Frugal setup – Inconsistent behavior

[Member olsztyn]

This report is a follow-up as a separate topic to the antiX Live capability to run from internal SATA hard disk, discovered by Christophe.
As noticed, live-usb-creator creates antiX Live on both USB connected device (flash or hard drive) and SATA connected (such as internal) drive.
As using internal SATA drive as Live proved very useful (and IMHO superior than traditionally installed), I further tested Frugal setup in such various scenarios and found Frugal setup inconsistent, as Frugal setup unnecessarily differentiates between USB and SATA.
Specifically, if antiX is booted as Live from SATA connected (hard disk) Frugal setup is looking for USB connected device as source, not taking SATA into account, and when booted from USB connected hard disk Frugal setup is looking for SATA connected hard drive to deposit Frugal antiX installation. In either case Frugal setup does not proceed with required media not found and offers ‘p’ to shutdown or ‘r’ to reboot.

MHO is that Frugal setup should not artificially and unnecessarily discriminate USB connected device from SATA connected device, which is to be used as source and target and should set up Frugal installation of antiX on eligible (having enough space) device, whether device is USB or SATA interfaced, as both are block devices and such restriction should not be hard-coded in Frugal setup.
Just MHO. Hopefully antiX Frugal specialist could please weigh in on whether it is feasible to remove such restriction. The importance of this is not just to make Frugal setup more flexible in operation but also to leverage a significant advantage of internal SATA hard drive run as Live (discovered by Christophe) to be able to set up Frugal installs directly on the same partition.

Live antiX Boot Options (Previously posted by Xecure):
https://antixlinuxfan.miraheze.org/wiki/Table_of_antiX_Boot_Parameters

[Anonymous]

Helpful

Up

0

::

Frugal setup unnecessarily differentiates between USB and SATA.

Food for thought, while we’re awaiting “antiX Frugal specialist” to enlighten us as to why the differentiation is, in fact, necessary…

[Moderator christophe]

Helpful

Up

0

::

My understanding is to keep newer users from wiping out their whole hdd when trying to make a live usb.

I once over-wrote my backup archive external usb hdd (1 TB) of all my valuable backup data while trying to make a live usb – but not paying enough attention to the destination drive.

I know people “should” be aware/careful and not have to have their hand-held. But I think that anticapitalista’s default setting is best.

After all — no matter what the “default” setting is, some of us will do what we want, anyway. That’s what “Tips & Tricks” are for.

(Just MHO.) 😉

• This reply was modified 1 year, 10 months ago by christophe.

confirmed antiX frugaler, since 2019

[Anonymous]

Helpful

Up

0

::

feasible to remove such restriction

[Anonymous]

Helpful

Up

0

::

I can’t find the recent topic, but someone (olsztyn?) questioned a comment I had posted regarding USB drives. The reply was worded something like “I can’t understand why skidoo mentioned ____ (scsi?) when we are talking about USB drives“.

‘USB Attached SCSI Protocol’ aka ‘UASP’
https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2020/uasp-makes-raspberry-pi-4-disk-io-50-faster
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_Attached_SCSI
https://superuser.com/questions/928741/how-can-i-check-whether-usb3-0-uasp-usb-attached-scsi-protocol-mode-is-enabled
https://linux-sunxi.org/USB/UAS

https://www.smartmontools.org/wiki/SAT-with-UAS-Linux

certain USB-SATA-bridge chipsets do not properly pass SAT commands on to the SATA device when running in UAS mode, and to work around this problem Linux automatically enables the NO_ATA_1X flag for those chipsets. This turns off SAT passthrough… which in turn means that smartmontools is prevented from communicating with the device.

For many of these chipsets, SAT passthrough works correctly in the old ​BOT (usb-storage driver) mode, and so smartmontools may suddenly stop working when the kernel is upgraded to a version which supports UAS, or from one which did did not apply the flag for that device to a newer kernel which does (see NO_ATA_1X kernel versions).

For more information on the usb-storage flags, search for the ‘usb-storage.quirks’ entry in the ​Kernel Parameters Documentation.

[Member olsztyn]

Helpful

Up

0

::

Although this skidoo’s reference is to live-usb-maker parameter, not sure how it can be applied to Frugal setup, which is on antiX Live boot persistence menu, this gave me some additional thoughts on Frugal setup improvements…
First and foremost I have to say that these tools and capabilities provided by antiX are excellent as they are now. I am not finding fault with them, just looking to possibility to further improve them so they are even more excellent and flexible than they are now. This is just my disclaimer…
Thoughts regarding Frugal set up and operation:
As it is now, booting Frugal install can be done in several ways:
– From antiX Live Persistence Menu – select any Frugal and boot will look for a partition labeled ‘antiX-Frugal’ and find ‘antiX-Frugal….’ folder, which has a linuxfs to boot there.
– From grub menu select a Frugal menu item (previously added to address Frugal installs as ‘antiX-Frugal….’ folders as above.

