More Details about the OS Please

Story: SprezzOS emerges, promising new-school tech with old-school gumptionTotal Replies: 13
Author Content
Jeff91

Feb 02, 2013
2:47 PM EDT
Maybe I just missed a giant section, but your project looks very interesting. I'm wondering about the following:

What package manager are you using?

Do you only provide your own repos or do you pull from other sources as well?

What does the installer look like?

What does the release cycle look like? How long is support provided for?

~Jeff
notbob

Feb 02, 2013
2:53 PM EDT
Me, me!

Do I get extra points for staying awake?
djohnston

Feb 03, 2013
7:38 AM EDT
Well, I am intrigued and installed von Neumann in a VBox VM. Sort of. Here are the steps I took in the partitioner:

(1) Create partition table "m"

(2) Select DOS

(3) Create new partition "n" (selected swap)

(4) Set size to 1024M

(5) mkswap "M"

(6) Make filesystem name="swap"

(7) Create new partition "n" (selected Linux filesystem)

(8) Set partition size as remaining space (100%)

(9) Make filesystem "M" (selected ext3)

(10) Entered filesystem name as "Sprezz"

(11) No matter what filesystem I choose for /, it comes out as ext4.

(12) Mount filesystem "o" (selected /)

(13) Mount target "t" (selected /)

(14) Selected mount option nostrictatime.

(15) Finalize BIOS "#" and installation continues.

Yes, I used a DOS partition table. Anyway, after booting to the hard drive, nothing I write to the file system survives a reboot. Contents of /etc/fstab:

/dev/sda1 none swap

/dev/sda2 / ext4 rw,relatime,data=ordered 0 1

/dev/sr0 /media/cdrom auto noauto,user 0 0

proc /proc proc defaults 0 0

I also have no eth0 device. A first for me for a Debian installation in VBox. It's obviously there during the live session or I wouldn't be able to finish the installation.

Any comments? Am I an ignoramus, or what?
djohnston

Feb 06, 2013
7:32 AM EDT
@Jeff,

It appears Nick is not following up on this. So, I'll volunteer what little I know.

Quoting:What package manager are you using?


apt

Quoting:Do you only provide your own repos or do you pull from other sources as well?


/etc/apt/sources.list shows a mix of official Debian sid and sprezzatech.com unstable. There's nothing in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/.

Quoting:What does the installer look like?


The installer is ncurses based and appears to follow the same routine as a Debian netinstall, minus the component choices. (desktop vs. server, desktop environment, etc.) The partitioner is custom and somewhat of a challenge the first time around.

Quoting:What does the release cycle look like? How long is support provided for?


That I can't answer. What I have installed is 64bit, and is the "von Neumann" edition. Although I have it installed, I can't do more than login and poke around. sudo ifup eth0 throws an error message that /run/network/ifstate does not exist. I can sudo mkdir /run/network, (yes, the directory does not exist), then create and populate the ifstate file, but nothing survives a reboot. Anyway, after creating the ifstate file and rerunning sudo ifup eth0, the error message says "interface eth0 already configured". That's odd, because sudo ifconfig only shows the lo device. And running sudo ifconfig eth0 throws an error message "error fetching interface information: Device not found". Doing sudo chattr +i /run/network/ifstate throws the error "Inappropriate ioctl for device while reading flags on /run/network/ifstate".

Pretty weird for a Debian installation.
Jeff91

Feb 06, 2013
8:56 AM EDT
Alrighty - that description plus the lack of follow up makes it seem like something not worth spending time on.

~Jeff
nickblack

Feb 06, 2013
10:48 AM EDT
Hey there. Sorry about this -- I didn't get any notifications about this post. So I've put up a new installer (the 1.0.4) with a lot more context-sensitive help for growlight. Let me address your questions inline. Thanks for trying it out!
nickblack

Feb 06, 2013
10:52 AM EDT
Package manager: we're an APT-based distro. Currently we're rebuilding about ~2k Debian source packages, fewer than a hundred Ubuntu packages, and about a dozen of our own. You can see the version comparison matrix here: http://sprezzos.com/debversions.html (updated weekly or so).

When you install, you'll have an /etc/apt/sources.list with both the SprezzOS repository and Debian Unstable configured at equal preference levels. Since our rebuilt packages will have a higher debian revision (see deb-version(5)), they'll be considered more up-to-date than the corresponding Debian package, unless Debian then updates the package and I don't. In general, we will be compatible with Debian and Ubuntu packages, though of course not in the case of API changes that aren't strictly additive, etc. We actively cooperate with Debian, and feed patches and bugs back to them. Some useful reading:

http://www.sprezzatech.com/wiki/index.php/APT http://www.sprezzatech.com/wiki/index.php/SprezzOS_and_Debia...
nickblack

Feb 06, 2013
10:55 AM EDT
That handles your second question as well, I think. What does the installer look like is answered here:

http://plus.google.com/photos/118364511747568235669/albums/5...

there's twenty stills of the installer, from GRUB through bulk package install, focusing on Growlight. You can see here the availability of ZFS in the installer and also creation of a RAID0. The SprezzOS installer is generated from several forked Debian installer components, plus my Growlight and Nethorologist tools. Some useful reading can be found here:

http://www.sprezzatech.com/wiki/index.php/Installation http://www.sprezzatech.com/wiki/index.php/Installer_developm...
nickblack

Feb 06, 2013
10:57 AM EDT
As for your final question, we are a rolling release, and have thus far done a major snapshot every six months or so. During the following development epoch, the previous snapshot's installer is upgraded as necessary, but there is no authorized "stable". In that sense, we are kind of the inverse of Debian. There's some useful reading here:

http://www.sprezzatech.com/wiki/index.php/Release_Model

Again, my apologies for delayed answers; I'm going to try and see what I can do about getting LXer communication mailed to me. Thanks a lot for trying out SprezzOS!
djohnston

Feb 06, 2013
2:05 PM EDT
Hmmm.
djohnston

Feb 07, 2013
9:37 AM EDT
Well, okay. I guess my question/comments don't merit a response. That's fine. I'm outta here.
penguinist

Feb 07, 2013
9:58 AM EDT
@djohnston: It looks to me like nickblack answered your questions point by point. What specific question did he miss?
djohnston

Feb 07, 2013
1:06 PM EDT
He answered Jeff's questions. I had already answered all but one of Jeff's. I was looking for a response to my comments on:

(1) no eth0 device (2) nothing written to the file system survives a reboot (3) proper steps for the custom-written partitioner

It's all moot now. I've lost interest.
shem

Feb 08, 2013
4:09 AM EDT
But this isn't the sprezzos support forum... or is it‽

Posting in this forum is limited to members of the group: [ForumMods, SITEADMINS, MEMBERS.]

Becoming a member of LXer is easy and free. Join Us!