Topic by Ethin 2019-02-17 01:07:56 (edited by Ethin 2019-06-05 23:08:40)

  • Ethin
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The FreeOS project is a project to develop a stable, extensible, useful Arch Linux installation system that 'just works'. The FreeOS project is ready to help you get Arch Linux installed onto your system. The installer guides you through the process, giving you several opportunities to tailor things to your liking before you even boot into the installed OS.
Features:

  • Detects whether you are on an EFI or BIOS system and acts accordingly

  • Automatically partitions disk for you

  • Options to select which type of file system to install to the root partition

  • Installs a base system with some extra tools to help diagnose network issues as well as allowing for wifi connections in the new system

  • Allows installation of additional packages upon user request

  • configures a desktop environment of the users' choice

  • configures a console screen reader of the users' choice (disabling desktop screen reader and display manager)

  • Allows you to set other options during installation, such as time zone, whether you want to enable NTP, whether you want a hostname or not, and whether you want microcode updates.

IF you've ever wanted a hassle-free Arch installation, give FreeOS a try.
Warning:
This ISO is not set up at the moment for duel-boot scenarios. Do not run this ISO on a computer with an existing OS unless you are sure; you will lose everything!
Getting the ISO:
The ISO can be downloaded by clicking this link.
Booting the ISO:
To boot the ISO, use a VM or boot it with physical hardware. The ISO will copy itself into memory, so you'll need (approximately) twice the amount of memory of the size of the ISO. Once the ISO has started, it will begin speaking with Fenrir. The basic speakup commands (caps+u, caps+o, caps+j, caps+k, ...) work to navigate the screen. Once the ISO has fully booted, you may remove your CD/USB drive.
Starting the installation:
To start the installation, simply type 'setup'. (If you want the latest development files, which may not be stable, type 'setup -d'.) This will download the latest files (development or stable) and immediately start the installation process.
Reporting issues:
Please report issues on the github repository, which is linked below. This is to ensure that we can keep track of all issues and fix them when we receive them, rather than the next time we happen to check the forum.
Developer listing:
The developers that are currently working on the project (as of the time of this edit) are:

  • Me

  • Ironcross32

  • Garrettturner

Contributing:
The project is fully open-source. The git hub repository is at https://github.com/ethindp/arch-installer. The project is licensed under GPL-2.0 and is written in Python 3 (though there are shell components). We have a few general rules as of now:

  • Use the dev branch for development/unstable additions. Use the master branch once you have confirmed that unstable additions are stable. Do not mix these two!

  • Please perform as much quality and assurance (QA) testing as you can before it is committed into master.

  • Please follow the PEP8 style guide. When you make changes, do your best to lint the files once you have added/modified python files. (Warnings like C0301 (line too long) can most likely be ignored.)

Notice:
This is late alpha software. While we have performed extensive testing to ensure the stability of the installation system, we cannot guarantee 100-percent stability, nor can we guarantee 100-percent success rates. There is NO warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
Enjoy the installation process, and I hope it works for you! smile

"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!]: 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out ?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."    — Charles Babbage.
My Github

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Reply by jack 2019-02-17 02:08:12

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Do you have a plan to expand into the Raspberry Pi installation that Jenux offered/possibly merge the two and iron out the kinks experienced in the initial autobuild? Excellent approach by the way for the Arch installation.

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Reply by Ethin 2019-02-17 02:18:47

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@2, perhaps. I don't know how to flash SD Cars that will boot on the Pi, but I'll look into it.

"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!]: 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out ?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."    — Charles Babbage.
My Github

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Reply by GrannyCheeseWheel 2019-02-17 03:08:23

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Neither do I, never had a pi in my life, though always kinda wanted one.

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Reply by devinprater 2019-02-17 03:30:34

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I'll be getting a Pi around March 13. As an aside, if you need more collaborators, the good people at irc.linux-a11y.org may be able to help a bit. The #a11y channel is most active.

