Linux Lite 7.0 RC1 Released

[Jerry]

Nice one @sqwuade my initial tests show promise

Typo fixed too. Someone buy this man a beer! Thanks to everyone else too for their contributions. I LOVE linux. Can't do this stuff with MS.

[sqwuade]

I got it!  I had to sacrifice the zram option to make it work but it works!

The problem was that the zram tweak has some code that isn't recognized by the new bash version 5.2.21 (I think...) anyway the PIPESTATUS(0) array was being populated with the error code 127 (Apparently that's a pretty common error/exit code) when it was expecting an output of 0.  Once I started hacking through the code and eliminating the different options one by one - the error code of 127 kept reoccurring until I eliminated the zram option.  Once I commented out those lines PIPESTATUS(0) received the expected output of 0 and the rest of the routine could then continue and complete normally.

Rock-n-Roll!

Here's the version that works:

https://digitalhemi.com/files/apps/Linux/LL7-RC1/lite-tweaks

You may need to set permissions appropriately (755?) after moving it to /usr/bin

I'm still experimenting around with the zram statement to see if I can figure out why it's not working.  I suspect there is something different in the latest version of bash that doesn't like the code.  I'm pretty sure it's this line that is the issue and bash can't process it so kicks out the 127 exit/error code:

if [ -z  "$(dpkg -l | grep -G '^ii' | grep zram-config)" ]; then

I'll update if I make any progress on getting the zram tweak working.

Cheers,  Scott

I also fixed a small text error that I found:



changed to:

[Jerry]

Inxi and zenity are held in 7x Zenity because of webkit and inxi so that it keeps working with our Hardware Database.

Thunderbird and Firefox are now via PPA in 7x No snap required.

[sqwuade]

Are we talking Violet Crumble Jerry?  https://www.violetcrumble.com/

My latest find on the "Lite Tweaks" bugger is that in LL7 the value of the "${PIPESTATUS[0]}" variable always comes out to be 127.  It's supposed to come out to be 0 (And it does in LL6.6).  The PIPESTATUS is filled with the exit codes of the functions in the array where 0 = true and 1 = false.  So I'm guessing that it's gathering all false outputs for some reason.  Maybe the newer version of bash does things a little differently that's incompatible with the code in the lite-tweaks script?  There are other scripts like lite-software that also use the PIPESTATUS variable that don't seem to be affected though.

[Şerban S.]

Keeping an eye on this thread. Really hope I don't have to leave it out of 7x

Free chocolate to the person that resolves this

Hi!

Things get messy...

This is what I got at the last attempt:

Code: [Select]

Monday 13 May 2024, 09:36:46 [UTC+3]
Memory Usage: 819/1853MB (44.20%)
Disk Usage: 9/30GB (34%)
 serban  ~  sudo apt upgrade
[...] The following NEW packages will be installed:
  snapd
The following packages have been kept back:
  inxi zenity zenity-common
The following packages will be upgraded:
  gir1.2-glib-2.0 gir1.2-glib-2.0-dev google-chrome-stable
  libgirepository-2.0-0 libglib2.0-0t64 libglib2.0-bin libglib2.0-data
  libglib2.0-dev libglib2.0-dev-bin thunderbird
10 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 3 not upgraded.
[...]

First ugly thing:
"The following NEW packages will be installed:
  snapd"
Never asked for that!
Sad thing is that they pushed Thunderbird through this channel.
I'll have to craft it through the Mozilla PPA.

Kept:

inxi zenity zenity-common

It's difficult to know if those packages are missing, what else gets broken, beside the Lite scripts.
Anyway, at least there is a possible explanation for the repeated crashes, different than some code error.
Worst thing is that there may be changes in those packages that might reduce backward compatibility with the previous versions' code depending on the old version.
Since there is only a short time window from the last update, it's difficult to know when the next update will work and what else will be included in the list, except for the three packages listed above.

Although it was intuitive enough that nothing changed, I ran again the script that catches the output of Lite Tweaks. Nothing changed.
Maybe if the zenity update will be operational, it will work again.
At 15:23 UTC+3, still nothing.
I hoped for a moment that those somehow depended on the previous update. Seems it's otherwise...

I'll get back if something changes into "good news".

[Jerry]

Keeping an eye on this thread. Really hope I don't have to leave it out of 7x

Free chocolate to the person that resolves this

[Şerban S.]

Comparing the code between master, 6.6 and 7.rc all the bashisms are the same, so the problem is with policy kit and the xfce terminal preconfiguration or Ubunbtu configuration file for Lite Tweaks. I've tried several solutions because I want to exhaust the possibilities but the bashisms are all comparable.

TC

Hi!

I've been looking into the scripts myself and since they work alright on LL 6.6, they should in 7.0 too. Yet, an error related to user rights, constantly appears. So the only conclusion is some major change in the policy occured. Further more, it seems that somehow this policy change, is intertwined among lots of packages that are held due to versioning reasons.
As such, it is unlikely that the issue has an origin in the scripts. I found that the error messages are related to minor problems that are unlikely to cause the breaking of the code, since the code is executed on LL 6.6 and the errors are present in this version too.
Yet, another message appears, stating that writing in a file that require just a user name, is denied due to "AccessViolation" error. Which is impossible on a common file or directory.
The $USER variable, is never empty. On my computer, I chose the password login instead of "auto". That is my default installation for over 12 years.
So, there is at least my user name in $USER and I checked that repeatedly.
As I see it, all we can do is for the updates to come and see what that changes.
Another thing I've noticed, that the kernel now is a PREEMPTIVE version. This might require some changes in the policy also.
On the other hand, Ubuntu was buggy for years, when the new release was issued.
Takes time to put the pieces together. Time will clear the things up, I'm sure.
User input will narrow the search for bugs also. So, let's see what happens next.
I'll keep testing meanwhile. If any change happens, I guess at least a bit more can be seen in the output.
The script I put together, is simple but allows me to get the console output when and while Lite Tweaks works.
For now, I never passed the BeginButton_Click() event.
Yet, the script is running up to some point.
 

