Okay, new stuff for refractasnapshot and installer:
New clean install of devuan, minus first round cut of Libre and it's mountainous bloated buggy self. Did not remove any of the packages now labeled as autoremovable yet, I did remove through synaptic the not-installed-residual-config packages, but nothing in the autoremovable list. I did bleachbit the .mo translations, and manually deleted all the /usr/share/doc/ files. Slowly doing another run at a smaller system but documenting and testing more this time. I kept lists of removed packages etc. Added Refracta stuff and dependencies including the new sysvinit-core package.
The synaptic issue I posted about in another thread, is an issue with synaptic or devuan, has it from the start on a new install, so it isn't anything I did.
Using Installer version 9.1.9, using snapshot 9.3.4+10.0.0beta03, and the new live-config-refracta 0.0.3
Added lines discussed in my other post into Refractasnapshot-gui , adding pluma to default list of editors, worked great, no issues!
Did a snapshot run, using xz with -Xbcj x86, snapshot.conf at defaults except for uncommenting line that excludes all of /var/log/*
So far most everything works swimmingly in the resulting installed system, no issues with pkexec or other permissions, round two I will autoremove the rest of Libre dependencies that synaptic
thinks aren't needed anywhere else.
Noticed for first time, that changes made while running the livecd, persist to the installed system, didn't ever even think about that before, I just assumed that it was copying the unmodified system on the CD. Kinda cool, opens up all kinds of questions and possibilities. But I wonder since that's the case, assuming for the moment you want a fresh clean install without excess files generated during the live environment, if the installer-exclude file doesn't need to be expanded to cover that? More on that subject here in a sec, but let me get to a couple simple things first.
The snapshot run didn't exclude a couple of things but it tried to:
- Code:
- /var/cache/debconf/*~old
did not exclude the old debconf files, there's only a couple but one is around 3.7 mb in size. Reason seems the actual files have a dash instead of the wavy thingy ( i.e. "templates.dat-old" ), don't know if the wavy thingy is used on other filesystems or representing a variable? Anyhoo, I tried this:
- Code:
- /var/cache/debconf/*.dat-old
and that worked perfectly, I applied it while the livecd was running to the
installer.excludes list instead of snapshot.excludes list as it was too late to go back and change the snapshot itself. But seems like it would work the same using it from the get-go in the snapshot excludes. Wondering I could have just done:
- Code:
- /var/cache/debconf/*old
??
The other one is similar,
- Code:
- /var/lib/dpkg/*~old
, the files on my system use a dash here again, and these have no dot or suffix, "diversions-old" etc., haven't tested a fix for this one yet, would this work :
- Code:
- /var/lib/dpkg/*-old
?
I also tried a couple of extra runs with some changes to installer.excludes list, to absolutely get rid of persisting user and root configs and anything generated in the home files during live-session. I ran the installer with these extra lines in installer.excludes list :
- Code:
- /root/.config/*
- /root/.dbus/session-bus/*
- /home/*/.[a-z,A-Z,0-9]*
- /home/*/[a-z,A-Z,0-9]*
This wiped out everything in the /home/(user)/ folder, I inspected the installed system before I logged out of the live session, there was nothing in /home/(user)/ but the installer error log, no default folders or hidden files.
The system, at least with Mate, autogenerates on first boot/login ,new default folders in home, "Documents, Downloads" etc. It also generated new .config folders and sub-folders, .gvfs, .gconf, .cache etc. Also new .Iceauthority, .xauthority, .xsession-errors. It generated new /.dbus/session-bus files in both root and user's home with the new correct machine ID.
It emulated adduser in every respect except for adding the etc/skel files, there's only 3 hidden files in that folder on this system, .bashrc , .profile, and .bash_logout, but if I recall correctly they really need to be added to users home.
If that can be accomplished automatically then the result is a perfect clean new user account 
.
Maybe something late in the script that copies the contents of etc/skel to home at the same time it's copying the installer-errors log there?
I don't know yet if you can exclude all of home like that in snapshot.excludes, wonder if the livecd environment will autogenerate the user stuff too?
I also don't know if other DE's and systems will autospawn all that stuff on first boot like this one will, might not work for some. But I would think that every system would have some way of generating new user home data wouldn't it?
The error log complained :
sed: can't read /target/home/****/.su-to-rootrc: No such file or directory
sed: can't read /target/home/****/.*/share/config/*desurc: No such file or directory
But that's KDE stuff, not needed here at least, looks like used if sudo is default. Maybe KDE re-spawns that on first boot if no folders or files are in home? Or it could be even added to etc/skel just in case?
It also said:
grep: /target/home/****/.config: No such file or directory
grep: /target/home/****/.local: No such file or directory
And that's from these lines I think? :
- Code:
# do username
if [ -z "$newname" ]; then
newname=$oldname
fi
if [ "$oldname" != "$newname" ]; then
chroot /target usermod -l $newname $oldname ; check_exit
chroot /target groupmod -n $newname $oldname ; check_exit
chroot /target usermod -d /home/$newname -m $newname ; check_exit
for i in $(grep -r "/home/$oldname" /target/home/$newname/.config | awk -F":" '{ print $1 }'); do
sed -i "s/\/home\/$oldname/\/home\/$newname/g" "$i"
done
for i in $(grep -r "/home/$oldname" /target/home/$newname/.local | awk -F":" '{ print $1 }'); do
sed -i "s/\/home\/$oldname/\/home\/$newname/g" "$i"
done
fi
But there was no .local or .config folders to be had since they were excluded, but nevertheless home is correctly named and functional, and the re-spawned folders are as they should be and owned by the user. This part is a little confusing for me.