MX Linux Forum

Posted: **Wed Nov 25, 2020 2:34 am**

Hi MX'ers!

Happy to pass along the first release of AV Linux MX Edition!

A huge thanks to the developers and community of MX for your patience, help and a warm welcome! I wish all of you in the U.S. a safe and healthy Thanksgiving!

http://www.bandshed.net/2020/11/25/av-l ... n-is-here/

Posted: **Wed Nov 25, 2020 2:45 am**

Congrats! When I have some time, I'll check it out on live USB.

Posted: **Wed Nov 25, 2020 3:06 am**

Thanks asqwerth!

I'd love your feedback if you do find the time, if not no worries! :-)

Posted: **Wed Nov 25, 2020 3:36 am**

Nice! Keen do see what you've done with it and kick the tyres. Downloading now.

Posted: **Wed Nov 25, 2020 7:02 am**

The Bytemark Mirror is not synced yet!
Congrats :)
Edit: Bytemark is ok now!

Posted: **Wed Nov 25, 2020 10:08 am**

I downloaded AVL and checked md5sum. I was able to install in Virtualbox, but it failed trying to write to usb from Live USB Maker in both Full Featured and in Image mode. In both it seemed to complete and then gave an error message. I attemped to boot anyway and got "/antiX/vmlinuz not found". I tried with two different usb's. The usb's did work again with other MX iso's.
Earl

Posted: **Wed Nov 25, 2020 10:35 am**

Congrats! Thanks for using MX base to build your OS. Hopefully new releases will be easier and easier.

Posted: **Wed Nov 25, 2020 11:00 am**

Followup
I went into the Virtualbox install and made a snapshot. I was able to make a bootable usb from the snapshot.
Differences between downloaded iso and my snapshot:
downloaded iso:ls -l
total 40
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Nov 25 09:22 antiX
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Nov 25 09:22 AVL-MXE-2020.11.23-xfce4-amd64
drwxr-xr-x 6 root root 4096 Nov 25 09:22 boot
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 894 Nov 17 19:31 cdrom.ico
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Nov 25 09:22 EFI
drwx------ 2 root root 16384 Nov 25 09:08 lost+found
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 116 Nov 25 09:22 made-by-live-usb-maker

my snapshot:
ls -l
total 40
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Nov 25 10:50 antiX
drwxr-xr-x 6 root root 4096 Nov 25 10:50 boot
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 894 Nov 17 19:31 cdrom.ico
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Nov 25 10:50 EFI
drwx------ 2 root root 16384 Nov 25 10:36 lost+found
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 116 Nov 25 10:50 made-by-live-usb-maker
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Nov 25 10:50 snapshot-20201125_0957

Does having the name "AVL..." instead of "snapshot..." make the difference ?

Earl

Posted: **Wed Nov 25, 2020 12:30 pm**

@old_guy

Thanks for taking a look and following up..

I can't say for sure what the difference is as far as the Snapshots, I'm still getting up to speed on these great tools! A couple of things that may or may not be related:

1. The RT Preempt Kernel in AV Linux is notoriously cranky with Virtualbox especially newer versions, this can lead to freezups and all sorts of weird behaviours. Since the aim of AVL is lowlatency Audio recording much of that benefit is lost in a VM environment. I don't really recommend AVL-MXE Virtualized unless the user wants to install an alternate Kernel etc.

2. In my experience running MX-Snapshot with a CPU performance governor can lead to variable results, I suggest running Snapshot with an ondemand Governor which you can set on the fly in the AVL-MXE Assistant.

Posted: **Wed Nov 25, 2020 12:42 pm**

The problem is not virtualbox, it is that it fails using the MX Live USB Maker. Look at my followup note, You have a directory named "AVL-MXE-2020.11.23-xfce4-amd64" with the package list in it. I installed your iso in virtualbox and from there made a snapshot. That snapshot did work with MX Live USB Maker. The difference I see is the name of the directory holding the package list - it's name is "snapshot-20201125_0957".
Earl

Posted: **Wed Nov 25, 2020 1:15 pm**

Hi,

OK, wasn't trying to blame your particular issue on VBox, just wanted to mention it's known to be flaky in other ways so be aware if you want to run AVL in VBox

I don't have an answer about that right now, perhaps one of the MX devs will pop their head in later and give a clue where to start looking. I did not knowingly modify anything to do with Snapshot itself aside from dolphin_oracle kindly helping me with a customized ISO template which was mostly limited to custom booting menu images.

Posted: **Wed Nov 25, 2020 4:21 pm**

Seems the md5sum of linuxfs on the iso failed:
Downloaded and check the checsum of the ISO are OK, as provided:

Code: Select all

$ LANG=en_US.UTF-8 check AVL-MXE-2020.11.23-xfce4-amd64.iso.md5;
#---------------------------------------------
md5sum --check --ignore-missing AVL-MXE-2020.11.23-xfce4-amd64.iso.md5 
#---------------------------------------------
AVL-MXE-2020.11.23-xfce4-amd64.iso: OK
#----------------  DONE ----------------------

$ LANG=en_US.UTF-8 check AVL-MXE-2020.11.23-xfce4-amd64.iso.sha512 
#---------------------------------------------
sha512sum --check --ignore-missing AVL-MXE-2020.11.23-xfce4-amd64.iso.sha512 
#---------------------------------------------
AVL-MXE-2020.11.23-xfce4-amd64.iso: OK
#----------------  DONE ----------------------

Here my terminal log for live-usb-maker

Code: Select all

$ LANG=en_US.UTF-8 sudo live-usb-maker -V -g -f ./AVL-MXE-2020.11.23-xfce4-amd64.iso 
===============================================================================
Starting live-usb-maker 2.41.17
===============================================================================
Only one target usb device was found sdg
Will use target device sdg (28.7G SanDisk Ultra)
                                                                                                                            
Please select an action to perform                                                                                          
  > Make a full-featured live-usb                                                                                           
  = Start live-usb with a data partition                                                                                    
  > Make an encrypted full-featured live-usb                                                                                
  > Make a customized live-usb (includes encryption option)                                                                 
  > Other options                                                                                                           
Press <Enter> to select the highlighted entry                                                                               
Use 'h' for help, 'r' to redraw, 'q' to quit                                                                                
                                                                                                                            
Check md5 of the file AVL-MXE-2020.11.23-xfce4-amd64.iso?                                                                   
  > yes                                                                                                                     
  = no                                                                                                                      
Press <Enter> to select the highlighted entry                                                                               
Use 'h' for help, 'r' to redraw, 'q' to quit                                                                                
Will use source file ./AVL-MXE-2020.11.23-xfce4-amd64.iso                                                                   
Found grub config 2.0

                    Total      Used     Extra
   entire drive  28.6 GiB 28.6 GiB     0 MiB
 data partition     1 MiB    0 MiB     1 MiB
 main partition  28.6 GiB 3.48 GiB  25.1 GiB
 uefi partition    50 MiB   18 MiB    32 MiB
                                                                                                                            
Please select how much space to use for the live-usb partitions                                                             
      Live Percent  Live Size  Remaining                                                                                    
  >            90%   25.8 GiB  2.86 GiB                                                                                     
  >            85%   24.3 GiB  4.30 GiB                                                                                     
  >            80%   22.9 GiB  5.73 GiB                                                                                     
  >            75%   21.5 GiB  7.16 GiB                                                                                     
  >            70%   20.0 GiB  8.59 GiB                                                                                     
  =            65%   18.6 GiB  10.0 GiB                                                                                     
  >            60%   17.2 GiB  11.5 GiB                                                                                     
  >            55%   15.8 GiB  12.9 GiB                                                                                     
  >            50%   14.3 GiB  14.3 GiB                                                                                     
  >            45%   12.9 GiB  15.8 GiB                                                                                     
  >            40%   11.5 GiB  17.2 GiB                                                                                     
  >            35%   10.0 GiB  18.6 GiB                                                                                     
  >            30%   8.59 GiB  20.0 GiB                                                                                     
  >            25%   7.16 GiB  21.5 GiB                                                                                     
  >            20%   5.73 GiB  22.9 GiB                                                                                     
  >            15%   4.30 GiB  24.3 GiB                                                                                     
  >            13%   3.72 GiB  24.9 GiB                                                                                     
Press <Enter> to select the highlighted entry                                                                               
Use 'h' for help, 'r' to redraw, 'q' to quit                                                                                
Have set size to 65% (18.6 GiB)                                                                                             

                    Total      Used     Extra
   entire drive  28.6 GiB 28.6 GiB     0 MiB
 data partition  10.0 GiB    0 MiB  10.0 GiB
 main partition  18.6 GiB 3.48 GiB  15.1 GiB
 uefi partition    50 MiB   18 MiB    32 MiB
                                                                                                                            
Please select the data partition filesystem type                                                                            
  > vfat filesystem                                                                                                         
  = exfat filesystem                                                                                                        
  > ntfs filesystem                                                                                                         
  > ext4 filesystem                                                                                                         
Press <Enter> to select the highlighted entry                                                                               
Use 'h' for help, 'r' to redraw, 'q' to quit                                                                                
Will create a leading exfat data partition                                                                                  

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ready to make live-usb on device sdg
... by copying file ./AVL-MXE-2020.11.23-xfce4-amd64.iso
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                                                                                                            
Shall we begin?                                                                                                             
  = yes                                                                                                                     
  > no                                                                                                                      
  > pretend mode                                                                                                            
Press <Enter> to select the highlighted entry                                                                               
Use 'h' for help, 'r' to redraw, 'q' to quit                                                                                
>> partition-clear                                                                                                          
>> partition-make
Using gpt partitioning
>> makefs-data
>> makefs-data
Make exfat filesystem
mkexfatfs 1.3.0
Creating... done.
Flushing... done.
File system created successfully.
Error: Partition(s) 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64 on /dev/sdg1 have been written, but we have been unable to inform the kernel of the change, probably because it/they are in use.  As a result, the old partition(s) will remain in use.  You should reboot now before making further changes.
>> makefs-bios
mke2fs 1.44.5 (15-Dec-2018)
64-bit filesystem support is not enabled.  The larger fields afforded by this feature enable full-strength checksumming.  Pass -O 64bit to rectify.
Creating filesystem with 4866816 4k blocks and 200256 inodes
Filesystem UUID: 942a1b4d-f2db-4124-a6ca-a6b83e3ab530
Superblock backups stored on blocks: 
	32768, 98304, 163840, 229376, 294912, 819200, 884736, 1605632, 2654208, 
	4096000

