Alien Pastures My Thoughts on Slackware, Life and Everything

Alien Pastures My thoughts on Slackware, life and everything

Build box: step 1, install Slackware About this blog About I am Eric Hameleers, and this is The new computer with its Ryzen where I think out loud. Alien’s ARM CPU created some issues for me. To More about me. start with… I had not considered the Archive possibility that a Ryzen CPU would Search PDO Powered not have an embedded GPU and so I did not order a graphics card. Bad Your feedback idea! Sponsoring I ended up ripping a GPU from one Subscribe to Blog via Email Please consider a small donation: of my other computers (the only Enter your email address to PCI-express card I could find) and plugging that into the new computer. That gave me a subscribe to this blog and receive working video instead of a monitor that kept falling asleep. notifications of new posts by Next came Slackware. When I booted the Slackware 14.2 installer, it did not give me a email. network connection. The Slackware Live Edition (based on slackware-current) worked

properly on the other hand. But the graphics card I plugged into the computer did not Join 315 other subscribers work too well with the nouveau driver – whenever I started Chromium, it was inevitable that the computer would lock up after some time. Initially I blamed this on the computer Email Address hardware and feared that I bought a dead duck, but once I stopped running Chromium

in the graphical desktop of Slackware Live, the system would remain operational. Since Subscribe it is not going to be used as a desktop system and I will access it only remotely, that buggy nouveau driver is not a big issue and I could still install the binary Nvidia blob if My Favourites needed. Famous sed one-liners How to use ip instead of So, the question became: I want to run a stable Slackware release on my new build ifconfig server, but how am I going to install it? I was facing two major issues: Linux Questions Steaming Penguins 1. The installer of Slackware 14.2 does not support NVMe boot devices (the new type Techrights of SSD hard drives with a M.2 PCI-express interface) 2. The Slackware 14.2 installer lacks network capability on this new hardware, so I Slackware would have to perform a local install Ktown (KDE packages) LQWiki Slackware FAQ I could spend a USB stick, putting the Slackware 14.2 DVD ISO on it, but then I still LQWiki Slackware links would have to patch the installer and I would not have a network connection after Multilib stuff reboot. Considering the fact that slackware-current’s kernel works much better and My Wiki NVMe support was added to the -current installer recently, I decided on a different My slackstuff approach. My tweets Robby’s place I used a slackware-current based liveslak to setup the computer with Slackware 14.2 Slackware Documentation and then added a 4.9 kernel using the configfile for this kernel as found in slackware- Project current. Slackware Linux Slackware Linux Essentials Steps taken: Slackware RSS feeds Willy Sudiarto’s SlackBlogs Obtain a recent ISO of the Slackware Live Edition which is based on slackware- slackbuilds.org current (for instance, the 2.7 GB bleeding edge version or else the 700 MB XFCE Calendar based edition) Write the ISO to a USB stick and boot liveslak. Now you have a proper graphical August 2017 Or you can donate bitcoin: environment where you can query Google/DuckDuckGo and download anything you M T W T F S S need. 1 2 3 4 5 6 We can not use the “setup2hd” of liveslak because that will install slackware-current 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 and I want 14.2. So, download the smallest installer we can get: slackware64- 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 current-mini-install.iso which contains just the kernel and the installer (no 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 packages) and is slightly more than 100 MB in size: 28 29 30 31 # wget http://bear.alienbase.nl/mirrors/slackware/slackware64-current- « Jul iso/slackware64-current-mini-install.iso Download my “extract_initramfs.sh” script which makes it easier to extract the Alien's Slackware initrd.gz file containing the installer: packages # wget http://www.slackware.com/~alien/tools/extract_initramfs.sh