MX Linux Forum

Hi,

I have a simple question (I think) and I would also like to report how the installation of MX 17.1 went, I'll try to be as brief as possible.

I am very new to linux and was looking for a distribution that would be portable and persistent foremost so I can plug my USB drive and go back into my browsing and coding, between my desktop and laptop mainly.

The install went fine overall (rootfs failed to create while homefs had no problem being created on first try, I had to select the option (3) on one of the options when asked -something like verify integrity (?) ...and also the nvidia driver install took 2 try to fully work via your app for whatever reason but a reboot solved the problem. Besides that the install went smooth).

At the end of the nvidia driver install I was told xorg.conf (I think) was created.

I understand this file tells X to use my gpu but I'm asking myself if that would not become a problem if I now boot my USB drive into my laptop (which does not have an nvidia ofc).

Thank you in advance for your time.

I'd also like to congratulate you on your distribution, I really like the down to earth choices you made with it.

Yes, that xorg.conf file will cause the X GUI to fail to start on the laptop.

However, the Debian wiki states

Debian 9 "Stretch"

As of stretch, you don't need nvidia-xconfig anymore, and a xorg.conf file is not needed either in most situations.

So I'd back up the file, remove it, and see if the two systems still boot correctly.

Ok so I removed the xorg.conf file and the OS fails to load.

To be more precise it loads normally until all the usual text has appeared on screen then hangs on a black screen with a cursor blinking top left whereas it used to start loading the desktop at that point previously.

So that makes it even less portable for now

Also I would like to know: if I had left the xorg.conf (the one pointing at my nvidia 1060 gpu) and plugged the usb drive and booted on my laptop, would have I burned the laptop?

Waiting to read from you when you find the time.

the nvidia driver I don't think will work on a live USB. not sure, but I think it wants to update the initramfs which isn't in use on the live side of things.

if you want to remove the nvidia-driver from the live, you can purge the nvidia-driver install with
it will also undo he blacklisting of the nouveau driver, which is probably why your video didn't come up.

dolphin_oracle wrote:the nvidia driver I don't think will work on a live USB.

It used to work, I even downloaded and ran a benchmark (Unigine Heaven Benchmark), which only started to work after the nvidia driver install.

arken wrote:

dolphin_oracle wrote:the nvidia driver I don't think will work on a live USB.

It used to work, I even downloaded and ran a benchmark (Unigine Heaven Benchmark), which only started to work after the nvidia driver install.

well, I'm wrong then

Its hard for me to tell as I don't have any nvidia hardware to test this stuff on.

Confirm this to me though: let's say I use MX17 as portable and persistent on an USB flash drive, if I don't install the nvidia driver I'll be able to use the stick on any other of my computers safely? The os will check the computer's hardware it is being booted on and load the necessary drivers if possible right?

So if I understand correctly, X is on the way and what you have to do to make the system fully portable is to have X load different xorg.conf files depending on detection (previous nvidia driver installation etc). Or maybe you can imagine some other way (I'll be curious to hear what would be your take on correcting this)?

arken wrote:Confirm this to me though: let's say I use MX17 as portable and persistent on an USB flash drive, if I don't install the nvidia driver I'll be able to use the stick on any other of my computers safely? The os will check the computer's hardware it is being booted on and load the necessary drivers if possible right?

So if I understand correctly, X is on the way and what you have to do to make the system fully portable is to have X load different xorg.conf files depending on detection (previous nvidia driver installation etc). Or maybe you can imagine some other way (I'll be curious to hear what would be your take on correcting this)?

yes. We don't load multiple xorg.conf files. between the kernel and the X11 server, its all auto-detected.

generally speaking, most of the time you don't even need a xorg.conf file anymore. There are 2 notable exceptions. 1. Some nvidia users still need one (but quite a few do not). 2. If you need to force the generic VESA driver, as happens with our failsafe live boot mode.

Can you answer the first question of my last post? ("let's say I use MX17 as portable and persistent on an USB flash drive, if I don't install the nvidia driver I'll be able to use the stick on any other of my computers safely?" )

I really need to make sure (and I'm a linux newbie).

Also can I ask if you'll consider 'fixing' the nvidia/portability issue in any distant future? (I don't mind if the answer is no, it's just to know how often I'll check for this particular update)

Thanks in advance.

arken wrote:Can you answer the first question of my last post? ("let's say I use MX17 as portable and persistent on an USB flash drive, if I don't install the nvidia driver I'll be able to use the stick on any other of my computers safely?" )

I really need to make sure (and I'm a linux newbie).

Also can I ask if you'll consider 'fixing' the nvidia/portability issue in any distant future? (I don't mind if the answer is no, it's just to know how often I'll check for this particular update)

Thanks in advance.

sorry, yes if you don't install nvidia you should be fine.