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Reply by Ethin 2019-02-17 03:34:05 (edited by Ethin 2019-02-17 03:36:02)

  • Ethin
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OK. So, I've done some digging. I can add the code in, but I have no way of testing it (unless thee's a way of virtualizing a raspberry pi). (Edit: QEMU can apparently emulate the raspberry pi, but supposedly needs an older version in order for it to work, and you can't update the pi without causing stability issues.) So I'll try it, and put it in the dev branch, but testing it will be tricky. If someone is willing to repeatedly wipe their pi to test the code and report errors and all that, this should become possible. I have a question though: Is it possible to arch-chroot into the pi? I'd love the stage2 installer to be there (or a variant of it at least).

"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!]: 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out ?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."    — Charles Babbage.
My Github

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Reply by jack 2019-02-17 03:35:29

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Well, autobuild isn't even the best system for pi sd cards anyway. Most anyone who hosts pi images, whether that be the Pi foundation, or raspberryvi.org, would host raw .img's with auto-expand scripts. You'd just have to host separate ones for each distribution, similar in part to there being a Kodi distribution, an Alexa rom, and a full Arch distribution in the Jenux autobuild for the pi.

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Reply by Ethin 2019-02-17 03:38:15

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@7, nod. I was also thinking of allowing you to flash other distributions, not just arch, to the pi, right from the installer, but we then would have no installer stage 2 for those, it would just be a flash and done. (Perhaps in the future we could make a stage 2 for the "official" ones, but that's not now.) I'll repost my question i post six that I added while editing it -- is it possible ot arch-chroot into the SD card to modify it?

"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!]: 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out ?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."    — Charles Babbage.
My Github

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Reply by Socheat 2019-02-17 04:34:22

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I would try this, but I don't have a spare computer at the moment. ah well.

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Reply by Ethin 2019-02-17 04:42:34 (edited by Ethin 2019-02-17 04:51:52)

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OK, I've started the pi project, commit f29d3c8 in the dev branch has it. Its in airootfs/root/pi_installer.py. If anyone wants to test it, build the ISO with ./build.sh in the dev branch, boot it up, and run 'setup -p'. (There are prior commits that have it but commit f29d3c8 has the latest linted code.) Note that this doesn't make the image accessible, since I still don't know if you can chroot into the root partition like you can normally since I've never done this before.

"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!]: 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out ?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."    — Charles Babbage.
My Github

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Reply by pauliyobo 2019-02-17 09:13:09

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so it's finally out. congrats.

Paul

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Reply by GrannyCheeseWheel 2019-02-17 10:41:24

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@11 Thanks

@all Do feel free to let us know here your experiences in using the installer. It's already been tested on VM's, so any feedback regarding real hardware would be greatly appreciated. Also, I have used it to install onto my secondary laptop, and the process went smoothly.

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Reply by Ethin 2019-02-17 12:57:15

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Hey all,
currently working on resolving an issue involving the timezone selection. At present, the command it invokes (timedatectl status) fails with the error "Failed to query server: the name org.freedesktop.timedate1 was not provided by any .service files". This (hopefully) should not take long to resolve, though I don't know. So at present, avoid TZ selection until the installation has finished. When its done, you can reboot or set it there and then; to do so, run:
timedatectl set-timezone <timezone>

"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!]: 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out ?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."    — Charles Babbage.
My Github

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Reply by Angel 2019-02-17 15:27:50

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First, congratulations for making your own distro of artch, I will test this one in a VM because my good laptop is in service and I can't spare this one cause I need windows, but aftefr I get it back and if I like the system, I will keep it for sure on this thing.
If you need tests on a real pi and if you tell me step by step how to install, just contact me, most of you know where to find me.
smile
Best regards and keep it up.

I am myself and noone is ever gonna change me, I am the trolling master!

