[Input Needed] Sabayon 5 Brainstorm

[WarraWarra]

This idea / info can be fine tuned, please suggest options or experience with good / bad about this and how to get best results.
20 mins of growing a brainstorm from problem posted below.

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We will have to find other ways to speed up the live dvd install process.

Example:
Install problems:
Installing default say 4.1 gnome umpc no 3d takes about 20-25 mins = ouch very long for 5gb copy ? mke2fs /dev/sda1 /boot 128mb + mkswap /dev/sda2 2048mb "no format root" done by installer onto clean hd.
Installing the same but remove office = 43mins ? 5gb files processed ?

Install 4.1 gnome no 3d + no games + no internet + no office + no audio = time ?? 2 or 3 hours ?? anyone have a idea.

Possible fixes:
Install all / default and select remove office then after reboot remove office after reboot in faster enviroment and user can continue sing enviroment without concern about overloading virtual workspace.
"Please not your packages selected for removal from default install will be removed after SL reboots"
"office has been removed and install now complete"

or

Gentoo type build block on demand ,
Example:
1: Install basic and "cp /mnt/livecd/office_block.tr.bz2 ~/temp && tar xvfjp ~/temp/office_block.bz2 -C / " and a few fix-up commands.
2: Install basic and "tar xvjpf office.tar.bz2 && tar xfjpv games.tar.bz2 && tar xvjpf audio.tar.bz2"
NB> Extracting and sym linking binary packages + final house keeping / cleaning could be faster to install and can "load on demand"
mount = squashfs.games , squashfs.audio , squashfs.office if needed = load / loop mount on demand can be very good for low ram enviroments / low resources used = faster transfers / faster install.
Either using squashfs or tar.bz2 above, will have to test and apply . 1 sec loopmount on select during installer can make a big difference.

or

Maybe even " cp /mnt/livecd/images/squashfs.office -C /mnt/gentoo/ " directly off the live dvd to hard drive and skip (the first extract and then copy slower process and no loop mounting needed ? ) of what would have been a tar.bz2 and later chroot mount for cleaning / final script configs then reboot.

I can see that a tar ball "big bin package block " can have it's benefits and re-used in entropy and possibly eaiser to maintain.
Example:
office.tar.bz2 = open-office.bz2 gimp.bz2 hplip.bz2 example.bz2 example.bz2

Sorry if this is confusing will try to clean it up later, brain farts happens LMAO then walk on beach and translate to readable english.

[DanySK]

Auto-detect the best monitor resolution and boot with the right framebuffer!

[kodiakmax]

How about a boot selection option to repair their grub configuration and reinstall grub if needed, etc etc

[WarraWarra]

I was wondering how well it would work if we build back on i486 ~x86 and then -mtune=i686 ?

Still trying to figure out a decent way to get boot times more efficient and almost went "back to the future" with funtoo build and gentoo 2005 build for testing this.

In my funtoo x86 stage3 gcc 4.3.3* git-sources build I have the above and it loads / probes all modules known on boot same as systemrescuecd and with this excluding network up I get to text login in max 15 secs with very similar items to boot as in 4.1 gnome umpc.

The same on 4.1gnome to "nox" login is about 23-25secs with 8 modules loading / probing. "e1000 tg3"
nvidia-drivers takes long so excluded it from above times already.

Did not compare 1:1 items so likely might be less difference but 5 to 10 seconds can make a big difference and even my source compiles is much faster and lower loads on cpu during compiles as compared to 4.1gnome installed.

It also appears that using the i486 instead of i686 that there is much less broken packages and errors in general as compared to i686, almost like i686 x86 with stable builds = guaranteed 30% problems and i486 x86 guaranteed 8% problems.

I see in latest systemrescuecd they have very efficient / fast ways to detect hardware and "lshw" that could be tweaked and used for SL 5.0 to show hardware (as requested above somewhere).

