Re: debianlive iso with xfce and clamav

[David Christensen]

On 11/25/2015 11:40 PM, rlhar...@oplink.net wrote:

On Wed, November 25, 2015 10:32 pm, David Christensen wrote:

... there are valid reasons for putting the rescue operating
system and the images on one large capacity device ...


I do not understand.

1. Would not that require the drive to be partitioned into an
"installation" partition and a "debianlive" partion?

2. And would it not be necessary that both partitions be bootable?

3. Or is the "installation" partition ruined when the boot loader is
installed?


I've played with Debian Live a few times, but am unfamiliar with the 
partitioning scheme.



On my system drives -- HDD, SSD, or USB -- I typically have three 
partitions:


1.  A "small" boot partition: ~0.5 GB, ext4 (Wheezy) or btrfs (Jessie).

2.  A "small" swap partition: ~0.5 GB, possibly encrypted with LUKS 
using a random key.  (I tried running machines without a swap partition 
in the past, but found that they crashed when low on RAM.)


3.  A root partition to fill out 90% of 16 GB: ~13.4 GB, possibly LUKS 
passphrase encrypted, ext4 or btrfs.



If the device is larger than 16 GB, I sometimes add a fourth "scratch 
data" partition.  For a Debian-on-USB flash drive, this could be used to 
hold backups, archives, and/or images of machines that you are working on.



David

Re: debianlive iso with xfce and clamav

[Liam O'Toole]

On 2015-11-27, Chris Bannister  wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 25, 2015 at 03:59:26PM +, Liam O'Toole wrote:
>> might feel slow compared to a 'normal' installation.) The live iso, on
>> the other hand, is intended for installation and system rescue and is
>> read-only.
>
> Isn't the term 'live' a misnomer in that case. 
> Thanks for the warning, I wouldn't have expect that by the name.

The term goes back to the live CDs of the 1990s. The OS would be loaded
entirely into RAM, without touching the hard drive. So it was 'live' in
the sense that it was dead when you powered off. :-)

-- 

Liam

Re: debianlive iso with xfce and clamav

[Curt]

On 2015-11-26, rlhar...@oplink.net  wrote:
> On Wed, November 25, 2015 9:37 pm, David Christensen wrote:
>> No, I'm talking about disconnecting all hard disk drives and solid state
>> drives, plugging in a USB flash drive, booting a Debian installer CD, and
>> installing Debian onto the USB flash drive.  Debian then runs from the USB
>> flash drive as if it were a HDD/ SDD -- e.g. /dev/sda.  Next, I install
>> whatever tasksel package sets I want, install whatever apt/ dpkg/ *.deb
>> packages I want, install whatever other software I want, and configure
>> things how I want.  I now have a USB flash drive that I can boot in most
>> other machines (up to ~10 years old) and have a Debian environment with
>> exactly what I want.
>
> Which arrangement sounds like exactly what I wished to find.  Thanks much;
> I shall give it a try.
>
> Dare I ask whether this would work with a USB-interface drive such as the
> Toshiba Canvio Connect II (reformatted, for example, to ext4)?
>

By the way this can be done neatly in kvm, for example (I have done
it myself, actually) with the netinstall.iso in your home directory,
for example (yes, I know, I said for example twice).  Here's the magic
formula:

kvm -hda /dev/sdc -boot d -cdrom netinstall.iso 

where /dev/sdc is your usb flash drive and netinst.iso is your, well,
netinstall.iso.  I used the big 266 mb (give or take) one.

No danger of installing onto the wrong medium and wiping out all your fond
memories (if you get the /dev/sdc part right) because the installer only
sees the flash drive.

Anyhoo.

Re: debianlive iso with xfce and clamav

[tomas]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On Thu, Nov 26, 2015 at 09:11:13AM +, Curt wrote:

[...]

