Debian Jessie dCore

[Jason W]

With a recompile of the current TC 3.8.13 kernel to include CONFIG_DEVTMPFS=y and a disabling of the zram swap routine in tc-config, I am testing an early working Jessie dCore.  There are some quirks with Udev and Xorg, as well as Gnome does not just fire up and run, but other than that things like icewm, XFCE, iceweasel, and my other commonly used apps are working as is.  Of course, there are always challenges with any major system-wide upgrade and I am confident that Jessie will make a solid dCore just like Wheezy has become.  Jessie will freeze in November, so package versions are still in flux right now but when I get things polished a little more I will post an alpha cut for wider testing.

The main dCore features are pretty much in place and working well it seems.  My plans for the coming few months will be to focus on the coming Jessie upgrade as well finding less widely used packages that may need startup scripts or dependencies added.

[netnomad]

hi jason w,

great news!
actually i wanted to ask you for a dCore-version based on jessie.

usually i use stable and extremely audited software especially based on lean, vanilla, stable debian,
but for some weeks i was fallen almost in love with my jessie-installation on a netbook...
it's stable, modern and there is some fun with fresh packages

what do you think about a more recent kernel? ... with the actual i didn't succeed with suspend to ram
i'm looking forward to your jessie-cut and will contribute with heavy testing

keep on hacking.

[Jason W]

Hi netnomad,

When standard Core updates it's kernel is when I adopt it rather than using a different one.  That way there is a larger pool of folks using and testing the same kernel rather version than us each having our own separate kernels for x86.  Actually, I plan to use the same source, config, and patches and compile it on dCore so that folks can use dCore to compile their own kernel modules if they want to use something outside the standard kernel tree.  I have been meaning to do that with wheezy dCore but just did not get around to it and there has not been a request for it yet.   

Basically right now the zram swap issue is the holdup, I hope to figure that out soon as I am also eager to get a Jessie dCore up for testing. 

[Jason W]

CONFIG_DEVTMPFS=y
CONFIG_LEGACY_PTYS=y

The above kernel changes fixes the xterm issue and allows most everything to work, but not Gnome, though the Gnome apps work through Icewm.  I will figure out Gnome, and as I don't think many use it on Core anyway, it is not a show stopper for an alpha release of the next major version.. 

These kind of changes are documented out there and are common to whether one is taking on a major update to a source based system or one like dCore.  I will continue to polish and hopefully in the coming weeks I will feel it is ready for a public alpha.

[Jason W]

Actually things have come together more quickly than I anticipated, just an xterm issue to resolve and otherwise all that I use on my normal desktop is just working.  I have made some more kernel config adjustments using Gentoo's list of required and recommended config options to support systemd.  The good thing is that like Knoppix, we use our own booting and init that is independent of systemd, upstart, etc.  So systemd is there but the /etc/init.d scripts work as before and to the user there is no real difference. 

So far the startup scripts, dependency lists, prebuilt packages, and data tarballs on the server work across Wheezy, Ubuntu, and Jessie dCore x86 versions.  So Jessie dCore will still be under the 5.x major release.  Since I plan to stay with one directory to support both existing and new dCore's, at least as long as possible, the next major version can be when enough changes require that we start a new directory of files on the server to cleanly support newer Debian/Ubuntu releases. 

Oh, and the packages in Jessie are changing daily, so when testing my advice would be to use the list file feature of importsce and make one large SCE.  If you want to add more packages, re-import that SCE with the additions.  Otherwise breakage can occur due to conflicting files among SCE's.   The xterm issue is all that is left before I feel confident to post a dCore.gz, I aim to fix that tonight.

[netnomad]

...sounds good.

keep on hacking!!!

[Jason W]

Thanks netnomad.

Ok, finally I figured out the Xterm issue with users other than tc, just some udev rules changes in base.  /lib/udev/rules.d/91-permissions.rules to be exact.

The files are located at:

http://tinycorelinux.net/5.x/x86/release_candidates/dCore-jessie/

I will ponder what name or version we wil go with ultimately, but for now dcore-jessie.

When I say if adding packages to re-import one SCE using a file list, I mean it.  I broke my system importing separate SCE's in a 24 hour period due to Jessie's constant changes.  As we know, re-importing will bring in any changed packages, only downloading what has not been already or what has changed.  But that being said, feel free to use, test, and report any issues stating your hardware (laptop, desktop, etc) and whether you are using one large SCE.  What I am looking for is needed changes in the kernel, startup scripts, or perhaps base files.  My normal desktop is now dCore-jessie, lets have fun with it and we have plenty of time to tweak it before it's November release.

Oh, and xmms requires you choose alsa as the sound output in preferences.  I don't remember if that had to be done in Wheezy, but I am all for the "just works" mindset and any supported changes that allow for it in the prebuilt as well as the regular package selection. 

[Jason W]

Glibc has been updated to 2.19 in Jessie, base files in dCore-jessie.gz has been updated and reposted.

http://tinycorelinux.net/5.x/x86/release_candidates/dCore-jessie/

[Jason W]

Posted an update that uses a rotating dash instead of echoing names of dependencies in the terminal during the dependency gathering routine. 

[Jason W]

Updated base libraries and posted a new cut:

http://tinycorelinux.net/5.x/x86/release_candidates/dCore-jessie/

[Jason W]

Updated to handle the creation of /dev/pts and dev/shm which is handled in Debian by initscripts rather than udev.

[Jason W]

Updated to remove unneeded files in /etc/udev/rules.d/ that were interfering with the creation of entries in /dev/disk that kept Unetbootin from operating.

[netnomad]

hi jason,

today i tried your last cut.
i booted with base and norestore, but i'm not able to importsce the package mc.

would you give me some hints.

thank you for your help.

[Jason W]

About 12 hours ago I had a bad cut posted for about an hour.  Please download a new dCore-jessie.gz and try again.

Thanks.

Below should be the content of /etc/udev/rules.d:

55-tc.rules
80-drivers.rules     
98-tc.rules
90-permissions.rules 

[netnomad]

hi jason,

i guess that the jessie-cut needs that label-adjustments, too.
would you be so kind and check it?

thank you for your great coding.