MX-19 Beta 3 Feedback

[JayM]

I tried installing MX beta 2 or 3 on the ssd and found the following - if before was installed *buntu, then the partition "/home" (ext4) is visible and saved when formatting other partitions.
If I reinstall the system on itself with the formatting of the partitions "/" and "/root", the system writes that the partition "/home" can't be detected and formats it as well.
By itself data is not saved on it (I have to restore everything from backup).
But when I installing *buntu instead of MX, I can properly format both partitions ("boot" and "/") and save the data in the partition "/home"
The disk, of course, is not encrypted in all cases.

Please post your Quick System Info, and also the results of lsblk inside of [code] [/code] tags. Also post the contents of /var/log/minstall.log also within [code] [/code] tags.

[BitJam]

If I reinstall the system on itself with the formatting of the partitions "/" and "/root", the system writes that the partition "/home" can't be detected and formats it as well.
By itself data is not saved on it (I have to restore everything from backup).

Did you (or the MX installer) create a separate /home partition the first time you installed MX? You have an option of having a separate /home partition or having /home be part of the root partition. If there was no /home partition in the first install, it makes sense that it wasn't found or saved during the second install. This would explain what happened. I'm wondering of one or more of these was part of the problem:

1) You expected a separate /home partition to be created/used during the first MX install but it wasn't even though data from a previous /home partition was saved.

2) A separate /home partition was not created/used in the first MX install but you expected the data under /home to be saved during the second install anyway and it wasn't.

3) A separate /home partition was created/used in the first MX install but the 2nd MX install couldn't find it and didn't save the data on it.

[JayM]

I've been testing suspend and hibernate on my HP laptop. These don't work very well using the Xfce power manager. I set it to hibernate when the laptop's lid was closed. I saw some disk activity but the machine never powered off. When I opened the lid the display came back on but my mouse buttons no longer worked. Suspend fared better, acting like I expected, but when it came out of suspend mode my keyboard no longer worked.

However, both functions work a treat from the shutdown menu, after I enabled hibernate on that menu in MX Tweak/Other tab which I found out about by (and this goes out to Jerry3904) actually Reading The Fine Manual! No issues with the mouse or keyboard at all and both functions worked as expected.

It seems that the power manager is mainly just good for dimming the display and shutting off the monitor when idle.

(I forgot to mention that before I did this I repartitioned my 19b3 HDD space for a 10GB swap partition, forgetting that this laptop has only 4GB of RAM, and reinstalled.)

[Charon]

Did you (or the MX installer) create a separate /home partition the first time you installed MX? You have an option of having a separate /home partition or having /home be part of the root partition. If there was no /home partition in the first install, it makes sense that it wasn't found or saved during the second install. This would explain what happened.

Initially, my disk is divided into three partitions - “boot”, “/” one, “/ home” the second and "swap" as last. When installing any new debbased-system, I specify in the installer that need to format the "boot" and "/" sections in ext4 (without changing the sizes and with the same labels), and simply attach the "/home" section (select the section and specify that this is a “home” in ext4. User, of course, another). This allows me to save everything in my "home" partition, but I have configuration from scratch on any system.
When I do the same with the MX installer for the first time over "foreign system" (indicate that the "home" section should be saved/not formatted and indicate that it is a "home" in ext4), then everything works. If I reinstall MX system on itself, then what I described happens - the system refuses to join the partition without formatting (the xubuntu works fine). First encountered this when switching from beta 2 to beta 3. Мaybe MX requires some special disk partitioning??

PS. There was also a problem when adding a second layout (lv+rus), I can’t immediately determine the “Menu” button as a "hotkey" for layout change - immediately after adding a layout, opens for selection incomplete list of buttons. In order for everything to open, it’s necessary to restart the session.

Well, the third problem found is described in #63: when connecting an external USB card with a built-in volume control, the controller works with the built-in card, and not the one on which it is installed. That is, in fact, the sound is not regulated by him - only programmatically. (in *buntu and debian it works)

Fourth, but I think that this is not an MX problem (observed on all recent systems) - when the built-in 3G modem (Ericsson in Lenovo X200s) is completely turned off, after the next start it disappears completely and is not even visible by "rfkill". If, before turning off the computer, apply power to it (for example using TLB) and initialize it via "rfkill unblock wwan", then the modem remains in the system. (but on beta 2 this was not so - the modem remained visible to the system. Maybe these are kernel problems)

[bpr323]

Is it possible for MX to have 2 install options:
1) straight Calamares with "use the entire disk" auto-install, OR
2) minstall with "live kernel update", "fugal" / "persistence" and any other fancy bells & whistles for the "fork in the toaster" crowd?
This minstall saga is really not worth it for 80% of home users who just wantr a beautiful, stable debian distro with the snapshot.iso for recovery and distribution that really makes it stand out
The MX-19 is pretty much done for the final release, bar some minor cosmetic glitches. Slap the Calamares on it and tinker with the minstall in the background - no?