Since antiX-Frugal installs are located in ‘antiX-Frugal-….’ folders on sda partitions on hard disk:
– It should not be necessary for Frugal finder from F5 Live persistence menu to require that partition label, where Frugals are located, be antiX-Frugal, but rather to look for folders named ‘antiX-Frugal-…’.
– Having found Frugal installs as ‘antiX-Frugal-…’ folders on sda drive (any partition), a menu should be presented of such Frugals to select which to boot. This would not require Grub menu setup in order to select and boot multiple Frugals. Frugals are just Live antiX installations and should belong on antiX Live menu (better a separate menu than on Persistence menu). Having them on Grub menu, instead on Live antiX menu seems an artificial workaround.
– Instead of Grub menu Frugal installations can be set up for selection menu to boot as Extlinux on hard disk, but it requires some Extlinux setup as well, so booting them directly from Live menu is still more consistent.

These are just some thoughts that antiX Live/Frugal can be further enhanced and further set antiX apart from other distros, leveraging these already magnificent Live capabilities…
Thanks and Regards.

Live antiX Boot Options (Previously posted by Xecure):
https://antixlinuxfan.miraheze.org/wiki/Table_of_antiX_Boot_Parameters

[Moderator christophe]

Helpful

Up

0

::

Oops. Sorry I totally missed your point.

You are wondering about a search-and-create-on-the-fly frugal booting menu? Searching hdd for antiX frugal folders & enabling a menu?

Would your vision have the dynamic parameters like the live-usb?

confirmed antiX frugaler, since 2019

[Member olsztyn]

Helpful

Up

0

::

christophe wrote:

Would your vision have the dynamic parameters like the live-usb?

Live USB and Frugal are the same thing, just Frugal is expected to be set up on the hard disk partition in a folder.
You could set up Frugal by just copying a few files from Live, linuxfs in particular, which is squashed fs of antiX.
On antiX Live set up on SATA internal hard drive, if you set up a Frugal, there are two ‘Live’ folders – ‘antiX Live’ and ‘antiX-Frugal-…’, both the same structure with linuxfs squashed file system.
So to answer – yes. Dynamic search for Frugals and presenting a menu of them to boot.

Thanks and Regards.

• This reply was modified 1 year, 10 months ago by olsztyn.

Live antiX Boot Options (Previously posted by Xecure):
https://antixlinuxfan.miraheze.org/wiki/Table_of_antiX_Boot_Parameters

[Anonymous]

Helpful

Up

0

::

It should not be necessary for Frugal finder from F5 Live persistence menu to require that partition label, where Frugals are located, be antiX-Frugal, but rather to look for folders named ‘antiX-Frugal-…’.

Asking you to re-read this doc, especially the sections titled “The Boot Device” and “The Boot Directory” and “The Frugal Device”
https://download.tuxfamily.org/antix/docs-antiX-19/FAQ/boot-params.html#_the_boot_device

fdev
flab
fuuid
bdir

to be able to set up Frugal installs directly on the same partition.

Compared to persistence options ( e.g. pdir= ), some choose-ability may, in fact, be missing, but are we you mixing peas and carrots?

>>> From grub menu select a Frugal menu item

grub is grub, and (but) the liveboot menu deals with extlinux.

Entries within the grub menu are (during boot) baked-in, decided in advance.
Somehow I’m failing to connect the dots regarding what additionally could//would be added.

[Member Xecure]

Helpful

Up

0

::

I think there is no advantage on searching multiple frugal installs when each may require the use of different boot parameters that will have to manually be written anyway before boot. Isn’t it better to manually add the frugal boot entries to the grub bootloader as explained in a different article by christophe (and also a video by dolphin_oracle)? Or add those boot entries to your live-usb boot/grub/grub.cfg (or to the syslinux/isolinus boot config) file as custom entries? It isn’t that common to boot frugal installs on different machines with the same live-USB, so I wouldn’t consider this a pressing issue.

Maybe I am understanding this wrong, but it makes more sense for me to be able to create easily grub or isolinux/syslinux instruction files with a script (to automate it a bit) and then add the generated instructions to grub/other. This would also include the specific boot parameters you request before running the script. We would not need to pressure the devs to add anything new and the few of us who use frugal may benefit more from it that making the live init more complicated and more prone to undesirable errors.

antiX Live system enthusiast.
General Live Boot Parameters for antiX.