[trinidad]

Comparing the code between master, 6.6 and 7.rc all the bashisms are the same, so the problem is with policy kit and the xfce terminal preconfiguration or Ubunbtu configuration file for Lite Tweaks. I've tried several solutions because I want to exhaust the possibilities but the bashisms are all comparable.

TC

[sqwuade]

I've made significant progress on the "Lite Tweaks" issue.  My first two theories (.rules vs .pkla polkit-1 and Zenity 3.44 not being compatible) are out the window!

Here's something that at least allows the tweaks to work, although it introduced a new issue, because, once you apply this change, even though all of the Lite Tweaks now work, you will get stuck in an infinite loop, where you can't exit the main window, and have to kill the zenity process manually.

So here it is;

Open the file
/usr/bin/lite-tweaks
and on line 786 change the operator "-ne" to "-eq"

I.e. change:
if [ "${PIPESTATUS[0]}" -ne "0" ]; then _clean_up; exit 0 ; fi # If Quit is clicked then exit

so it becomes:
if [ "${PIPESTATUS[0]}" -eq "0" ]; then _clean_up; exit 0 ; fi # If Quit is clicked then exit

Then try and run Lite Tweaks again and it should work for you...  That is until you try to close it!  That's where it gets stuck in the infinite loop.

A lot of great info on this page: https://linux.die.net/man/1/bash

That's where I found the info on the different operators.

arg1 OP arg2
    OP is one of -eq, -ne, -lt, -le, -gt, or -ge. These arithmetic binary operators return true if arg1 is equal to, not equal to, less than, less than or equal to, greater than, or greater than or equal to arg2, respectively. Arg1 and arg2 may be positive or negative integers.

Info on the PIPESTATUS arrays:
https://linuxsimply.com/bash-scripting-tutorial/process-and-signal-handling/exit-codes/pipestatus/

Cheers!  Sqwuade

[sqwuade]

I tried "sudo apt install openssh-server" first thing with a fresh install of LL7-RC1 and got "openssh-server is already the newest version (1:9.6p1-3ubuntu13).  It's not working for me...  I've installed and run ssh servers many times before.  Usually I just run "apt install ssh" to install the server and "service ssh status" etc. to check on it.  When I run "service ssh status" I get:

Job for ssh.service failed because the control process exited with error code.  See "systemctl status ssh.service" and "journalctl -xeu ssh.service" for details.

I even downloaded a fresh copy of the ISO to install from.  It works fine in LL6.6, Xubuntu and Debian etc.

[sqwuade]

I've been doing more research on the "Lite-Tweaks" issue and the problem could be related to the 3.44 version of zenity not having the "WebKit" option enabled/compiled into the binary any longer (LL6.6 had zenity 3.42.1, which was before the change).

Some info from the zenity Change log page:

3.44.0-2
Superseded in mantic-release on 2023-07-18
Deleted in mantic-proposed on 2023-07-20 (Reason: Moved to mantic)

zenity (3.44.0-2) experimental; urgency=medium

  * Team upload
  * d/control.in, d/rules: Disable WebKit integration (--html option).
    This adds several "heavy" dependencies, notably WebKit itself, but
    also video and spellchecking among others, which are undesired for
    a simple interactive dialog.
    The WebKit feature is disabled by default upstream, and several
    major distributions (including at least the Fedora/Red Hat family,
    Arch and openSUSE) don't enable it in their packaging, so portable
    software cannot rely on this option being available. According to
    codesearch.debian.net, none of the packages with a dependency on
    zenity use the --html option.
    The beginning of the Debian 13 cycle seems a good time to make this
    sort of potentially disruptive change; most likely nobody will notice
    this feature going away, but if we get bug reports, we can consider
    other options such as having a zenity-minimal package without HTML
    support, or having a zenity-full package with it.
    (Closes: #777608, #942362)
  * d/control.in: Remove version constraints in Build-Depends unnecessary
    since bullseye (oldstable)
    - libgtk-3-dev
    - libnotify-dev
    - meson

Source: https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/zenity/+changelog

As a test, try running this script in a terminal on LL7, then try it on LL6.6:

"echo "hello world" | zenity --text-info --html --filename=/dev/stdin"

I got that info here: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1141802

[sqwuade]

I'll give it another try Trinidad.  I did try it a couple times with LL7 in live mode and it wouldn't work.  I've always just run "apt install ssh" and that would setup the server.  I think the client is enabled out-of-the-box.

[trinidad]

SSH doesn't appear to be working/installing correctly in LL7

Works fine for me, and it's openssh not ssh. LL comes with the openssh client installed already. You just have to add openssh server and sftp server.
TC

[sqwuade]

SSH doesn't appear to be working/installing correctly in LL7.  I've always installed in the past with "apt install ssh".  I've confirmed it installs w/o issue that way with a live version of LL6.6 (UEFI) but I've tried several times with LL7 and it doesn't install correctly.
I also tested on a live version of the new Xubuntu (24.04) and it does install and work correctly with "apt install ssh" on that distro.

[sqwuade]

That makes sense.  I'll bet you're right and those "PERCENTAGE = (100 \* ${i} ) / ${TOTAL_LINES}" parts are to show progress bars leading up to 100%.