Thread 106312247

is there any point in sudo apt update in the live mint install?
will the updated packages be installed in place of the original iso contents?

also, all packages are marked as manually installed, presumably as a fail-safe, from a fresh install, i.e. there are no packets marked auto-installed, which likely cannot be coincidental either.

i'm dd-disk-image-backuping the 64 gb sdd i had lying around and the target system is an old x86-office-pc from the early 2010s, with a four-physical-core i5 and dual-channel 8gb total ram, and presently has no purpose except to serve as a testing grounds.

also, it's lmde in place of regular mint, and i'm thinking about changing to testing, unstable or setting bookworm to trixie and watching results.

has anybody else given this a shot?

The ISO stores everything in RAM. Anything you download, create, delete, etc. will not be saved.

You turn off the machine, or even reboot it, and all of your changes are gonna.

>>106312284
i'm pretty sure i've started out a fresh install with updated packages, what you say implies there is a fixed, immutable list of packages that will be installed.
i could be wrong, either way.

about the otherwise temporary nature of the live medium, i am not unaware, how this translates into the installation medium is a developer, user, etc. preference and can be arbitrary.
it could be conceived, a live system asks instead for a user name (with a default set, and also keyboard layout, and light/dark pref), and all the settings changed are saved into the target installation itself, asking things like a user password if they actually install.

lmde7 is supposed to ship with an oem installer, so maybe these are all going to be outdated issues once that's out.

also, i tried this
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LiveCDCustomization
and got thrown a curve-ball because you need casper installed, which is a ubuntu-package.
it worked without it, i.e. i could complete some apparently custom image, and the bios recognized the stick as bootable, but didnt boot into grub.
i (probably) fucked up elsewhere, or it's because casper is not available in debian installations.

>>106312362
>casper installed, which is a ubuntu-package
and
>>106312348
>lmde7 is supposed to ship with an oem installer

okay, so every change is stored in ram, the usb's iso is mounted read-only in /run/live/medim/ and that's then where the installer copies it out mint's installation data and i was mistaken, that updated packages had any effect on the target's installation.
or maybe the installer runs an apt update on a chrooted target or something, if network is available.

been thinking of going this the other way, installing minimalist bookworm, minimize-manual, add mint's repo and then add only the most top-level mint stuff and let everything else remain as auto-marked as possible.
>inb4
>just do minimize-manual on an already installed system
whoof...

>>106312536
>every change is stored in ram
oh shi-
that was
>need to get 703mb of updates
on
>>106312247 (OP)
>8gb total ram

a fresh and immediate (lmde) install it is then, and then on that new system the question would be whether to apt update or apt-mark minimize-manual first.

no rush, it's on my side-desk

>>106312247 (OP)
>setting bookworm to trixie and watching results
OP here, I ended up installing headless Trixie first.

Added Mint's LMDE repo to it (don't forget the keyrings), which is, in its preset form, made for Bookworm, not Trixie, and it expectedly failed when I tried to install a mintpackage.

Downloading pure Bookworm now, to see what'll happen on an actually compatible base.

>>106314784
>headless Trixie
Also, IIRC, about 115-125 manual and 100-110 auto installed packets.

Installed it on a 13.7GB ext4, forgot to df -BG, but apt said something like 11.5GB free, so I'm guessing Trixie's <2.5GB freshly installed with no DE.

>>106312284
>The ISO stores everything in RAM. Anything you download, create, delete, etc. will not be saved.
I feel like this alternate mode of use should be an option when booting. It's perfect for testing out software that might just be a virus

>>106312247 (OP)
OP here again, the "victim" is an M82 ThinkCentre [sic... lads].

It's so old, the live USB LMDE 6 appeared to be in a (GPU) boot-loop just before showing desktop.
Neither normal nor compatibility mode made a difference.
Furthermore, this is a unit hit by lightning. It has a fried onboard NIC. I thought the issues I had were related to a collaterally fucked up USB bus.

I have another one of those ThinkCentres, in known full working condition.
Same issue.

Turns out
https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=345433
the Intel iGPU is old enough to warrant booting with
>i915.modeset=0
param.

Super cool, super awesome.

>>106315398
Kali pre-2020-something's-makeover had a persistent USB (<--keywords) installer.

>>106315532
>Furthermore, this is a unit hit by lightning. It has a fried onboard NIC.
Not joking. It killed the VDSL2 modem and also (slowly) killed 2xLANs on a TD-W9980 I had flashed with OpenWRT, in addition to the onboard NIC of this unit.
They router ethernets initially still worked, albeit in spotty 100 Mbps, 10 Mbps modes and then dead.
Onboard NIC on the ThinkCentre and VDSL2 modem were fried dead.
In semi-related "wtf" anecdote, I once seated an Intel 1150-something-something CPU sligthly off and bent off a corner (as in cracked it off such that was still hanging on), but it still booted into BIOS, and I somehow could disable multi-cores, and then that still worked booting into (Windows) OS.

