Experience on my 1st Boot with XiniX on serveral units

[McEddie]

OK, hold in mind, I will write down this (my) experience with XiniX based on a logical step getting it running on my units as I will understand the options, the OS is offering to me... so this will be a report of my steps done with it.

two testing plattforms right now to start with:

a) Asus EeeKeyboardPC, Intel ATOM n270, 1GByte RAM, 32GByte SSD
b) WYSE ThinClient Notebook, Via C7-1.2GHz, 2GByte RAM, 2GByte SSD

Steps which where done to create a bootable USB Stick in 32Bit:
Downloaded the ZIP from SOURCEFORGE, extracted the ZIP, used "rufus" to bring up the ISO to USB.
Used USB for it: TOSHIBA 8GByte USB2 stick

So let's start to see, how far we will come.

a) Asus EeeKeyboardPC
- insert the STICK and booting from the stick will bring me up to the bootloader screen with several options:

Start XiniX
Install XiniX
Install Drivers
Restore Console
Emergency Console
From Harddrive

Conservative Mode
Compatibility Mode
Safe Mode
Debug Mode

- First impression: wow, what are that options for?
- Let's Start with "Start XiniX"
- "XiniX" is visible on Screen and after a while I will get a "login screen"
In order to use this device, you must login using a username and password. Any encountered problems should be referred to your support staff.

- Oha, did I missed something?
- Where does this little peace of software do know my username & password?
- OK, let's try a combination of it...
- hmm, Mouse is not as smooth as I thought it should be... ups, where do I land?
The software was started, but a required directory (/tmp/web.de) can not be created.

- Hmm. Do I missed some important steps in advance?
- OK, let's reboot and see what is comming up with an "installation".
:
- OK, the same menu from the bootloader screen, now I am choosing "Install XiniX" with the goal of installing it onto the internal SSD (or what could it mean?)
- Do see some LINUX messages on the screen up to the point, where it is called "New Installation Wizard".
- I am getting a question in case of creating a needed space for my data... hmm, at this stage? No question about which harddrive or storage the OS will be placed? No partitioning or anything like this?
- Sure, if it will need a SPACE the answer will "Y", otherwise what else can I do at this stage of installation???
- Ah, interesting question: "What username would you want to use?" it seems, that I need to do this step in advance or first and with this, the login screen is getting more logical... because now, I am creating a user...
- OK, next is the question for the password... sure, I will pass it to you buddy...
- ups... running into a problem. "Creating the DATA partition: [sdb] [failure] I like this colored profile of messages... you can easily see what is going on... hehehe... but what the f... I am getting here?
- Mounting home directory... [none] [done] of course, if I can not create my personal DATA partition, mounting it is not possible too.
- same with the restore directory
- "Adding the requested user to the device:md5sum: can't open 'sudoers': No such file or directory" [McEddie] [done]
- hmm, device seems not my PC, it seems the USB stick is mentioned with device...
- "Checking the template directories exists for the user: [done]" hmm, of course it is done, but what else? If I can not create my DATA partition, where is the error message with this step?
- same with "checking various directory ownership and permissions: [done] no Error with this step??? OK, let go further
Congrats, your device is now setup and ready to use!
- Oh, now I can use it... perfect, but will it be working without my DATA partition? Do I am able to login without my stored account? Let's see
- I am landing at the same "login screen" like with my first try.
- Same action after using the "username" and "password" that (/tmp/web.de) can not be created.

Damned, Do I missed another step or do I missinterpred "Install" in the wrong manner so it will not install the whole OS onto an internal storage? It seems, it is used/needed to "Install" the used device in the first step to be able to use it or better, to login... but not possible for me in case of a little problem I need to check out first.

I do not think, any other option of the bootmenu will bring me a step forward, so let's try to figure out, why it is not possible right now.

Anyhow, the same is happen with the WYSE ThinClient Notebook.

[wysiwyg]

Welcome to the forums McEddie!  And thanks for the run down of several of the boot options.  It appears that you may have uncovered a bug in the login screen when using credentials not found in the system (e.g. a created user account or the built-in root account).