> kvm -hda /dev/sdc -boot d -cdrom netinstall.iso 

Heh. That's cute. Thanks for the recipe :)

- -- t
-BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-
Version: GnuPG v1.4.12 (GNU/Linux)

iEYEARECAAYFAlZWyVQACgkQBcgs9XrR2kbBngCeNtgWDS26g81Wo+iwjlihVYJ0
3hMAn1U9+EvOvwm024uf/L3jtd/DQUcX
=l84l
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Re: debianlive iso with xfce and clamav

[Thomas Schmitt]

Hi,

David Christensen wrote:
> > there are valid reasons for putting the rescue operating
> > system and the images on one large capacity device

rlhar...@oplink.net wrote:
> 1. Would not that require the drive to be partitioned into an
> "installation" partition and a "debianlive" partion?

Yes. The partition for the disk based operating system has
to be added.

If you start with one of the isohybrid ISOs (e.g.
debian-8.2.0-amd64-netinst.iso) then put it on the stick as
described in
  https://www.debian.org/CD/faq/#write-usb

After that your stick is a partitioned "hard disk".

  $ /sbin/fdisk -lu /dev/sdc

  Disk /dev/sdc: 1.9 GiB, 2004877312 bytes, 3915776 sectors
  Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
  Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
  I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
  Disklabel type: dos
  Disk identifier: 0x7714c637

  Device Boot StartEnd Sectors  Size Id Type
  /dev/sdc1  *0 505855  505856  247M  0 Empty
  /dev/sdc23984   4815 832  416K ef EFI (FAT-12/16/32)

Now you need a partition editor which is willing to tolerate
- the fact that partition 2 lies inside partition 1
  (/sbin/fdisk -l labels partition 1 as "Empty")
- the fact that there are both, a MBR partition table and a
   GUID Partition Table (GPT).
By this editor you add partition number 3 and maybe number 4.

I will use MBR partition editor fdisk, but first zapp the GPT header
block in order to remove the ambiguity of partitioning.
The main header is at 512-block 1 (directly after MBR):

  $ dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdc bs=512 seek=1 count=1 conv=notrunc
  
The backup header is in the last 512-block of the ISO.
It will become part of the new partition and there is supposed
to be regarded as meaningless garbage.

Next would be a session with fdisk:

  $ /sbin/fdisk /dev/sdc

with input
  n
  p
  3


  w
A total of 6 inputs, two of them empty lines.

I did this as normal user (after chmod g+w /dev/sdc).
So i have now to unplug the device and plug in again to force loading
of the partition table by the running Linux kernel.
Now i have /dev/sdc1, /dev/sdc2, dev/sdc3

  $ /sbin/fdisk -l /dev/sdc
  ...
  Device Boot  Start End Sectors  Size Id Type
  /dev/sdc1  * 0  505855  505856  247M  0 Empty
  /dev/sdc2 39844815 832  416K ef EFI (FAT-12/16/32)
  /dev/sdc3   505856 3915775 3409920  1.6G 83 Linux

Let's try whether it still boots:

  $ qemu-system-x86_64 -enable-kvm -m 512 -hda /dev/sdc

  ... Debian GNU/Linux installer boot menu ...

  $ qemu-system-x86_64 -enable-kvm -m 512 -cdrom /dev/sdc

  ... Debian GNU/Linux installer boot menu ...

So now the stick is usable as Debian installation medium with
additional data vault. The adventure begins when you populate
that vault with a disk based operating system.

-

One could decide to let GPT survive. But other than MBR
partitioning, GPT is clearly specified to not have overlapping
partitions.

I have a proposal pending to omit GPT from Debian ISOs and
to append the EFI boot partition _after_ the ISO partition.
Although this would waste the room of a duplicate EFI boot
image, it would make above use case more straightforward.
(Start fdisk and make partition. Basta.)
The price of 416 KiB can hardly be unaffordable.


> 2. And would it not be necessary that both partitions be bootable?

I understand that the "bootable" flag is a hint towards
bootloaders which partition to use by default or where to
look for a partition boot loader.

