The image is Os, i686, mmx, sse and sse2 optimized, which means you’ll need an sse(2) capable CPU to use this image (it’s very likely that you have one if you plan on using such a chroot and if you’re running 64bit, however, you can check using cat /proc/cpuinfo)

The guide and download location is here

My aim for this image was to keep a low amount of pre-installed modules. The image comes with 101 modules:

acl                flex               libtool            psmisc
attr               gawk               libusb             Python
autoconf           gcc                libusb-compat      readline
automake           gccmakedep         Linux-PAM          rsync
bash               gettext            linux-stable       sed
bash_static        glib-2             lunar-init         shadow
bin86              glibc              lunar-tools        sysfsutils
binutils           gmp                m4                 sysvinit
bison              gperf              make               tar
bzip2              grep               modutils-wrappers  texinfo
ccache             gzip               moonbase           theedge
check              installwatch       mpfr               TimeDate
chkconfig          iproute2           nasm               timezone-data
coreutils          iputils            ncurses            udev
cpio               kbd                net-tools          unzip
cracklib           kernel-headers     openssl            usbutils
dialog             kernel-reqs        patch              util-linux
diffutils          kmod               pbzip2             vim
discover           lard               pciutils           wget
discover-data      less               pcre               which
distcc             lftp               perl               wipe
e2fsprogs          libcap             pkgconfig          xz
ethtool            libffi             polylib            zlib
expat              libidn             popt               
file               libmpc             ppl                
findutils          libtirpc           procps             

If you’re using the guide or my image, please let me know, some feedback is always welcome. Have fun!

However, we still need a solution to handle renamed modules better than we do currently, so I came up with the following snippets:

Patch 1 to /var/lib/lunar/functions/modules.lunar

368a369,381
> # function : module_superseeded
> # usage    : module_superseeded $MODULE
> # purpose  : checks if $MODULE is superseeded by another MODULE
> # return   : returns 0 if superseeded, 255 else
> module_superseeded() {
>   if run_details $1 &>/dev/null ; then
>     if [ ! -z "$SUPERSEEDED" ]; then
>       return 0;
>     fi
>   fi
>   return 255
> }
>
546a560,572
>       fi
>     else
>       # run_details $MODULE worked; thus the module is installed
>       # let's check if it got renamed.
>       if module_superseeded $MODULE ; then
>         message
> "${MODULE_COLOR}$MODULE${DEFAULT_COLOR}${MESSAGE_COLOR} got renamed to
> ${MODULE_COLOR}$SUPERSEEDED${DEFAULT_COLOR}";
>         if query "Do you want to switch to
> ${MODULE_COLOR}$SUPERSEEDED${DEFAULT_COLOR}${MESSAGE_COLOR} ?" y ; then
>           lrm $MODULE
>           lin $SUPERSEEDED
>           continue
>         else
>           message
> "${MODULE_COLOR}$MODULE${DEFAULT_COLOR}${MESSAGE_COLOR} is kept and can
> be renamed manually later${DEFAULT_COLOR}";
>         fi

Patch 2 to /sbin/lin

142a143,146
>           elif module_superseeded $MODULE ; then
>             error_message
> "${LRM_COLOR}Notice:${DEFAULT_COLOR}${MESSAGE_COLOR} The module is
> superseeded by
> ${MODULE_COLOR}$SUPERSEEDED${DEFAULT_COLOR}${MESSAGE_COLOR}";
>             error_message "please lin that one
> instead.${DEFAULT_COLOR}"
>             continue

Remember, the goal was to keep it very simple. The above code changes the way, developers have to handle modules (if they rename them) a little bit. They have to set the SUPERSEEDED flag in DETAILS file to get it working. The devs I talked to have been okay with this approach.