>It's so old, the live USB LMDE 6 appeared to be in a (GPU) boot-loop just before showing desktop.
Also, it also "suddenly" booted into desktop on the lightning-struck unit, maybe it's cycling through (a gajilion) modesets, until it finds one that works.
And then having found it "suddenly" booted into desktop, seemingly random, further strengthened my suspicion it was a hardware issue
>thought the issues [...] related to a collaterally fucked up USB bus
Not really sure what happened there.
It's weird it had booted into LMDE once or twice, and not always failed.
Debian Trixie had no issues with the Graphical Install, but installed I had only ran it headless.

Okay, so back to
>>106312951
>a fresh and immediate (lmde) install it is then

>>106315532
>>i915.modeset=0
OP here, that was it.
>posted from my lightning-struck unit
biaaatch!

>>106315866
Well, that was weird, after installing LMDE, I came back to a login-screen.
Entered the password, then that boot-loop again.
>Oh yeah, forgot to add that to the GRUB config
Rebooted and set the modeset parameter by pressing 'e' from with option in GRUB, and then it all worked smoothly.

...but it's weird that lightdm (?) does not need that modeset?
In fact, I should try this again, and see if this is repeatable, or if that sudden login-screen was just one of those weird boot-ups, where it decides to work.

>>106316258
>it's weird that lightdm (?) does not need that modeset?
>In fact, I should try this again
I can indeed confirm that
>this is repeatable
lightdm will start with and without i915.modeset=0, but desktop won't without it.

if not using i915.modeset=0, after entering password into lightdm, mouse cursor remains momentarily visibile after background has gone black, before entire screen/monitor goes black

if using i915.modeset=0, all behaviour is as is to be expected.

had a similar issue, when i installed my old GPU for a friend, it was an AMD tropical island series (r9 280x, 290, 290x, etc.) and vulkan support is not enabled in their last supported drivers, it was also a linux command-line parameter that you had to pass at boot for linux to use the (unsupported) newer AMD drivers for it (those cards work with both old atiradeon and new amdgpu).

what an adventure!
both (un)ironically.

>>106312247 (OP)
use a network install image if available to install your OS with updated packages.

OP here, that freshly installed LMDE is waiting, but today's time's up.
Will post tomorrow about
>changing to testing, unstable or setting bookworm to trixie and watching results

>liiiiife
>oh life
>ooooooh liiiiiihiiiiiife
>oooh liiiife
Des'ree, I'd fathom, probably 'Life'

>LMDE 6, deb packages, clean install
https://pastebin.com/CatkGQ7c

Okay, it's got 2080 deb packages installed on it.
Didn't touch a thing, apart from adding the modeset parameter sudo nano /etc/default/grub and sudo update-grub.
Otherwise, I haven't even removed the checkmark from the Mint Welcome Utility.

I probably might install the SSH server for remote administration though.
My jumper keyboard for diagnosis work is a PITA to use (one of those HTPC thingies with an integrated touchpad; super small keys, but otherwise worth its discomfort for the task).

Going to dd a backup 'lmde6.zero.img' first.

>>106321518
>keyboard [...] with an integrated touchpad
These things with a 2m cable would be perfect.
If they exist, they're probably rare...

>>106321554
>These things with a 2m cable would be perfect.
Why?
>don't need batteries (ever)
>one less piece to lose (USB receiver)
>IR broadcast of passwords avoided (if you're some important cocksucker/work for them)

>>106321518
>Going to dd a backup 'lmde6.zero.img' first.
Couldn't get dd to work over an SFTP connection to my main desktop, had to pick a local target image path.
All set now.

I just realized: Testing is ahead of Trixie, duh, switching to testing'd only make sense once LMDE 7's out.
Otherwise, one could try to update everything to latest and then switch to Trixie and see how it breaks.
But since LMDE7 is around the corner, that's probably all pointless now.
Though setting both Debian and Mint sources to Trixie and Gigi might work, pretty sure I already saw 'gigi' in the repository.
Yeah, I think I'm just going to run all updates first (and do another round of capturing what's installed, etc.) and then try just that.

>>106321843
>another round of capturing what's installed
>>106321518
>LMDE 6, deb packages, clean install, updated
https://pastebin.com/rsFcj1iC

now dd imaging a backup of the updated state.
then switch to trixie and either change faye to gigi... or add gigi on top of faye... heh.
also, ...branches? (e.g. main, non-free, contrib on debian) might be different on non-release version of mint.

gotta do some other stuff too, this is just chugging along on the side.

