Re: have a mate-desktop CD was Re: magnet links and pushing them to meta-search engines.

[shirish शिरीष]

Reply at bottom :-

On 17/03/2018, Rick Thomas  wrote:
>


> Is there a relatively simple way a normal Debian user (without special
> developer skills or access to special developer resources) can create a
> Debian Live CD/DVD/BD/USB-stick with their choice of packages?  The goal
> here would be for Sirish (and me too, for that matter) to be able to create
> our own Debian Live mate-desktop.  Generalizing a little bit: One could
> create a bootable Live USB-stick with a custom set of utilities (e.g. for
> network installation/testing/debugging).
>
> Is that possible?
>
> Thanks,
> Rick
>

Dear Rick,

As Steve shared there is that . If you are looking at stable model
then you are in luck as

https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current-live/amd64/iso-hybrid/
which I guess Steve was talking about earlier.

https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current-live/amd64/iso-hybrid/debian-live-9.4.0-amd64-mate.iso
would have been perfect if I were chasing a stable release .

There used to be an interesting service when debian-live was an
unofficial project (third-party) where one could put a list of all the
softwares needed and after few minutes to an hour you would get a
customized iso image which could be downloadable for a day.

There are and were multiple problems with that scenario as sometimes I
got packages from unstable or even testing which were buggy and had RC
(release-critical) bugs filed against them which means those packages
should not have been allowed to come on the live-cd in the first
place. Also just a single person was a maintainer so support was an
issue.

>From what little I know even the new debian-live to offer a similar
service with more hardened tools and checks but needs heads and hands
to provide a similar service.

There is also debian's own automated installation routine involving
preseeding as well -

http://d-i.alioth.debian.org/manual/en.i386/apb.html

an example preseed.txt file

http://d-i.alioth.debian.org/manual/example-preseed.txt

The preseed way looks to be more easy and simpler than the scripts
that Steve shares. I for instance, wouldn't know which lines to touch
and which not to in order to get a customized mate-debian-alpha 2
.iso.

Maybe if it had a nice UI rather than a gitlab instance or just the
documentation it would have been fruitful but that again need people
power who are willing to do the needful.

-- 
  Regards,
  Shirish Agarwal  शिरीष अग्रवाल
  My quotes in this email licensed under CC 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/
http://flossexperiences.wordpress.com
EB80 462B 08E1 A0DE A73A  2C2F 9F3D C7A4 E1C4 D2D8

Re: have a mate-desktop CD was Re: magnet links and pushing them to meta-search engines.

[shirish शिरीष]

On 17/03/2018, Steve McIntyre  wrote:
> [ Dropped the mate list - this isn't relevant there... ]
>



Reply in-line :-

>
> Then you were definitely using ISO mode in Rufus. The main problem
> with that (and with unetbootin and other tools that work like this) is
> that it's very easy to replace boot loader files with versions that
> don't work well together, or don't work the way we expect and have
> tested. If you're blindly modifying what the d-i and debian-cd scripts
> have produced, then we have no way of knowing if reported bugs are our
> fault or not. That's why we *really* don't recommend unetbootin, for
> example. We have had a lot of bugs reported by novice users that we
> just cannot reproduce.
>

Dear Steve,

I actually tried in both but neither worked in Rufus. I'm going to get
couple of usb sticks to get to the bottom of this mess.


> For Debian installer images for both i386 and amd64, we create iso
> hybrid media which will run 4 different ways:
>
>  * BIOS boot from CD/DVD (isolinux)
>  * BIOS boot from USB(isolinux)
>  * UEFI boot from CD/DVD (grub)
>  * UEFI boot from USB  (grub)
>

Is it one and the same from  -

https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/buster_di_alpha2/amd64/iso-cd/

https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/buster_di_alpha2/amd64/iso-cd/debian-buster-DI-alpha2-amd64-xfce-CD-1.iso

or somewhere different.

> and that's a deliberate choice for maximum flexibility from a single
> image. If a tool like unetbootin changes the setup of the media, it's
> very likely to break things here.
>

correction it was rufus who was trying to put in tools, not unetbootin.

I tried rufus both in iso mode as well as dd mode without any success at all.

