sharrisii/taz

A slimmed down gentoo linux livecd/liveusb iso that allows to load different boot options and runs from RAM upon boot. A VCTLabs project.

taz's Issues

MUSL and palemoon

Hi, I read that you guys use palemoon w MUSL, can you please show me how you build palemoon? I guess its an 'ebuild' in gentoo? I'm looking for the equivalent of Arch PKGBUILDs / Void templates, sorry I'm not sure what its called.
I am trying to build palemoon for Void Linux MUSL & could really use some other resources, your help is greatly appreciated, thank you.

Create coherence

Create style coherence between all components. Perhaps further improve the conky system monitoring panel / style (ie conky background should be set to be the same as the desktop background, ...).

Also remove bookmarks toolbar in palemoon by specifying this GUI layout in an initialized profile.

Issues list for next TAZ versions

add :
app-portage/layman
net-misc/ntp

remove
lxlock (see below) -not sure what the exact package name of this was, was this x11-misc/slock ? )

Keep build tools on the iso after finishing livecd (to allow installing extra packages, compiling small programs, ...)

Update the flags in the /catalyst folder with the flags mentioned at TAZ_general_compiler_flags.txt
--> https://github.com/Sharrisii/TAZ/blob/master/TAZ_x86_v1_specs/catalyst/portage/make.conf.catalyst --> no reference to -mpfmath=sse, -mmmx, -msse, -mtune generic, -fomit-frame-pointer, -fno-unwind-tables, -fno-asynchronous-unwind-tables

Also compare https://github.com/Sharrisii/TAZ/blob/master/TAZ_x86_v1_specs/catalyst/portage/make.conf with https://github.com/Sharrisii/TAZ/blob/master/TAZ_x86_v1_specs/catalyst/portage/make.conf
These probably won't match (not sure whether the local flags there need to match with the flags in make.conf; are the flags in make.conf local or global flags btw ?)

If after this, there are still problems with permissions (writing to drives, errors, ...) then delete the lxpolkit packages completely. Integration of apparmor (to replace lxpolkit) could be a possibility later-on then.

Check whether slim starts up before login to x

Also a (small) problem is that any non-azerty keyboard users are currently forced to also use the optional usb stick to correct their keyboard settings. A better solution is to include a list of selectable keymaps during boot (before typing in the password)
I saw that in the regular gentoo livedvd too. The user then needs to type in a number I believe and a keymap is then loaded.
If you can integrate the keymap selection at boot (before asking
password) in one of the next versions (not now) then we could remove:
https://github.com/Sharrisii/TAZ/blob/master/files_included_in_TAZ_isos/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-keyboard.conf
It could show up a message such as:
"Please select your keymap; if the optional usb stick is inserted and
keymap on it is set correcty (bootscripts/keymap.sh) then do nothing"
I'll also need to change a few readmes then.
This would also solve the issue that outside of x, the keyboard is not changed to the required keymap, which means that the password entered for root/username is different from the password typed in in x (because keymap will load in x; so becoming su isn't possible if password is different then)

The root and user password setting is probably also too unsecure.
Have a separate password asked fo user taz and root, and have it require a minimum set of characters (ie 8) and a combination of numbers and letters.

Add btrfs kernel support:
https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Btrfs#Kernel

Using portageq (for checking installed flags) gives following error:
taz@livecd ~ $ portageq envvar USE | xargs -n 1
!!! Repository 'x-portage' is missing masters attribute in '/mnt/livecd/usr/local/portage/metadata/layout.conf'
!!! Set 'masters = gentoo' in this file for future compatibility
bindist
build

Due to the global useflag emerge doesn't want to remove net-print/cups from boot setup 1 (or any other boot setups). This should be fixed so that it only show up in boot setup 2

qdepends -Q net-print/cups
app-text/ghostscript-gpl-9.26
net-print/cups-filters-1.20.4
net-wireless/bluez-5.50
x11-libs/gtk+-2.24.32
x11-libs/gtk+-3.22.30