>>106322272
>now dd imaging a backup of the updated state.
Anybody reading happen to know about partial dd images of /dev/sda?
With dos partition tables, it seems you can take them from sector 0 to the end of some partition and fdisk will still correctly interpret them, despite the end missing, but with GPT partitioning, this does not seem to work.

I only need the partition, but it's nice to also know the disk layout of a backup.
Apparently, with fdisk you can dump with (capital) 'O' the partition table, but this didn't work either with the partial GPT dd image.

I was able to dd-cut-out the partition itself, skipping offset and the EFI boot partition and can confirm both the cut-out partition from the partial disk image and a direct dd of partition to image (WITHOUT specifying count=) both are the same size, so I still have the data I need for the backups, except I'm not so sure about what I need to do if I want to back-up the disk layout as well.

Welp, here we go.
>bei dem Weg
Donggäh für Bandbreite :3

wow, this was nasty.
sed-replaced bookworm with trixie, apt update, apt upgrade, dpkg crashes out with cinnamon.
then sed-replaced faye with gigi as well, update and upgrade, and it all just went into a frankendebian hellhole with dist-upgrade and removal of countless packages, etc.

restoring the updated backup image now.
then maybe try replacing both bookworm and faye simultaneously.
or maybe just screw it, and install minimal bookworm, add mint's repository and keyrings and then install mintsystem (and probably cinnamon too), and hope to be able to get a minimalist LMDE system.

>>106321843
>Couldn't get dd to work over an SFTP connection to my main desktop, had to pick a local target image path.
Nemo mounts SFTP with gvfs, which resides in /run/[...]/gvfs/[...] and those directory and contents are not viewable by root (!).

I was annoyed I also couldn't read from network.
I probably have to read the file as the user into std in and pipe that to dd to write with root to disk.

OP here again.

>>106323029
>I probably have to read the file as the user into std in and pipe that to dd to write with root to disk.
Yeah, that worked,
cat disk.img | sudo dd of=/dev/sdX
allows you to write from network via SFTP the disk image straight onto the disk and
sudo dd if=/dev/sdX | dd of=disk.img
should allow the reverse.
I used cat intuitively, but you should probably used dd as well when reading from network.

>>106322924
>then maybe try replacing both bookworm and faye simultaneously.
Same issues, dependency hell, breaks with Cinnamon.
So instead, what I now appear to be doing, is installing LMDE from a Debian system... i.e. "LMDEFS" heh.
>install minimal bookworm
>add mint's repository
>keyrings
>then install mintsystem (and probably cinnamon too)
Current state of affairs.
Haven't pressed enter yet.
Made lists like earlier about installed auto/manual packages, in a sec.

>>106324027
Also, I wanted to neofetch that Bookworm install, but I'll "belay that command," lel.

Welp
>Linux Mint From Script (LMFS)
'gnome-screenshot' used for picrel was installed after creating the package lists:
https://pastebin.com/eGdzjL5s
Otherwise, what you're seeing is
# prepare debian
install (minimalist) bookworm (e.g. from netinst and without any desktop environment set)
# gnome-terminal has issues starting with unknown locale; define a specific one instead
dpkg-reconfigure locales

# prepare for mint
- add mint to sources
- add mint's keyrings (either manually copy or get .deb of linuxmint-keyring and install that with apt)
# make debian aware of mint
apt update

# (OPTIONAL) if you manually copy the keyrings, install the package to keep it updated
apt install linuxmint-keyring
# install mint base
apt install mintsystem mint-info-cinnamon xserver-xorg lightdm cinnamon
# (OPTIONAL) install a terminal (or you will have to Ctrl+Alt+F1 to enter commands)
apt install gnome-terminal
# reboot into lightdm's login screen/ into desktop
systemctl reboot

# install mint software suite
apt install gnome-screenshot

Nemo was e.g. auto-installed, but 'Terminal' had no results in Cinnamon's menu.
Gnome Terminal is otherwise what is included in Mint.
>inb4 Pure Debian with Cinnamon
idk, I guess I just want LMDE with a little bit less, there are still packages missing, never mind the cosmetics.

Stats, so far:
>distro / disk / manual / auto
>book-deb / ca. 1.7G / 212 / 111
>lmfd-min / ca. 3.5G / 219 / 960
>lmde / ca. 8.5G / 2080 / 0
lmfs-min stats does not include gnome-screenshot, which at install was only a single package, though.
Addendum:
'mintsources' is missing, I'm thinking of writing a script and wget the (probably) two packages, sources and keyring, to setup apt for the rest.
Wasn't really sure if that's part of Mint's Software Sources app or a utility for Mint sources to be kept by apt.