>>During a discussion with Steve Mcntyre during debconf 2016, he had
>>shared about both the unrealiability of the usb drives themselves as
>>well as the data so now always use shasums to make sure the data
>>stream is correct.
>
> Yay!
>
>>This https://www.debian.org/CD/faq/#write-usb I had already done
>>before. I used the built-in
>>certutil and Get-FileHash on MS-Windows powershell to make sure the
>>sum was correct.
>>
>>Now that I'm on Debian GNU/Linux did as I had copied the same on one
>>of my usb disks, the .iso image which I just transferred to the hdd.
>>
>>shirish@debian:~/games$ ./check_debian_iso SHA1SUMS
>>debian-buster-DI-alpha2-amd64-xfce-CD-1.iso
>>Piping 331776 blocks of 'debian-buster-DI-alpha2-amd64-xfce-CD-1.iso'
>>through 'sha1sum'
>>to verify checksum list item
>> 'debian-buster-DI-alpha2-amd64-xfce-CD-1.iso'.
>>331776+0 records in
>>331776+0 records out
>>679477248 bytes (679 MB, 648 MiB) copied, 1.35603 s, 501 MB/s
>>Ok: 'debian-buster-DI-alpha2-amd64-xfce-CD-1.iso' matches
>>'debian-buster-DI-alpha2-amd64-xfce-CD-1.iso' in 'SHA1SUMS'
>>
>>although trying to do the same with /dev/sdb or /dev/sdb1 results in -
>>
>>shirish@debian:~/games$ ./check_debian_iso SHA1SUMS
>>debian-buster-DI-alpha2-amd64-xfce-CD-1.iso /dev/sdb
>>Does not look like an ISO 9660 filesystem: '/dev/sdb' magic='  '
>>
>>That's the usb key/thumb drive on which debian iso image is done by
>> unetbootin.
>
> So unetbootin will not have written an exact copy.
>

That might be correct.

see -

~/games$ ls -lh debian-buster-DI-alpha2-amd64-xfce-CD-1.iso
-rw-r--r-- 1 shirish shirish 648M Dec  5 21:37
debian-buster-DI-alpha2-amd64-xfce-CD-1.iso

~/games$ mount


/dev/sdb1 on /media/shirish/DEBIAN TEST type vfat
(rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,uid=1000,gid=1000,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=437,iocharset=ascii,shortname=mixed,showexec,utf8,flush,errors=remount-ro,uhelper=udisks2)

shirish@debian:~/games$ df -h /media/shirish/DEBIAN\ TEST/
Filesystem  Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sdb129G  808M   29G   3% /media/shirish/DEBIAN TEST

But I do believe that during transfer from .iso image to installation
media some archives are extracted, hence perhaps the change .

I did notice that the time-stamp changes which it shouldn't have -

shirish@debian:/media/shirish/DEBIAN TEST$ ls -lh
total 46M
-rw-r--r-- 1 shirish shirish  146 Dec  5 21:04  autorun.inf
drwxr-xr-x 3 shirish shirish  64K Mar 10 02:00  boot
drwxr-xr-x 2 shirish shirish  64K Mar 10 02:00  css
drwxr-xr-x 3 shirish shirish  64K Mar 10 02:00  dists
drwxr-xr-x 4 shirish shirish  64K Mar 10 02:00  doc
drwxr-xr-x 3 shirish shirish  64K Mar 10 02:00  efi
drwxr-xr-x 2 shirish shirish  64K Mar 10 02:00  firmware
-rw-r--r-- 1 shirish shirish 180K Dec  4 12:55  g2ldr
-rw-r--r-- 1 shirish shirish 8.0K Dec  4 12:55  g2ldr.mbr
drwxr-xr-x 2 shirish shirish  64K Mar 10 02:00  install
drwxr-xr-x 3 shirish shirish  64K Mar 10 02:00  install.amd
drwxr-xr-x 2 shirish shirish  64K Mar 10 02:00  isolinux
-r--r--r-- 1 shirish shirish  32K Mar 10 02:07  ldlinux.sys
-rw-r--r-- 1 shirish shirish 146K Dec  5 21:05  md5sum.txt
-rw-r--r-- 1 shirish shirish  60K Mar 10 02:07  menu.c32
drwxr-xr-x 2 shirish shirish  64K Mar 10 02:00  pics
drwxr-xr-x 3 shirish shirish  64K Mar 10 02:00  pool

Re: have a mate-desktop CD was Re: magnet links and pushing them to meta-search engines.