Neither ISOLINUX nor GRUB2 seem to care much about this.


> 3. Or is the "installation" partition ruined when the boot loader is
> installed?

It will be interesting to see what debian-installer does
to its own boot equipment when installing the boot loader
of the hard disk based system.
We have two boot loaders and their configurations:
ISOLINUX used for BIOS machines, GRUB2 used for EFI machines.

Only experiments will give insight.
Make a (sparse) installation, reboot, and look what choices you
get offered by the boot menu.


Have a nice day :)

Thomas

Re: debianlive iso with xfce and clamav

[Chris Bannister]

On Wed, Nov 25, 2015 at 03:59:26PM +, Liam O'Toole wrote:
> might feel slow compared to a 'normal' installation.) The live iso, on
> the other hand, is intended for installation and system rescue and is
> read-only.

Isn't the term 'live' a misnomer in that case. 
Thanks for the warning, I wouldn't have expect that by the name.

-- 
"If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people
who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the 
oppressing." --- Malcolm X

Re: debianlive iso with xfce and clamav

[Brian]

On Wed 25 Nov 2015 at 09:37:39 -0600, rlhar...@oplink.net wrote:

> On Wed, November 25, 2015 7:22 am, Brian wrote:
> > On Wed 25 Nov 2015 at 11:29:52 +, Liam O'Toole wrote:
> >> David
> >> is talking about using the USB as an installation target.
> >
> > Personally I would forget about a customised Debian Live and follow
> > David's suggestion to install Debian on a USB stick. Unstable can be
> > installed to a stick with the mini.iso from
> >
> > http://ftp.nl.debian.org/debian/dists/jessie/main/installer-i386/current/
> > images/netboot/
> 
> I am ignorant here; the technique is new to me.
> 
> After installation to a USB stick, then what?  Do I boot the Windows
> machine with the USB on which Debian is installed?

Yes.

> And does the resulting environment differ from the environment provided by
> the debianlive ISO?

Not that I'm aware of. (You'll need to install what you need on the
stick, of course.
 
> Kindly enlighten me!

Consider yourself enlightened.

Re: debianlive iso with xfce and clamav

[Liam O'Toole]

On 2015-11-25, rlhar...@oplink.net  wrote:
> On Wed, November 25, 2015 7:22 am, Brian wrote:
>> On Wed 25 Nov 2015 at 11:29:52 +, Liam O'Toole wrote:
>>> David
>>> is talking about using the USB as an installation target.
>>
>> Personally I would forget about a customised Debian Live and follow
>> David's suggestion to install Debian on a USB stick. Unstable can be
>> installed to a stick with the mini.iso from
>>
>> http://ftp.nl.debian.org/debian/dists/jessie/main/installer-i386/current/
>> images/netboot/
>
> I am ignorant here; the technique is new to me.
>
> After installation to a USB stick, then what?  Do I boot the Windows
> machine with the USB on which Debian is installed?

Yes. You then use the OS in the same way as if it were installed on the
hard drive.

> And does the resulting environment differ from the environment provided by
> the debianlive ISO?

Any changes you make will persist to the USB across reboots. (The system
might feel slow compared to a 'normal' installation.) The live iso, on
the other hand, is intended for installation and system rescue and is
read-only.

-- 

Liam

Re: debianlive iso with xfce and clamav

[Ric Moore]

On 11/25/2015 10:54 AM, Brian wrote:

On Wed 25 Nov 2015 at 09:37:39 -0600, rlhar...@oplink.net wrote:


On Wed, November 25, 2015 7:22 am, Brian wrote:

On Wed 25 Nov 2015 at 11:29:52 +, Liam O'Toole wrote:

David
is talking about using the USB as an installation target.


Personally I would forget about a customised Debian Live and follow
David's suggestion to install Debian on a USB stick. Unstable can be
installed to a stick with the mini.iso from

http://ftp.nl.debian.org/debian/dists/jessie/main/installer-i386/current/
images/netboot/


I am ignorant here; the technique is new to me.