[Member olsztyn]

Helpful

Up

0

::

Thanks skidoo.
Understood that much can be controlled by boot options – manually.
Understood that grub menu entries for Frugals are baked in – in advance.
Understood that extlinux menu entries for Frugals can be set up (baked in) in advance) for extilinux Live menu. I have done this too…
Understood that Persistence menu allows to set up persistence in advance for Frugals.
Having said this, all I meant was about dynamic menu and flexibility in addition to control by boot parameters.
To explain my point:
– antiX Live has the (dynamic, not baked in ahead of time) capability of finding all grub loaders and grub menus and building a dynamic menu of such bootable items, presented as part of Live boot menu. This is called (not too all inclusively) ‘Grub Rescue Menus’. So it is building a dynamic menu all such discovered items for selecting which to boot. This is very powerful. In such dynamically built menu includes even Windows.
Why, having such dynamic capability for finding grub entries and building a menu to boot, not adding finding the equivalent extlinux boot items, such as multiple Frugals, using a simple convention that Frugal folders must be named ‘Frugal…’?
Just trying to explain my point and I apologize if I missed your point…
Thanks and Regards.
P.S. I re-read (already) the sections you linked to…
I realize this topic evolved much from the original post. So I apologize for extending scope.
I also understand that I am occasionally being pain in the neck for antiX establishment for raising ideas for enhancements, instead of just being happy with what has been so graciously provided by antiX creators, praising the existing status quo instead. This is not coming from expecting too much to happen in short period of time, considering small development team, but trying to leverage some low hanging fruit that can enhance this system.
If I am going too far with this, please let me know. I will sit quiet, not to annoy the creator(s).
Thanks for this best Live system in all Linux universe in any case…

• This reply was modified 1 year, 10 months ago by olsztyn.

Live antiX Boot Options (Previously posted by Xecure):
https://antixlinuxfan.miraheze.org/wiki/Table_of_antiX_Boot_Parameters

[Member olsztyn]

Helpful

Up

0

::

Xecure wrote:

Maybe I am understanding this wrong, but it makes more sense for me to be able to create easily grub or isolinux/syslinux instruction files with a script (to automate it a bit) and then add the generated instructions to grub/other. This would also include the specific boot parameters you request before running the script.

Understood. Thanks Xecure…
I added some more comments in P.S. section of my prior post.
I will work with what is available at this point.
Regards.

• This reply was modified 1 year, 10 months ago by olsztyn.

Live antiX Boot Options (Previously posted by Xecure):
https://antixlinuxfan.miraheze.org/wiki/Table_of_antiX_Boot_Parameters

[Anonymous]

Helpful

Up

0

::

>>> If I am going too far with this, please let me know.

Topics like “this”, which question the status quo, can lead to breakthroughs and we all benefit.

>>> Understood that
>>> Understood that

scusa if my post mentioning the docs wound up sounding condescending. I really thought this detail about bdir= adequately handled case of “same partition”. At least it (maybe) clears the misunderstanding “must be named Frugal”

https://download.tuxfamily.org/antix/docs-antiX-19/FAQ/boot-params.html#_the_boot_directory

The Boot Directory

By default, we look for the linuxfs file and and persistence files in the antiX directory on the boot device. If you want to boot more than one Live system on the same device or if you want to do a frugal install, you should change that directory and use the bdir parameter to point to the new directory.

bdir=<dir>

Looking into the prospect of auto-discovery…

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/BitJam/Live-initrd/master/init
I searched in page “find_frugal_file()” (noquotes) and confirmed

…when bdir=nnn is given on the bootline and no matching dir is found, it offers to create it and setup frugal there. Or, if the given directory is found, it is used to initiate a frugal boot session. The directory location may have been “given” via grub entry, but the live init script doesn’t know/care about that detail.

Next, looking into the live-usb-maker code…

https://github.com/BitJam/live-usb-maker/search?q=frugal
hardcoded? “Frugal”
Yes, but (when performing a clone operation) it’s hardcoded to look for a Frugal subdirectory within the _whatervername_ bdir location(s) you had previously specified.

Xecure wrote:

making the live init more complicated and more prone to undesirable errors.

I’m at aloss to recite the details offhand, but I’m fairly certain the AncientOnes included “hooks” within the antiX live init script. Whatever accessory scripts are found in suchandsuch directory of the unpacked initramfs will be executed. An accessory script could sniff “Is a new frugal being setup during the current session?” and, conditionally, it would mangle rewrite the grub menu entries + call update-grub. (I’m unsure that utility is among the busybox tools ~~ may need to add it into the initramfs.)

[Author]

Posts