Here's the main issue with the xorg.conf file. If you are using persistence, its going to stick around. If your nvidia hardware is one of the ones that requires an xorg.conf file to be present, what should we do? Remove it or keep it? Unfortunately, keeping it means that other drivers won't load, and removing it means the nvidia driver won't work (and neither will the nouvaeu open source driver, because its blacklisted when one of the nvidia-drivers is installed).

There is a mechanism in place that might work, but we have it disabled at the moment, for reasons I don't quite remember, but probably because nvidia-driver is a spaghetti factory of conflicting drivers. We can set up things to save the /etc/X11/xorg.conf on a machine by machine basis. I just don't remember at the moment how to tell the machine to do that, but I'll check tonight. Even then you might get conflicts if you try to use the usb on machines that use different nvidia-drivers, because you can't have more than 1 installed at a time, and there are 3 different ones (nvidia-driver, plus 2 different nvidia-legacy-driver packages).

If you do want the proprietary Nvidia drivers, maybe it would be less of a headache just to make another USB stick with those installed and the xorg.conf file, and save the stock MX one for all the other computers.

dolphin_oracle wrote:

arken wrote:Can you answer the first question of my last post? ("let's say I use MX17 as portable and persistent on an USB flash drive, if I don't install the nvidia driver I'll be able to use the stick on any other of my computers safely?" )

I really need to make sure (and I'm a linux newbie).

Also can I ask if you'll consider 'fixing' the nvidia/portability issue in any distant future? (I don't mind if the answer is no, it's just to know how often I'll check for this particular update)

Thanks in advance.

sorry, yes if you don't install nvidia you should be fine.

Here's the main issue with the xorg.conf file. If you are using persistence, its going to stick around. If your nvidia hardware is one of the ones that requires an xorg.conf file to be present, what should we do? Remove it or keep it? Unfortunately, keeping it means that other drivers won't load, and removing it means the nvidia driver won't work (and neither will the nouvaeu open source driver, because its blacklisted when one of the nvidia-drivers is installed).

There is a mechanism in place that might work, but we have it disabled at the moment, for reasons I don't quite remember, but probably because nvidia-driver is a spaghetti factory of conflicting drivers. We can set up things to save the /etc/X11/xorg.conf on a machine by machine basis. I just don't remember at the moment how to tell the machine to do that, but I'll check tonight. Even then you might get conflicts if you try to use the usb on machines that use different nvidia-drivers, because you can't have more than 1 installed at a time, and there are 3 different ones (nvidia-driver, plus 2 different nvidia-legacy-driver packages).

Seems like a nightmare. Wouldn't it be possible to generate different hardware profiles and be able to select them on the boot screen for cases like this?

Stevo wrote:If you do want the proprietary Nvidia drivers, maybe it would be less of a headache just to make another USB stick with those installed and the xorg.conf file, and save the stock MX one for all the other computers.

I think it would be too much hassle for me and kind of defeat the purpose. I'll be fine with a portable USB install without a nvidia driver for now, I'll tinker on opengl/vulkan only when I'm on my main PC.

Thanks for the quick answers and for your time.

on the live-usb, under

/live/boot-dev/antiX/state

there are machine state files. You can define files to save on a machine by machine basis. right now /etc/X11/xorg.conf is NOT saved, because its handled by the persistence system.

You could edit that file to save those xorg.conf files, and then edit /usr/local/share/excludes/persist-save-excludes.list to ADD the xorg.conf to the excludes list. that way only the machine state files would be saving the xorg.conf.

If you decide to try it, it will probbably be easier to set those up BEFORE installing nvidia drivers. That way the xorg.conf will only be saved on the machine that needs it and won't end up in the persistence file.

dolphin_oracle wrote: ... /live/boot-dev/antiX/state
... /usr/local/share/excludes/persist-save-excludes.list

@dolphin_oracle Wow that is smart!!! indeed! Cool stuff. I did always wonder what I can do with that states files!

Thanks for that!

fehlix wrote:

dolphin_oracle wrote: ... /live/boot-dev/antiX/state
... /usr/local/share/excludes/persist-save-excludes.list

@dolphin_oracle Wow that is smart!!! indeed! Cool stuff. I did always wonder what I can do with that states files!

Thanks for that!

I hope it works out OK. the system is flexible, but users are always coming up with new use cases! anticapitalista and BitJam (the antix devs that created the live system of which I'm but a humble yet enthusiastic user) built it to be flexible, and flexibility sometimes brings complexity.

this is why we love the antiX live-USB system. Its the most flexible live system around. Or as we like to say over in antiX land... The most extensive live-usb on the planet!