Allocating group tables: done                            
Writing inode tables: done                            
Creating journal (8192 blocks): done
Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information: done   

tune2fs 1.44.5 (15-Dec-2018)
>> makefs-uefi
mkfs.fat 4.1 (2017-01-24)

Filesystem     Type     Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sdg1      fuseblk   11G  1.5M   11G   1% data
/dev/sdg2      ext4      19G   44M   19G   1% main
/dev/sdg3      vfat      49M   512   49M   1% uefi

>> copy-uefi
copy from iso to uefi partition
files [Ee][Ff][Ii] version
Fix Dell uefi memtest bug
>> copy-main
copy from iso to main partition
copy /antiX/vmlinuz
e4defrag 1.44.5 (15-Dec-2018)
ext4 defragmentation for ./antiX/vmlinuz
[1/1]./antiX/vmlinuz:	100%  extents: 2 -> 1	[ OK ]
 Success:			[1/1]
copy /antiX/initrd.gz
e4defrag 1.44.5 (15-Dec-2018)
ext4 defragmentation for ./antiX/initrd.gz
[1/1]./antiX/initrd.gz:	100%  extents: 1 -> 1	[ OK ]
 Success:			[1/1]
copy remaining files ...
|=======================================================================================================================>100%
>> check-usb-md5
check md5 for initrd.gz
initrd.gz: OK
check md5 for linuxfs
linuxfs: FAILED
md5sum: WARNING: 1 computed checksum did NOT match
Warning: MD5 CHECK FAILED FOR linuxfs
check md5 for vmlinuz
vmlinuz: OK

Warning: At least one file failed the md5 check
                                                                                                                            
Do you want to continue anway?
(Use --force=nomd5 to always ignore this warning)                                            
  > yes                                                                                                                     
  > no                                                                                                                      
Press <Enter> to select the highlighted entry                                                                               
Use 'h' for help, 'r' to redraw, 'q' to quit                                                                                
   Error: nomd5                                                                                                                
At least one file failed the md5 check: nomd5

live-usb-maker took 4 minutes and 36 seconds.

and if directly "mounting" the iso with isomount:

Code: Select all

$ isomount AVL-MXE-2020.11.23-xfce4-amd64.iso 
isomount: Mounted AVL-MXE-2020.11.23-xfce4-amd64.iso at /mnt/iso/iso1
isomount: Mounted /mnt/iso/iso1/antiX/linuxfs at /mnt/iso/sq1

isomount mount-points
File                                                                   Type      Size  Mounted at   
/mnt/data_iso/ISO/MX-Linux/AVL-MXE/AVL-MXE-2020.11.23-xfce4-amd64.iso  iso9660   3,5G  /mnt/iso/iso1
/mnt/iso/iso1/antiX/linuxfs                                            squashfs  3,5G  /mnt/iso/sq1 
Drücken Sie eine Taste zum Fortfahren...

$ 
$ cd /mnt/iso/iso1
fehlix@mx192ahs:/mnt/iso/iso1
$ ls -al
insgesamt 13
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2048 Nov 24 07:42 .
drwxrwxrwt 4 root root   80 Nov 25 22:04 ..
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2048 Nov 24 07:42 antiX
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2048 Nov 24 07:35 AVL-MXE-2020.11.23-xfce4-amd64
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2048 Nov 18 01:31 boot
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  894 Nov 18 01:31 cdrom.ico
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2048 Nov 18 01:31 .disk
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2048 Nov 18 01:31 EFI
fehlix@mx192ahs:/mnt/iso/iso1
$ cd antiX
fehlix@mx192ahs:/mnt/iso/iso1/antiX
$ ll
insgesamt 3,5G
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 7,4M Nov 24 07:35 initrd.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   44 Nov 24 07:35 initrd.gz.md5
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 3,5G Nov 24 07:42 linuxfs
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   42 Nov 24 07:42 linuxfs.md5
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 5,1M Nov 24 07:35 vmlinuz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   42 Nov 24 07:35 vmlinuz.md5

and checking manuall linuxfs.md5 /mnt/iso/iso1/antiX

Code: Select all

fehlix@mx192ahs:/mnt/iso/iso1/antiX
$ LANG=en_US.UTF-8 check linuxfs.md5
#---------------------------------------------
md5sum --check --ignore-missing linuxfs.md5 
#---------------------------------------------
linuxfs: FAILED
#----------------  DONE ----------------------

And the GUI "MX LiveUSB Maker" would certainly complain about the mismatch,
not recognizing, that the mismatch exists already before it starts to create the LiveUSB.

Posted: **Wed Nov 25, 2020 4:51 pm**

Speaking of the realtime kernels, are they also incompatible with the proprietary Nvidia drivers like Debian's?

If so, has anyone tested to see if the Liquorix kernels are a workaround on AVL?

Posted: **Wed Nov 25, 2020 5:06 pm**

that mismatch would have occurred during the snapshot process. I believe avlinux reported a similar problem before with md5 sums.

Posted: **Wed Nov 25, 2020 6:19 pm**

so the question remains, whats wrong with the md5sum and linuxfs.
in tests putting snapshot dir in a 12GB tmpfs tmpdir I see the temp-working it is made within home.
do we miss some syncs after having generated linuxfs and before running md5sum run?
I assume generated squashed file is ok and also the generated iso, so it might only be the md5sum get confused and created a wrong one.
Perhabs a quick fix for the current situation, until we find a fix with mx-snapshot, might be a iso-repack-script, where checksum are generated freshly.

Posted: **Wed Nov 25, 2020 6:52 pm**

The user that reported running a new snapshot worked in vb so I think.it's something with the actual generation of the md5sum on avlinux's machine. There is another thread with similar issues with generating md5 sum on isos. (Not linuxfs file.)

viewtopic.php?p=600507#p600507

Your workaround should be ok I would think.

Posted: **Wed Nov 25, 2020 7:40 pm**

Hi,

Wow I step away for a few hours and the switchboard lights up!

First @Stevo

Yes our RT Kernels are not compatible with nVidia/AMD Drivers... to my knowledge any kernel with the RT patch suffers the same fate.. BUT there are several workarounds..
In our repo we also provide lowlatency Kernel builds of our own that should allow 3rd party Video drivers to build without issue... or AVL-MXE comes with the Liquorix repos enabled... or any of your recommended MX Kernels should also be installable as easily from Package Management..

OK now about this checksum business... I have to admit to being very confused..

I did have problems with MX-Snapshot creating ISOs that the generated MD5 and SHA512 did not match, but this was very obvious, simply running independent checksums after the ISO was completed showed that the Snapshot generated text files were incorrect.. With some trial and error I noted that when my build machine had the CPU governed for 'performance' the ISO's were more often wonky than not as far as checksums went.. further to that Live USB Maker would fail on every ISO that had wonky checksums

THEN I changed my governor to ondemand and ever since every ISO I have created had perfectly matching checksums and also created Bootable USB Keys successfully... Of course before I uploaded these ISO's I checked and double checked that the ISO files had matching checksums and that my USB Keys were not only created successfully but booted successfully, in fact the Youtube Video was all made on booted USB Keys..

So where did I mess up and what can I do to fix it?

Posted: **Wed Nov 25, 2020 8:51 pm**

i downloaded the iso, md5 and sha512 files from linuxaudio.org and when I checked data integrity by right-clicking on the checksum files in Thunar they tested OK. I'm burning the iso to a generic 8GB flash drive now using LUM in full-feature mode and will boot fom it later and check the integrity of the kernel etc. in the live USB's menus and report back.

Posted: **Wed Nov 25, 2020 9:12 pm**

LUM gave me an error when burning the iso:
/var/log/live-usb-maker.error

Code: Select all

:At least one file failed the md5 check

/var/log/live-usb-maker.progress

Code: Select all

Starting live-usb-maker 2.41.17
Will use target device /dev/sdd (14.5G TOSHIBA TransMemory)
Will use source file /home/snapshot/snapshot-20201014_1821.iso
Found grub config 2.0
Ready to make live-usb on device sdd
... by copying file /home/snapshot/snapshot-20201014_1821.iso
>> partition-clear
>> partition-make
Using msdos partitioning
>> makefs-bios
>> makefs-uefi
>> copy-uefi
copy from iso to uefi partition
files [Ee][Ff][Ii] version
Fix Dell uefi memtest bug
>> copy-main
copy from iso to main partition
copy /antiX/vmlinuz
copy /antiX/initrd.gz
copy remaining files ...
>> check-usb-md5
check md5 for initrd.gz
check md5 for linuxfs
check md5 for vmlinuz
>> uuids
Using antiX/MX grub config 2.0
>> install
extlinux version 6.04
>> done

live-usb-maker took 33 minutes and 34 seconds.
Starting live-usb-maker 2.41.17
Will use target device /dev/sdd (14.5G TOSHIBA TransMemory)
Will use source file /home/snapshot/snapshot-20201114_1142.iso
Found grub config 2.0
Ready to make live-usb on device sdd
... by copying file /home/snapshot/snapshot-20201114_1142.iso
>> partition-clear
>> partition-make
Using msdos partitioning
>> makefs-bios
>> makefs-uefi
>> copy-uefi
copy from iso to uefi partition
files [Ee][Ff][Ii] version
Fix Dell uefi memtest bug
>> copy-main
copy from iso to main partition
copy /antiX/vmlinuz
copy /antiX/initrd.gz
copy remaining files ...
>> check-usb-md5
check md5 for initrd.gz
check md5 for linuxfs
check md5 for vmlinuz
>> uuids
Using antiX/MX grub config 2.0
>> install
extlinux version 6.04
>> done

