Ideas for Aros Distributions

OlafS3 · 14244

x-vision

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Reply #60 on: January 03, 2021, 12:44:24 PM
So sad to check (once more) that Amigaland only seems to attract this kind of characters. Too bad we need people, but this type is so needless
Seem to be from Spain? Here a lot of work for you. Spanish is hardly supported in AROS, what was done long ago is outdated. Don't thank.  ;)

You clearly have problems. You don't have a clue but it's my advice to others (in case there is someone left which didn't realise yet). Whatever you try to do, it doesn't matter: don't help. It just sinks the community more and more.

BTW following my policy of ignoring toxic people, I won't answer any fruther texts from you. Hope you get (much) better in the future.



cdimauro

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Reply #61 on: January 03, 2021, 01:12:31 PM
What was proposed and discussed is a different thing, and it isn't something which can be achieved writings a few lines of code, even using Python (which is particularly well suited for most of the needed tasks, since it has built-in libraries and requires much less lines of code compared to other languages).
Of course you might have made a proposal (and which isn't a bad one) which works differently from what is currently implemented but ..., why bother ?

right now:
- obtain data from system
- share data obtained from system

what you seem to propose:
- obtain data from system
- present user with information on already obtained system data from a "huge" database and check their specific system data against it (is it supported or not)
- share data obtained from system

That looks/smells to me as a natural evolution of code that is already in place. Might perhaps be working differently as proposed but as long as the results are the same.
Indeed. As I've said before, the existing part might be a starting point for this new feature.
Quote
The fact is that current implementation never matured because Paolone indicated back then that it was hardly used (only 2/3 people bothered, but please correct me if wrong).
In this case the new tool might be executed transparently the first time that Icaros runs (just after the installation).
If all peripherals found are supported then no action is taken.
If some is not found on the database, then a report is shown to the user with the current status of its machine, and asking to send the feedback (with some togglebutton which can be used to indicate if the specific peripheral is working fine, not working, or if its status is unknown. Unknown is the default status).
Quote
As you wrote yourself python having a good stack of libraries, i base my opinion on a good stack of subroutines that i (or anyone else with some decent programming skills) can take a pick from, and make use of the current infrastructure that is in place.
Python is a great tool which allows to more quickly fill the gaps in many areas. In fact, it's already used on many Linux / BSD or other o.ses a system tool.

The primary problem with AROS is that it's missing (the one which runs is really too much outdated). So, porting a new version (3.9 is the last one, which I recommend).

The second, and not even less important, is that if you decide to integrate Python as a system tool, then you can say goodbye to the original Amiga machines, even if expanded, because it requires way much more resources. I don't care so much, because today we have TONs of resources even on very low-end machines (e.g.: Raspberry Pi. Which was built around Python, BTW), but some people might be upset. This is a decision which AROS devs have to take (once Python is finally ported, of course).

But for tools like the ones which we're talking, using Python just server-side isn't a problem. It's already there: only need to be used.
Quote
Based on that then yes the discussion on this particular topic is using up more space than it would have in a code-editor  :P

So i end up with the notion of why waste time on yet another implementation (which would end up with similar results) ?

You know, you and me have been going back'n'forwards for more than a decade now, so you should know by now that i am a person of practical implementations, not hypothetical ones  :)

No matter how good the intention, practise always seems more reluctant to cooperate and, that seems especially true for AROS/Amiga.
Writing lines to a forum isn't like writing lines to a code-editor. :) For me it's just relaxing. Taking a project and working on it requires a completely different attitude / focus, at least for me. But maybe it's just my personal problem.

I agree that implementing some feature is much better than discussing about it. However at least some discussions about requirements is beneficial to the project, because it might catch problems quite ahead.
Quote
With regards to personal beef between individuals, i am not going to bother with that other than stating that life is simply too short to get upset about these kind of things even though i understand that you wish to defend yourself in case someone put words in your mouth. It is all about perception/interpretation.