Thu, 10 Aug 2017 05:46:04 Partition the SSD drive. The M.2 interface results in a character device /dev/nvme0 GMT and a namespace block device /dev/nvme0n1. The first partition on this device openjdk7: updated to 7u151_b01 using the icedtea-2.6.11 Thanks to TekLinks in will be called /dev/nvme0n1p1. The installer in Slackware 14.2 can not handle this framework. These are security updates. Install either Birmingham, AL, for providing new namespacing format. The one in -current can. openjre/openjre7, or colocation and bandwidth. This is a UEFI computer, and I want Slackware to use this. That requires a FAT openjdk/openjdk7, but not both. partition which will be used as the EFI system partition. Slackware will mount this Optionally you can install icedtea- web for Java applet support in Page Rank partition at /boot/efi. I created a 100 MB partition of type EF00 (EFI system) and your mozilla-compatible browser. formatted this with: Wed, 9 Aug 2017 15:43:33 # mkdosfs -F32 -s 2 -n “EFI” /dev/nvme0n1p1 GMT clamav: updated to 0.99.2. The remainder of the disk is partitioned with swap (yes even with 64 GB of RAM it is chromium-pepperflash-plugin: Fame still a good idea to add some swap space), and additional partitions are created for updated to 26.0.0.151. /, /boot, /var, /tmp and /home . flashplayer-plugin: updated to 26.0.0.151. See Extract the installer from this mini ISO into a new directory “/root/initrd64-current“: https://helpx.adobe.com/security/products/flash- # mount -o loop slackware64-current-mini-install.iso /mnt/tmp player/apsb17-23.html # sh extract_initramfs.sh /mnt/tmp/isolinux/initrd.img /root/initrd64-current Alien's unofficial Get the installer running in the terminal while we are still in a liveslak graphical KDE Slackware Desktop Environment: packages # mount -o bind /dev /root/initrd64-current/dev Tue, 25 Jul 2017 19:37:24 # mount -o bind /proc /root/initrd64-current/proc GMT Recent posts # mount -o bind /sys /root/initrd64-current/sys current/latest: the following packages that are part of KDE Build box: step 1, install # chroot /root/initrd64-current 5_17.07, both 33bit and 64bit, Slackware Inside this chroot-ed installer environment, run the ‘setup‘ command and proceed as have been recompiled against the New server arrived in the post new imagemagick version update usual with the installation of Slackware64 14.2 from a network server. The liveslak in slackware-current: OpenJDK7 and Flash Player deps:dvdauthor kde/applications- security updates (Aug ’17) has already taken care of the network connectivity. I have NFS and HTTP servers at extra:digikam Pale Moon update fixes high home, providing package trees but I pick NFS because that is much faster. I pointed Sun, 23 Jul 2017 08:37:59 CPU usage for HD video the installer to a Slackware64-14.2 package source and did a full install (first time GMT playback ever that I installed the Emacs package, go figure). current/latest: the following New build server was ordered packages that are part of KDE At the end of the installation, do note yet exit! Instead, run “chroot /mnt” to enter 5_17.07, both 33bit and 64bit, the freshly installed system. Configure slackpkg with a suitable mirror, then run: have been recompiled to Recent comments compensate for recent # slackpkg upgrade-all cwizardone on Build box: step incompatible library updates in 1, install Slackware This will install all the latest patches including the latest kernel. slackware-current: Finally, blacklist the kernel-generic and kernel-modules so that slackpkg will never kde4:libkexiv2_4,kfilemetadata cwizardone on Build box: step frameworks:kfilemetadata5 1, install Slackware replace our kernel accidentally. applications:libkexiv2,gwenview,kde- Cooper on July 17 updates – Create an initrd (the /usr/share/mkinitrd/mkinitrd_command_generator.sh script will runtime,okular applications- Plasma 5, Live ISOS and more extra:digikam,krita help you finding the correct parameters) and copy the generic kernel and this initrd BrianA_MN on Build box: step 1, install Slackware to the EFI partition. This is the elilo.conf file I ended up with: Alien's multilib Alexander on Build box: step 1, # cat /boot/efi/EFI/Slackware/elilo.conf packages install Slackware