handle grub2 install - oh well - onto AntiX actual install method... I guess the AppImage will help me make an initial AntiX usb for further experimentation. No, I'm not about to desert over to AntiX

So that's a pretty nice safe dd frontend. But if you run it from an actual antiX, it is better than that for then it can make a read/write (rather than read-only ISO9660) frugal install on AntiX - we want something similar for KL distros, but also grub2 dual boot install facilty. However, not enough time in the day to work on that just now, sorry. However, other ways possible for now (such as using that Fedora grub2 install... or making a dual boot AntiX install and then modifying that grub.conf to boot KLV or whatever).

[wiak]

Booted into AntiX. Oh... not very pretty - well, the base version isn't anyway. Like being in some kind of Puppy Linux from some years ago: icewm, Rox, seamonkey. Awful looking compared to the shiny XFCE environment I'm used to with KLV-Airedale and so on. Initial RAM figures really low, but that's not surprising considering what the resulting look is... Still working on it - booted back to KLA-XFCEbase to see if I can find root's password (!) which I need to use AntiX install routines... That's odd... says password = root in google search. Didn't work for me thus far. I'll reboot and try again. All distros are problematic sometimes it seems.

[wiak]

Well that worked as far as creating a KLV bootable usb stick that was read/writable (rather than using dd type method which results in read-only iso9660 bootable usb).

What I did was a bit convoluted.

1. I downloaded that 50MB AntiX AppImage mentioned above and then antiX base iso (around 750MB in size)
2. I ran the AppImage on my distro (which happened to be KLA-XFCEbase at the time, but that doesn't matter) and used that to install that AntiX iso to a blank usb stick, but could only use the dd method, since not running from an AntiX system, so result was read-only iso9660 - could have just used plain dd but result was safer and the utility has nice GUI.
3. I then booted AntiX from that usb stick and in Accessories -> antiX for the same usb live installed program and ran it from there (not the AppImage but the one provided on antiX install) - note: the password required was 'demo'. I plugged in a second blank usb and used that utility to install yet another antiX to that second usb, but this time I was able to click the check box for a read-write install since running the utility from running antiX distro (and didn't need the downloaded iso since just chose to clone the already running AntiX).

4. You may wonder what use that was... Well the result was a normal read/write frugal install of AntiX to that second usb stick and that included a grub2 installation. So then I was able to simply create a KLV directory onto that usb stick alongside the antiX frugal install and after mounting the KLV iso copy the contents of the KLV iso into that usb stick KLV directory. My goodness, this all sounds difficult, but in practice it wasn't.

5. Then inside that KLV directory I opened a terminal and ran command: ./wd_grubconfig, which provided me with a grub2 stanza that I put into the antiX /boot/grub/grub.conf file. That's all - I rebooted and chose KLV so booting from it now.

Okay, so that was just for creating a grub2 usb boot disk - haven't been able to try installing to Windows machine since don't want the risk - but by all accounts that can be achieved from the live boot antiX stick.

NOTE: The end result is similar to what could also be done using a Fossapup bootable usb stick and then running its frugalpup utility, but frankly the antiX utility was much more user friendly and understandable once I got that far...

Attached is a jpg of the usb stick final organisation that antiX utility created for me.

[Phil_54]

@wiak

Booted into AntiX. Oh... not very pretty

The following is for info on antix, so should be in other distros thread, but is here as a response to wiak.
I agree. I've been using antix part-time for about a month now, mainly because it works extremely well with my setup. Boots from cold to browser in 15 seconds, shuts down most times in 2 seconds. I wish I could say the same for puppies, dogs or kennels.
Anyway although it is easy to put xfce into antix, I have decided to trial icewm, which turns out to be fast, flexible and well supported in their forum. If you don't want to fiddle with desktop settings, there is a FT10 Transformation package that a lot of people use. Can be enabled and disabled as needed and has a number of useful mini apps within it. Supposedly makes it look more like Windust for newcomers. Obtained from their synaptic package manager or from within forums.
I'm not sure about root password, as I've fully installed and set my own user/password.
I also multiboot using grub2, with ease.