What was it again... live long and prosper ?  ;D
Especially since we have just one. :)

I'll not reply anymore to the guy, unless there some technical (and only technical) discussion which deserves it. I've already wasted a lot of time which I could have spent acquiring some knowledge with capstone (I Python package which I need for my project), instead...

Well, in the end of this long and useful discussion.. any idea for a distribution?
I've already suggested what to do: provide one which is already pre-installed with all tools which Icaros provides.

You can add an hard drive to a VMWare virtual machine of a little bit 8GB (less than the space used by an 8GB USB Stick), partition it properly with GRUB, the SFS primary partition where Icaros is installed. Provide a 1GB SFS partition that might be used for storing some extra (non-system) data. And another 1-2GB FAT32 partition useful for exchanging data with the external world.

Once Icaros is fully working, just use the dd command to make a rough dump of the whole device (not partition), and provide it for downloading.

It should work-out, and should be easy to "flash" on the USB Stick using tools like Rufus.

Or... do you need something else?



paolone

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Reply #62 on: January 04, 2021, 03:59:57 AM
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In this case the new tool might be executed transparently the first time that Icaros runs (just after the installation).If all peripherals found are supported then no action is taken.If some is not found on the database, then a report is shown to the user with the current status of its machine, and asking to send the feedback (with some togglebutton which can be used to indicate if the specific peripheral is working fine, not working, or if its status is unknown. Unknown is the default status).



Hi. Just a question: how does AROS understand by itself if a device (video card, audio card, nic) is actually working or not? AFAIK there is no central probing system but, please forgive me if I am wrong.


Moreover, every relevant setting for hardware is included in envarc:. My old quickconfig tool just backupped relevant files in envarc: into a .zip file with the name of the system, and just allowed restoring it on another AROS machine. So, for instance, if you had an Acer Aspire One laptop, you just needed to give him the acer-aspire-one.zip file to get a working system.


Nothing more, nothing left.





paolone

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Reply #63 on: January 04, 2021, 04:13:47 AM
@cdimauro


I tried creating a bootable AROS partition with vmware, then I converted it with dd into a ISO file, but all I got is a not-bootable ISO file, hence I think turning it into a USB pendrive won't work either.


cdimauro

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Reply #64 on: January 04, 2021, 04:46:13 PM
Quote
In this case the new tool might be executed transparently the first time that Icaros runs (just after the installation).If all peripherals found are supported then no action is taken.If some is not found on the database, then a report is shown to the user with the current status of its machine, and asking to send the feedback (with some togglebutton which can be used to indicate if the specific peripheral is working fine, not working, or if its status is unknown. Unknown is the default status).
Hi. Just a question: how does AROS understand by itself if a device (video card, audio card, nic) is actually working or not? AFAIK there is no central probing system but, please forgive me if I am wrong.
The information comes from the "database" (CSV), or from the user (which selects its experience with a peripheral on its system, which is reported as "unknown" from the new tool).
Quote
Moreover, every relevant setting for hardware is included in envarc:. My old quickconfig tool just backupped relevant files in envarc: into a .zip file with the name of the system, and just allowed restoring it on another AROS machine. So, for instance, if you had an Acer Aspire One laptop, you just needed to give him the acer-aspire-one.zip file to get a working system.

Nothing more, nothing left.
Can you share some .zip file?

@cdimauro

I tried creating a bootable AROS partition with vmware, then I converted it with dd into a ISO file, but all I got is a not-bootable ISO file, hence I think turning it into a USB pendrive won't work either.
There should be some disk layout issue or some difference which is preventing it to work.

You can already create a bootable & working USB stick if you use your actual Icaros installer. So, it's definitely possible to have Icaros/AROS working from an USB stick.

So, there are two possibilities here: either you just make a full installation of Icaros on an USB stick and then create an .ISO dumping it, or investigate the differences between this working USB stick and the other one which you created using VMWare.