After installation to a USB stick, then what?  Do I boot the Windows
machine with the USB on which Debian is installed?


Yes.


And does the resulting environment differ from the environment provided by
the debianlive ISO?


Not that I'm aware of. (You'll need to install what you need on the
stick, of course.


Kindly enlighten me!


Consider yourself enlightened.


Plus, to me, the install from USB stick is much quicker. Ric


--
My father, Victor Moore (Vic) used to say:
"There are two Great Sins in the world...
..the Sin of Ignorance, and the Sin of Stupidity.
Only the former may be overcome." R.I.P. Dad.
http://linuxcounter.net/user/44256.html

Re: debianlive iso with xfce and clamav

[rlharris]

On Wed, November 25, 2015 7:22 am, Brian wrote:
> On Wed 25 Nov 2015 at 11:29:52 +, Liam O'Toole wrote:
>> David
>> is talking about using the USB as an installation target.
>
> Personally I would forget about a customised Debian Live and follow
> David's suggestion to install Debian on a USB stick. Unstable can be
> installed to a stick with the mini.iso from
>
> http://ftp.nl.debian.org/debian/dists/jessie/main/installer-i386/current/
> images/netboot/

I am ignorant here; the technique is new to me.

After installation to a USB stick, then what?  Do I boot the Windows
machine with the USB on which Debian is installed?

And does the resulting environment differ from the environment provided by
the debianlive ISO?

Kindly enlighten me!

Russ

Re: debianlive iso with xfce and clamav

[David Christensen]

On 11/24/2015 10:25 PM, rlhar...@oplink.net wrote:

Yes; the CD images routinely are designed for USB booting.


No, I'm talking about disconnecting all hard disk drives and solid state 
drives, plugging in a USB flash drive, booting a Debian installer CD, 
and installing Debian onto the USB flash drive.  Debian then runs from 
the USB flash drive as if it were a HDD/ SDD -- e.g. /dev/sda.  Next, I 
install whatever tasksel package sets I want, install whatever apt/ 
dpkg/ *.deb packages I want, install whatever other software I want, and 
configure things how I want.  I now have a USB flash drive that I can 
boot in most other machines (up to ~10 years old) and have a Debian 
environment with exactly what I want.



David

Re: debianlive iso with xfce and clamav

[rlharris]

On Wed, November 25, 2015 9:37 pm, David Christensen wrote:
> No, I'm talking about disconnecting all hard disk drives and solid state
> drives, plugging in a USB flash drive, booting a Debian installer CD, and
> installing Debian onto the USB flash drive.  Debian then runs from the USB
> flash drive as if it were a HDD/ SDD -- e.g. /dev/sda.  Next, I install
> whatever tasksel package sets I want, install whatever apt/ dpkg/ *.deb
> packages I want, install whatever other software I want, and configure
> things how I want.  I now have a USB flash drive that I can boot in most
> other machines (up to ~10 years old) and have a Debian environment with
> exactly what I want.

Which arrangement sounds like exactly what I wished to find.  Thanks much;
I shall give it a try.

Dare I ask whether this would work with a USB-interface drive such as the
Toshiba Canvio Connect II (reformatted, for example, to ext4)?

Russ

Re: debianlive iso with xfce and clamav

[David Christensen]

On 11/25/2015 07:47 PM, rlhar...@oplink.net wrote:

On Wed, November 25, 2015 9:37 pm, David Christensen wrote:

No, I'm talking about disconnecting all hard disk drives and solid state
drives, plugging in a USB flash drive, booting a Debian installer CD, and
installing Debian onto the USB flash drive.

Which arrangement sounds like exactly what I wished to find.  Thanks much;
I shall give it a try.


Please do; it's a useful trick.


Beware that not all USB ports are created equal -- e.g. for some 
machines/ motherboards, I've found that the Debian-on-USB-flash-drive 
trick only works on a specific port (typically the USB port next to the 
Ethernet port).