[wiak]

@wiak

Booted into AntiX. Oh... not very pretty

The following is for info on antix, so should be in other distros thread, but is here as a response to wiak.
I agree. I've been using antix part-time for about a month now, mainly because it works extremely well with my setup. Boots from cold to browser in 15 seconds, shuts down most times in 2 seconds. I wish I could say the same for puppies, dogs or kennels.
Anyway although it is easy to put xfce into antix, I have decided to trial icewm, which turns out to be fast, flexible and well supported in their forum. If you don't want to fiddle with desktop settings, there is a FT10 Transformation package that a lot of people use. Can be enabled and disabled as needed and has a number of useful mini apps within it. Supposedly makes it look more like Windust for newcomers. Obtained from their synaptic package manager or from within forums.
I'm not sure about root password, as I've fully installed and set my own user/password.
I also multiboot using grub2, with ease.

I'm fine with your post Phil since AntiX is useful here both for a possible method to arrange dual-booting with Windows and grub2 usb stick installation, but also interesting because of some of the many utilities it includes. Having said that, the utilities in say KLV-Airedale are much more useful to me overall, and nicer distro to use, from my viewpoint, by a mile. I don't mean to criticize antiX since I'm sure it will run much better on lower powered distros than KL XFCE-based distros. I don't myself find it boots/shutdowns much faster than KLA-OT2 (openbox/tint2) on my system - though my computer is quite powerful so again it is a poor comparison by me. Icewm is known for speed and efficiency, however - in fact the original DebianDog by saintless used that wm.

I have booted antiX long ago and thought much the same back then, but don't know my way around it; always useful to check out other distros like that though since they always have some useful facilities/utilities that we've not seen before or thought of or done in a different sometimes better way. Certainly useful for grub2-related installation work.

LICK with Puppy Linux might be another approach worth using to get dual boot grub2 working with a Windows install, but as I said I've never used it so don't know the risks or benefits. My own computer does dual boot any Linux with Windows - my approach was similar to above described use of Fedora, except I used Zorin to install its grub2 (which is Ubuntu-based) and also use that distro quite often. Problem with Ubuntu grub2 is that it thereafter needs signed kernels and more unless Secure boot is turned off. I now do in fact run with Secure boot turned off to make installing and booting KL distros easier.

AntiX grub2 install program, when run from a booted AntiX live usb stick is really much more sophisticated and user friendly than FrugalPup, which I've used in the past to install grub2 and I doubt frugalpup also handles the situation of trying to dual boot with MS windows, without breaking everything..., which is the most difficult scenario really. Zorin actually did a great job too, except for that Secure grub2 issue.- Big difference with these bigger mainline upstream distros is that grub is set up to use the /etc/grub.d hierarchy, which is a big plus once you are comfortable with using that (updating grub via update-grub program). The small distro methods don't employ that hierarchy, nor use update-grub but instead require user to manually edit grub.conf - most here prefer that manual editing method because they are long time used to doing similar with grub4dos menu.lst. I am happy using either but do think the /etc/grub.d custom control method is better for complex distro boot scenarios.

Similarly, in a way, I personally prefer systemd as a superior init system to old sysVinit because of systemd's well organised control mechanisms and efficient parallel loading design, but certainly I do also feel it is important to support alternatives since losing choice would be sad. On small simple distros it doesn't really matter though since less complex daemons to run anyway usually so less difficult to make sure everything starts up in appropriate order without deadlocks sometimes arising.

[AlexOceanic]

(the old RAM1 method did copy save folder contents actually into RAM but neither RAM0 nor RAM2 modes do). Rather, when using w_changes=RAM2 mode the save folder or save flle is simply mounted, but stays on its external media disk - that just means the external media save folder can be accessed via that mount point - nothing is copied into RAM.

Hi wiak

Firstly thanks very much for the extensive and detailed reponses you've supplied.

I'm probably trying to run before I can walk as usual but (with a mind to running heavy load graphics apps) am I right in thinking the performance would be improved when running from RAM (ie using RAM1) providing applications didn't run out of memory and needed to use the SWAP directory perhaps or do all apps end up running in RAM anyway and it would just be the initial loading of the app into RAM that might be a little quicker but performance of the app when running would be relatively unchanged?

I thought perhaps the read/write speeds of a USB (plus wanting to reduce the amounts of data being written back and forth to the USB drive) would be way slower than the "SSD-like" performance of the RAM chips and the cost of losing a little RAM to the OS?

Don't worry too much as I can benchmark the speeds of a standard operation in each mode once I am a bit more familiar with KLV (not Puppy )

[wiak]

(the old RAM1 method did copy save folder contents actually into RAM but neither RAM0 nor RAM2 modes do). Rather, when using w_changes=RAM2 mode the save folder or save flle is simply mounted, but stays on its external media disk - that just means the external media save folder can be accessed via that mount point - nothing is copied into RAM.