Damn that 20 girls in the bikini photo shoot outside next to the pool is distracting me

[Fitzcarraldo]

These are all great suggestions, how about full drive encryption option? Or at least home partition encryption option as part of base install, ala debian/Ubuntu. Sure not perfect, but would make it easier for us laptop users to use best practices safety.

Great idea. If we were able to install SL from the get-go with an encrypted HDD then, as you say, that would be excellent for us laptop users.

[kodiakmax]

This one might be difficult to do (maybe why I have yet to see a distro do this)

How about, Where the install detects what modules were loaded by the live cd for a particular computer. It then recompiles the kernel to add those modules as built-in instead of modules. Thereby speeding up boot times and becoming more tuned to individual computers.

[DanySK]

Let the user to be able to mask packages directly from Spritz!

[Thev00d00]

good ideas guys keep it coming

[WarraWarra]

This one might be difficult to do (maybe why I have yet to see a distro do this)

How about, Where the install detects what modules were loaded by the live cd for a particular computer. It then recompiles the kernel to add those modules as built-in instead of modules. Thereby speeding up boot times and becoming more tuned to individual computers.

Will have to either during install or after 1st boot do the speed up / customization.

Maybe this might help:
If the command

Code: Select all

grep -v rootfs /proc/mounts > /etc/mtab

dumps a list of mounted into /etc/mtab surely we can use it or in a similar way to make a module list.

/proc/modules shows modules that appears to be active or used by the system then we can get this into a new load modules at boot list maybe killing current load plenty modules list and using this /proc/modules in ..../modules.autoload.d/kernel-2.6 or the latest replacement for this file to load at boot.
Not sure how effective or time consuming it might be to make a new initrd hoping you have 90% or more of the needed modules to make this work. To get 90% to 99% or more then like systemrescuecd have the 1000 modules load at boot.

Alternatively we can after first successful boot have a "tweak your install" icon / interactive script to build a new initrd and or customized kernel and tweak other wonderful things for performance.

If we have a script icon like this then it could have

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rc.conf, parallel = yes
-mtune= or -march= and possibly -j2 -s to be -j16 -s users enters option in advanced options
cd ~/usr/portage ; git pull ; cd ~ ; emerge --sync ; equo update ; equo install equo entropy spritz layman ; layman -s ; equo database gentoosync ; revdep-rebuild ; equo libtest ; equo deptest ; equo world ; depmod -a ; equo conf update ; emerge -Dkb git-sources ; genkernel all

Might then as well remove useless for current installed system from /etc/init.d/ as well as from rc-update list.
This above is more or less what I do each time after installing gentoo as well as emerge @preserve-rebuild sometimes if needed and a few others as well.

[dagurasu]

Encryption is tricky. Just went that way myself with this sabayon install... by hand.

1)full drive... good, but wasting cpu to read binaries.

2) just home: If you're going to bother you must encrpyt tmp and sawp too (and maybe var)
2a) tmp is easy.
2b) swap is easy.
2c) but... encrytping swap breaks hybernation unless you use a fixed password and unlock before resuming.
2d) now you have to type at least 2 passwords for unencrypting + one for login on every boot

so, what I do.. I added a small parition with all the keys... itself encrypted.
I modified the initramfs script to ask for ONE password that unlocks the key drive.
It first luksOpens swap and then tries to resume.
assuming it doesn't resume, it then LuksOpens everything else, closes the key partition and keeps booting. /tmp is just done later with the usual dmcrypt thing.

I'm sure v00d00 knows this all takes thought and I think he's already read what I do anyway, but I thought I'd chime in for the record here.

As you can guess, I REALLY like the idea of having some options for this in an installer. AFAIK this is something sabayon could get an edge on. there doesn't seem to much otu there for automatic setup of encryption and it's not trivial for users to do. But unless you just go with full drive encryption, it's complicated to do this right, not too dificult, but complicated, all the more reason it would be great to have it in an installer though.

It's not that I import porn from foreign countries. But I do like to be able to keep all my banking info on my laptop and not worry about it.