[Steve McIntyre]

On Fri, Mar 16, 2018 at 01:42:44PM -0700, Rick Thomas wrote:
>
>On Mar 16, 2018, at 1:03 PM, Steve McIntyre  wrote:
>
>>> Lastly, would it be possible to have a mate-desktop CD apart from the
>>> xfce one. While choice of desktop environment is certainly a personal
>>> choice,  I feel it's a good lightweight yet at the same time fully
>>> functional desktop environment. It isn't bloated as GNOME has become
>>> but still tries to be true to the gtk+ philosophy.
>> 
>> I *really* don't want to go down the route of multiple CD variants
>> again. The xfce CD was already a concession here...
>
>Hi Steve,
>
>I’m asking from total ignorance, so forgive me if my question doesn’t
>make sense…
>
>Is there a relatively simple way a normal Debian user (without
>special developer skills or access to special developer resources)
>can create a Debian Live CD/DVD/BD/USB-stick with their choice of
>packages?  The goal here would be for Sirish (and me too, for that
>matter) to be able to create our own Debian Live
>mate-desktop. Generalizing a little bit: One could create a bootable
>Live USB-stick with a custom set of utilities (e.g. for network
>installation/testing/debugging).

Hi Rick,

Yes, there is - we're using live-wrapper and vmdebootstrap to generate
the official images from Stretch onwards. The exact config for our
official builds could be clearer and better documented (sorry!), but
if you're prepared to dig you can work it out from the scripts in the
live-setup repo at

  https://salsa.debian.org/images-team/live-setup/

In particular, look at

  
https://salsa.debian.org/images-team/live-setup/blob/master/available/run-30live-wrapper

and

  
https://salsa.debian.org/images-team/live-setup/blob/master/available/live-customise.sh

There's complication in the way we build things inside a VM, but
hopefully you can see how things work there. Essentially, run "lwr"
with appropriate options and pass in a live-customise script to tweak
how things are set up.

-- 
Steve McIntyre, Cambridge, UK.st...@einval.com
"...In the UNIX world, people tend to interpret `non-technical user'
 as meaning someone who's only ever written one device driver." -- Daniel Pead

Re: have a mate-desktop CD was Re: magnet links and pushing them to meta-search engines.

[Rick Thomas]

On Mar 16, 2018, at 1:03 PM, Steve McIntyre  wrote:

>> Lastly, would it be possible to have a mate-desktop CD apart from the
>> xfce one. While choice of desktop environment is certainly a personal
>> choice,  I feel it's a good lightweight yet at the same time fully
>> functional desktop environment. It isn't bloated as GNOME has become
>> but still tries to be true to the gtk+ philosophy.
> 
> I *really* don't want to go down the route of multiple CD variants
> again. The xfce CD was already a concession here...

Hi Steve,

I’m asking from total ignorance, so forgive me if my question doesn’t make 
sense…

Is there a relatively simple way a normal Debian user (without special 
developer skills or access to special developer resources) can create a Debian 
Live CD/DVD/BD/USB-stick with their choice of packages?  The goal here would be 
for Sirish (and me too, for that matter) to be able to create our own Debian 
Live mate-desktop.  Generalizing a little bit: One could create a bootable Live 
USB-stick with a custom set of utilities (e.g. for network 
installation/testing/debugging).

Is that possible?

Thanks,
Rick

Re: have a mate-desktop CD was Re: magnet links and pushing them to meta-search engines.

[Steve McIntyre]

[ Dropped the mate list - this isn't relevant there... ]

On Sat, Mar 17, 2018 at 12:38:33AM +0530, shirish शिरीष wrote:
>.
>
>Dear Thomas,
>
>In response to https://lists.debian.org/debian-cd/2018/03/msg5.html
>
>Thank you for sharing the info. I probably will try to get a couple of
>usb sticks next week for work and probably will also try to see how
>rufus responds and if possible get in touch with Pete Batard to take
>the discussion forward.
>
>I found it pretty disconcerting especially for students or for that
>matter anybody who wants
>to take the plunge into Debian and get stuck like that.
>
>I also perhaps failed to mention that rufus tried to install syslinux
>instead of grub2 which at least to me feels more convenient and
>friendly but that's a discussion outside of this purview.