Lets begin with just booting off the USB stick on the EeePC.  If you do not invoke the boot menu (pressing F8 during the start of the bootup process), then it will land you at the login prompt of the OS.  At this stage it is like you have booted off of a live CD because no install process has occurred (either through the GUI or the boot menu) so the only account you have available is the root account.  As the included README.txt file states, the login credentials are:

username: root
password: now has zen

Entering that information should enable you to log into the system, but obviously no data will be saved.  Now lets move on to the 'Install XiniX' boot option.  Once it has come to the 'New Installation Wizard', you will be prompted if you would like to create a DATA partition using default parameters with valid answers being: Y(es), N(o), Q(uit).
- Pressing 'Q' will let you know nothing can be saved, but will boot you into the GUI.
- Pressing 'Y' will only ask you for the username and password you would like to setup and will then use default values to setup the DATA partition (using the same boot media as the target device for the partition along with using the entire remaining space of the device for the DATA partition itself).
- Pressing 'N' will allow you to specify your own DATA partition parameters including:
     which device to use (e.g. hard drive, flash drive, etc)
     what filesystem to use (e.g. ext2, ext3, ntfs, etc)
     the size of the partition
     the user account credentials (name and password)


Couple of notes...
1) If you are using older hardware, you may want to use the 'Conservative Mode' from the boot menu since using 'Start XiniX' (the default option) loads everything to RAM.  But since you have low resources available on the computer, the 'Conservative Mode' will use the boot media as the storage for the files instead of the RAM.

2) The sluggishness of your mouse is most likely due to the default frame buffer (Xfbdev) that is used for the graphical environment.  After a successful login with a valid account, you should get a prompt to install X.org if you would like.  Doing so should make the UI run a lot smoother.

3) After running a quick test, it appears that the 'Y' and 'N' answers to the installation process fail no matter what.  There are several bugs that have made their way into the setup process (regression) which should get corrected in the next release.  Currently the OS can only used used as a "Live CD" using the root account credentials.  Alternatively you may be able to install using the GUI.

[wysiwyg]

I would also like to point out for anyone reading this thread that the wrong .iso burning software has been included by mistake for the Windows distribution files.  The .img software is correct.  See this post for additional information: https://forums.cliquesoft.org/index.php?topic=7.0.

[McEddie]

Hello @wysiwyg and thank you for your welcome!
Thank you for the hints, I will digg a little bit deeper into it later on and will pass my experience with it at this place too.
Cheers

[wysiwyg]

Sounds good @McEddie!  The next release should be in about 2 weeks and will have these bugs fixed.  Keep us posted!

[McEddie]

Hello wysiwyg,
yep, of course... tried starting the next step when you wrote your last message...

OK, first there is to mentioned a "little" devil" I found so far, which let me run into some kind of troubles...

As mentioned, I loaded the file from SOURCEFORGE and used their proposal for the download... that seems to be the troublemaker for me... it was the 32bitVM.ISO.TGZ file... so for me right now, no way to check, if I got the troubles due to uncompress, writing the ISO or whatever...
I loaded manuallly the 32bit.iso.zip and burned the CD and it is working... so let's start the next steps with the goal to get a working installation out of the internal storage.

[McEddie]

As long, as the CD is working right now, let's see, how far I will come now.
Refering unit will be the ASUS EeeKeyboardPC, other units will come up after I got this unit working.

- the boot screen is there, so let's start with the first option "Start XiniX".
- login screen, so let's try the "root" account first, because I did not install any other user so far.
- hmm, not working... what the h... OH. stupid, my fault... no german keyboard so it is the "z"/"y" problem.. hehehe
- ui, something is happen... I am at the "desktop"... nice looking. not exactly what I would prefer but we are here for test.
- a welcome message with the information of installing "Xorg"... ok, ready for it and "click" on "Install"-button

The software will now be installed in the background with an alert once it is completed.
- well, sound great. Now you will get my "click" on the "OK" button

An error was encountered attempting to install Xorg.
- argh. Did I again missed something? Hmm... could be possible in case of "no" user space (oh DATA it was called)?

First we would like to thank... blablabla... I am not interesting in that message right now (hihihi)... I like to get solve the problems to take a look at this small OS and its design, grrr....

OK, next steps will follow soon.

