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installer confusion

Fri Dec 11, 2015 3:04 am

jessie-sysv-amd64-20151129_1536.iso
installer dialog presents 3 checkboxes. I don't exactly recall the wording, but these 2 seemed mutually exclusive:
use sudo by default for user
use sudo only for shutdown

another point of feedback:
"you didn't choose a swap partition. installer will now exit" gave me a WTF moment.
Earlier similar dialog (partition UUIDs) invited leaving the dialog open "you may need it later".
First run, it didn't sink in that in the swap dialog ima s'posed ta SELECT a line item
(didn't sink in probably b/c a single entry, a line listing the one available partition, was displayed)

Installed to a new-to-me pc, so far I've been unable to achieve a successful linux boot (not specific to refracta).
The mobo seems very linux-UNfriendly.
I've added rootdelay=9999 to the grub boot line & although I've waited as long as 1400seconds during various attempts
the init is experiencing an interminable delay awaiting the mobo to enumerate all the devices
(or, /scripts/local-block... is buggy, or is stuck in a loop ~~ it "finds" the attached USB optical mouse dozens of times /input/input47 48 49 ...and counting)

Re: installer confusion

Fri Dec 11, 2015 3:19 am

sudo by default refers to the ubuntu way, where the user can do all admin tasks with sudo
sudo for shutdown means user can reboot, shutdown, suspend and hibernate (I think) but not anything else.

It's not actually a checkbox. It's a form with checkbox fields. Is it possible to check more than one box? I never tried that. That might be bad.

The swap window does say "Select a partition for swap." and if you don't choose one, you should get a choice to continue and use a swapfile instead or exit.

What motherboard did you get? I'll make sure I stay away from it.

Re: installer confusion

Fri Dec 11, 2015 8:56 am

They acted like independent checkboxes, not "a set of radio buttons", which is the point of confusion (seemed those SHOULD be mutually-exclusive choices).
FWIW, I ticked the first and the third boxes.

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugrepo ... bug=712999
sounds identical to what I encountered. Live works fine, but post-install... fall down, go boom.
initramfs-tools in jessie is v1.12 though (supposedly fixed that reported problem), and...

so far, the only successful install from the without-systemd.org list has been "trios-uefi-test1-amd64.iso"
(debian kernel 3.16.7-ckt11-1+deb8u4 + OpenRC + initramfs-tools v1.12 from jessie repo)
Last edited by thwak on Sun Dec 13, 2015 6:56 am, edited 1 time in total.

Re: installer confusion

Fri Dec 11, 2015 11:19 am

Maybe on the wrong track but.. it's worth checking if the boot problem might be udev-related. There must be a reason why it works live and a trios installation boots.

thwak, if you still have the problematic refracta installed can you please boot a live system and let us know if refracta's /dev has any static device nodes present?

If exegnu64 works, it might be relevant that this is included in it's installer (which is inspired by, similar to but simpler with less options than refractainstaller):

Code:
# make some basic entries in /target/dev so the system can boot properly before udev starts
# rsync excluded /dev/*

mknod -m 622 /target/dev/console c 5 1
mknod -m 666 /target/dev/null c 1 3
mknod -m 666 /target/dev/zero c 1 5
mknod -m 666 /target/dev/ptmx c 5 2
mknod -m 666 /target/dev/tty c 5 0
mknod -m 444 /target/dev/random c 1 8
mknod -m 444 /target/dev/urandom c 1 9
chown -v root:tty /target/dev/{console,ptmx,tty}

ln -sv /proc/self/fd /target/dev/fd
ln -sv /proc/self/fd/0 /target/dev/stdin
ln -sv /proc/self/fd/1 /target/dev/stdout
ln -sv /proc/self/fd/2 /target/dev/stderr
ln -sv /proc/kcore /target/dev/core
ln -sv /run/shm /target/dev/shm
mkdir -v /target/dev/pts


You could try that from a live session, see if it makes any difference.

Other than that, you could try compiling 4.2 or 4.3 kernel debs (time consuming but mostly unattended, if you use an existing .config). For a quick test, siduction kernel (but not headers) installs in jessie.

Have to look at "installer confusion" separately.. thwak is right that more than one sudo checkbox can be ticked.

Re: installer confusion

Fri Dec 11, 2015 11:55 am

I don't think there's a way to make the buttons act like radio buttons. What you did should not break anything. First sudo button (allow sudo) adds the user to the sudo group.
Second button (sudo default) adds user to sudo group and changes the sudo-mode setting in ~/.gconf/apps/gksu/%gconf.xml
Third one (sudo shutdown) adds a file under etc/sudoers.d giving user shutdown/reboot with sudo.

So, you should be safe. If you removed the user from the sudo group, the user could still use sudo to shutdown/reboot. If instead, you removed the file under sudoers.d, it wouldn't change anything - user could still use sudo for all commands, due to membership in sudo group.

If you had chosen the second button, it would affect whether you use the root password or the user password when a window pops up asking for a password.

Edit: Wow, two of us here at the same time. That's rare.
I didn't mention all the files that get edited for sudo as default. Here is that section of code. The sed lines show what was changed.
Code:
   if [ -f /target/home/"$newusername"/.gconf/apps/gksu/%gconf.xml ]; then
   sed -i '/sudo-mode/s/true/false/' /target/home/"$newusername"/.gconf/apps/gksu/%gconf.xml
   fi

   sed -i 's/SU_TO_ROOT_SU=sudo/SU_TO_ROOT_SU=su/' /target/home/$newusername/.su-to-rootrc
   # detects .kde/ .kde4/ .trinity/ (kdesurc or tdesurc)
   for file in /target/home/$newusername/.*/share/config/*desurc ; do
   sed -i 's/super-user-command=sudo/super-user-command=su/' $file
   done

Re: installer confusion

Fri Dec 11, 2015 12:02 pm

RE refractainstaller sudo configs:

Permit sudo for new user : means only that user will be added to sudo group and that group can use sudo globally with user's password.

Use sudo as default for new user : means ubuntu-style global sudo without password

Use sudo only for shutdown : means no-password sudo for (only) /usr/sbin/pm-suspend, /usr/sbin/pm-hibernate, /sbin/halt, /sbin/reboot. A DM like lightdm or TDM normally handles user shutdown permissions. A WM like openbox may not, then you must use sudo.

It should not matter if more than one box is ticked. For example, you might want shutdown without password but require one for anything else. Global no-password sudo overrides the others anyway (provided user is in sudo group)

EDIT sorry fsr, we posted at the same time! Hope that explains it.

Re: installer confusion

Sat Dec 12, 2015 10:02 am

Thanks for explaining how the sudo overrides work/interact & for suggesting to check udev.
That (udev) probably was the immediate problem. After disabling the onboard wifi device in bios (grrr, would sworn I had already done so) the boot problem is resolved.
Tonight I was able to successfully install and boot from hdd each of these: refracta, antix15, MX linux14, TRIOS, and exegnu64_devuan_20150914.iso

I noticed this week that Makulu and proxmox latest release have succumbed to systemd... and read that the Porteus dev intends to abandon slackware in favor of arch.
Yeah, I also read about the debian-live dustup. FYI, antiX and MX are using this, instead:
https://github.com/antiX-Linux/Build-iso
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