MX Linux Forum

siamhie wrote: Wed Sep 22, 2021 10:12 pm

dolphin_oracle wrote: Wed Sep 22, 2021 9:23 pm did you not get a popup when installing mx-fluxbox to run the install routine from the menu? there is a lot of stuff in there that lives in the home folder and we don't let packages touch home folders directly.

No I didn't. The install of Fluxbox went like it did the first time I installed back on Sep 5th by itself. As soon as it was finished installing the OS, the installer says it will reboot after I click finish (or close-can't remember) at the bottom. When I booted into Fluxbox, that's the desktop I got. The first time I installed beta 2, I had the normal desktop with the dock, tint2 panel and conky.

Has the ISO on the web site been updated since the 5th of Sep? (that's the ISO I'm working with)

no but unless you installed "mx-fluxbox" you won't see the popup. fluxbox on its own doesn't have anything. come to think of it, installing mx-fluxbox from synaptic won't generate the popup, its only automatic from mx-packageinstaller->popular apps->window managers.

dolphin_oracle wrote: Wed Sep 22, 2021 11:04 pm

siamhie wrote: Wed Sep 22, 2021 10:12 pm

dolphin_oracle wrote: Wed Sep 22, 2021 9:23 pm did you not get a popup when installing mx-fluxbox to run the install routine from the menu? there is a lot of stuff in there that lives in the home folder and we don't let packages touch home folders directly.

No I didn't. The install of Fluxbox went like it did the first time I installed back on Sep 5th by itself. As soon as it was finished installing the OS, the installer says it will reboot after I click finish (or close-can't remember) at the bottom. When I booted into Fluxbox, that's the desktop I got. The first time I installed beta 2, I had the normal desktop with the dock, tint2 panel and conky.

Has the ISO on the web site been updated since the 5th of Sep? (that's the ISO I'm working with)

no but unless you installed "mx-fluxbox" you won't see the popup. fluxbox on its own doesn't have anything. come to think of it, installing mx-fluxbox from synaptic won't generate the popup, its only automatic from mx-packageinstaller->popular apps->window managers.

OK, that makes more sense. I'll go ahead and do a re-install of my dual boot setup using the KDE and Fluxbox ISO's I have tomorrow. I'm going to install them in the same order, KDE first then Fluxbox. I'll reformat both root partitions, home partition and boot partition so that I'm starting fresh. I'll post my results here when I'm done.

siamhie wrote: Wed Sep 22, 2021 11:49 pm

dolphin_oracle wrote: Wed Sep 22, 2021 11:04 pm no but unless you installed "mx-fluxbox" you won't see the popup. fluxbox on its own doesn't have anything. come to think of it, installing mx-fluxbox from synaptic won't generate the popup, its only automatic from mx-packageinstaller->popular apps->window managers.

OK, that makes more sense. I'll go ahead and do a re-install of my dual boot setup using the KDE and Fluxbox ISO's I have tomorrow. I'm going to install them in the same order, KDE first then Fluxbox. I'll reformat both root partitions, home partition and boot partition so that I'm starting fresh. I'll post my results here when I'm done.

@siamhie If you first install MX from the MX-KDE iso, then install MX-Fluxbox from the MX-Fluxbox iso into a separate root partition but use the same home partition, I'm guessing that you will end up with the same result because the installer will see that a version of MX has already been installed so it won't place the fluxbox files in the home directory because it will not overwrite what it thinks might be there, but isn't.

Perhaps @dolphin_oracle could confirm this. He is not installing mx-fluxbox from the package installer but in a dual boot that uses the same /home partition. Isn't there a feature of the MX installer that preserves the /home so that files are not overwritten. So is it possible that the installer sees that he installing MX again, but reusing his /home partition so it won't write the MX-Fluxbox configuration files to /home because it assumes there maybe something there already and doesn't want to overwrite the users' settings files. Unless the mx-installer is super smart and looks at all of the files in the /home to determine if they are there or not and writes only the files from the installer that are not already present.

.fluxbox might be there for one of two possible reasons that I can imagine. 1. It came from the MX-KDE iso install which was built from the default installer for MX-19.2 which installed both MX-XFCE and MX-Fluxbox so it is just an artifact from the installer. or 2. When the fluxbox.deb is installed as a window manager it automatically creates a configuration folder in /home but doesn't populate it with sample user files, hence why it looks like a stock Debian install of fluxbox without any customizations.

@mowest: we never write new files into the home folder. the packages are deliberately set up that way. settings under /etc/skel get updated, which will work for newly created user accounts, but not existing home folders, at least not without running the mxflux_install.sh script. there is a menu entry for it for those folks that don't install from mxpi->popularapps.

personally I don't like the blend of fluxbox and plasma. they both mess around with the ~/.config/gtk-3.0 folder and things can get a little weird with overlapping settings.

this kind of thing is why I use separate home folders for each install.

dolphin_oracle wrote: Thu Sep 23, 2021 10:56 am @mowest: we never write new files into the home folder. the packages are deliberately set up that way. settings under /etc/skel get updated, which will work for newly created user accounts, but not existing home folders, at least not without running the mxflux_install.sh script. there is a menu entry for it for those folks that don't install from mxpi->popularapps.

personally I don't like the blend of fluxbox and plasma. they both mess around with the ~/.config/gtk-3.0 folder and things can get a little weird with overlapping settings.

this kind of thing is why I use separate home folders for each install.