Dare I ask whether this would work with a USB-interface drive such as the
Toshiba Canvio Connect II (reformatted, for example, to ext4)?


I suppose.  But, I prefer small, dedicated, solid-state system drives. 
(I use SanDisk Ultra Fit USB 3.0 16 GB flash drives.)  Once booted, you 
can connect additional external drives, connect to Samba shares on a 
LAN/ VLAN, connect to external hosts/ file systems via SCP/ SSH over a 
LAN/ VLAN/ WAN, etc..  If you include openssh-server, you can also get 
in from other machines.



That said, there are valid reasons for putting the rescue operating 
system and the images on one large capacity device -- for example, if 
the computer has only one USB port.  (The Ultra Fit is available in a 
128 GB version; I recently bought one.)



In either case, give yourself plenty of options by installing plenty of 
tools when you create the Debian-on-USB system.  As you find that you 
want more, install (or write) it.



David

Re: debianlive iso with xfce and clamav

[rlharris]

On Wed, November 25, 2015 10:32 pm, David Christensen wrote:
> On 11/25/2015 07:47 PM, rlhar...@oplink.net wrote:
>> Dare I ask whether this would work with a USB-interface drive such as
>> the Toshiba Canvio Connect II (reformatted, for example, to ext4)?
...
> I suppose.  But, I prefer small, dedicated, solid-state system drives.
> (I use SanDisk Ultra Fit USB 3.0 16 GB flash drives.)

I happen to have a USB-powered breastpocket 1 gibabyte mechanical drive,
which costs about US$50.

An old spare machine here has several USB ports, so I booted from a USB
flash stick and now am in the middle of installing Debian Jessie 8.2.0 to
the mechanical USB drive.

This is one of the most valuable techniques I have been shown.



> That said, there are valid reasons for putting the rescue operating
> system and the images on one large capacity device -- for example, if the
> computer has only one USB port.

I do not understand.

1. Would not that require the drive to be partitioned into an
"installation" partition and a "debianlive" partion?

2. And would it not be necessary that both partitions be bootable?

3. Or is the "installation" partition ruined when the boot loader is
installed?

Russ

Re: debianlive iso with xfce and clamav

[Liam O'Toole]

On 2015-11-25, rlhar...@oplink.net  wrote:
> On Tue, November 24, 2015 11:28 pm, David Christensen wrote:
>> On 11/24/2015 09:16 PM, rlhar...@oplink.net wrote:
> ...
>> I discovered the install-Debain-to-USB trick a couple of years ago, when
>> I was using Wheezy.  I am only just starting to migrate to Jessie, and
>> expect that it works too.
>
> Yes; the CD images routinely are designed for USB booting.  Just use dd to
> copy the image to the USB device.  I do not recall where I saw the
> recommendation for the blocksize parameter, but this is what I use:
>
> # dd if=.iso of=/dev/sdb bs=8M
>

The above command copies the installer or live iso to a USB stick. David
is talking about using the USB as an installation target.

-- 

Liam

Re: debianlive iso with xfce and clamav

[Brian]

On Wed 25 Nov 2015 at 11:29:52 +, Liam O'Toole wrote:

> On 2015-11-25, rlhar...@oplink.net  wrote:
> > On Tue, November 24, 2015 11:28 pm, David Christensen wrote:
> >> On 11/24/2015 09:16 PM, rlhar...@oplink.net wrote:
> > ...
> >> I discovered the install-Debain-to-USB trick a couple of years ago, when
> >> I was using Wheezy.  I am only just starting to migrate to Jessie, and
> >> expect that it works too.
> >
> > Yes; the CD images routinely are designed for USB booting.  Just use dd to
> > copy the image to the USB device.  I do not recall where I saw the
> > recommendation for the blocksize parameter, but this is what I use:
> >
> > # dd if=.iso of=/dev/sdb bs=8M
> >
> 
> The above command copies the installer or live iso to a USB stick. David
> is talking about using the USB as an installation target.