4pLaY

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Reply #65 on: January 04, 2021, 07:38:47 PM
Guys, give it a rest in this thread, please. You should all be grown men, above the age of 30. It should be unnecessary for me to have to tell you to behave as grown ups. Do not make me have to close this thread or worse, have to ban some of you.

I do not like to be pestered on email (x amount of times) to check a thread where so called grown ups can not behave.

« Last Edit: January 04, 2021, 08:00:01 PM by 4pLaY »



magorium

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Reply #66 on: January 04, 2021, 08:56:34 PM
I tried creating a bootable AROS partition with vmware, then I converted it with dd into a ISO file, but all I got is a not-bootable ISO file, hence I think turning it into a USB pendrive won't work either.
When you dump a disk (whether it is in vmware/vbox or an actual physical disk) using dd then you do not create an iso. What you create is a raw image dump of the disk (and which is stored as an image file). Usually these get distributed using gzip or bzip to reduce the filesize.

Such image files can then be 'copied' back to a physical device again by using the disk dump utility.

I understand the suggestion made by cdimauro, but i fail to see why the name iso is introduced there (that's an genuine question from my part).

There are linux distro's that are distributed as .iso file and which are constructed in such a way that you can actually use dd to write it directly to a physical device and be able to boot from it without additional work, other then booting your machine and selecting the proper boot-device) (*)

Note that when you experiment that a) there is no need for a full installation, making it work is more interesting and b) working with partitions and dd will most probably complicate things unnecessary.

I would suggest to leave those both parts for a later moment, and focus on getting it to work first.

And fwiw, it should simply work, because all you do is simply copy the raw data from one device to another (just like xcopy did back in the day with copying raw tracks from floppy to floppy, the only difference is that you use a file as a intermediate step).

Do note that the destination device must be of the same size or be bigger for this to work. In case the destination device is larger then the space not written to it will simply not be used as all (that is why f.e. the raspi automatically detects this situation and asks the end-user to 'enlarge' the disk-space by offering to also use the unwritten blocks as space for the partition)

edit: (*) See for example https://wiki.syslinux.org/wiki/index.php?title=Isohybrid in case you are interested in experimenting with such route.
« Last Edit: January 04, 2021, 09:40:35 PM by magorium »



paolone

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Reply #67 on: January 05, 2021, 03:21:34 AM
@Magorium


Thanks.


paolone

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Reply #68 on: January 05, 2021, 03:49:54 AM
Can you share some .zip file?


They've been in Icaros' Storage/Config for years.


cdimauro

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Reply #69 on: January 05, 2021, 04:28:35 PM
I understand the suggestion made by cdimauro, but i fail to see why the name iso is introduced there (that's an genuine question from my part).
Because an ISO file is a 1:1 sectors copy of the physical content of an optical disk (as well as an USB storage), exactly like the 1:1 sectors copy made by the dd command.

Can you share some .zip file?
They've been in Icaros' Storage/Config for years.
OK, thanks.



OlafS3

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Reply #70 on: January 06, 2021, 06:23:44 AM
Guys, give it a rest in this thread, please. You should all be grown men, above the age of 30. It should be unnecessary for me to have to tell you to behave as grown ups. Do not make me have to close this thread or worse, have to ban some of you.

I do not like to be pestered on email (x amount of times) to check a thread where so called grown ups can not behave.

My intentation was what the thread is named "ideas for aros distributions". What is needed or missing from user or potential user perspective. The discussion to me only partly explains why aros never got more than a "research OS"



cdimauro

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Reply #71 on: January 06, 2021, 11:52:54 PM
Can you share some .zip file?

They've been in Icaros' Storage/Config for years.
The PC configuration is stored in a file called hdaudio.config: it's a text file with an "header" (a single line with the "QUERY" string. Sometimes this line is missing), and the following lines just report the Vendor ID and Device ID information in hex format.

Usually it should be enough to identify the device (and the driver to load), but sometimes the so called Subsystem Vendor ID and Subsystem ID are needed (and maybe the Revision ID).