live-usb-maker took 56 minutes and 38 seconds.
Starting live-usb-maker 2.41.17
Will use target device /dev/sdd (7.5G Generic Flash_Disk)
Will use source file /home/jay/Downloads/AVL-MXE-2020.11.23-xfce4-amd64.iso
Found grub config 2.0
Ready to make live-usb on device sdd
... by copying file /home/jay/Downloads/AVL-MXE-2020.11.23-xfce4-amd64.iso
>> partition-clear
>> partition-make
Using msdos partitioning
>> makefs-bios
>> makefs-uefi
>> copy-uefi
copy from iso to uefi partition
files [Ee][Ff][Ii] version
Fix Dell uefi memtest bug
>> copy-main
copy from iso to main partition
copy /antiX/vmlinuz
copy /antiX/initrd.gz
copy remaining files ...
>> check-usb-md5
check md5 for initrd.gz
check md5 for linuxfs
Warning: MD5 CHECK FAILED FOR linuxfs
check md5 for vmlinuz
Error: At least one file failed the md5 check

live-usb-maker took 7 minutes and 56 seconds.

The last entry in /var/log/live-usb-maker.log

Code: Select all

>> copy-uefi
copy from iso to uefi partition
files [Ee][Ff][Ii] version
 > cp --no-dereference --preserve=mode,links --recursive /run/live-usb-maker/iso/EFI /run/live-usb-maker/uefi/.
Fix Dell uefi memtest bug
 > cp /run/live-usb-maker/uefi/EFI/BOOT/grubx64.efi /run/live-usb-maker/uefi/EFI/BOOT/fallback.efi

>> copy-main
 > rm -rf /run/live-usb-maker/main/boot.orig
copy from iso to main partition
vm.dirty_bytes = 20000000
copy /antiX/vmlinuz
 > cpio -pdm --quiet /run/live-usb-maker/main/
 > e4defrag -v ./antiX/vmlinuz
e4defrag 1.44.5 (15-Dec-2018)
ext4 defragmentation for ./antiX/vmlinuz
[1/1][1/1]./antiX/vmlinuz:	  0%[1/1]./antiX/vmlinuz:	100%  extents: 2 -> 1	[ OK ]
 Success:			[1/1]
copy /antiX/initrd.gz
 > cpio -pdm --quiet /run/live-usb-maker/main/
 > e4defrag -v ./antiX/initrd.gz
e4defrag 1.44.5 (15-Dec-2018)
ext4 defragmentation for ./antiX/initrd.gz
[1/1][1/1]./antiX/initrd.gz:	100%  extents: 1 -> 1	[ OK ]
 Success:			[1/1]
copy remaining files ...
 > cpio -pdm --quiet /run/live-usb-maker/main/
copy pids: 18074 18077
vm.dirty_bytes = 20000000
vm.dirty_ratio = 0
 > write_file /run/live-usb-maker/main/made-by-live-usb-maker   created: Thu 26 Nov 2020 09:56:04 AM PST
  program: live-usb-maker
  version: 2.41.17 (Thu 12 Dec 2019 01:59:33 AM MST)
 > dd status=none if=/dev/urandom of=/run/live-usb-maker/main/antiX/random-seed bs=512 count=1
 > chmod 600 /run/live-usb-maker/main/antiX/random-seed
 > rm -rf /run/live-usb-maker/main/.disk

>> check-usb-md5
check md5 for initrd.gz
 > md5sum -c initrd.gz.md5
initrd.gz: OK
check md5 for linuxfs
 > md5sum -c linuxfs.md5
linuxfs: FAILED
md5sum: WARNING: 1 computed checksum did NOT match
Warning: MD5 CHECK FAILED FOR linuxfs
check md5 for vmlinuz
 > md5sum -c vmlinuz.md5
vmlinuz: OK
Error: At least one file failed the md5 check

live-usb-maker took 7 minutes and 56 seconds.

so it's linuxfs with a bad checksum, vmlinuz is OK. BTW there's still over 4GB of free space on the flash drive so it's not an issue with the smaller size of the USB stick. It's a generic store brand stick that I've been using reliably for over 3 years.

Posted: **Wed Nov 25, 2020 9:38 pm**

Thanks for your time JayM, that is very useful info!

Something that just occurred to me is that the 32bit build was spun off a different machine (both AV Linux ISOs come from bare metal installs on 2 separate machines). It would be interesting to see if the 32bit ISO has the same failing, that may indicate if this problem is directly related to the hardware in the 64bit machine..

Posted: **Wed Nov 25, 2020 10:20 pm**

The 32-bit iso burns and boots OK.

Question: how much free disk space do you have on your 64-bit machine?

Posted: **Wed Nov 25, 2020 10:50 pm**

921.4 Gb of free space on the system drive..

FreeSpace.png

Posted: **Wed Nov 25, 2020 11:02 pm**

That should be plenty. Hmm. I have no idea.

Posted: **Wed Nov 25, 2020 11:18 pm**

Thanks for the help Jay, hopefully we can get to the bottom of it..

Posted: **Wed Nov 25, 2020 11:25 pm**

Is your mx-iso-template up to date on that machine?

Posted: **Wed Nov 25, 2020 11:52 pm**

JayM wrote: Wed Nov 25, 2020 11:25 pm Is your mx-iso-template up to date on that machine?

Yes it is... however it is a custom MX ISO template that dolphin_oracle did up for me to allow some different artwork, it is the latest version though.. Note this template is also used in the 32bit ISO..

Code: Select all

isotester@avlmx:~
$ apt-cache show mx-iso-template-avl
Package: mx-iso-template-avl
Status: install ok installed
Priority: optional
Section: admin
Installed-Size: 9535
Maintainer: Dolphin Oracle <dolphinoracle@gmail.com>
Architecture: all
Version: 20.10.06
Replaces: iso-template, mx-iso-template
Provides: iso-template (= 16.17.1)
Conflicts: iso-template (<< 16.17.1), mx-iso-template
Description: MX ISO template for AVL spin
  MX ISO Template is used by MX Snapshot to create a live ISO disk image from
  the running system.
Description-md5: 3a26fb76f25edfeee0d4132e3daa3d80

Posted: **Thu Nov 26, 2020 12:02 am**

except for the grub theme, its identical to mx-iso-template.

and anyway, the md5sum for the linuxfs file isn't generated until after the linuxfs file is created during the snapshot process.

Posted: **Thu Nov 26, 2020 12:07 am**

Ah, so something about his 64-bit system vs. MX Snapshot then?

Posted: **Thu Nov 26, 2020 1:53 am**

I used cp to write 64bit version to USB and it wrote and booted fine.

Posted: **Thu Nov 26, 2020 12:13 pm**

sunrat wrote: Thu Nov 26, 2020 1:53 am I used cp to write 64bit version to USB and it wrote and booted fine.

Hi sunrat,

The waters are getting a bit muddied here, my understanding of the original problem is that the ISO can be copied to USB, booted and then installed on to a new system, but at that point there were problems making bootable snapshots from there. I tested and double tested the original ISO's with LUM and made the release video from USB keys made with LUM and I had the maintainer of one of the mirrors do the same. Other than here I don't have a lot of actual reports of the original ISO not booting and installing so I'm a bit puzzled right now... If my 64bit machine is the root cause somehow I am going to be extremely bummed out as I just upgraded from a 9 year old machine this year and made a significant investment in new hardware.

Posted: **Thu Nov 26, 2020 2:34 pm**

It's about the md5sum's found within the antiX folder of the ISO or on the created LiveUSB.
It's not about those checksums of the ISO itself:

Code: Select all

AVL-MXE-2020.11.23-xfce4-amd64.iso.md5
AVL-MXE-2020.11.23-xfce4-amd64.iso.sha512

The ISO-checksum are ok.
Within the antiX folder we have 3 md5sums:

Code: Select all

ls -l 
total 3583776
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root    7662155 Nov 24 07:35 initrd.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root         44 Nov 24 07:35 initrd.gz.md5
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 3656863744 Nov 24 07:42 linuxfs
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root         42 Nov 24 07:42 linuxfs.md5
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root    5258016 Nov 24 07:35 vmlinuz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root         42 Nov 24 07:35 vmlinuz.md5

and this one linuxfs.md5 does not match:

Code: Select all

md5sum -c linuxfs.md5
linuxfs: FAILED
md5sum: WARNING: 1 computed checksum did NOT match

md5sum linuxfs
7475ac389c3ead1c7e5a8b228025b0d6  linuxfs
cat  linuxfs.md5
cdaf6aace23e4f2e176001727acb52e3  linuxfs

You can check it also when booted from the LiveMedia either LiveISO or LiveUSB.
by selecting F4 checkmd5 boot option:

AVL-MXE-64bit-F4_option_checkmd5.png

and it shows this error warning:

AVL-MXE-64bit-xfce_ISO-check-md5sum.png

The checkmd5 option is also available on UEFI booting in the text-menu or add as kernel option parameter.
On either GUI LUM or CLI-LUM you get a warning when creating a LiveUSB in full featured mode:
GUI-LUM:

LUM-gui.png

and the warning

LUM-gui-md5sum-warning.png

CLI-LUM:

cli-lum.png

and the warning

cli-lum-md5sum-warning.png

The check made by LUM is mainly to make sure that the USB is created correctly
under the assumption the original md5sum on the ISO match to the files on the ISO.
Of course if you creat a DD/dumpt LiveUSB, the md5sum-check is not made by LUM.
You can manually also check the antiX/*.md5 files,
by just mounting the iso with

Code: Select all

isomount isofile-name

and run md5sum -c on the md5-files within the antiX folder of the mounted ISO.
If one of those other ISO do match and they have been generated on another hardware, suggest to recreate the ISO where md5sum of linuxfs does not match.
If you cannot find a way of recreating ISO's, as suggested, I might prepare a iso-repack-script, which fixes the wrong md5sum's.

