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Posts: 5,028 | Thanked: 8,613 times | Joined on Mar 2011
#2789
Originally Posted by sulu View Post
As some of you might know, the next Debian release "Wheezy" went into Freeze on june 30th, which means that the developers will concentrate on bug fixing now instead of adding new program versions.
This in turn means that dependencies won't change that much anymore, making custom package builds less prone to breaking by simply becoming outdated.

As suggested earlier I finally took that chance to create an Easy Debian image completely based on Wheezy, which Estel and qole generously agreed to host [1] (Thanks for that!).
It is a very minimal image with little more than only a working LXDE desktop. There is no web browser installed, no office suite or whatever one might expect to find in an end-user's image.

Since Wheezy, although in Freeze now, is still Testing, this image is intended for people who know how to handle Testing. And I trust that some of these users will eventually put together an image for brave end users with all the appropriate software.
For instance, Iceweasel 10esr can be installed from the repository. (Chromium currently isn't available in Wheezy armel due to a bug [2].)
I intend to create a similar image when Wheezy is released, so this image is is sort of a release candidate to find out what can be improved. Any tips are welcome!

Some facts about that image:
md5sum (unlzma'd): 6aa2bd305a99b9d9f9e21b092aa5659e
size: 2GB
file system: ext2
default keymap: us (with some minor changes; details follow)
bugs: So far I've only encountered one bug. sudo doesn't set the $PATH variable correctly. All the sbin pathes are missing. You have to become root by calling sudo su to get the sbin pathes correctly. Atm I have no idea what causes this, nor how to fix it since I don't use sudo on my regular computers. If anybody knows how to fix this, please let us know!
others:
a) Due to Maemo's ancient pulseaudio version I had to patch the pulseaudio-related packages in the image. In contrast to the packages in Squeeze this time it's the real Wheezy pulseaudio version 2.0 with only the protocol version patched down to 15 as suggested by thomasjfox [3] (Thanks a lot for that!). The packages currently installed in the image are:
Code:
libpulse0-armel
pulseaudio
pulseaudio-module-x11
pulseaudio-utils
You'll find all the patched packages, including the ones currently not installed, created from pulseaudio here: [4]
Since the packages had to be patched this means that they MUST NOT be replaced with regular Wheezy packages if you want to have sound in Easy Debian. Therefore I set them on "hold" so they will not be automatically upgraded by newer versions. If for some reason you need newer packages than the ones that are currently in the image (because they are required as a dependency) rebuild the packages after patching them yourself or contact me and I'll build new ones (it may take some days until I'm able to provide new ones)!
b) Just like in the Squeeze image I had to replace the xkb folder after the dist-upgrade, so the xkd-data package shouldn't be upgraded too or you'll have to copy it over from Maemo again. When I copied the folder I forgot that I altered my keyboard definition slightly. Users with US layout will notice that "£" and "€" will produce "<" and ">" instead, Shift+Alt+"." will produce "|" and Shift+Alt+Space will produce Escape. If you want an unmodified us keymap copy /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/nokia_vndr/rx-51 from Maemo to the Wheezy image!

[1] image@Estel: http://lorienart.pl/debian_wheezy0sulu.img.lzma @qole: http://qole.org/files/debian_wheezy0sulu.img.lzma
[2] Chromium armel bug: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=674728
[3] pulseaudio patch by thomasjfox: http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p...6&postcount=34
[4] patched pulseaudiopackages@Estel: http://lorienart.pl/pulseaudio_patch...reeze.tar.lzma
Hey Sulu,

Could you please write small "tutorial" for upgrading Squeezy image to wheezy, similar to one You did for upgrading *to* Squeezy? I would put it in wiki, then. Of course, I suppose it includes more than just "dist-upgrade" - installation of new, custom pulseaudio, and such things.

I'm personally interested in it - I would like to do upgrade keeping my current image, instead of starting from scratch, with a fresh one. It would not only save me downloading gigabytes of files over slow network access, but also, more importantly, help testing compatibility with existing (and working well in Squeeze) programs. Diary of steps needed for upgrade would also help in debugging any possible issues with images.

Thanks in advance,

/Estel
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