Anyway, this information might be a good starting point for AROS' supported peripheral database. If it's coming from PCITool it should be easy to gather also the above missing data (and extend the database).



magorium

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Reply #72 on: January 07, 2021, 06:33:27 AM
I understand the suggestion made by cdimauro, but i fail to see why the name iso is introduced there (that's an genuine question from my part).
Because an ISO file is a 1:1 sectors copy of the physical content of an optical disk (as well as an USB storage), exactly like the 1:1 sectors copy made by the dd command.
An important detail that is missing from that statement is that the physical content of a optical disk <> physical content of a USB storage.

What is important there is the how the actual content is 'recognized'/located and subsequently booted. You can test that yourself by dd'ing the icaros iso to a disk. If you put a filesystem (partition layout) on that disk before dd'ing it will then be mounted as iso9660. Faling to create the filesystem beforehand will render the disk unrecognizable.

Please read the link to isolinux that i posted earlier (that also have additional links to el-torito, xoriso, genisoimage etc.) to understand the difference.



cdimauro

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Reply #73 on: January 08, 2021, 12:17:35 AM
Because an ISO file is a 1:1 sectors copy of the physical content of an optical disk (as well as an USB storage), exactly like the 1:1 sectors copy made by the dd command.
An important detail that is missing from that statement is that the physical content of a optical disk <> physical content of a USB storage.

What is important there is the how the actual content is 'recognized'/located and subsequently booted. You can test that yourself by dd'ing the icaros iso to a disk. If you put a filesystem (partition layout) on that disk before dd'ing it will then be mounted as iso9660. Faling to create the filesystem beforehand will render the disk unrecognizable.

Please read the link to isolinux that i posted earlier (that also have additional links to el-torito, xoriso, genisoimage etc.) to understand the difference.
Indeed. And this is why I've written this:

"There should be some disk layout issue or some difference which is preventing it to work."

and suggested this:

"You can already create a bootable & working USB stick if you use your actual Icaros installer."

because with the latter you'll get a USB stick with the correct layout / content, and making an .ISO out of it will work out.



magorium

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Reply #74 on: January 08, 2021, 07:51:43 AM
@cdimauro
some layout issue.

Code: [Select]
--- icaros-pc-i386.iso
Regular file, size 692.9 MiB (726511616 bytes)
ISO9660 file system
  Volume name "AROS Live CD"
  Publisher   "Icaros Desktop"
  Preparer    "Icaros Desktop (www.icarosdesktop.org)"
  Application "GENISOIMAGE ISO 9660/HFS FILESYSTEM CREATOR (C) 1993 E.YOUNGDALE (C) 1997-2006 J.PEARSON/J.SCHILLING (C) 2006-2007 CDRKIT TEAM"
  Data size 692.9 MiB (726511616 bytes, 354742 blocks of 2 KiB)
  El Torito boot record, catalog at 4315
    Bootable non-emulated image, starts at 4316, preloads 2 KiB
      Platform 0x00 (x86), System Type 0x00 (Empty)
  Joliet extension, volume name "<4152><4F53><204C><6976><6520><4344><2020><2020><2020><2020><2020><2020><2020><2020><2020><2020>"
  Joliet extension, volume name "AROS Live CD"

Code: [Select]
--- icaros_light_2-3-0_pendrive.bin
Regular file, size 1.868 GiB (2005925888 bytes)
GRUB boot loader, unknown compat version 180
DOS/MBR partition map
Partition 1: 1.868 GiB (2005401600 bytes, 3916800 sectors from 1024, bootable)
  Type 0x05 (Extended)
  Partition 5: 1.867 GiB (2004353024 bytes, 3914752 sectors from 1024+2048)
    Type 0x30 (Unknown)
    Amiga Rigid Disk partition map at sector 1
    Partition 1: 1.866 GiB (2003304448 bytes, 3912704 sectors from 2048)
      Drive name "DU0"
      Type "SFS\0" (Amiga Smart File System)
      Amiga Smart File System
        Type "SFS\0"

At best you can make an hybrid iso which is able to install itself onto a hd/usb (and which is able to boot both ways). That is why some people believe they are the same, because they are able to dd the .iso straight to a pendrive and/or hd and it works for them.