Example:
renamed gcc to wdp-rulez

[lunar] root@lunar /var/lib/lunar/moonbase/compilers # purge_modules
+ Discovering modules that were removed from moonbase
flash-plugin-10 was removed from /var/lib/lunar/moonbase
flash-plugin-10: Do you want to remove flash-plugin-10 ? [y] n
flash-plugin-10 is kept and can be removed manually later
gcc got renamed to wdp-rulez
gcc: Do you want to switch to wdp-rulez ? [y] n
gcc is kept and can be renamed manually later
[lunar] root@lunar /var/lib/lunar/moonbase/compilers #

For devs handling of modules changes to this:

The proper way to handle renamed modules is now:

1. Copy the module to it’s new place and rename the copy.
   e.g: cp -rva compilers/gcc compilers/newgcc
2. Move the old one to zdeprecated
   e.g: mv compilers/gcc zdeprecated/gcc
3. Remove everything _except_ DETAILS from zdeprecated/gcc/*
4. Add: SUPERSEEDED=newgcc to DETAILS
   e.g: echo “SUPERSEEDED=newgcc” >> zdeprecated/gcc/DETAILS

El_Angelo suggested that we make sure that people can’t lin/get
the new module if they “lin” the old one.

Example:

root@lunar ~ # lin gcc
+ Spawning download manager
+ download queue:   gcc
Notice: The module is superseeded by  wdp-rulez
please lin that one instead.
root@lunar ~ #

That way we’re making sure, that nobody installs a package which
is superseeded by another.

Let’s see whether this will go into Lunar

CONFIG_DEVTMPFS=y
CONFIG_CGROUPS=y
CONFIG_AUTOFS4_FS=[y|m]
CONFIG_IPV6=[y|m]
CONFIG_RTC_DRV_CMOS=y
CONFIG_FANOTIFY=y
CONFIG_AUDIT=y

AUDIT is not a requirenment. IPV6 is not a requirenment i.e. it’s recommended to have them, not needed though.

Now we can continue by installing systemd using the following command:

lin systemd

The installer will ask you, whether you want sysv-compatibility, for now you should say “yes”, because of a few reasons. For example networking wouldn’t work correctly without it, as of writing this article. If it asks you whether you want cryptsetup keep in mind that this will install lvm2, which is not what I want, because I use device-mapper which would conflict with lvm2. So I’ll say “no”.

Suggestion: If compilation fails because of some error get it compiled by saying “no” to libnotify.

The next step in our list is removing everything not-needed from /etc/fstab. /etc/fstab should ONLY contain your real drives. That means, comment /dev/pts comment /proc comment /var* and tmp.. My fstab looks like this:

#UUID=83f6bd55-9686-46e2-b793-74a3e13332cd
/dev/sda1               /       ext4            defaults,noatime        0 1
#UUID=e66bbf62-783b-4276-b2f8-5bd05bbfd542
/dev/sda5               /home   ext4            defaults,relatime       0 2
/dev/sda2               swap    swap            defaults                0 0

There’s NOTHING ELSE in /etc/fstab. Now you need to add a symlink from /proc/self/mounts to /etc/mtab. If you don’t, you’ll get:

Aug  4 14:07:24 localhost kernel: systemd[1]: /etc/mtab is not a symlink or not pointing to /proc/self/mounts. This is not supported anymore. Please make sure to replace this file by a symlink to avoid incorrect or misleading mount(8) output.

so just do:

rm /etc/mtab && ln -s /proc/self/mounts /etc/mtab

The stuff below, is already integrated into lunar linux

That means, you don’t need to do this. This is just here, so you can see what I had to do when I initially tried to integrate it. However; Skip to “Migrating Services” below

You can try systemd now by adding init=/sbin/systemd to your bootloader. I hope it’s starting as fine for you as for me. However. Let’s configure systemd now. First we should set a nice hostname, in case you haven’t set one yet.

echo "yourhostname" > /etc/hostname

Now let’s configure console font and such stuff. Open /etc/vconsole.conf with your favorite editor and write something like this to it:

KEYMAP=de
FONT=sun12x22
FONT_MAP=8859-15_to_uni

As a little hint: You can check available keymaps in /usr/share/kbd/keymaps/. DE is german. You can check for available fonts in: /usr/share/kbd/consolefonts. I love this font. And the font maps are located in: /usr/share/kbd/consoletrans. 8859-15 is euro charset.

You can add the following to /etc/os-release:

NAME=Lunarlinux
ID=lunar
PRETTY_NAME=Lunar Linux
ANSI_COLOR=1;34

Usually you shouldn’t touch this, but as it doesn’t exist yet… Now add the locales:

LANG=en_US.utf8
LC_COLLATE=C

to /etc/locale.conf – I dislike german locales.. if you like them, replace en_US with de_DE. Basically this was it. You could play around with module blacklisting and loading now but that’ll be explained by me another time.