So, this is what I expected. When @siamhie runs the installer from the 2nd MX-iso (namely MX-Fluxbox) it sees that you have a user installed and the /home folder will not receive any of the MX-Fluxbox configuration files. Where as if it was a fresh install with its own fresh /home partition then the installer would see it as a new user and copy the settings files into the /home folder. From what you said, I think I will continue to happily just run one MX DE environment to keep things predicable. I knew the problem must have been the previously created /home and the installer not wanting to possibly overwrite files.

mowest wrote: Thu Sep 23, 2021 10:12 am @siamhie If you first install MX from the MX-KDE iso, then install MX-Fluxbox from the MX-Fluxbox iso into a separate root partition but use the same home partition, I'm guessing that you will end up with the same result because the installer will see that a version of MX has already been installed so it won't place the fluxbox files in the home directory because it will not overwrite what it thinks might be there, but isn't.

That's exactly what happened with my second attempt. When I install KDE first, then install Fluxbox second, I end up with a stock Fluxbox enviorment.

mowest wrote: Thu Sep 23, 2021 10:12 am .fluxbox might be there for one of two possible reasons that I can imagine. 1. It came from the MX-KDE iso install which was built from the default installer for MX-19.2 which installed both MX-XFCE and MX-Fluxbox so it is just an artifact from the installer. or 2. When the fluxbox.deb is installed as a window manager it automatically creates a configuration folder in /home but doesn't populate it with sample user files, hence why it looks like a stock Debian install of fluxbox without any customizations.

When I install KDE first, there is no .fluxbox folder within my home folder. The .fluxbox folder shows up after the installation of Fluxbox.

dolphin_oracle wrote: Thu Sep 23, 2021 10:56 am @mowest: we never write new files into the home folder. the packages are deliberately set up that way. settings under /etc/skel get updated, which will work for newly created user accounts, but not existing home folders, at least not without running the mxflux_install.sh script. there is a menu entry for it for those folks that don't install from mxpi->popularapps.

That explains the stock Fluxbox desktop when I installed it after installing KDE. Does the mxflux_install.sh script launch MX Tweak?

mowest wrote: Thu Sep 23, 2021 11:03 am So, this is what I expected. When @siamhie runs the installer from the 2nd MX-iso (namely MX-Fluxbox) it sees that you have a user installed and the /home folder will not receive any of the MX-Fluxbox configuration files. Where as if it was a fresh install with its own fresh /home partition then the installer would see it as a new user and copy the settings files into the /home folder.

Yes. When installing Fluxbox second, the installer saw that I had a home folder of the same name I used during the KDE install and gave me three options. I selected the first, which was to re-use the folder.

So to recap my dual boot installation, Fluxbox must be installed first so that the installer will populate the needed MXFB config files or just create a second home partition.

I'm up and running my dual boot (Fluxbox/KDE) and I'm glad I came across all of this now while I'm still testing. This gives me ideas of how I want to setup my computer when MX21 Final is released.
Thank you @dolphin_oracle and @mowest .

@siamhie

That explains the stock Fluxbox desktop when I installed it after installing KDE. Does the mxflux_install.sh script launch MX Tweak?

other way around...mx-tweak uses the mxflux_install.sh script to reset defaults.

dolphin_oracle wrote: Thu Sep 23, 2021 1:24 pm @siamhie

That explains the stock Fluxbox desktop when I installed it after installing KDE. Does the mxflux_install.sh script launch MX Tweak?

other way around...mx-tweak uses the mxflux_install.sh script to reset defaults.

Your right. I don't know what I was thinking this morning. When this happened the first time, I resolved the issue by going this route (opened Thunar via a bash shell from the menu. From there I went to /usr/bin and launched the mx-welcome file. From there I opened mx-tweak and selected reset ALL mx-fluxbox settings)

Does MX-21 have a signed kernel? I cannot seem to get secure boot working with MX-19 so wondered whether support has been or will be added to MX-21? Rather bizzarely, signed kernels appear to be being used on Live ISOs because they boot, but the installed partition does not and will not boot unless secure boot is disabled.

Mirador wrote: Sun Sep 26, 2021 1:05 pm Does MX-21 have a signed kernel? I cannot seem to get secure boot working with MX-19 so wondered whether support has been or will be added to MX-21? Rather bizzarely, signed kernels appear to be being used on Live ISOs because they boot, but the installed partition does not and will not boot unless secure boot is disabled.

The default kernel installed are signed. What needs to be done after MX-Installer did run and after purged any dkms-related stuff, would be to install and add signed grub-modules and shim related stuff. Further to not have grub-install and generate efi-grub loader but get the Debian signed efi-loader onto the ESP.
The little hickup, would be that debian signed EFI-grub loader do have a hardcoded prefix for the EFI folder, which is on the ESP something like /EFI/debian. (That' something similar to Mint which use Ubuntu's hardcoded prefix at /EFI/ubuntu)
I might need find my notes how I have installed MX21 to boot in secure mode ... in case anyone might be interested....