Then you were definitely using ISO mode in Rufus. The main problem
with that (and with unetbootin and other tools that work like this) is
that it's very easy to replace boot loader files with versions that
don't work well together, or don't work the way we expect and have
tested. If you're blindly modifying what the d-i and debian-cd scripts
have produced, then we have no way of knowing if reported bugs are our
fault or not. That's why we *really* don't recommend unetbootin, for
example. We have had a lot of bugs reported by novice users that we
just cannot reproduce.

For Debian installer images for both i386 and amd64, we create iso
hybrid media which will run 4 different ways:

 * BIOS boot from CD/DVD (isolinux)
 * BIOS boot from USB(isolinux)
 * UEFI boot from CD/DVD (grub)
 * UEFI boot from USB(grub)

and that's a deliberate choice for maximum flexibility from a single
image. If a tool like unetbootin changes the setup of the media, it's
very likely to break things here.

>During a discussion with Steve Mcntyre during debconf 2016, he had
>shared about both the unrealiability of the usb drives themselves as
>well as the data so now always use shasums to make sure the data
>stream is correct.

Yay!

>This https://www.debian.org/CD/faq/#write-usb I had already done
>before. I used the built-in
>certutil and Get-FileHash on MS-Windows powershell to make sure the
>sum was correct.
>
>Now that I'm on Debian GNU/Linux did as I had copied the same on one
>of my usb disks, the .iso image which I just transferred to the hdd.
>
>shirish@debian:~/games$ ./check_debian_iso SHA1SUMS
>debian-buster-DI-alpha2-amd64-xfce-CD-1.iso
>Piping 331776 blocks of 'debian-buster-DI-alpha2-amd64-xfce-CD-1.iso'
>through 'sha1sum'
>to verify checksum list item 'debian-buster-DI-alpha2-amd64-xfce-CD-1.iso'.
>331776+0 records in
>331776+0 records out
>679477248 bytes (679 MB, 648 MiB) copied, 1.35603 s, 501 MB/s
>Ok: 'debian-buster-DI-alpha2-amd64-xfce-CD-1.iso' matches
>'debian-buster-DI-alpha2-amd64-xfce-CD-1.iso' in 'SHA1SUMS'
>
>although trying to do the same with /dev/sdb or /dev/sdb1 results in -
>
>shirish@debian:~/games$ ./check_debian_iso SHA1SUMS
>debian-buster-DI-alpha2-amd64-xfce-CD-1.iso /dev/sdb
>Does not look like an ISO 9660 filesystem: '/dev/sdb' magic='  '
>
>That's the usb key/thumb drive on which debian iso image is done by unetbootin.

So unetbootin will not have written an exact copy.

>Although it appears to have worked though as was able to get a working
>Debian GNU/Linux system at the end, was able to get updates, get the
>net working and so on and so forth.
>
>FTR, I could have used cp or dd but that would have been only if I had
>taken my lappy that day. It should not be a requirement that we should
>have a debian laptop because in real-world scenarios many people not
>might have access to an installation nor should they require one,
>although do agree it's handy if it's there.

Absolutely, hence why we have recommendations for rufus in DD mode, or
before that win32diskimager.

-- 
Steve McIntyre, Cambridge, UK.st...@einval.com
< Aardvark> I dislike C++ to start with. C++11 just seems to be
handing rope-creating factories for users to hang multiple
instances of themselves.

Re: have a mate-desktop CD was Re: magnet links and pushing them to meta-search engines.

[Steve McIntyre]

Hey Shirish!

On Sat, Mar 10, 2018 at 10:22:20PM +0530, shirish शिरीष wrote:
>
>As I was on MS-Windows had to resort to using a variety of softwares
>trying out rufus and other softwares. For some reason, other than
>unetbootin none of the others worked. But this was also only limited
>to the alpha build, the others just didn't even copy either using
>rufus or using unetbootin. Dunno the reason for that. Most of the logs
>were cryptic in nature so couldn't come to any specific result. The
>only thing I was able to figure out that somehow the boot loader was
>corrupted during the copy.