Migrating services

I hope you’re willing to improve Lunar Linux also – Issue:

systemctl

and scroll down. You’ll see some lines with “failed”. Please report them or try to find out, why they failed, try to fix them and let us know on IRC or by mail. Also take a look at those lines containing SYSV. Those are the compatibility-sysv-services which needs to be replaced i.e. we need to write a service for them. I’ll show you one example. You can help us to improve Lunar by mailing such services to us or by giving them to us on irc (using pastebin or something). Anyway. Let’s imagine we want to write a service for “slim” my favorite graphical login manager. First let’s go into /etc/systemd/system as it’s a system-service and not a user-service. Now open “slim.service” in your favorite text editor.

[Unit]
Description=slim - simple login manager
Requires=dev-tty7.device
After=dev-tty7.device systemd-user-sessions.service

[Service]
ExecStart=/usr/bin/slim -nodaemon
Restart=always
StandardOutput=syslog

[Install]
WantedBy=graphical.target

I guess, the stuff is pretty self-explaining. Now issue:

systemctl enable slim.service

And you’re done. That was all about it.

Connman

Currently we’re using some bash scripts and lnet to setup networking. Using connman this can be simplified a lot. El_Angelo and me are working on some GUI for connman right now, will take some time till it’s in moonbase. However, if you got a dhcp router connman should easily configure your wired network automatically – wireless lan should work also. If you have any trouble with connman ask us on IRC and we’ll try to help.

lin -cr connman
mv /etc/init.d/network /etc/init.d/network.old
/etc/init.d/network.old stop
systemctl enable connman.service
systemctl start connman.service

This will install connman, make a backup of your network init script i.e. if networking fails with connman just do /etc/init.d/network.old start, enable the service and start connman.

Check if /etc/resolv.conf is correct, check if ifconfig is correct, check if internet connectivity/network works. If yes – Try a reboot and check if your network comes up automatically.

For wlan, unpack the source (/var/spool/lunar/connman*) to /usr/src, switch into that directory, and there switch into the directory “test” within that folder, you’ll find a few test-tools which are handy to configure connman:

./list-services

find out your service (the part after /service/ starting with wifi_)

./test-connman enable service

(replace service with wifi_yourservice)

to enable the stuff. Now you can set the Passphrase:

./test-connman passphrase service the-phrase

(replace service again, and put in your phrase at the-phrase)

and you can try to enable autoconnect:

./test-connman passphrase service

hint #1
dveatch reported that he dislikes iptables and that connman moaned because of some xtable thingy. A simple lin of iptables solved that issue for him.

hint #2
we did some work on the wpa_supplicant module, it might well be that you have to relin it, so that it uses the new dbus interface and so that it has the nl80bla-driver enabled. even if you just use wired networking, connman might moan that it wants wpa_supplicant – So just install it using lin -cr wpa_supplicant.

Switching to non-sysv-compat systemd

Basically you just had to do the following: install systemd. boot with systemd. Migrate your services to systemd (at least the important ones), get connman working (thus our old network init script is not used anymore and your network works without sysvinit), reboot and check for any errors, solve them if possible and if there are any, recompile systemd without sysv-compatibility, reboot – done.

sqlite

time sqlite3 cache.db " select t1.id, t1.name, t2.category from lunar_modules t1 join lunar_modules_categories t2 on t1.category_id = t2.id where t2.category = 'shells';"

real    0m0.010s

lunar’s tools

time lvu section shells

real    0m0.093s

Looks like sqlite is 9 times faster than the lunar-tools. That’s not bad at all. However, these are just some pseudo numbers, we’re working on a patch so that everyone can test that. There’s a todo list with this db:

1. Implement dependency tracking
2. Write functions to do usual tasks (lvu depends, lvu where, lvu search, lvu website, lvu depends, get_all_modules, lvu expired, etc)
3. Write an entry in lunar features where users can enable this cached db optionally
4. Enhance the lunar tools (lvu, lin, lunar, etc) to use this database and the file-operations as fallback

The good thing about this solution is: It’s just a starting point. We can enhance this as much as we want. While just using it to improve some simple things now, we can use it also for complex things in the future. Also: Any changes made is non intrusive to the old behavior, they would co-exist and sqlite would be optional if implemented.