[McEddie]

NEXT STEP.
now let me go via "Install" to get a DATA partition ready...as "wysiwyg" mentioned to me I need to use "N" option to be able to get access to my internal SSD for it...

boot screen is there so let's try "Install XiniX"
- colored messages on the screen... nice to see with one look, what is going on
- keyboard:us hold that in mind (hehehe), not to get the same problem with "z"/"y"...
- New Installation Wizard. Perfect and now I am using "N" to be able to get my DATA space on my internal SSD... but wait, do I am getting ONLY a data space there or the complete OS include the needed DATA space?
- Do I need to use "N" or will "n" do the same? No idea... safely I will use "N" for it.
- Yeah, "sda" (internal SSD) and "sr0" (CD ROM) are found... so my decision will be "sda".
- question for the filesystem to be used... I will stay with "ext4".
- question on how much space I will take, able to pass it with a size "1GB" or percent number "50%". Hmm, sound like it will be ONLY the space for the DATA storage and not the whole OS itself... OK, no problem. I will take "50%".

- to fast for me to see/read, what was happen and I am landing at the "login screen".
- as I did not installed a user, I think, I need to use "root" "now has zen".

The password entered is incorrect, please try again.

- hmm, did I used "y" in case of "z"? Do it again Sam...
- Same message... argh, this is getting frustrating... time to get a little break for breakfast. I am back soon

[wysiwyg]

As mentioned, I loaded the file from SOURCEFORGE and used their proposal for the download... that seems to be the troublemaker for me... it was the 32bitVM.ISO.TGZ file... so for me right now, no way to check, if I got the troubles due to uncompress, writing the ISO or whatever...
I loaded manuallly the 32bit.iso.zip and burned the CD and it is working...

Hmmm I have seen some reports about SF altering some of their distribution files at one point, but figured this had been corrected.  Can you give me the md5sums of the .TGZ and contained .iso files?  Did you use the same program to burn the .iso from the .TGZ and .ZIP files?

- a welcome message with the information of installing "Xorg"... ok, ready for it and "click" on "Install"-button

The software will now be installed in the background with an alert once it is completed.
- well, sound great. Now you will get my "click" on the "OK" button

An error was encountered attempting to install Xorg.
- argh. Did I again missed something? Hmm... could be possible in case of "no" user space (oh DATA it was called)?

I am not sure what happened with the install of Xorg.  Can you try this again and let me know what the relevant contents of /var/log/pax.log are?  There shouldn't be any issues installing it without a DATA partition, but I will check into this myself.

- New Installation Wizard. Perfect and now I am using "N" to be able to get my DATA space on my internal SSD... but wait, do I am getting ONLY a data space there or the complete OS include the needed DATA space?
- Do I need to use "N" or will "n" do the same? No idea... safely I will use "N" for it.
- Yeah, "sda" (internal SSD) and "sr0" (CD ROM) are found... so my decision will be "sda".
- question for the filesystem to be used... I will stay with "ext4".
- question on how much space I will take, able to pass it with a size "1GB" or percent number "50%". Hmm, sound like it will be ONLY the space for the DATA storage and not the whole OS itself... OK, no problem. I will take "50%".

- to fast for me to see/read, what was happen and I am landing at the "login screen".
- as I did not installed a user, I think, I need to use "root" "now has zen".

The password entered is incorrect, please try again.

- hmm, did I used "y" in case of "z"? Do it again Sam...
- Same message... argh, this is getting frustrating... time to get a little break for breakfast. I am back soon

Couple of things...
- First, the prompt can take any form of the responses, so 'n' is good, 'N' is good, etc.
- Second, the installation process (if it were working correctly) using the bootmenu option 'Install XiniX' only creates a DATA partition.  I will also expand this to include installing FIRMWARE on the drive as well.
- Third, this bootmenu option will not work with any of the 2017.02.07.0 distribution files as the problem is with the install script itself (will be fixed in March release), so trying to install at this point will not work at all.
- Fourth, it appears that the 'root' password does NOT get updated when using the 'Install XiniX' bootmenu option like it does when using 'Start XiniX'.  This is another bug that will get fixed in the next version.

Sorry for all the encountered issues trying to get the OS to install, but thanks for making us aware of these bugs.  At least we can now fix them.