:-( Windows really does make it hard to talk to raw devices...

>I was also stuck by the warning debian usb stick told me while I was
>trying to install saying unetbootin is not a good tool to make a usb
>stick.  Perhaps a hyperlink would have been better than just saying
>its in installation instructions.
>
>While installing the alpha build, two things became apparent, one
>while there is support for https protocol, there doesn't seem to be
>any mirrors which support that or I couldn't find them and I tried a
>few, although finding https mirrors should perhaps be more automated,
>dunno.

https://deb.debian.org/debian should work, I'd hope. It's a sensible
default that we're trying to bake into various places.

>Lastly, would it be possible to have a mate-desktop CD apart from the
>xfce one. While choice of desktop environment is certainly a personal
>choice,  I feel it's a good lightweight yet at the same time fully
>functional desktop environment. It isn't bloated as GNOME has become
>but still tries to be true to the gtk+ philosophy.

I *really* don't want to go down the route of multiple CD variants
again. The xfce CD was already a concession here...

>Also is buster alpha 3 on the horizon anywhere or what constraints or
>issues that need to be resolved before an alpha 3 can be a reality ?

We're overdue a buster alpha 3, yes. No real issues that I'm aware of,
just lack of people with time to do it so far.

-- 
Steve McIntyre, Cambridge, UK.st...@einval.com
  Mature Sporty Personal
  More Innovation More Adult
  A Man in Dandism
  Powered Midship Specialty

Re: have a mate-desktop CD was Re: magnet links and pushing them to meta-search engines.

[shirish शिरीष]

.

Dear Thomas,

In response to https://lists.debian.org/debian-cd/2018/03/msg5.html

Thank you for sharing the info. I probably will try to get a couple of
usb sticks next week for work and probably will also try to see how
rufus responds and if possible get in touch with Pete Batard to take
the discussion forward.

I found it pretty disconcerting especially for students or for that
matter anybody who wants
to take the plunge into Debian and get stuck like that.

I also perhaps failed to mention that rufus tried to install syslinux
instead of grub2 which at least to me feels more convenient and
friendly but that's a discussion outside of this purview.

During a discussion with Steve Mcntyre during debconf 2016, he had
shared about both the unrealiability of the usb drives themselves as
well as the data so now always use shasums to make sure the data
stream is correct.

This https://www.debian.org/CD/faq/#write-usb I had already done
before. I used the built-in
certutil and Get-FileHash on MS-Windows powershell to make sure the
sum was correct.

Now that I'm on Debian GNU/Linux did as I had copied the same on one
of my usb disks, the .iso image which I just transferred to the hdd.

shirish@debian:~/games$ ./check_debian_iso SHA1SUMS
debian-buster-DI-alpha2-amd64-xfce-CD-1.iso
Piping 331776 blocks of 'debian-buster-DI-alpha2-amd64-xfce-CD-1.iso'
through 'sha1sum'
to verify checksum list item 'debian-buster-DI-alpha2-amd64-xfce-CD-1.iso'.
331776+0 records in
331776+0 records out
679477248 bytes (679 MB, 648 MiB) copied, 1.35603 s, 501 MB/s
Ok: 'debian-buster-DI-alpha2-amd64-xfce-CD-1.iso' matches
'debian-buster-DI-alpha2-amd64-xfce-CD-1.iso' in 'SHA1SUMS'

although trying to do the same with /dev/sdb or /dev/sdb1 results in -

shirish@debian:~/games$ ./check_debian_iso SHA1SUMS
debian-buster-DI-alpha2-amd64-xfce-CD-1.iso /dev/sdb
Does not look like an ISO 9660 filesystem: '/dev/sdb' magic='  '

That's the usb key/thumb drive on which debian iso image is done by unetbootin.

Although it appears to have worked though as was able to get a working
Debian GNU/Linux system at the end, was able to get updates, get the
net working and so on and so forth.