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Reply by Amit 2019-02-17 18:08:27

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Hi,
Congratulations on the release. Are there plans to add multi boot support? and a way in the hard disk section so that it can automatically install itself alongside windows, or not wipe windows if we have to make partitions manually?
Regards,
Amit

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Who prefered to sleep with the light on.
They learnt how to code, devices sure glowed,
and lit the night using python.

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Reply by SLJ 2019-02-17 18:30:08

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Hi.
Congratulations on the release. Sounds cool. I'll follow the topic with interest.

Best regards SLJ.
Feel free to contact me privately if you have something in mind. If you do so, then please send me a mail instead of using the private message on the forum, since I don't check those very often.
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Reply by Ethin 2019-02-17 20:59:33 (edited by Ethin 2019-02-17 21:02:21)

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@14, the steps are:
1. Clone the git repo (https://github.com/ethindp/arch-installer) on an Arch Linux machine.
2. If you don't have the talkingarch-git package, first install the archiso-git AUR package, then cd into the talkingarch-git directory n the git repository and run makepkg -si as an unprivileged user to install it.
3. Run git checkout -b dev origin/dev to switch to the dev branch, which is for unstable/testing development. If it gives a fatal error, try running with git checkout dev origin/dev.
4. type ./build.sh to build the iso.
5. Boot the ISO in a VM or on physical hardware. Ensure your SD Card is plugged into the VM or physical machine.
6. Type 'setup -p'. This tells the setup program that you'd like to flash an SD Card. Follow the instructions it gives there.
Remember though, this is unstable code and I don't know if it works, so don't be surprised if it fails.
@15, multiboot support will be a bit more difficult because the following issue need to be addressed: How do we safely shrink partitions without the possibility of large data loss. (As I understand it, shrinking a partition without shrinking the file system can have massive (and disastrous) consequences.) I'd add some code to do that but at the moment I don't really know where I'd begin without damaging windows or other OSes.

"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!]: 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out ?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."    — Charles Babbage.
My Github

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Reply by potterspotter13 2019-02-17 21:21:38

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I'll definatly be giving this a look.
I'm guessing it's 64 bit only? Also, does it have broadcom drivers installed for wi-fi on macintosh machines and other hardware with broadcom cards?

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Because You can see the world how it really is...
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Reply by Ethin 2019-02-17 21:56:12

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@18, yep, 64-bit only. And no, it doesn't come with Broadcom drivers since their incredibly unstable (or at least they were the last time I tried them on my mac).

"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!]: 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out ?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."    — Charles Babbage.
My Github

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Reply by potterspotter13 2019-02-17 22:43:58

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ok, so my first impressions of this are good, however, I can't find a keymap for the screenreader used in the installer anywhere, could anyone point me at a userguide of some description?
Thanks.

But sometimes the world is better without sight...
Because You can see the world how it really is...
Dark.

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Reply by potterspotter13 2019-02-17 23:19:29

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@ethin:
I sent you an unrelated pm but because of lack of notifications, figured I'd post here.

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Reply by jack 2019-02-17 23:45:53

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The basic speakup commands work during installation.

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Reply by Ethin 2019-02-17 23:51:17

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Yeah, basic speakup commands work. You can find all the keyboard shortcuts and documentation at https://wiki.linux-a11y.org/doku.php?id … er_manual. The fenrir key can either be meta, caps lock, numpad zero, and insert.

"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!]: 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out ?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."    — Charles Babbage.
My Github

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Reply by GrannyCheeseWheel 2019-02-18 00:14:08

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It uses Fenrir which is more feature rich than speakup and written in python. It doesn't embed into the kernel using kernel modules, or get compiled into the kernel. This presents several disadvantages, such as that you don't get boot boot status, but you don't anyway if using a softsynth. The advantages far outweigh the disadvantages though.

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Reply by Ethin 2019-02-18 00:22:46

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@potterspotter13, replied to your PM.

"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!]: 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out ?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."    — Charles Babbage.
My Github

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