Posted: **Thu Nov 26, 2020 3:16 pm**

Hello everyone!

I'm really enjoying the new AV Linux, thank you so much for the work!

But, I've found an issue. I'm using the x64 version. When opening a .h2song file with LMMS (installed via stable repo) the program itself closes immediately. I don't understand why.

It'd be really helpful if someone could tell me how to find the problem.

Thank you!

Posted: **Thu Nov 26, 2020 5:47 pm**

rqdr wrote: Thu Nov 26, 2020 3:16 pm Hello everyone!

I'm really enjoying the new AV Linux, thank you so much for the work!

But, I've found an issue. I'm using the x64 version. When opening a .h2song file with LMMS (installed via stable repo) the program itself closes immediately. I don't understand why.

It'd be really helpful if someone could tell me how to find the problem.

Thank you!

Hi!

I am pretty well versed in Ardour and Mixbus but have to admit to not using LMMS very much at all... Is LMMS supposed to import .h2song files? That file extension is for Hydrogen Drum machine not LMMS.. Does the h2song file open in Hydrogen?

Posted: **Thu Nov 26, 2020 5:53 pm**

@fehlix

My apologies if I sound dense.. I am merely running MX Snapshot as any normal user would, I don't really know any other way of creating the ISO's? I'd like to determine what the flaw is in my build environment, I thought the CPU governor thing had fixed the issue because the obvious mismatch problems had gone away.. Is there data or Snapshot diagnostic terminal output I can provide to determine where the break in the chain is?

Posted: **Thu Nov 26, 2020 6:38 pm**

AVLinux wrote: Thu Nov 26, 2020 5:53 pm @fehlix

My apologies if I sound dense.. I am merely running MX Snapshot as any normal user would, I don't really know any other way of creating the ISO's? I'd like to determine what the flaw is in my build environment, I thought the CPU governor thing had fixed the issue because the obvious mismatch problems had gone away.. Is there data or Snapshot diagnostic terminal output I can provide to determine where the break in the chain is?

The linuxfs.md5 checksum is created during mx-snapshot run, just after the linuxfs shquashfile has been generated and before the iso-file is build. There is one "sync" command executed before the md5sum is reading the linuxfs file to create the linuxfs.md5. The code executed looks all ok to me. So we do not know what happened and why the created linuxfs.md5 does not match to the linuxfs file. But as you mentioned you did already had some checksum missmatch of the ISO.md5 sums. I honestly have no clue. One idea was to add some more sync-command and potentially some sleep's between those checksum creations but that would only be a speculation. You can quickly check those md5-sums as mentioned by mounting the iso-file.
BTW, when you had those ISO-md5sum mismatch, was it always only the md5sum which did not match or also the sha256sum. If so it would be an indication, of either adding some more syncs - or something with the md5sum tool itself. If the sha256 always matched, but only the iso-md5sum sometimes not, the indication would be the sequence: the first run is the md5sum and takes some time, the next run is the sha256sum. So if sha256 alwayss was ok, we simply could add another md5sum run after the sha256 again.
But again only weird speculation.

Posted: **Thu Nov 26, 2020 6:56 pm**

Hi fehlix and thank you for your patience,

I really didn't want to come here and be a pain in the neck when you've all been so helpful, I regret that I'm taking up so much time.

OK so something about my system... It's a Threadripper 24 Core/48thread.. When MX-Snapshot ties into building the squashfs it goes full tilt and reports 48 cores and takes about 7 minutes to completely build the ISO, if you are telling me there are sync processes etc running is it possible they are being executed too quickly or some of these processes are overlapping somehow? Is there any way to tell MX Snapshot to use a limited number of cores to slow it down? Are any MX Devs using a machine with similar specs? As to your question about MD5 and SHA512, yes previously when I was running the performance CPU governor I had a few instances where the one checksum would match and the other wouldn't I can't remember now which way the mismatch was though

It is curious that the 32bit ISO spun off an old 32bit Dell Core Duo Inspiron does not have the issues we are seeing here, it takes about 59 minutes to mint an ISO, it certainly points to the fact that speed may be a relevant factor..

Posted: **Thu Nov 26, 2020 7:23 pm**

It's probably not the speed itself, but I remember having seen in multiple spots where developer put more than one sync, and I was always wondering why. In theory this should not happen. And to add "our" mx-tools shall always work on such super-hardware regardless of the speed. So in a sense you might help us to make the tool working on such a speedy system. I could tweak mx-snapshot a bit, and if you run again and check whether this would make a difference ...

Posted: **Thu Nov 26, 2020 7:38 pm**

rqdr wrote: Thu Nov 26, 2020 3:16 pm But, I've found an issue. I'm using the x64 version. When opening a .h2song file with LMMS (installed via stable repo) the program itself closes immediately. I don't understand why.

Generally in Linux, when some program don't start or closes right away, you want to run in a terminal. That way, you will usually be able to see some error msg, which can then help in troubleshooting.

In your specific case, I don't know that app, I'm not using AV Linux, so someone else will need to tell you, what the command is.
Once you find out which command to run in a terminal, copy/paste output here for further help.

Posted: **Thu Nov 26, 2020 7:39 pm**

fehlix

I will test anything you're willing to throw my way, I want to fix this ASAP! In any case I think it would be nice to be able to put some brakes on the squashfs creation, fast is great but fast and superheated CPU is not so great..

Posted: **Thu Nov 26, 2020 8:29 pm**

AVLinux wrote: Thu Nov 26, 2020 7:39 pm fehlix

I will test anything you're willing to throw my way, I want to fix this ASAP! In any case I think it would be nice to be able to put some brakes on the squashfs creation, fast is great but fast and superheated CPU is not so great..

Can you try whether the attached makes any difference.

Posted: **Thu Nov 26, 2020 8:48 pm**

Buck Fankers wrote: Thu Nov 26, 2020 7:38 pm
rqdr wrote: Thu Nov 26, 2020 3:16 pm But, I've found an issue. I'm using the x64 version. When opening a .h2song file with LMMS (installed via stable repo) the program itself closes immediately. I don't understand why.
Generally in Linux, when some program don't start or closes right away, you want to run in a terminal. That way, you will usually be able to see some error msg, which can then help in troubleshooting.

In your specific case, I don't know that app, I'm not using AV Linux, so someone else will need to tell you, what the command is.
Once you find out which command to run in a terminal, copy/paste output here for further help.

I doubt there is actually an error message anywhere since md5sum actually completes. it just computes the wrong value.

there is a log though at /var/log/mx-snapshot.log

Posted: **Thu Nov 26, 2020 9:43 pm**

Hi! Sorry, had to grab a quick bite in there..

OK so I tried the new MX-Snapshot package... created a new ISO, ISO checksums matched, burned to USB Key with LUM, Booted USB key and ran F4 md5sums options and all 3 files passed! That's good right??

Posted: **Thu Nov 26, 2020 9:55 pm**

AVLinux wrote: Thu Nov 26, 2020 9:43 pm OK so I tried the new MX-Snapshot package... created a new ISO, ISO checksums matched, burned to USB Key with LUM, Booted USB key and ran F4 md5sums options and all 3 files passed! That's good right??

Exzellent!
Regarding heating issue you mentioned.
To reduce max number of processors to allow mksquashfs to take
do adjust within

Code: Select all

/etc/mx-snapshot.conf

the option "mksq_opt="
e.g like this for you 24 core system

Code: Select all

mksq_opt="-processors 12"

Posted: **Thu Nov 26, 2020 10:02 pm**

Oh that is a big relief to know!! So what did you change in MX-Snapshot?

Thanks for the info on changing the number of cores too!

Posted: **Thu Nov 26, 2020 10:11 pm**

AVLinux wrote: Thu Nov 26, 2020 10:02 pm So what did you change in MX-Snapshot?

I added additional sync's and a forced freeing pagecache,
before each of the big files get processed by md5sum/sha512sum

Code: Select all

sync
sleep 1
echo 1 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
sleep 1

Posted: **Thu Nov 26, 2020 10:21 pm**

Ahhh I see...so a couple more questions and hopefully you will be rid of me for a while..

So are the existing uploaded ISO's compromised in any way, or was the md5sum just not computed properly without any real issue to the installed system? Will Users who installed the original ISO be able to create their own snapshots once they upgrade to your updated MX-Snapshot Package? Or do I need to upload a whole new ISO ASAP?

Thanks again for your patience and quick response to this issue, I will be sure in the future to run all of the possible MD5 tests!

Posted: **Thu Nov 26, 2020 10:42 pm**

AVLinux wrote: Thu Nov 26, 2020 10:21 pm Ahhh I see...so a couple more questions and hopefully you will be rid of me for a while..

So are the existing uploaded ISO's compromised in any way, or was the md5sum just not computed properly without any real issue to the installed system? Will Users who installed the original ISO be able to create their own snapshots once they upgrade to your updated MX-Snapshot Package? Or do I need to upload a whole new ISO ASAP?

Triggers two points:
Point 1:
The linuxfs.md5 is not just for the F4 option to have a comfortable check.
But all those md5sum's within the antiX folder do have a reason.
The main issue would be the error message the user will get from LUM (gui or cli) when user creates a full featured LiveUSB. Also, I'm not 100% sure whether a "wrong" md5sum might be an issue when doing a "rollback" after having made a remaster.
2nd point:
Whether the ISO's are compromised ...
None of the md5sum or sha*sum will tell you anything about the ISO are compromised or not.
The way people try to put a bit of certainty in this issue is to sign the iso using gnupg
to create a pgp-signature. With help of the published "public" signing key user could verify the signature of the iso. In case you have never done anything with gpg-signing I might send a quick receipt how to do this easily .. later ...