The arrow keys don't work when writing text (ie to move the cursor forwards and back). Pressing button up executes xwd (this needs to be removed too).
I also need to add an entry for the delete button, to delete files in pcmanfm
Another thing that doesn't work is the up button, to cycle through the last commands in sakura; not sure whether it has anything to do with this: https://askubuntu.com/questions/325807/arrow-keys-home-end-tab-complete-keys-not-working-in-shell
typing in | or the @ doesn't work: this is probably because the alt / alt gr key doesn't work (laptop keyboard)
--> I changed keymap from 102 keys to 105 keys (see paragraph below); perhaps this fixes the issue ?

bootsetup2to6 and bootsetup7 which includes the driver should be placed on the usb stick, and a list with the 7 different boot options needs to be presented at bootup along with the ability for the user to select one of the boot options. For the list to be shown, see
https://github.com/Sharrisii/TAZ/blob/master/live_cd_overview.txt

For gparted and wicd: removed the desktop files as these require root privileges (so best started only with sakura, after an su). Mupdf desktop file didn't work either (only works with sakura), but I think this desktop file has already been removed.

http://localhost:631/ doesn't seem to work (CUPS); it gives an Unable to connect message
The new iso (which has user taz in lp and lpadmin group) has not addressed this issue.

There is an error: Unmute needs service alsasound.

The emerge command doesn't work, so it's not possible to install something temporarily (for testing, development purposes). This can be fixed by disabling the build tool removal. Also, porthole doesn't work; when opened in sakura, it gives the Segmentation fault error, so this needs to be fixed too. Same goes for gajim, this also gives a segmentation fault error

Palemoon is still very unstable.

Palemoon started under a sandbox doesn't work. It says "your pale moon profile can not be loaded. It may be missing or inaccessible."

At boot (openrc), there's an error "your xdm value is invalid: no xdm executable could be found on your system" OpenRC also complains about the display manager. These are but very minor issues. --> probably now solved, since I changed the value in /etc/conf.d/xdm

OpenRC also mentioned sys-apps/hwsetup failed to start.
It also says "start-stop-deamon:usr/bin/xdm" does not exist, so start-stop-deamon probably does not work correctly. We probably need to change a few config files for this.
See post I made over at https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-8297516.html#8297516

Regarding the groups:
the user taz is part of:
disk lp wheel floppy audio cdrom video games usb users users plugdev lpadmin
root is part of:
root root bin daemon sys adm disk wheel floppy tape video

Taz is hence not part of the scanner group, and twice part of users
root is not part of lp, lpadmin, audio, cdrom, games, usb, plugdev adn twice part of root
Also adding shadow permission may also be beneficial, since the user may want to copy the
files in /etc/shadow/ to the usb drive (folder roothash)

Writing to an inserted usb stick may still not work.
Another issue is that any additional usb stick that is inserted (and/or any additional hard disk) doesn't show up in pcman (under /mnt). So this tends to be problem for the taz distro as users can't really store any files at all.
Regarding the writing to usb drive problem: I did a post at https://forum.lxde.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=38186

When using a usb stick with the taz iso written unto it, the other usb sticks/drives are not recognized (see above), so it's not possible to run the "optional usb stick files" from an addtional usb stick.

When deleting things on the harddisk or usb stick, it gives an "Unable to find or create trash directory for /mnt/sda1/filename" error and consequently, deleting things isn't possible. This issue only occurs on harddisks and usb sticks that have been created in/for windows operating systems and/or have been formatted in windows. So this probably isn't an issue specific to taz.

In PCManFM, the right-click menu: compress doesn't work --> this may be because libfm might try to launch "xarchiver --add-o %F" whereas the correct command is "xarchiver --compress %f" (see https://bugs.mageia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=21261 ). The solution is then to edit the xarchiver desktop file in /usr/share/applications, changing the Exec line. If that doesn't work, then mimeinfo.cache needs to be checked. I changed the desktop file command https://github.com/Sharrisii/TAZ/blob/master/files_included_in_TAZ_isos/usr/share/applications/xarchiver.desktop from xarchiver %f to "xarchiver --compress %f"; this didn't seem to fix anything though. When right-clicking on an archive, there's an "xarchiver" entry and when clicked this also doesn't do the requested action (opening the archive with xarchiver). Rather when clicked on, it wants to create a new archive, with the same name as the source archive.
Another possibility for xarchiver not working is that there was no terminal line in /etc/xdg/libfm/libfm.conf (now corrected, see https://github.com/Sharrisii/TAZ/blob/master/files_included_in_TAZ_isos/etc/xdg/libfm/libfm.conf but still doesn't fix the issue)