chooser=simple Thu, 17 Aug 2017 05:57:38 delay=50 GMT current/gcc-7.2.0_multilib- timeout=50 x86_64-1alien.txz: Upgraded. default=slackware142 current/gcc-brig-7.2.0_multilib- x86_64-1alien.txz: Upgraded. image=vmlinuz current/gcc-g++-7.2.0_multilib- label=huge142 x86_64-1alien.txz: Upgraded. current/gcc-gfortran- read-only 7.2.0_multilib-x86_64-1alien.txz: append="root=/dev/nvme0n1p7 vga=normal ro" Upgraded. current/gcc-gnat- 7.2.0_multilib-x86_64-1alien.txz: image=vmlinuz-generic-4.4.75 Rebuilt. current/gcc-go- label=slackware142 7.2.0_multilib-x86_64-1alien.txz: initrd=initrd_4.4.75.gz Upgraded. current/gcc-objc- 7.2.0_multilib-x86_64-1alien.txz: read-only Upgraded. append="root=/dev/nvme0n1p7 vga=normal ro" Sat, 12 Aug 2017 11:38:28 Now that the Slackware 14.2 installation is complete we have to ensure that we add GMT current/slackware64-compat32: a working kernel to it. I want to use the kernel as found in slackware-current Refreshed the *compat32 because I know the 4.9.x series is good (liveslak proved that) and because packages. slackware-current contains a kernel config that I can just re-use. Download the kernel source, and the kernel packaging scripts so that we can compile a kernel and Slackware64- current its modules manually but still can wrap the results in package format and install slackware64 current changes those. Warning – when you try this at home, the actual kernel version may have for Thu, 17 Aug 2017 moved beyond the “4.9.44” which I use in the example below. Just substitute the 05:36:28 GMT August 17, 2017 a/kernel-generic-4.9.44-x86_64- actual version instead: 1.txz: Upgraded. a/kernel-huge- # CWD=$(pwd) 4.9.44-x86_64-1.txz: Upgraded. # lftp -c “open http://slackware.osuosl.org/slackware64-current/source; mirror k” a/kernel-modules-4.9.44-x86_64- 1.txz: Upgraded. d/kernel- # cd k/ headers-4.9.44-x86-1.txz: # tar -C /usr/src -xf linux-4.9.44.tar.xz Upgraded. k/kernel-source- 4.9.44-noarch-1.txz: Upgraded. # cp config-x86_64/config-generic-4.9.44.x64 /usr/src/linux-4.9.44/.config xap/mozilla-thunderbird-52.3.0- Now we can compile that kernel (yes I compile kernels as root): x86_64-1.txz: Upgraded. isolinux/initrd.img: Rebuilt. # cd /usr/src/linux-4.9.44 kernels/*: Upgraded. usb-and- # make oldconfig pxe-installers/usbboot.img: Rebuilt. # make -j 15 all # make install Meta Now that the kernel is installed as /boot/bzimage and the modules as Log in /lib/modules/4.9.44 we use the Slackware packaging scripts to create two packages: Entries RSS # cd $CWD/k/packaging-x86_64/kernel-generic Comments RSS # ./kernel-generic.SlackBuild WordPress.org # cd $CWD/k/packaging-x86_64/kernel-modules # ./kernel-modules.SlackBuild The two packages in /tmp can then be installed using “installpkg”. Do not use “upgradepkg” with your kernels – you will want to keep at least one previous kernel. The kernel-modules package will essentialy overwrite what’s in /lib/modules/4.9.44 but now with a package, we can control it through the package manager if needed. The kernel-generic package will have installed the new kernel as /boot/vmlinuz- generic-4.9.44. Copy that kernel to the EFI partition, and create a new initrd in the same location to match the kernel: # cp /boot/vmlinuz-generic-4.9.44 /boot/efi/EFI/Slackware/ # $(/usr/share/mkinitrd/mkinitrd_command_generator.sh -k 4.9.44 -r -a “-o /boot/efi/EFI/Slackware/initrd_4.9.44.gz”) Add a section for the new kernel to elilo.conf. You can just copy the existing section for “label=slackware142” and change the version numbers. Make sure that the “default” keyword has this new label as its value. We want the new kernel to boot by default. Exit the installed system’s chroot: # exit Then exit the installer’s chroot: # exit We are almost done. Unfortunately the eliloconfig of Slackware 14.2 did not add a Slackware entry to the computer’s EFI boot menu. So now that we are back in liveslak we need to fix this omission using the eliloconfig of slackware-current which is part of our liveslak: # eliloconfig /setup2hd /dev/nvme0n1p7 This assumes the installed system is mounted under /setup2hd and the root partition is /dev/nvme0n1p7 . Change the parameters to match your situation. This time you will see that the Slackware entry is being created. Reboot the system. Have fun!

