live-installer

[Snow Keld]

i have been trying to bugfix this installer to work on a debian unstable live image made using remastersys

most packages between testing and unstable are the same or not much different.

i had some issues with the installer printing line: "Base filesystem does not exist! Critical error (exiting)."
i assume this is because i am using unetbootin to install iso to USB

to fix this i changed line 91 in usr/lib/live-installer/installer.py to

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            if(not os.path.exists("/")):

i also disabled the removel of the live tools (to simplify things for now)

i made other edits due to the fact that i use gdm rather than gdm3 (all work fine)


the installer will not create my new user. i dont know what the root of the problem is, output below:

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 --> Installation started
EXECUTING: 'mkfs -t ext3 /dev/sdb6'
mke2fs 1.42 (29-Nov-2011)
/dev/sdb6 is mounted; will not make a filesystem here!
EXECUTING: 'mkswap /dev/sdb5'
Setting up swapspace version 1, size = 2046972 KiB
no label, UUID=8a9643ae-be48-4a82-beec-d30c5974b8e6
 --> Mounting partitions
 ------ Mounting /live/image/live/filesystem.squashfs on /source/
EXECUTING: 'mount -o loop -t squashfs /live/image/live/filesystem.squashfs /source/'
mount: according to mtab /live/image/live/filesystem.squashfs is already mounted on /source/ as loop
 ------ Mounting /dev/sdb6 on /target/
EXECUTING: 'mount -t ext3 /dev/sdb6 /target'
mount: /dev/sdb6 already mounted or /target busy
mount: according to mtab, /dev/sdb6 is already mounted on /target
 --> Indexing files
 --> Copying files
 --> Restoring meta-info
 --> Chrooting
 --> Adding new user
useradd: cannot create directory /home/imagine
chpasswd: (user imagine) pam_chauthtok() failed, error:
Authentication token manipulation error
chpasswd: (line 1, user imagine) password not changed
chpasswd: (user root) pam_chauthtok() failed, error:
Authentication token manipulation error
chpasswd: (line 2, user root) password not changed

the only other problem i am having is that at the end of the install it checks grub, this action loops forever, i havent spent much time looking into this yet as grub is always installed correctly.

[mank_in]

If you are use unetbootin , format your USB flashdrive with FAT32 file system. Maybe seem like ridiculous suggestion , but FAT32 always works for me.

[Snow Keld]

this is how i got the installer to work correctly

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            os.system("chroot /target/ mkdir /home")
            os.system("chroot /target/ useradd -s /bin/bash -c %s -G sudo -m %s" % (setup.real_name, setup.username))
            newusers = open("/target/tmp/newusers.conf", "w")
            newusers.write("%s:%s" % (setup.username, setup.password1))
            newusers.close()
            do_chroot = open("/target/tmp/do_chroot.conf", "w")
            do_chroot.write("cat /tmp/newusers.conf | chpasswd")
            do_chroot.close()
            os.system("cat /target/tmp/do_chroot.conf | chroot /target")
            os.system("chroot /target/ rm -rf /tmp/newusers.conf")
            os.system("chroot /target/ rm -rf /tmp/do_chroot.conf")

the issue seems to be PAM and some python bugs in sid, now also is testing as well.

this means that the same issues will be seen on the next release for LMDE, these types of issues started around 11/2011

also, why doesnt LMDE use live-config? this caused some confusion on why the installer was trying to remove the "live" user till i figured out why..



by the way unetbootin needs to be used with a NON journaling file system, ext2 or fat32 are both fine.