Hi wiak

Firstly thanks very much for the extensive and detailed reponses you've supplied.

I'm probably trying to run before I can walk as usual but (with a mind to running heavy load graphics apps) am I right in thinking the performance would be improved when running from RAM (ie using RAM1) providing applications didn't run out of memory and needed to use the SWAP directory perhaps or do all apps end up running in RAM anyway and it would just be the initial loading of the app into RAM that might be a little quicker but performance of the app when running would be relatively unchanged?

I thought perhaps the read/write speeds of a USB (plus wanting to reduce the amounts of data being written back and forth to the USB drive) would be way slower than the "SSD-like" performance of the RAM chips and the cost of losing a little RAM to the OS?

Don't worry too much as I can benchmark the speeds of a standard operation in each mode once I am a bit more familiar with KLV (not Puppy )

No, RAM1 is almost never a good choice - it does not result in apps running from RAM. As I said in post immediately below the one about RAM0, 1 and 2, the way to make the sfs files all first be loaded into RAM and thus mounted and then run from there is to use the single kernel argument w_copy2ram on the grub2 kernel line. But certainly that will use RAM. Will the result be faster - probably not much in practice on a modern system using modern hard drives such as SSD devices - I expect hardly noticeable really though yes, benchmarking tests would be interesting.

Main reason I don't expect much benefit in practice using w_copy2ram is that if your system has sufficient RAM once an app is loaded it tends to stay in RAM cache anyway so it is only the initial load that is slow. Also fast modern drives like SSD are solid state anyway so not slow at all. I am presuming the use of w_changes=RAM2 mode in which case there are no continual writes back to slow usb. The whole session gets kept in RAM until you choose to save it back (save on demand via the save2flash utility).

If booting from usb stick, you definitely should aim to achieve the normal frugal install with read-write capability rather than a simple hybridiso image write to usb which ends up stored as read-only iso9660 format though (instead of read/write ext4 or similar) - that's were I found the antiX approach useful (and as alternative way to arrange dual boot with Windows on hard disk probably).

Note that issue with overlayfs is that saving back to media (save on demand using save2flash) doesn't actually free up RAM, it just makes sure persistence has a correctly merged copy of it. The other oft-used method of layering a filesystem, aufs, however, actually can clear out the RAM at that point - which is indeed a big advantage of aufs. Having said that, my system has enough RAM that that disadvantage of overlayfs approach is irrelevant to me pretty much always, but might not be on smaller RAM systems when using RAM intensive apps... then aufs would win and KL doesn't support that and aufs support isn't planned. Problem with aufs is it needs a patched kernel and aufs isn't supported by the official kernel team, so eventually I think its days are numbered (and its upstream support is limited anyway).

[AlexOceanic]

Many on this forum will not be familiar with Gnome Disks Utility
2. I note that it has been installed by Disks Restore as an ISO 9660 filesystem, which means that partition will be read-only, which is not the best arrangement since we'd prefer a Linux partition type, such as Linux ext4, such that we can put a save folder on it.

3. I note also that the remains of the usb stick (over 3GB) has been formatted by Disks Restore as HPFS/NTFS. Personally I would always prefer to use a Linux formatted partition with a save folder rather than use a savefile unless I had no choice. It is just easier despite Linux being able to read and write to NTFS partitions.

EDIT: In fact turned out Disks formatted the whole usb stick as read-only ISO9660. I thought it said it was only doing the KLV part as that and the rest NTFS, that iss not very useful except for RAM0 mode, which you have been using.

wiak

So I've used live Gparted on USB many times over the years to rescue data from broken Windows systems on friends pc's and the like but it seemed to have less abilities to manipulate the partitions compared to Disks when I tried it out recently (although it may have been down to me not understanding enough about mounting partitions and I was trying to perform illegal actions with Gparted on a mounted partition perhaps!).

Ironically I used Gnome Disks as thought that it seemed to have more abilities and was perhaps better known in GNU/Linux circles but maybe that's because I was mainly using Fedora previously and that's their preferred app for some reason (although some do use GParted too).

Anywho... thanks for going to the trouble of recreating my situation - so that's interesting as I was also getting confused about instucting Disks to wipe all data on the USB and restore/create the ISO only to find it created 2 partitions, 1 x 850Mb ISO partition and 1 x 29GB 60GB NTFS partition (hence my trying to create a savefile/folder in the NTFS partition) and yet it acted as though the whole USB was a read only ISO. I'm still not quite sure about the difference between save files and folders in this context - does it mean I wouldn't be able to create any kind of directory tree (i.e. sub folders) in the "Save file" only type?