Posted: **Thu Nov 26, 2020 11:00 pm**

FYI i just burned the 64-bit iso to my flash drive using LUM in dd mode and it burned and booted. When I rebooted from the stick and selected checkfs from the F4 options menu it still booted and I didn't get any error messages. I assume this is because a dd burn results in a read-only live system while full-featured mode allows MX RemasterCC to write to the squashfs, and whatever is causing the file system checksum issue would prevent that, or rather RemasterCC won't write to a file system that it thinks is corrupt. Something like that anyway, I don't really know the internal workings of full-featured live USBs very well except from a user standpoint.

Off-topic slightly but I noticed that when I booted the 32-bit live USB it prompted me for a password (which i correctly guessed was "demo") but the 64-bit version automatically logged in.

Posted: **Thu Nov 26, 2020 11:10 pm**

Hi Jay,

Yes the 32bit uses SliM and is not Autologin, FWIW this is mentioned in the release notes and also on the webpage. You're correct it's "demo"

Due to the issues in this thread and because there was a last minute update to Harrison Mixbus 32C I have decided to upload an updated and fixed 64bit ISO..

Posted: **Thu Nov 26, 2020 11:14 pm**

You can configure SLIM to auto-login if you want: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/SLiM

Posted: **Thu Nov 26, 2020 11:20 pm**

First, I would like to offer congratulations to both the MX and AV Linux teams for creating what looks to be the distro a lot of musicians who are into Linux have been waiting for. I first tried AV Linux, man I forget it was that long ago, and I thought it was terrific then, yet I was very green to the Linux world, and even though I have used DAW's both in PC as well as software such as Mark of the Unicorn and Cubase, DAW's still intimidated a guy like myself who were accustomed to old 24 track tape machines lol. I don't even use Garageband on my iMac, and I have worked shows like AES in San Francisco years ago. I do live audio mostly, and all my old boxes have gone to the great recycle bin in the sky, after their organs have been harvested, and I am kind of wary doing any production in laptops, because they can fail on you in the most inopportune time, like say when two hours before a scheduled webcast with a former champion during the opening round first golf major championship that season, and the LPGA is your client lol. That has happened, and with luck we had a rescue image to restore with, but thus why I am reluctant to do production on laptops, and a reason why I have yet to build a DAW.

All this being said, I was wondering since I already have MX installed (with Openbox, as I prefer window managers to full on desktop environments) and config'd a bit, if there is a way to add AV on it, like in a meta package or by packages in a repo? I don't at this point need software like Cinelarra, and I try to keep the repo management to a minimum, and integrating AV into this build (that also is going to have the Nix package manager on the side) is for future builds going forward, kind of creating my own ISO that is not for distribution as a spin, rather just a reproducible custom ISO that MX is great for, but with AV and my own choice of window manager.

Again, congrats to both teams, this is very exciting to see it come to fruition, and thanks for all your hard work.

Posted: **Thu Nov 26, 2020 11:23 pm**

JayM wrote: Thu Nov 26, 2020 11:00 pm FYI i just burned the 64-bit iso to my flash drive using LUM in dd mode and it burned and booted. When I rebooted from the stick and selected checkfs from the F4 options menu it still booted and I didn't get any error messages.

Where did you downloaded the ISO from? Have you also checked the sha512sum
AVL-MXE-2020.11.23-xfce4-amd64.iso.sha512
.. and manually checked the antiX/*.md5

Code: Select all

isomount AVL-MXE-2020.11.23-xfce4-amd64.iso
cd /mnt/iso/iso1/antiX/
md5sum -c linuxfs.md5

In case all those checks are ok, please post the all related checksums,
to avoid any indication of the ISO's are compromised.
Here the checksums I have:
ISO-checksums:

Code: Select all

 head ./AVL-MXE-2020.11.23-xfce4-amd64.iso.md5 AVL-MXE-2020.11.23-xfce4-amd64.iso.sha512 
==> ./AVL-MXE-2020.11.23-xfce4-amd64.iso.md5 <==
7c12005d3a8b3669f84d536542215062  AVL-MXE-2020.11.23-xfce4-amd64.iso

==> AVL-MXE-2020.11.23-xfce4-amd64.iso.sha512 <==
c9000f047581df50dde0558fcab3b2b1c003f63afc7c1105fc2e7249a37c8af9af09c2df9b2a82a77bd17d92ce1bb34f40a466256eec066586f8ca9c87eee05e  AVL-MXE-2020.11.23-xfce4-amd64.iso

and the anitX/*.md5 checksumsafter running

Code: Select all

isomount AVL-MXE-2020.11.23-xfce4-amd64.iso

and

Code: Select all

cd /mnt/iso/iso1/antiX/

and
head /mnt/iso/iso1/antiX/*.md5
gives:

Code: Select all

==> /mnt/iso/iso1/antiX/initrd.gz.md5 <==
e2d82f4774577e556c2ba6c7a99d53bc  initrd.gz

==> /mnt/iso/iso1/antiX/linuxfs.md5 <==
cdaf6aace23e4f2e176001727acb52e3  linuxfs

==> /mnt/iso/iso1/antiX/vmlinuz.md5 <==
b4472207b4b2582345b43772abfb38da  vmlinuz

Posted: **Thu Nov 26, 2020 11:49 pm**

drummer wrote: Thu Nov 26, 2020 11:20 pm First, I would like to offer congratulations to both the MX and AV Linux teams for creating what looks to be the distro a lot of musicians who are into Linux have been waiting for. I first tried AV Linux, man I forget it was that long ago, and I thought it was terrific then, yet I was very green to the Linux world, and even though I have used DAW's both in PC as well as software such as Mark of the Unicorn and Cubase, DAW's still intimidated a guy like myself who were accustomed to old 24 track tape machines lol. I don't even use Garageband on my iMac, and I have worked shows like AES in San Francisco years ago. I do live audio mostly, and all my old boxes have gone to the great recycle bin in the sky, after their organs have been harvested, and I am kind of wary doing any production in laptops, because they can fail on you in the most inopportune time, like say when two hours before a scheduled webcast with a former champion during the opening round first golf major championship that season, and the LPGA is your client lol. That has happened, and with luck we had a rescue image to restore with, but thus why I am reluctant to do production on laptops, and a reason why I have yet to build a DAW.

All this being said, I was wondering since I already have MX installed (with Openbox, as I prefer window managers to full on desktop environments) and config'd a bit, if there is a way to add AV on it, like in a meta package or by packages in a repo? I don't at this point need software like Cinelarra, and I try to keep the repo management to a minimum, and integrating AV into this build (that also is going to have the Nix package manager on the side) is for future builds going forward, kind of creating my own ISO that is not for distribution as a spin, rather just a reproducible custom ISO that MX is great for, but with AV and my own choice of window manager.

Again, congrats to both teams, this is very exciting to see it come to fruition, and thanks for all your hard work.

Hi drummer!

Thanks for the post! Unfortunately MX and AVL are still very much separate entities and at this very early point in time and at this stage of development. AV Linux as a one-man project has always been very ISO-based and MX with it's large community and development team is very repository-based which of course is to it's credit! There is currently no path to crossgrade one to the other at this point in time. That is definitely a future goal of mine but it is going to take a tremendous amount of time and getting up to speed on my part and AVL is already quite a juggle in my spare time.

Posted: **Thu Nov 26, 2020 11:54 pm**

fehlix,

I fear I have used a wrong word.. by 'compromised' I did not mean in a security or malware way. I meant if there were flaws or errors in the filesystem that would make the system function improperly or unstable.. I don't think it is a surprise that JayM would have a successful copy to USB using DD, there are not the same md5sum checks with DD are there? Also Jay ran checkfs not md5sum..

Posted: **Fri Nov 27, 2020 12:13 am**

I said where i got the iso and that the md5 and sha512 checksums passed in my post #18. viewtopic.php?p=609842#p609842

I can't do

Code: Select all

isomount AVL-MXE-2020.11.23-xfce4-amd64.iso

because sudo isn't working on my system today for some reason. It keeps rejecting my password. It's not working in any of my Virtualbox MX installations either, 19.3 or 18.3. Maybe a policy update disabled sudo? (Edit: see my post #57. Wonky shift key on my keyboard combined with mixed-case characters in my password. Fixed by massaging the key. Sudo itself still works.)

Posted: **Fri Nov 27, 2020 12:32 am**

AVLinux wrote: Thu Nov 26, 2020 11:49 pm
drummer wrote: Thu Nov 26, 2020 11:20 pm First, I would like to offer congratulations to both the MX and AV Linux teams for creating what looks to be the distro a lot of musicians who are into Linux have been waiting for. I first tried AV Linux, man I forget it was that long ago, and I thought it was terrific then, yet I was very green to the Linux world, and even though I have used DAW's both in PC as well as software such as Mark of the Unicorn and Cubase, DAW's still intimidated a guy like myself who were accustomed to old 24 track tape machines lol. I don't even use Garageband on my iMac, and I have worked shows like AES in San Francisco years ago. I do live audio mostly, and all my old boxes have gone to the great recycle bin in the sky, after their organs have been harvested, and I am kind of wary doing any production in laptops, because they can fail on you in the most inopportune time, like say when two hours before a scheduled webcast with a former champion during the opening round first golf major championship that season, and the LPGA is your client lol. That has happened, and with luck we had a rescue image to restore with, but thus why I am reluctant to do production on laptops, and a reason why I have yet to build a DAW.