FTR, I could have used cp or dd but that would have been only if I had
taken my lappy that day. It should not be a requirement that we should
have a debian laptop because in real-world scenarios many people not
might have access to an installation nor should they require one,
although do agree it's handy if it's there.

-- 
  Regards,
  Shirish Agarwal  शिरीष अग्रवाल
  My quotes in this email licensed under CC 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/
http://flossexperiences.wordpress.com
EB80 462B 08E1 A0DE A73A  2C2F 9F3D C7A4 E1C4 D2D8

Re: have a mate-desktop CD was Re: magnet links and pushing them to meta-search engines.

[shirish शिरीष]

:at bottom :-

On 10/03/2018, shirish शिरीष  wrote:



>
> As I was on MS-Windows had to resort to using a variety of softwares
> trying out rufus and other softwares. For some reason, other than
> unetbootin none of the others worked. But this was also only limited
> to the alpha build, the others just didn't even copy either using
> rufus or using unetbootin. Dunno the reason for that. Most of the logs
> were cryptic in nature so couldn't come to any specific result. The
> only thing I was able to figure out that somehow the boot loader was
> corrupted during the copy.
>



Just read Thomas's reply on the debian-cd mailing list specifically
https://lists.debian.org/debian-cd/2018/03/msg3.html . Please CC
me in further correspondence in this regard as I'm not subscribed to
the list .

FWIW and FTR I did try the rufus 'dd' for all three iso images and it
failed spectacularly.

Unfortunately, I did not copy the logs of the ones which failed and
the one run which succeeded. I could retry it again on the weekend
when I have bit more of time and share the logs but as shared before,
the logs were cryptic. It didn't tell the reason why the dd to usb
failed . I also failed to see if there is a more verbose flag or
method which I could use. to have some idea as to why a failure
occurred in the first place. It only has single run logs and no
persistent logging across runs as we are used to in Debian for most of
our work.

To be precise by a single run I mean by a cycle of attempting to copy
or dd an iso image from hdd to the usb disk using software. And I did
try multiple runs (2-3 times at least)  of formatting the usb disk
(not quick format) and running the same operations with the same
result.

I also researched a bit of the flash drive itself later after I came
back both in MS-Windows space as well as using Debian to see if the
flash drive is true or not. It turned out it was true, although was a
TLC .

Using Chip genius -


Description: USB Mass Storage Device(Kingston DataTraveler 3.0)
Device Type: Mass Storage Device

Protocal Version: USB 3.10
Current Speed: High Speed
Max Current: 504mA

USB Device ID: VID = 0951 PID = 1666
Serial Number: 

Device Vendor: Kingston
Device Name: DataTraveler 3.0
Device Revision: 0110

Manufacturer: Kingston
Product Model: DataTraveler 3.0
Product Revision: PMAP

Controller Vendor: Phison
Controller Part-Number: PS2251-07(PS2307) - F/W 08.01.50 [2017-01-17]
Flash ID code: AD3A1803 - Hynix [TLC]

The only thing I have hid is the serial number as it's of no
consequence. I purchased the usb stick from a reputed vendor from whom
I have purchased IT equipment over the years without complaints. Did
find out it's a TLC chip
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-level_cell#Triple-level_cell but
that shouldn't be a factor as I had bought it just before going on the
road.

We should have a similar utility in Debian to find out flash
internals. I don't know of any which does the same .

http://www.usbdev.ru/files/chipgenius/ unfortunately the page is in Russian.

While trawling also discovered this oldish article
https://flashchiptech.wordpress.com/2010/12/07/chip-genius-the-good-and-the-bad-about-this-software-in-identify-flash-memory-chips-and-repairing-fake-hacked-memory-how-useful-is-chipgenius/

And also read that transcend doesn't share internal chip details
unlike other vendors.

Hope it throws a bit more light.

Btw, can anybody share the unetbootin issues as I have no clue where
to search for unetbootin issues with Debian. Quite a few of my
friednds and colleagues use it to make Debian images over the years
without an issue.

Look forward to know more.

-- 
  Regards,
  Shirish Agarwal  शिरीष अग्रवाल
  My quotes in this email licensed under CC 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/
http://flossexperiences.wordpress.com
EB80 462B 08E1 A0DE A73A  2C2F 9F3D C7A4 E1C4 D2D8

have a mate-desktop CD was Re: magnet links and pushing them to meta-search engines.