For example:
Code: [Select]
--- sparkylinux-5.13-x86_64-minimalgui.iso
Regular file, size 940 MiB (985661440 bytes)
DOS/MBR partition map
Partition 2: 2.813 MiB (2949120 bytes, 5760 sectors from 172)
  Type 0xEF (EFI System (FAT))
  FAT12 file system (hints score 5 of 5)
    Volume size 2.796 MiB (2931712 bytes, 2863 clusters of 1 KiB)
GPT partition map, 128 entries
  Disk size 940 MiB (985661440 bytes, 1925120 sectors)
  Disk GUID E0D9B24F-E56D-8D42-9AFE-67FB51D82D36
Partition 1: 939.8 MiB (985444352 bytes, 1924696 sectors from 0)
  Type Basic Data (GUID A2A0D0EB-E5B9-3344-87C0-68B6B72699C7)
  Partition Name "ISOHybrid ISO"
  Partition GUID E3120080-2233-2D44-9037-BB0E17B2F6B0
Partition 2: 2.813 MiB (2949120 bytes, 5760 sectors from 172)
  Type Basic Data (GUID A2A0D0EB-E5B9-3344-87C0-68B6B72699C7)
  Partition Name "ISOHybrid"
  Partition GUID B91D441A-536C-4343-925E-B3DB32A483F8
  FAT12 file system (hints score 5 of 5)
    Volume size 2.796 MiB (2931712 bytes, 2863 clusters of 1 KiB)
Partition 3: unused
ISO9660 file system
  Volume name "SPARKY_64bit"
  Preparer    "XORRISO-1.5.0 2018.09.15.133001, LIBISOBURN-1.5.0, LIBISOFS-1.5.0, LIBBURN-1.5.0"
  Data size 939.8 MiB (985444352 bytes, 481174 blocks of 2 KiB)
  El Torito boot record, catalog at 42
    Bootable non-emulated image, starts at 1483, preloads 2 KiB
      Platform 0x00 (x86), System Type 0x00 (Empty)
      ISOLINUX boot loader
    Bootable non-emulated image, starts at 43, preloads 2.813 MiB (2949120 bytes)
      Platform 0xEF (EFI), System Type 0x00 (Empty)
      FAT12 file system (hints score 5 of 5)
        Volume size 2.796 MiB (2931712 bytes, 2863 clusters of 1 KiB)
  Joliet extension, volume name "SPARKY_64bit"

It would be easier to use a simple loopback which also allows to change the image(s) (whether .iso or .img) on the pendrive for an easy update process.


edit: a quick and dirty proof of concept (the errors as can be seen in the screenshot were expected) seem to suggest it can be done with some additional tinkering.

Code: [Select]
--- hybridaros.iso
Regular file, size 34.29 MiB (35960832 bytes)
GRUB boot loader, unknown compat version 121
DOS/MBR partition map
Partition 1: 34.29 MiB (35960320 bytes, 70235 sectors from 1, bootable)
  Type 0xCD (Unknown)
ISO9660 file system
  Volume name "AROS Hybrid Live CD"
  Publisher   "MAGORIUM"
  Preparer    "MAGORIUM"
  Data size 34.29 MiB (35960832 bytes, 17559 blocks of 2 KiB)
  El Torito boot record, catalog at 175
    Bootable non-emulated image, starts at 1540, preloads 2 KiB
      Platform 0x00 (x86), System Type 0x00 (Empty)
  Joliet extension, volume name "AROS Hybrid Live"

« Last Edit: January 10, 2021, 07:36:58 AM by magorium »