Exo-utils keep messing up the mimeapps/mimeinfo.cache files when using them. They're part of lxsession which needs to remain, but perhaps they can either be removed, or the config file for them changed (so they don't start up any more), see https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2287226
Sandboxed sakura: doesn't work: error:
Sakura: 28112
VTE warning: failed to translated GRegex: failed to compile pattern to regex at offset 4: invalid range in character class

Can you delete the files in /home/taz/.local/share/applications in the iso ?
Can you delete all .desktop files on the cd (folder: /usr/share/applications ), keep mimeinfo.cache file though ? Point of this is to have all non-essential .desktop files removed (which won't be overwritten); examples are the exo-....desktop files, ...

Also, in sakura, the cursor was set to red but this does not appear to work for some reason.
See https://github.com/Sharrisii/TAZ/blob/master/files_included_in_TAZ_isos/home/taz/.config/sakura/sakura.conf

Not sure whether the lz4's can also function as "hot-swappable mounted images". As far as I remember the idea with this was that (using tty I believe, so F1 keys to F12) you could just swap the boot setup "on-the-fly" (so from within the distro). So far I didn't mention it since I thought that setting this up would make things a lot more difficult and possibly slow down the system as well (compared to regular non-hot swappable image archives). Another reason I didn't mention it was because I somewhat like the fact that you're "forced" to reboot if you want to do something else because that way, you stay on-topic and only do the things you wanted to really do that day (and not get distracted by clicking on links, ... and winding up playing video's, ...) whereas you really didn't need to do that at that day. If the approach is almost identical however (not more difficult), we could think about including it at some point however.

Regarding boot setup 1: this isn't lz4'ed. It doesn't need to be, but I believe this means it actually loads somewhat slower then the rest of the boot setups, so some efficiency
gain could be attained here in next versions by lz4-ing it. Since this complicates matters, we haven't done this so far, but it may be something something to think about once all the more important issues have been corrected.

On laptop:
When the usb stick with the files of the optional_usb_stick repo on is inserted into the pc before boot, the pc stops the boot (openrc) when coming to the "starting local" entry. So, the scripts on the optional usb stick repo still don't work.

The error message "Error calling StartServiceByName for org.freedesktop.PolicyKit1" sometimes shows up after boot.

The lx-logout menu shows up with delay and then shows far less options now than what it did before. Perhaps this is because of lxlock which you might have added. In any case, besides not allowing to use many of the previous options in the lxlogout-menu, it also doesn't allow shutting down any more (it shows that root permission is added for this now). Logging off still works though. ---> On my desktop pc these issues don't seem to occur, so perhaps it's a bug ?
In either case, it might be better to drop lxlock since besides the bug it does seem to take a lot of computing power, and instead, we can simply change the lxde-logout menu or drop it entirely by means of a custom script to replace lxde-logout
see https://forum.lxde.org/viewtopic.php?t=475 , https://askubuntu.com/questions/1029228/where-is-the-lxde-logout-menu , https://sourceforge.net/p/lxde/mailman/message/33440964/
I did a post on how to change the menu at https://forum.lxde.org/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=38185

Not sure whether https://github.com/Sharrisii/TAZ/blob/master/TAZ_allversions_specs/packages_install.sh is useful at all (when making new iso's, do you use this file at all ?). If not useful, I'll delete it.

Also to be done is the integrating of compatibility of palemoon (source at github) in the manner explained by wolfbeast. Perhaps best to try it out locally before pushing the changes to the palemoon github repo.

[Documentation/FAQ]

Hello Sharrisii,

If you have some spare time one day in the future, would it be possible to either add to the documentation here (README.md I suppose), or a new FAQ, what TAZ is about?

Questions could include:

• Can TAZ be installed persistently, such as a gentoo .iso too?

This is my only question for now, but of course some secondary aspects may be interesting, e. g. how TAZ came to be, if there are any speed advantages/disadvantages, recommendation ... and also how to use the 32 binary parts. (This may be interesting for people who use winehq)

Thanks for reading!