[shirish शिरीष]

Reply at bottom :-

On 16/02/2018, Steve McIntyre  wrote:



> I've since re-added a single-CD option for Xfce, for thoe people who
> really do want a single CD that will give them a basic desktop,
>

Dear Steve,

There has been quite a few things happening at my end hence wasn't
able to reply before today, so sorry for that.

I had been asked to share some of Debian newness recently.  Because I
was on the road and didn't have my trusty lappy with me, had to use
window machines, download the daily, weekly and thankfully the last
alpha2 xfce build.

As I was on MS-Windows had to resort to using a variety of softwares
trying out rufus and other softwares. For some reason, other than
unetbootin none of the others worked. But this was also only limited
to the alpha build, the others just didn't even copy either using
rufus or using unetbootin. Dunno the reason for that. Most of the logs
were cryptic in nature so couldn't come to any specific result. The
only thing I was able to figure out that somehow the boot loader was
corrupted during the copy.

I was also stuck by the warning debian usb stick told me while I was
trying to install saying unetbootin is not a good tool to make a usb
stick.  Perhaps a hyperlink would have been better than just saying
its in installation instructions.

While installing the alpha build, two things became apparent, one
while there is support for https protocol, there doesn't seem to be
any mirrors which support that or I couldn't find them and I tried a
few, although finding https mirrors should perhaps be more automated,
dunno.

Lastly, would it be possible to have a mate-desktop CD apart from the
xfce one. While choice of desktop environment is certainly a personal
choice,  I feel it's a good lightweight yet at the same time fully
functional desktop environment. It isn't bloated as GNOME has become
but still tries to be true to the gtk+ philosophy.

Also is buster alpha 3 on the horizon anywhere or what constraints or
issues that need to be resolved before an alpha 3 can be a reality ?

Looking forward to know more.

> --
> Steve McIntyre, Cambridge, UK.
> st...@einval.com
> Who needs computer imagery when you've got Brian Blessed?
>
>

-- 
  Regards,
  Shirish Agarwal  शिरीष अग्रवाल
  My quotes in this email licensed under CC 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/
http://flossexperiences.wordpress.com
EB80 462B 08E1 A0DE A73A  2C2F 9F3D C7A4 E1C4 D2D8

Re: magnet links and pushing them to meta-search engines.

[Steve McIntyre]

On Mon, Feb 12, 2018 at 08:25:54AM +0530, shirish शिरीष wrote:
>On 12/02/2018, Steve McIntyre  wrote:
>>
>> We've had a few "virus" reports about our images over the years, but
>> every one I've investigated has clearly been a false positive in the
>> virus checker involved. Many of them are proprietary, which of course
>> makes it difficult to debug the problem. :-/
>
>aha, ok didn't know that.

...

>Actually what I had wanted to ask/post the query is that we somehow
>miss the bus of getting the releases to meta-search engines such as
>torrentz.eu
>
>See for e.g. https://torrentz2.eu/search?f=%27debian-9.3.0-amd64%27
>
>and see the results that have cropped up. I was hoping that it would
>show the CD releases as well as the DVD releases and net install.  As
>can be seen while it shows the DVD image and the netinstall images,
>but for unknown reasons officially CD images seems to have gone the
>way of dodo
>
>https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current/amd64/bt-cd/
>
>Maybe because CD-1 has become too big that it can't anymore fit lxde
>or something for base-install + desktop environment. I did scour the
>archives for last 2-3 months but wasn't able to get anything about why
>they were dropped although it probably is due to the space issue I
>have mentioned above.
>
>Are there any hopes of the CD images being revived in the future or
>that's sort of gone forever ?

We dropped the CD sets a while back, for the reason you've
guessed. See the announcement in

  https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2015/09/msg4.html

I've since re-added a single-CD option for Xfce, for thoe people who
really do want a single CD that will give them a basic desktop,

-- 
Steve McIntyre, Cambridge, UK.st...@einval.com
Who needs computer imagery when you've got Brian Blessed?

Re: magnet links and pushing them to meta-search engines.