All this being said, I was wondering since I already have MX installed (with Openbox, as I prefer window managers to full on desktop environments) and config'd a bit, if there is a way to add AV on it, like in a meta package or by packages in a repo? I don't at this point need software like Cinelarra, and I try to keep the repo management to a minimum, and integrating AV into this build (that also is going to have the Nix package manager on the side) is for future builds going forward, kind of creating my own ISO that is not for distribution as a spin, rather just a reproducible custom ISO that MX is great for, but with AV and my own choice of window manager.

Again, congrats to both teams, this is very exciting to see it come to fruition, and thanks for all your hard work.
Hi drummer!

Thanks for the post! Unfortunately MX and AVL are still very much separate entities and at this very early point in time and at this stage of development. AV Linux as a one-man project has always been very ISO-based and MX with it's large community and development team is very repository-based which of course is to it's credit! There is currently no path to crossgrade one to the other at this point in time. That is definitely a future goal of mine but it is going to take a tremendous amount of time and getting up to speed on my part and AVL is already quite a juggle in my spare time.

No worries, I understand and appreciate all the hard work you have done over the years, and it's great to have the opportunity to thank you for it personally. I can always try to put it together by assembling what I need using the ISO, although that can be a very tall task for someone of my limited skill lol. I see you have an ISO in Openbox, albeit in 34 bit (which I can install on my old iMac), and I prefer Openbox over XFCE, so I am glad to see AV Linux in Openbox, my window manager of choice.

I hope you and your family had a wonderful holiday, and wish you and your family well for the remainder of the holiday season. Cheers!

Posted: **Fri Nov 27, 2020 3:44 am**

I managed to get around the lack of working sudo by running su in a terminal to become root. (Edit: i have some upper-case letters in my password and I discovered that my left shift key is acting up today. Sudo is fine.)

The iso's md5:

Code: Select all

$ md5sum AVL-MXE-2020.11.23-xfce4-amd64.iso
7c12005d3a8b3669f84d536542215062  AVL-MXE-2020.11.23-xfce4-amd64.iso

with the iso mounted:

Code: Select all

linuxfs
root@mx-desktop:/mnt/iso/iso1/antiX# md5sum -c linuxfs.md5 
linuxfs: FAILED
md5sum: WARNING: 1 computed checksum did NOT match

root@mx-desktop:/mnt/iso/iso1/antiX# head /mnt/iso/iso1/antiX/*.md5
==> /mnt/iso/iso1/antiX/initrd.gz.md5 <==
e2d82f4774577e556c2ba6c7a99d53bc  initrd.gz

==> /mnt/iso/iso1/antiX/linuxfs.md5 <==
cdaf6aace23e4f2e176001727acb52e3  linuxfs

==> /mnt/iso/iso1/antiX/vmlinuz.md5 <==
b4472207b4b2582345b43772abfb38da  vmlinuz

From the live USB burned in LUM in dd mode, after booting from it to make sure it works:

Code: Select all

$ head *.md5
==> initrd.gz.md5 <==
e2d82f4774577e556c2ba6c7a99d53bc  initrd.gz

==> linuxfs.md5 <==
cdaf6aace23e4f2e176001727acb52e3  linuxfs

==> vmlinuz.md5 <==
b4472207b4b2582345b43772abfb38da  vmlinuz

Posted: **Fri Nov 27, 2020 5:11 am**

I just checked out the vid you have on your site, and from what I understand so far (and I stopped the vid to download the ISO and getting ready to install it lol), you're using Opnebox for the WM in XFCE, instead of XFWM?

It's looks fantastic. Nicely done!

Posted: **Fri Nov 27, 2020 5:15 am**

I think openbox is only for the 32bit version

Posted: **Fri Nov 27, 2020 5:17 am**

AVLinux wrote: Thu Nov 26, 2020 11:10 pm Hi Jay,

Yes the 32bit uses SliM and is not Autologin, FWIW this is mentioned in the release notes and also on the webpage. You're correct it's "demo"

Due to the issues in this thread and because there was a last minute update to Harrison Mixbus 32C I have decided to upload an updated and fixed 64bit ISO..

Please let us know when it's uploaded so I can grab it. Thanks!

Posted: **Fri Nov 27, 2020 5:20 am**

asqwerth wrote: Fri Nov 27, 2020 5:15 am I think openbox is only for the 32bit version

Yeah I got a little ahead of myself lol, but I can use Openbox for the WM in XFCE instead of XFWM, and of course just create a Openbox desktop to log into as well as the default XFCE.

The vid kinda got me all excited (blush).

Posted: **Fri Nov 27, 2020 9:09 am**

JayM wrote: Fri Nov 27, 2020 3:44 am
The iso's md5:

Code: Select all

$ md5sum AVL-MXE-2020.11.23-xfce4-amd64.iso
7c12005d3a8b3669f84d536542215062  AVL-MXE-2020.11.23-xfce4-amd64.iso

with the iso mounted:

Code: Select all

linuxfs
root@mx-desktop:/mnt/iso/iso1/antiX# md5sum -c linuxfs.md5 
linuxfs: FAILED
md5sum: WARNING: 1 computed checksum did NOT match

root@mx-desktop:/mnt/iso/iso1/antiX# head /mnt/iso/iso1/antiX/*.md5
==> /mnt/iso/iso1/antiX/initrd.gz.md5 <==
e2d82f4774577e556c2ba6c7a99d53bc  initrd.gz

==> /mnt/iso/iso1/antiX/linuxfs.md5 <==
cdaf6aace23e4f2e176001727acb52e3  linuxfs

Ok, so this confirms you got also the wrongly generated linuxfs.md5.
The checkmd5 option on the LiveBoot menu is doing excatly the same
and gives me a warning/error message and an option to ignore or shutdown.
Make sure you selected not the other checkfs option.

AVL-MXE-64bit-F4_options.png

F4-checkmd5.png

F4-checkmd5-non-fatal-error-warning.png

If you can reproduce getting no warning despite the manual failed md5sum check
we would need to further investigate.

Posted: **Fri Nov 27, 2020 9:24 am**

AVLinux wrote: Thu Nov 26, 2020 11:54 pm I fear I have used a wrong word.. by 'compromised' I did not mean in a security or malware way. I meant if there were flaws or errors in the filesystem that would make the system function improperly or unstable

If the ISO-checksum do match, we can assume the ISO are OK, with only one flaw of the wrongly generated linuxfs.md5. So until you have the isos updated, you could tell the user, that the ISO are not compromised.
It also a good idea to publish the ISO-checksum not just only on the download server, but somehwere on the download-page to avoid a single point of failure.
In addition do manual generate a gnupg signature file and put on the server like the cheksum files.
I'll send a gnupg-iso-signing receipt ina minute or so..

AVLinux wrote: Thu Nov 26, 2020 11:54 pm .. I don't think it is a surprise that JayM would have a successful copy to USB using DD, there are not the same md5sum checks with DD are there? Also Jay ran checkfs not md5sum..

On both dd-dumped or fullfeatured mode generated LiveUSB, the MD5-sum check of the antiX/*.md5 sum are identical. So I can only assume JayM have chosen the other checkfs option, otherwise it would be an issue within the Live md5sum check script, which I would be really surprise me . Manual check after isomount is the quickest way anyway.

Posted: **Fri Nov 27, 2020 1:15 pm**

Quick receipt to digital sign ISO or other data files.

For publishing ISO's in addition to have checksums prepared some users like to perform a digital signature check to verify the iso-file is not compromised. For this purpose we create a dedicated gnupg signing key,
which provides only signing but no encryption capabilities.

Quick generate signing key:
gpg --quick-generate-key "NAME <email>" algo purpose expire
NAME: choose any name, probaly best related to iso-signing
EMAIL: need not to be a valid one
ALLGO: rsa4096
purpose: sign
expiration: 2 years
Example:

Code: Select all

gpg --quick-generate-key  "demo iso signing key <demo-iso-signing@demos-home.com>" rsa4096 sign 2y

Code: Select all

gpg --quick-generate-key  "demo iso signing key <demo-iso-signing@demos-home.com>" rsa4096 sign 2y

We need to generate a lot of random bytes. It is a good idea to perform
some other action (type on the keyboard, move the mouse, utilize the
disks) during the prime generation; this gives the random number
generator a better chance to gain enough entropy.
gpg: key EF80867E1956F430 marked as ultimately trusted
gpg: revocation certificate stored as '/home/demo/.gnupg/openpgp-revocs.d/9D2AAC5F57F8CD9BF78FD1B7EF80867E1956F430.rev'
public and secret key created and signed.

Note that this key cannot be used for encryption.  You may want to use
the command "--edit-key" to generate a subkey for this purpose.
pub   rsa4096 2020-11-27 [SC] [expires: 2022-11-27]
      9D2AAC5F57F8CD9BF78FD1B7EF80867E1956F430
uid                      demo iso signing key <demo-iso-signing@demos-home.com>

List signing key with fingerprint:
list keys

Code: Select all

gpg --keyid-format 0xlong --list-keys demo-iso-signing@demos-home.com
pub   rsa4096/0xEF80867E1956F430 2020-11-27 [SC] [expires: 2022-11-27]
      9D2AAC5F57F8CD9BF78FD1B7EF80867E1956F430
uid                   [ultimate] demo iso signing key <demo-iso-signing@demos-home.com>

list keys with finger print

Code: Select all

gpg --keyid-format 0xlong --fingerprint 0xEF80867E1956F430
or
gpg --keyid-format 0xlong --fingerprint demo-iso-signing@demos-home.com

pub   rsa4096/0xEF80867E1956F430 2020-11-27 [SC] [expires: 2022-11-27]
      Key fingerprint = 9D2A AC5F 57F8 CD9B F78F  D1B7 EF80 867E 1956 F430
uid                   [ultimate] demo iso signing key <demo-iso-signing@demos-home.com>

Key-ID in our example is "0xEF80867E1956F430"

Sign an ISO-file
with long and short options:

Code: Select all

gpg --local-user "demo-iso-signing@demos-home.com" --detach-sign --output demo-test.iso.sig demo-test.iso

gpg -u "demo-iso-signing@demos-home.com" -b -o demo-test.iso.sig demo-test.iso
gpg -u "demo-iso-signing@demos-home.com" -b  demo-test.iso

gpg -u 0xEF80867E1956F430 -b  demo-test.iso

Export public signing key
Export the public signing key into a file and make it availbe on your web-server.