The OP seems to have two requirements:

1. To run Debian Live with xfce desktop and clamav.

2. To have the most up-to-date packagae versions possible.

Personally I would forget about a customised Debian Live and follow
David's suggestion to install Debian on a USB stick. Unstable can be
installed to a stick with the mini.iso from

  
http://ftp.nl.debian.org/debian/dists/jessie/main/installer-i386/current/images/netboot/

Re: debianlive iso with xfce and clamav

[David Christensen]

On 11/24/2015 01:26 PM, rlhar...@oplink.net wrote:

I am attempting to recover data from a virus-damaged Windows machine.  For
this work, I wish to run debianlive with xfce desktop and clamav.


I have found that I am able to install Debian Wheezy onto a USB flash 
drive that boots and seems to work on desktops and laptops made since 
~2005.  This allows me to install whatever software I want.  Have you 
tried this approach?



David

Re: debianlive iso with xfce and clamav

[rlharris]

On Tue, November 24, 2015 10:54 pm, David Christensen wrote:
> On 11/24/2015 01:26 PM, rlhar...@oplink.net wrote:
>
>> I am attempting to recover data from a virus-damaged Windows machine.
>> For
>> this work, I wish to run debianlive with xfce desktop and clamav.
>
> I have found that I am able to install Debian Wheezy onto a USB flash
> drive that boots and seems to work on desktops and laptops made since
> ~2005.  This allows me to install whatever software I want.  Have you
> tried this approach?

I do not understand why the regression to Wheezy; the debianlive ISO
copied to a USB flash stick gave me Jessie with xfce and synaptic, and
with the flash stick I booted the Windows machine; NetworkManager
performed beautifully.

Then, using synaptic, I installed clamav and another utility or two
(including Midnight Commander) which enabled me to inspect the machine.

The only problem I encountered was an error message when I executed rsync
on a Debian desktop in order to copy the drive of the Windows machine;
there was something which ssh did not like, and with Google I discovered
that others, too, have experienced the difficulty.  But it turned out that
by executing rsync on the Windows machine running debianlive, I was able
to copy the drive.

But it would be nice to have a customized debianlive ISO which includes
clamav and mc and a few other packages.

Russ

Re: debianlive iso with xfce and clamav

[David Christensen]

On 11/24/2015 09:16 PM, rlhar...@oplink.net wrote:

I do not understand why the regression to Wheezy;


I discovered the install-Debain-to-USB trick a couple of years ago, when 
I was using Wheezy.  I am only just starting to migrate to Jessie, and 
expect that it works too.



David

Re: debianlive iso with xfce and clamav

[Martin Str|mberg]

In article  rlhar...@oplink.net wrote:
> I am attempting to recover data from a virus-damaged Windows machine.  For
> this work, I wish to run debianlive with xfce desktop and clamav.

> I found at:

> ttps://www.debian.org/CD/live/

> ISO images for Jessie with xfce desktop.

> And debianlive includes synaptic, so it it fairly easy to install clamav;
> but my task would be simpler if I could create a debianlive ISO image
> which includes both xfce and clamav.  Is there a HOWTO for this?

There are documentation for this and . Install
live-build and company, read, read, build, boot, build and boot.


-- 
MartinS

Re: debianlive iso with xfce and clamav

[rlharris]

On Tue, November 24, 2015 11:28 pm, David Christensen wrote:
> On 11/24/2015 09:16 PM, rlhar...@oplink.net wrote:
...
> I discovered the install-Debain-to-USB trick a couple of years ago, when
> I was using Wheezy.  I am only just starting to migrate to Jessie, and
> expect that it works too.

Yes; the CD images routinely are designed for USB booting.  Just use dd to
copy the image to the USB device.  I do not recall where I saw the
recommendation for the blocksize parameter, but this is what I use:

# dd if=.iso of=/dev/sdb bs=8M

Russ