[shirish शिरीष]

Reply in-line :-

On 12/02/2018, Steve McIntyre  wrote:
> Hey Shirish!
>

Hi Steve,

> On Sun, Feb 11, 2018 at 02:38:36AM +0530, shirish शिरीष wrote:
>>
>>>From the last few days/week I have been poking around torrent
>>meta-search engines, While looking through, I noticed that the
>>sometimes (not all the times) there have been occasions where the
>>hashes have told to be a virus.
>>
>>Most recent example is
>>https://torrentz2.eu/1193adc8d620b0e35ddcd7932f2d07f2992140c0
>>
>>As can be seen down below in the link, it has been labeled as a virus
>>which may or may not be true.
>
> We've had a few "virus" reports about our images over the years, but
> every one I've investigated has clearly been a false positive in the
> virus checker involved. Many of them are proprietary, which of course
> makes it difficult to debug the problem. :-/
>

aha, ok didn't know that.

>>I dunno whom to approach, the page in question on Debian side
>>
>>See  https://torrentz2.eu/1193adc8d620b0e35ddcd7932f2d07f2992140c0 as an
>> e.g.
>
> Do your links match the torrents that we've published? There's always
> a possibility that people might be modifying them to add malware after
> we're published, of course...
>

I  realized just after sending that email that the images
it was sharing
were old jessie testing ones and weird (CD1+CD2) which kinda makes it
hard to do all that back-checking.

>From https://wiki.debian.org/DebianJessie  it seems couple of months
before Jessie installer beta 1 arrived.

Actually what I had wanted to ask/post the query is that we somehow
miss the bus of getting the releases to meta-search engines such as
torrentz.eu

See for e.g. https://torrentz2.eu/search?f=%27debian-9.3.0-amd64%27

and see the results that have cropped up. I was hoping that it would
show the CD releases as well as the DVD releases and net install.  As
can be seen while it shows the DVD image and the netinstall images,
but for unknown reasons officially CD images seems to have gone the
way of dodo

https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current/amd64/bt-cd/

Maybe because CD-1 has become too big that it can't anymore fit lxde
or something for base-install + desktop environment. I did scour the
archives for last 2-3 months but wasn't able to get anything about why
they were dropped although it probably is due to the space issue I
have mentioned above.

Are there any hopes of the CD images being revived in the future or
that's sort of gone forever ?

FWIW I do still queries from students and the only thing I can give
them is the dvd-iso image link as net-install image can be problematic
as I found out when testing.

Look forward to comments.

> --
> Steve McIntyre, Cambridge, UK.
> st...@einval.com
> You lock the door
> And throw away the key
> There's someone in my head but it's not me
>
>


-- 
  Regards,
  Shirish Agarwal  शिरीष अग्रवाल
  My quotes in this email licensed under CC 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/
http://flossexperiences.wordpress.com
EB80 462B 08E1 A0DE A73A  2C2F 9F3D C7A4 E1C4 D2D8

Re: magnet links and pushing them to meta-search engines.

[Steve McIntyre]

Hey Shirish!

On Sun, Feb 11, 2018 at 02:38:36AM +0530, shirish शिरीष wrote:
>
>>From the last few days/week I have been poking around torrent
>meta-search engines, While looking through, I noticed that the
>sometimes (not all the times) there have been occasions where the
>hashes have told to be a virus.
>
>Most recent example is
>https://torrentz2.eu/1193adc8d620b0e35ddcd7932f2d07f2992140c0
>
>As can be seen down below in the link, it has been labelled as a virus
>which may or may not be true.

We've had a few "virus" reports about our images ove the years, but
every one I've investigated has clearly been a false positive in the
virus checker involved. Many of them are proprietary, which of course
makes it difficult to debug the problem. :-/

>I dunno whom to approach, the page in question on Debian side
>
>See  https://torrentz2.eu/1193adc8d620b0e35ddcd7932f2d07f2992140c0 as an e.g.

Do your links match the torrents that we've published? There's always
a possibility that people might be modifying them to add malware after
we're published, of course...

-- 
Steve McIntyre, Cambridge, UK.st...@einval.com
You lock the door
And throw away the key
There's someone in my head but it's not me