Code: Select all

gpg --armor --output 0xEF80867E1956F430_public_signing_key.asc  --export 0xEF80867E1956F430

Send the public iso-signing key to the gnupg-keyserver network:

Code: Select all

gpg --keyserver pool.sks-keyservers.net --send-key 0xEF80867E1956F430
gpg --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com    --send-key 0xEF80867E1956F430

Export secret signing key as backup and to make it available on another computer:

Code: Select all

gpg --armor --output 0xEF80867E1956F430_secrete.asc  --export-secret-keys  0xEF80867E1956F430

Import secret signing key on another computer:

Code: Select all

gpg --import 0xEF80867E1956F430_secrete.asc

Make a paper backup copy of secrete key:
to be printed on paper

Code: Select all

gpg --export-secret-keys  0xEF80867E1956F430  | paperkey > 0xEF80867E1956F430_secrete_paperkey.txt

The generated printed paperkey.txt can be easiley read from paper copy by OCR.

Reconstruct secrete key from a paperkey.txt file combined public key:
paperkey --pubring my-public-key.gpg --secrets my-key-text-file.txt --output my-secret-key.gpg

Code: Select all

paperkey --pubring 0xEF80867E1956F430_public_signing_key.asc --secrets 0xEF80867E1956F430_secrete_paperkey.txt --output 0xEF80867E1956F430_secrete.gpg

Posted: **Fri Nov 27, 2020 1:22 pm**

That's great tutorial, maybe it needs to be put in a Wiki page instead of losing the instructions on some obscure thread in the forum

Posted: **Fri Nov 27, 2020 1:46 pm**

Thanks so much fehlix for taking the time to prepare that guide!

On the other issue I really need to put on the brakes here.. I have an issue occurring now that defies my comprehension, I need to get a 'checksum clean' ISO off of this machine and move to an older machine to continue development. I don't know if it's a memory problem, a CPU support problem, a heat problem, an SSD problem but this machine is flaky somehow. I'm not a dummy or a newb when it comes to building PC's and choosing hardware but I am baffled so I think before I waste one more second of anyone's precious time I'd like to determine if the existing released 64bit ISO can have the faulty linuxfs md5sum fixed OR if installing that ISO on a new host machine and re-running MX-Snapshot and producing an ISO without a bad linuxfs checksum will create a path forward.

Here's where things are at now, read slowly because it's pretty convoluted:

If you recall you sent me an updated MX-Snapshot, I installed it, rebooted the machine just in case, re-ran bleachbit which I always do before building an ISO and I built the ISO which as I reported to you on the forum last night generated all correct checksums and passed all the F4 boot tests and it did! After all of our forum discussions last night just before going to bed I added one updated program to the ISO, ran bleachbit, ran the new MX-Snapshot again this time with 12 CPUs in mksqfs and for some reason that I cannot begin to fathom Snapshot generated checksums that do not match the ISO just like my original issue with the performance CPU governor!? The thing is the governor is still set to 'ondemand'. OK maybe it didn't like the revised CPU setting so I unset the 12 CPU settings back to default and ran the new Snapshot again, same issue... ISO md5 and SHA512 are incorrect.. Then I downgraded MX-Snapshot to the current Repository version again and tried it because despite the linuxfs md5sum problem the repo version of MX-Snapshot was generating correct ISO checksums every time.. well not any more... md5 and SHA512 are still incorrect.. As a final last resort before posting this I ran the Repo version of Snapshot with 4 CPU's set in mksqfs and once again, incorrect checksums... So I am DOA right now for the ability to Respin an ISO off of this hardware. This is why I want to fix what I have if possible and take this machine out of development..

Posted: **Fri Nov 27, 2020 9:49 pm**

i had just run the head command for *.md5 in the antiX directory of the mounted but not booted from live USB burned in dd mode. here's the result of md5sum:

Code: Select all

$ md5sum linuxfs
7475ac389c3ead1c7e5a8b228025b0d6  linuxfs

and again here's the head command on linuxfs.md5:

Code: Select all

$ head linuxfs.md5
cdaf6aace23e4f2e176001727acb52e3  linuxfs

So it looks like an md5 computation error when MX Snapshot computed the md5 sum then created the rootfs.md5 file.

Regarding multiple sync commands: https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blo ... gendOfSync
It seems that running sync more than once actually just creates a delay before executing the command that comes after, so I would think that a sleep command would do the same thing which is just to wait a bit for the sync to finish clearing the buffers before continuing. Multiple syncs shouldn't be necessary. (I do vaguely remember, in the early days of Linux, when doing something-or-other, maybe a kernel compilation (?) that instructions always said to manually sync three times as per the example in the website I linked to. That was decades ago though so I don't remember it clearly. I seem to recall having to do it in AT&T Unix SysV 3.2 also, 30-some years ago. I think that was before shutting down or rebooting though, as per the blog in my link.)

Maybe adding a short sleep after syncing or possibly before and/or after the md5 calculations is all that's needed? I have a gut feeling that it's a timing issue as AVLinux also had iso md5 issues creating snapshots with the performance CPU governor enabled and I believe he's using a custom low-latency kernel. Maybe the buffers weren't cleared when the calculations were done because the kernel and/or processor are too fast?

Posted: **Sat Nov 28, 2020 7:20 am**

Downloaded the iso today md5 checks flashed on usb stick with balenaetcher usb would not boot so flashed with mxliveusbmaker using DD as is a 4GB stic. Sadly that will not boot to.Using file manager i can see the files on the stick.Using gparted it show as file system iso9660 loabel mxlive used,unused and flags empty.
The release candidate2 was installed with no problems and running.
Machine:: Laptop System: Hewlett-Packard product: HP Pavilion 17 Notebook PC.
The problem is in the bios the boot manager option is greyed like the stick is not bootable.
Any advice ?

Posted: **Sat Nov 28, 2020 7:31 am**

Be OK wrote: Sat Nov 28, 2020 7:20 am Downloaded the iso today md5 checks flashed on usb stick with balenaetcher usb would not boot so flashed with mxliveusbmaker using DD as is a 4GB stic. Sadly that will not boot to.Using file manager i can see the files on the stick.Using gparted it show as file system iso9660 loabel mxlive used,unused and flags empty.
The release candidate2 was installed with no problems and running.
Machine:: Laptop System: Hewlett-Packard product: HP Pavilion 17 Notebook PC.
The problem is in the bios the boot manager option is greyed like the stick is not bootable.
Any advice ?

Yes, try another USB-stick USB-3 min 8GB. ALso you can try full feature mode instead of DD-mode.
The 64bit ISO boots here in BIOS and UEFI mode without an issue.
When you create in full-feature mode, you might see a warning about an internal md5sum check of linuxfs failed.
This is a know issue, and can be ignored for this ISO, as it will be fixed in an updated version.

Posted: **Sat Nov 28, 2020 12:19 pm**

@fehlix ok will do that on a 8GB,and yes i had read here about the md5 and that the iso was ok as was mine checksum.
Will edit this here if i have succes,Sadly no at the end of the stick he give a error and it looks like it does not write a bootloader.
Wil flash again as i dint read the error :(
liveusb maker 2.41.17
check md5 for initrd.gz , check md5 for linuxfs and check md5 for vmlinux

live usb maker took 22 minutes and 53 seconds

then a popup with the text
Error encountered in the LiveUSB creation process. after that i try to boot in other machine to, Nothing that machine hangs after selecting usbdrive (enter).

Posted: **Sat Nov 28, 2020 3:30 pm**

Be OK wrote: Sat Nov 28, 2020 12:19 pm liveusb maker 2.41.17
check md5 for initrd.gz , check md5 for linuxfs and check md5 for vmlinux

live usb maker took 22 minutes and 53 seconds

then a popup with the text
Error encountered in the LiveUSB creation process. after that i try to boot in other machine to, Nothing that machine hangs after selecting usbdrive (enter).

Oops, I can re-produce ...
Seems the GUI-LUM does not ignore the error, and you are right it does not write the
extlinux loader needed for BIOS/MBR booting.
Here the fix for now:
Do open a terminal within the downloaded folder of the ISO
and run the CLI-LUM (live-usb-maker on the command line)

Code: Select all

sudo live-usb-maker --force=nomd5  -f AVL-MXE-2020.11.23-xfce4-amd64.iso

LUM-CLI.png

alternatively just run without "--force=nomd5"

Code: Select all

sudo live-usb-maker  -f AVL-MXE-2020.11.23-xfce4-amd64.iso

It would give than an option to ignore the internal linuxfs.md5 sum check:

LUM-CLI-ignoe-md5sum-check.png

And now it should boot.
BTW 23 minutes is a indication of a bad USB-3 stick,
it took here only 4 minutes .

Posted: **Sat Nov 28, 2020 5:19 pm**

Will do that Thanks felix.
Not a bad stick usb2 and old as my computer, 10 year old Dell OptiPlex 780 with 10 Gb Ram
CPU: Intel Core2 Quad Q9550 Speed: 2016 MHz
Graphics: Device-1: AMD Cedar Radeon HD 5000/6000/7350

using sudo live-usb-maker --force=nomd5 -f AVL-MXE-2020.11.23-xfce4-amd64.iso .
>> uuids
Using antiX/MX grub config 2.0
>> install
extlinux version 6.04
Filesystem Type Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sdb1 ext4 7.2G 3.5G 3.8G 49% main
/dev/sdb2 vfat 49M 4.2M 45M 9% uefi
>> done

live-usb-maker took 20 minutes and 19 seconds runing to computer and

Sadly stil no boot How to check and report ? i go sleeping.