[BitJam]

nitially, my disk is divided into three partitions - “boot”, “/” one, “/ home” the second and "swap" as last. When installing any new debbased-system, I specify in the installer that need to format the "boot" and "/" sections in ext4 (without changing the sizes and with the same labels), and simply attach the "/home" section (select the section and specify that this is a “home” in ext4. User, of course, another). This allows me to save everything in my "home" partition, but I have configuration from scratch on any system.
When I do the same with the MX installer for the first time over "foreign system" (indicate that the "home" section should be saved/not formatted and indicate that it is a "home" in ext4), then everything works.

This does not answer my question. In the first MX installation was /home a separate partition or was /home part of the root partition? Saying "everything worked" does not tell us if /home was a separate partition. If data from your previous /home partition was copied to /home on the root partition of the first MX installation then it would explain what happened. There is a difference between saving data from a previous /home partition and creating or using a separate /home partition on the new system.

I imagine we can figure out what happened if you can provide the information JayM asked for, especially the log file from the first installation but this may not have been preserved which is why I asked the question.

If you got behavior you didn't expect then that's a problem we should address. If you also lost data then it's a serious problem we should address but we can't fix it until we know what the problem is. Perhaps someone else who is more familiar with the installer can help you tomorrow.

[bpr323]

The only major problem left over is the terrible instability of BT - I use it for connecting BT headphones, but like in all distros using blueman, once you reboot - your BT connection is gone and you have to click-click-click disconnect, reconnect .. terrible. I invested some hard earned cash into a pair of good BT headphones, but have to connect them with a cable, b/c BT is useless it can't maintain re-establish connection after reboot.

[JayM]

Is it possible for MX to have 2 install options:
1) straight Calamares with "use the entire disk" auto-install, OR
2) minstall with "live kernel update", "fugal" / "persistence" and any other fancy bells & whistles for the "fork in the toaster" crowd?
This minstall saga is really not worth it for 80% of home users who just wantr a beautiful, stable debian distro with the snapshot.iso for recovery and distribution that really makes it stand out
The MX-19 is pretty much done for the final release, bar some minor cosmetic glitches. Slap the Calamares on it and tinker with the minstall in the background - no?

Calamares is Debian's new installer in Buster, not MX's installer which is based on the one from MEPIS. Calamares has nothing to do with MX. Different distro, different installer.

Frugal and persistence USB boot options have nothing whatsoever to do with the installer, they're functions of the live USB which come from antiX ("the antiX Magic".) The installer just installs MX to the HDD or SSD if someone chooses to do do.

The Live USB Kernel Updater is an MX Tool that again has nothing to do with the installer. just like MX Boot Options,MX Boot Repair, and so on.

So I basically have no idea what you're talking about here.

[anticapitalista]

Is it possible for MX to have 2 install options:
1) straight Calamares with "use the entire disk" auto-install, OR
2) minstall with "live kernel update", "fugal" / "persistence" and any other fancy bells & whistles for the "fork in the toaster" crowd?
This minstall saga is really not worth it for 80% of home users who just wantr a beautiful, stable debian distro with the snapshot.iso for recovery and distribution that really makes it stand out
The MX-19 is pretty much done for the final release, bar some minor cosmetic glitches. Slap the Calamares on it and tinker with the minstall in the background - no?

Correct - No , we won't use the calamares installer.

[bpr323]

So I basically have no idea what you're talking about here.

I'm talking about the change from 18.3 being now totally unable to install 19b3 snapshots created from other machines and unable to install a "fresh" copy of 19b3 over the existing installation on the same machine.
You sound like you haven't even looked at the s/shots and logs I posted all over this thread.
And before rolling your eyes and lecturing me that Calamares is a "Debian installer for Buster", please do yourself a favor and read up here - https://calamares.io/about/
MX (Antix) installer is far too over-engineered "old school" swiss-knife home-brew installer for otherwise brilliant and excellent distro like MX.
MX snapshot is a brilliant piece of software - I don't know of any other distro (besides Antix) that allows to shrink-wrap partitions (just the data) without cloning whole 1tb disks.
I don't know what exactly LUM does better than Etcher, and why it needs minstall.conf to carry over errors from one failed install to the next, but my testing shows there's too many variables to control when you combine LUM and MX Installer for very little benefit to the average "set and forget" type of home user.