>>106324889
Oh yeah, the network works OOTB, but not in the systray.
I assume something that makes Cinnamon interface with Network Manager.
Then, I also haven't added that modeset parameter anywhere, and it still boots fine into both lightdm and cinnamon.
I suppose that has something to do with Linux's equivalent of "hardware accelaration" and those packages and configs being effective on LM OOTB.
Oh, and there aren't any printers installed either, actually.

Firefox would be something to install, that probably will install a gigaton of dependencies.
But I think it's better to find out which components Cinnamon needs to functionally be equivalent to LMDE first.

>>106324889
>>Linux Mint From Script (LMFS)
Oh yeah, it cannot actually be called that, my bad.
(My intentions were however ironically rather to remain at a distantance with that...)
Or otherwise, I'd suppose, "Anon's script to convert debian into mint (ASCDM)" :DD

>>106324889
OP here again, before I leave this post semi-finished
>>106325040
>network works OOTB, but not in the systray
uncomment all lines in /etc/network/interfaces, this makes NetworkManager take over of networking interfaces, and then it should all work OOTB with Cinnamon as well (might need to reboot, idk).
>haven't added that modeset parameter anywhere, and it still boots fine into both lightdm and cinnamon
Still haven't, although I haven't installed any packets that affect graphic output.
>Oh, and there aren't any printers installed either, actually.
There aren't any listed either, and it can be removed.
I have a printer actually connected to my desktop
(and I still need a vendor .deb package for that on vanilla LM/LMDE to use the scanner;
no idea if scanner driver packages are missing on my system or if that vendor never made their scanner drivers in any way available)
and I just unplugged it, and it's still there in the systray, listed, when the icon is clicked on.
No idea.

Also, I thought it didn't have sound, but I just forgot to Enable it under Onboard Devices in the BIOS.
In the meantime, I had replaced pulseaudio with pipewire.
After both of those steps, the sound worked fine in system and systray
(although devices/ports/interfaces were hidden once headphones were unplugged and appeared when plugged;
not sure, my desktop's device is always visible, regardless of plugged state).
I purged pulseaudio again afterwards, rebooted, and sound and everything still works.

So the extra steps are
>disable old networking by uncommenting everything in /etc/network/interface
>apt install pipewire && apt purge pulseaudio (ideally) BEFORE installing Mint packages

I'll write a proper guide and script, no guarantees when, and post somewhere.
I'll write some sloppy notes for myself and post them here, if I have the full list of essential minimal packages.
Cheers, /g/ents.

>>106327175
Yeah, no, that's actually it.
No other extra packages installed.
Added gnome-screenshot, pulseaudio packages were marked auto, pipewire is manual, hence 221 packages now vs. 219 in >>106324889.

Possibly the most minimal version of Mint you can get, GRUB is still Debian background, but Option name was updated to Linux Mint, so I think that's a legit statement.

Seven packages
>linuxmint-keyring
>mintsystem
>mint-info-cinnamon
>xserver-xorg
>lightdm
>cinnamon
>(gnome-terminal)
>(gnome-screenshot)
and preconfiguration
>enabling NetworkManager
>installing pipewire (possibly optional, but I recall a blog entry about default Mint switching to pipewire as well).

That's it, that's what you're seeing in picrel, nothing else.

>>106327373
*grep "sudo apt" .bash_history
and it's
>GeNeRic-test
ffs, omg.

>>106327373
>nothing else
*to go from a terminal Debian to GUI-OS.

I picked the "standard system utilites" in Debian Graphical Install.
One could also consider that itself to be a 'fat' installation.
I think to figure out the basic building blocks of LMDE (to know which to strip away), it's best to have a basic set of guaranteed common system and similar lowlevel utilites installed.

I take no guarantees, but it's probably safe to assume, that every package marked auto on the minimal Mint system, can likely also be safely marked auto on the regular Mint system.
(The problem with minimize-manual is that it likely does not assign semantic value, and you can very easily end up in dependency hell if the wrong packages are marked auto... I'd guess? I wouldn't know...)

Hence we circle back around to why we are here! :DD

>>106328256
>I take no guarantees, but it's probably safe to assume, that every package marked auto on the minimal Mint system, can likely also be safely marked auto on the regular Mint system.
Actually don't, absolutely don't do this, unless you can afford to bork your system and have backups, etc.
It's almost midnight here, it's daytime somewhere else.

But I haven't tried that out myself, and I'd honestly would not risk it without having done some backups now.

>>106312247 (OP)
this apu makes me happy