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Remastering Debian 10 with Refracta snapshot & installer

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Len E.
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Remastering Debian 10 with Refracta snapshot & installer

#1 Post by Len E. »

(Background: In this category, as described in a post entitled
"Remastering Debian 10 with remastersys/respin + Calamares”,
a dead-end has been reached with problems with shutdown, reboot
and logout from the primary desktop environment, LXDE or XFCE,
and the secondary environments, e16 and icewm. Other posts in
this category mentioned the possible viability of the Refracta software
as an alternative remastering platform, so the solution described
herein has evolved with Refracta, and has been heavily focused on
avoiding the pitfalls encountered with remastersys/respin and
Calamares”.)

I have belatedly realized that Calamares is and has been the default
installer for all Debian 10 live .iso’s. Given its relative newness,
I’ve started this development with the debian-10.8.0-xfce-cd-1
.iso which uses the traditional standard installer, and the xfce
default desktop. (The other standard desktops are optional).

The Refracta software is downloadable from SourceForge in the
form of 4 .deb packages, refractasnapshot-base, refractasnapshot-gui,
refractainstaller-base, and refractainstaller-gui.

I found that when trying to install the first package on Debian 10 with
gdebi, 49 packages would be removed, and 27 installed. Given the
history of Refracta with Devuan, a distro devoid of systemd, I concluded
that, like remastersys/respin, Refracta needs the hybrid sysvinit/systemd
arrangement used by MX19 and Debian 9.

Accordingly, I installed the MX19 packages (as was done with remastersys/
respin) to implement the hybrid sysvinit/systemd arrangement.

SYSVINIT/SYSTEMD HYBRID ENVIRONMENT
The following modules were collected in a
MX19.3sysvinit directory:

libnss-systemd_1%3a241-7~deb10u5+mx19_i386.deb
libpam-systemd_1%3a241-7~deb10u5+mx19_i386.deb
libsystemd0_1%3a241-7~deb10u5+mx19_i386.deb
systemd_1%3a241-7~deb10u5+mx19_i386.deb
systemd-shim_10-4_i386.deb
systemd-sysv_1%3a241-7~deb10u5+mx19_i386.deb
sysvinit-core_2.93-8_i386.deb

The first 6 packages were downloaded on a MX19 test
installation. The last package is a standard Debian 10
.deb file, but included here for installation purposes.

The following installation sequence was used:

-from the MX19.3sysvinit directory,

sudo dpkg -i libpam-systemd*.deb libsystemd0*.deb systemd_1*.deb
systemd-sysv*.deb libnss-systemd*.deb

-with synaptic, install initscripts and its 4 dependencies, insserv,
startpar, sysv-rc, psmisc, and additionally, cgmanager, dbus-x11
and bootlogd.

-from MX19.3sysvinit directory,
sudo dpkg --auto-deconfigure -i sysvinit-core*.deb systemd-shim*.deb

-reboot

********************************************************
Installation of the 4 Refracta packages with gdebi was then uneventful.

In order, refractasnapshot-base installed 18 packages in total with no
removals, refractasnapshot-gui installed with 1 dependency,
refractainstaller-base and refractainstaller-gui installed with no dependencies.

************************************************************
Alternative Desktop Environment Installation

My favourite alternative DE is e16, which is faithfully maintained by Kim
Woelders. I’ve used it for years, with periodic advice from Kim.

For illustrative purposes, I’ll describe the implementation of icewm herein,
because it also works well, and is easily implemented.

-after installation from synaptic, the directory /etc/X11/icewm is created,
and should have the following minimal “startup” file created in it:
******************************************************
#!/bin/bash

# polkit authentication
/usr/lib/policykit-1-gnome/polkit-gnome-authentication-agent-1 &
********************************************************
The file should be made executable, i.e. sudo chmod 755 startup

-the other requirement for polkit authentication is to change the last
statement in the /etc/xdg/autostart/polkit-gnome-authentication-agent-1.desktop
file from OnlyShowIn=XFCE;Unity;X-Cinnamon;
to NotShowIn=TDE; (active for any desktop except TDE)
(I use the Trinity desktop designation, TDE, for this purpose because I never
use the Trinity desktop).
*********************************************************
To support proper shutdown/reboot/logout behaviour, the /etc/sudoers
file needs the following statements added; because positioning in the sudoers
file is important, they MUST be inserted immediately after the %sudo statement:
# Allow members of group staff to execute shutdown/reboot/poweroff without a password
%staff ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: /sbin/shutdown -h 0
%staff ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: /sbin/reboot
%staff ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: /sbin/poweroff

-users should be members of the staff group

******************************************************************
Refracta execution

-The partition containing the original distro being remastered should be at least
3 times the anticipated size of the completed customization. Refractasnapshot
needs working space at least twice as large as the completed original.

Len E.

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Re: Remastering Debian 10 with Refracta snapshot & installer

#2 Post by sunrat »

Looks like the packages you installed are for i386. Is this guide is only for 32 bit?
There's also a howto in this section for adding MX repos and pinning them so only specified packages are installed. MX Snapshot can be used with Debian. I tested it and reported about it in that same thread. YMMV.
“ computer users can be divided into 2 categories:
Those who have lost data
...and those who have not lost data YET ”
Remember to BACKUP!

Len E.
Posts: 29
Joined: 2018-02-12 18:48
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Remastering Debian 10 with Refracta snapshot & installer

#3 Post by Len E. »

Hi Sunrat:

I work exclusively with 32-bit software on old equipment, so I don't
know what would happen with 64-bit software. My guess is, and
it's only a guess, that things would work o.k. in 64-bit as well, given
that 64-bit is much more mainstream, and presumably better
maintained these days.

I only glanced at the discussion about MX-Snapshot in the
"Adding MX Linux tools to Debian" post, and didn't understand
that you've absolutely nailed-down a solution in that regard.

I'll have a closer look at what you did.
Thanks for the heads-up !

Len E.

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Re: Remastering Debian 10 with Refracta snapshot & installer

#4 Post by sunrat »

Len E. wrote:I only glanced at the discussion about MX-Snapshot in the
"Adding MX Linux tools to Debian" post, and didn't understand
that you've absolutely nailed-down a solution in that regard.
I wouldn't say it's "absolutely nailed-down". I did it as a proof-of-concept and moved on, planning to investigate Debian live-build instead sometime.
And I'm not trying to dissuade you from Refracta, certainly it could work fine. More to point out a simple way to add MX packages by adding the repo as in that other tips post. Make sure the repo is pinned as explained in that post to prevent other MX packages replacing Debian packages.
Another tip - If you add the repo, you can also use apt install ./<package.deb> for local packages and apt will resolve dependencies if online, rather than dpkg -i with which you must manually install dependencies.
“ computer users can be divided into 2 categories:
Those who have lost data
...and those who have not lost data YET ”
Remember to BACKUP!

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