If I have omitted anything or steps are unclear, let me know. Now that I have Slackware on it, I can start thinking of how to add a virtualization solution. Either use my old scripts that wrap qemu and are very convenient and versatile, or go for qemu with libvirt and manage my virtual machines with virt-manager. The possibilities are endless. But first I need to get on with virtualizing my current server’s OS… its LAN services must stay operational but then in a VM on the new hardware.

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Posted: 21 August, 2017 in Hardware, Me, Slackware.

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Comments

Comment from Jen Posted: August 21, 2017 at 23:00

There was some issue with the Ryzen cpu and Linux. Not sure if you’re one of the ones affected, but: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php? page=news_item&px=Ryzen-Segv-Response

So the segfaults you have might not be video card related.

Comment from alienbob Posted: August 21, 2017 at 23:10

The segfaults happen during parallel compilation tasks where the CPU is stressed. I compiled the linux kernel twice in a row – on 15 of its 16 cores, and that took 7.5 minutes both times, without any issue or error. The issue seems to affect older batches of Ryzen, perhaps I have one that’s new enough.

Comment from cwizardone Posted: August 22, 2017 at 00:26

Just yesterday, Sunday, my time, I drove to the nearest large computer store and bought a Asus Prime B350-Plus motherboard, a Ryzen 5 1400 CPU and 16 gigs of RAM. Put my “old” Nvidia GT-730 video card in it and attached my existing SSD which had both winXp and Slackware64-current on it. Booted right up into Slackware. No fuss, no muss. It won’t boot winXp, but I expected that. In honor of the new hardware, this morning I did a fresh install of Slackware64-current, added your multilib files and several others and it has been off to the races. I re-partitioned the SSD, putting a 100 meg EFI partition on it, four gigs for a swap file (not sure that is really needed anymore) about a 50 gig boot/system directory and the rest is /home. So far, so good. The actuall “fresh” install took less than twenty minutes. The rest of the time was installing and tweaking this and that. As I said, so far, so good. No surprises. I’m looking for information on editing the elilo.conf file. I would like to see a graphic come up on the screen a la lilo.conf. That can wait.

Comment from Helios Posted: August 22, 2017 at 08:31

For many years, when I installed slackware on a new computer, I had already slackware(64)-current installed and working on some other computer. I installed then on the new computer from a DVD built from the slackware(64)-current tree. I realize that probably in many cases it had been impossible to install from the official slackware DVDs.

But generally newcomers will know only the official distribution. Is not it a problem ?

Comment from alienbob Posted: August 22, 2017 at 08:38

Hi Helios. No, I do not think that is a problem. Newcomers to Slackware should work with the stable release and not try to mess with -current. If they own hardware which does not work with Slackware, then there’s the LQ forum for questions and answers. Also, I created liveslak so that you can easily test new hardware for compatibility with Slackware 14.2 and -current. Just boot the Live ISO and see what works (or not).

Comment from D.L.C. Burggraaff Posted: August 22, 2017 at 11:31

9 out of 10 cases I just restore on the new computer a backup of the install on the old one. There are some minor things to be taken care of — /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules, /etc/fstab and /etc/hosts come to mind — but that is all.

Comment from Alexander Posted: August 22, 2017 at 16:10

14.2 almost works with NVMe. The installer simply doesn’t search for a EFI partition on an NVMe disk. This can be fixed by a minor modification of the script /usr/lib/setup/SeTEFI in initrd.img inside usbboot.img. Details (obvious) are in this post: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/requests-for-current- 20151216-a-4175561577/page60.html#post5538267

In this way I already installed 14.2 on 3 computers with NVMe SSDs.

Comment from BrianA_MN Posted: August 22, 2017 at 16:39

Congrats Eric on the new hardware and also Thank you for this detailed writeup. I plan to print it out for my next hardware upgrade of both laptop and desktop. Cheers

Comment from cwizardone Posted: August 23, 2017 at 10:44

The only problem I’ve had with the new Ryzen chip, so far, is VirtualBox. The most recent version, doesn’t see the USB ports…. Well, I should say VB as host sees them, but the “guest” does not. Doesn’t matter switch way I set the preferences. Perhaps, Oracle has a new version in the wings.

Comment from cwizardone Posted: August 23, 2017 at 18:37

Well, the problem with VirtualBox and USB ports is not the fault of the CPU or VirtualBox. Turns out, “….all USB devices connected to the USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 ports are controlled by the xHCI controller.” And, according to Intel, “…the Intel xHCI USB driver is not supported on Windows XP or Windows Vista,” and Xp is what is running as a VirtualBox guest. Had I known that I would have shopped for a different motherboard….. OTOH, I wouldn’t be surprised if USB support is the same on all recent motherboards. Write a comment

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