I was trying to use NTFS as the save folder directory type because it seemed to be a file system that both GNU/Linux and Windows could read (in the unlikely event I ever use Windows again) but when I think more about it, I can always use a GNU/Linux system to pull any files from an EXT4 partition and send them to Windows readable partition if necessary. It's not like I'm constantly having to use Windows to open files in my GNU/Linux partitions (indeed I haven't used Win for months now I'm relieved to say!).

So it sounds like perhaps I should create 2 x EXT4 partitions on the USB, 1 x 2 GB for KLV and 1 x 29GB for the save folder.
I'm not sure if I can select the 2GB partition and just make that a KLV ISO or if I need to simply place the contents of the ISO in that 2 GB partition as it seems KLV can run both ways? I guess at boot the system will just search all partitions for the init file (and find it quickly being the first (and relatively small) partition on the drive) but I didn't know if an ISO might be more secure than read only system files that might be easier to change the permissions of and hack somehow.

[mikewalsh]

@AlexOceanic :-

Actually, we usually find that for 'sharing' between multiple platforms, FAT32 (which is what USB sticks come with, ex-factory - by default) is much the best option. It's the one format that is recognised by absolutely everything, it seems.

There IS the modern M$ equivalent of this, ExFAT - which was developed to get round the 'max' 4 GB individual file-size limit that FAT32 suffers from - but I honestly don't know much about it, OR what Linux support for it is like.

However, if you format with FAT32 you ARE stuck with the older save-file (which contains a Linux file-system within.....and is a 'fixed' size).The newer save-folder - which expands/contracts according to contents, up to the max available storage on that partition - requires a Linux format (ext2, 3, or 4) to work with.

*shrug*

Mike.

[wiak]

Well, there is that ability to share between win and Linux advantage of using fat32 or ntfs or exfat for that matter, though Linux needs exfat support installed for the latter and initrd also needs exfat support added.

A savefile is a specially structured file that is formatted with Linux disk format like ext4, so does hold any folder hierarchy you want. However default windows wouldn't be able to read and access the files inside the savefile. Windows would be able to read any other file stored on same ntfs or fat32 partition the savefile is stored in though.

Nevertheless, I do find save folders more useful since easy to edit their contents and savefiles possibly easier corrupted such that data recovery difficult even after trying fix using fsck utility.

[wiak]

You certainly don't need a separate partition for a save folder though. The frugal install is normally created in a directory inside one Linux formatted partition and a sub-drectory inside that named upper_changes is automatically crated for save persistence when the likes of RAM2 mode being used. It is possible to put upper_changes directory on different partition, but not usually done except for iso image booting since, obviously, you can't put upper_changes onto read only media and expect it to work! Actually I myself don't normally use a different partition for iso boot either, I just use upper_changes on same partition the iso image is stored.

[AlexOceanic]

You say you have grub2 already installed to a partition on the hard drive. Which partition. i.e. where is it, and which partition is Fedora installed on? Is that a full install (I presume it is)?
Also I am confused. On one hand you are talking about a usb with 61GB unallocated (was that 61GB usb already partitioned prior to Disks Restore being applied to it and, if so, what kind of partition table, GPT or msdos style?), but then in different breath your are saying 29GB unallocated, so I'm finding it difficult to understand where and what everything is.

I get the impression that the usb stick that has 29GB unallocated was already partitioned as msdos type and you now have ISO9660 format with KLV-Airedale on it occupying partition one of that being a bit less than 900MiB in space. I 'think' you are saying you have an already made second partition there, which is the unallocated part; if so, it would be somewhat better to make that ext4 Linux format rather than NTFS, so you can put your save folder there - however, it is easier if both the frugal install AND the save folder were kept on same device - depends what you want so, yes, precise information concerning everything including where grub already is would be required to work out how best to arrange matters. If you really do need NTFS for some reason we will have to work with that, but let us know and why please.

If you can keep your current grub2, which presumably is used to dual boot between Windows and Fedora, then that would make life much easier since getting grub2 installed appropriately is actually the hard part and doing so really needs very precise info about individual system current arrangement.

Whilst that Gnome Disks program offers ability to format (as ext4 or NTFS I notice), most of us, as I said, won't have that program, so we may later be best to outline howto make the install using the likes of gparted instead, which tends to come with distros here by default. Admittedly that Gnome DIsks utility looks very nice and does indeed remind me of Windows Disk Manager program.

There is no easy answer, however, to installing grub2... or we would already have detailed that. The other distro you mentioned, Puppy Linux, does have a couple of grub2-related install utilities - FrugalPup comes to mind, which is generally used to install Fossapup as far as I know (there is another such utility called grub2config, but I've never used it and rockedge included an older grub4dos install utility, but I'd say best to use grub2 and GPT partition table if for hard disk at least, and maybe also best for usb stick rather than msdos partitioning) - no matter what distro is installed first doesn't really matter as long as grub2 is successfully part of that installation. You can always later remove any distro not wanted as long as you keep the 'dual-boot' working grub2 install to your hard drive - everything thereafter becomes very easy really.

NOTE: I haven't actually used this, but the KLV iso was, I believe, made as a hybrid iso so should have grub4dos booting out of the box when written to a usb stick with the likes of simple but dangerous program called 'dd'. Maybe Gnome Disks achieves similar - I had to go out so haven't tested the result yet.

EDIT: I'm just writing these notes as I do things so not very specific yet, sorry. Have now tried booting after writing ot my usb stick partition 1, but it wouldn't boot. I'll quickly try with 'dd' in case the iso is not in fact working as a hybrid bootable iso, but then again, I know Ventoy boots it okay so feel that it must be. Just don't know how Gnome Disks does its restore.

Apologies for the confusion - so its a 64GB USB with 1 partition being the 900Mb KLV - where there was approx 60GB of unallocated/free space, when I tried to create a save partition, I thought I'd set it to 29/30 GB just in case I messed up and I would then still have another 30GB of free space to create another partition of the correct type if I messed up.

Of course now Disks doesn't even see the USB drive at all and GParted won't even load for some reason (I was going to provide screenshots of each partition to help explain the current setup and attempt to change the unallocated 60GB into an ext4 partition as a "save folder" capable directory just to see if that worked with the current setup on this USB).

Regarding keeping the GRUB2 setup, I think that'll be ok as that was the one thing that was working correctly throughout my previous issues which might have been more due to faulty ISO images of various distros being flashed with the wrong tools (a windows boot repair ISO on another USB usually seemed to boot ok (although not always on first attempt and I wasn't sure if moving it to another usb port and/or making seemingly irrelevant changes to the BIOS boot order and saving them (e.g. USB Kingston/Verbatim/Sandisk etc was always the first in boot order but when I boosted USB FDD and USB CD up the boot order above the HDD entries and F10 to save it seemed to help it boot but maybe it was just coincidental).
Hopefully we can clean up the GRUB2 config file afterwards to eliminate the Fed36 entries and perhaps point it to a newly created KLV partition when created.

I guess at the end of the day, if I can:

- boot KLV from USB
- use GRUB2 to boot windows if need be

Its irrelevant that the Fed 36 options (three kernels were created during attempts to install the GPU driver) on the GRUB2 boot menu will be pointing to deleted Fed 36 partitions and I saw your comments on potentially updating the GRUB files to point to an instance of KLV residing in an sda4 I can create after deleting the sda4/5/6 Fed 36 partitions (and I'd create an sda5 partition as the save folder for KLV too).
I'm a bit confused as to what sda1/2/3 are too to be honest, especially the 1GB sd3 partition where sda5 appears to be identical.
I thought it might be:
sda1 - Win MBR
sda2 - Win7
sda3 - 1 GB of unallocated space that I left on the HDD for some reason
sda4 - overarching Fed36 partition containing:
--sda5 - 1 GB unallocated space that I left on HDD for some reason or perhaps a SWAP partition
--sda6 - Fed36

If this is true then I was hoping to use Gparted or Disks (happy to use Gparted if you're more familiar with that) from this live version of KLV to:

- Delete sda3/4/5/6 (if sda3 is extraneous)
- Create a 2GB sda3 ext4 partition for KLV (I said sda4 here in another post as was going to leave sda3 alone being only 1GB and potentially a Win recovery partition or something although I don't think this is the case, previous backups have been around 8GB for Win if I recall correctly and I think I just left 1 GB for emergency saving of files when I set up the dual boot system etc - if it's unnecessary I would like to delete the existing sda3 for completeness and to simplify the situation)
- Create a 170GB sda4 ext4 (I understand its not really worth using ntfs now) partition as the KLV save folder

Sorry this is so convoluted - what a mess eh