Posted: **Sat Nov 28, 2020 7:37 pm**

Be OK wrote: Sat Nov 28, 2020 5:19 pm Not a bad stick usb2 and old as my computer, 10 year old

They do wear out, you know. Flash memory has a finite number of times it can be written to and read from, then it stops working. I had an 8GB Kingston Traveler USB stick that I bought in 2009 and used to test-drive and install distros up until 2017, when one day it suddenly stopped working. I couldn't boot from it, writing to it took a very long time and eventually stopped working altogether, and reformatting it didn't help. I had to throw it away and buy a new one.

Posted: **Sat Nov 28, 2020 10:46 pm**

What does AV stand for? Audio Visual? I've never heard of it and reading through the thread I felt like everyone was speaking in a foreign language.

Posted: **Sat Nov 28, 2020 10:57 pm**

Hi Sparky!

'AV' is for Audio Video... this is a Respin 'Studio in a box' workstation for producing Audio recordings, doing Video Editing and Photography and Graphics work on top of being a well-rounded daily driver.. Half of the complications in this thread are some ISO teething problems that fehlix has been extremely helpful in troubleshooting and fixing... It's normally not this encompassed in geekspeak..

Posted: **Sat Nov 28, 2020 11:02 pm**

@Be OK,

Please just sit tight, fehlix is working out some final details to get things working better and there will be an ISO update ASAP... Nobody had used MX-Snapshot with a full preempt RT Kernel and we discovered some quirks that needed sorting out.

Posted: **Sun Nov 29, 2020 4:04 am**

@JayM yes i know but this one is not much used, i used DVD mostly.
@AVLinux o yes rc2 runs on that machine fine so i can make music :) All other computers here run MX.

Posted: **Mon Nov 30, 2020 8:42 am**

Downloaded from your website link ByteMark Mirror and all good. Installed and first look is VERY Impressive.
Nice clean layout and loaded with audio goodness.
Congratulations. @AVLinux.

Posted: **Sun May 30, 2021 1:37 pm**

Hi guys,
I was wondering if there is a way to keep that System HUD on screen after installing it (the one that appears on the AVL virtual boot at the right side of the screen)

does anyone knows how to do it?

Posted: **Mon May 31, 2021 10:52 am**

Hi,

Are you referring to the 'Conky'? If so I have it set for the Live session but I don't assume the User necessarily wants it there after installing so I leave it up to them..

To enable it go to Menu-->Accessories-->Conky Manager and select which Conky you want to use, (there are many to choose from) if you want to restore the default one then select 'AVL-MXE-Diehard-Basic'

Posted: **Sat Jun 05, 2021 4:35 am**

Hi @AVLinux ,

Is there any way to get the sources for the latest -rt kernel (5.9.1-rt20avl1)? I need to recompile the snd-usb-audio module to add support for one of my soundcards.
Thanks in advance!

Posted: **Mon Jun 07, 2021 3:13 pm**

Hi!

The only thing I don't do in AV Linux is the Kernels, they are maintained by another person and it appears that perhaps the sources for the most recent 5.9.1 were not tagged posted on the Github page:
https://github.com/musical-chairs/linux/tags

Let me see if I can get that done.. In the meantime...

So I don't have a quick and easy way to do it but as it happens I custom compiled the 5.9.1-rt19 Kernel for AVL-MXE 32bit version (Trulan only does 64bit AVL Kernels now) and I made these notes for myself:

*SUGGESTED GUIDE TO BUILDING AN RT KERNEL WITH GIT

1. You should determine what the most recent RT Patch is and for which kernel version it applies.. Look at this web page:
https://mirrors.edge.kernel.org/pub/lin ... ojects/rt/

2. Let's use 5.9.1-rt19 as an example.. So first fetch the kernel source code with 'git clone':
git clone git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git linux

3. When the cloning of the Stable Kernel source has completed, change directory to the 'linux' directory:
cd linux

4. In order to build the kernel with RT Preemption we need to add a git remote for the RT Source code:
git remote add rt-stable https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/ke ... ble-rt.git
git remote add rt-devel https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/ke ... -devel.git

5. Now fetch the RT remote sources to your 'linux' directory:
git fetch --all

6. Then checkout the source code for the kernel which in our example is 5.9.1-rt19:
git checkout v5.9.1-rt19

7. When the checkout has completed successfully you will likely want to import the configuration of your current kernel:
cp /boot/config-`uname -r`* .config

8. If you want to browse or make changes to the current config then run the configuration utility 'xconfig'
make xconfig

9. Once configuration is complete you can build your kernel and create Debian packages:
make deb-pkg

Posted: **Thu Jul 01, 2021 6:51 pm**

Hi @AVLinux ,

Am also interested in the sources for the latest kernel 5.9.1-rt20avl1, mainly to try and investigate a latency issue for which I would recompile the kernel with CONFIG_LATENCYTOP, to use it from a live iso. Since I presume I'd need to apply the AVL patches too, if alternatively I were to follow Your helpful notes.

Cheers!

Posted: **Fri Jul 02, 2021 11:43 am**

walker wrote: Thu Jul 01, 2021 6:51 pm Hi @AVLinux ,

Am also interested in the sources for the latest kernel 5.9.1-rt20avl1, mainly to try and investigate a latency issue for which I would recompile the kernel with CONFIG_LATENCYTOP, to use it from a live iso. Since I presume I'd need to apply the AVL patches too, if alternatively I were to follow Your helpful notes.

Cheers!

Hi,

Well at this point in time we have no actual 'AVL' patching, the biggest thing that was custom patched previous to the move to MX Linux that really had nothing to do with Audio work was the 'aufs' modules because they were required for our previous ISO creation utility. So the guide above really is what we are working with; really just the usual RT patches. If you want to experiment simply import the existing 5.9.1 config as shown in the guide and make your changes then build your new Kernel.

I am strongly considering getting out of the Kernel business completely for the next AVL-MXE release based on Bullseye. RT is becoming more trouble than it is worth in various ways and the performance benefits are visible only to a tiny amount of users it seems and nVidia Users are left out in the cold..

Posted: **Sat Jul 03, 2021 12:41 pm**

Hmm, What would be a good kernel for real time audio and midi play and recording? Windows has ASIO drivers to communicate directly with the audio/midi hardware and the software accessing it. Windows does NOT have a real time kernel.. Soooo. LINUX?? I have used MX Linux for music and it has resulted in mixed results depending on the software driver/interface I have used(JACK vs ALSA). The kernel usage was also mixed. On my first installs I just used the standard MX kernels which seem to be tweaked better than stock Debian kernels, and I have had confirmation of this from a kind dev right nere! Now, MX offers real time and stock kernels as well as the Liquorix low latency kernels. I honestly think the choice of kernel you use is very dependent on the HARDWARE/SOFTWARE combination and usage case of each individual. @AVLinux please do not give up on the kernel you are using if indeed you have had it tweaked specifically for AUDIO/VIDEO recording and playback. Stay with what works. Now nvidia hardware vs intel vs Amd, the issues will ALWAYS exist. As an artist and distro maker, just release what has worked for MOST. Most of us use Intel and AMD hardware with Nvidia being the exception. At least, when we are assembling a pro audio or pro video system, Intel and AMD has been specified since the 90s. Go with that. Please keep up the great work!!

Posted: **Fri Jul 09, 2021 11:17 am**

Hi pianokeyjoe!

There is a lot of confusion and old/stale information out there about kernels for Audio work on Linux. In addition to the Kernel it is equally important to have some settings in the system itself and it is the combination of things not just the Kernel that helps with the final performance result. There is no real voodoo to the current AVL Kernel, they are vanilla Kernels patched for RT or configured for 'lowlatency'. I would say in most cases the user will not be aware of a perceptible performance difference between RT and lowlatency. The biggest difference is most likely the several system tweaks to take advantage of the Kernel features and that is where AVL-MXE differs from your usual Desktop Linux.

Those tweaks are covered in great detail here: https://wiki.linuxaudio.org/wiki/system_configuration

Posted: **Fri Jul 09, 2021 5:28 pm**

AVLinux wrote: Fri Jul 09, 2021 11:17 am Hi pianokeyjoe!

There is a lot of confusion and old/stale information out there about kernels for Audio work on Linux. In addition to the Kernel it is equally important to have some settings in the system itself and it is the combination of things not just the Kernel that helps with the final performance result. There is no real voodoo to the current AVL Kernel, they are vanilla Kernels patched for RT or configured for 'lowlatency'. I would say in most cases the user will not be aware of a perceptible performance difference between RT and lowlatency. The biggest difference is most likely the several system tweaks to take advantage of the Kernel features and that is where AVL-MXE differs from your usual Desktop Linux.

Those tweaks are covered in great detail here: https://wiki.linuxaudio.org/wiki/system_configuration

Amen! I do agree! It is a mix of things to get that perfect cup of coffee as it were. So far, I love the MX 19.3 version of your distro from 2020 and I am sure the next release will be even better! My thing right now is if it works and it is not broken.. play with it and enjoy it.. life is too short.. 2020 happened sooo there ya go lol!. Keep up the great work my friend! Cheers!

Posted: **Fri Jul 09, 2021 5:31 pm**

Oh! And thankyou for the link to linuxaudio! I have a feeling all the hardware I need covered in this manual I have and then some, but the software tweaks will be a Godsend for sure!

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Re: AV Linux MX Edition is here!

Re: AV Linux MX Edition is here!

Re: AV Linux MX Edition is here!

Re: AV Linux MX Edition is here!

Re: AV Linux MX Edition is here!

Re: AV Linux MX Edition is here!

Re: AV Linux MX Edition is here!

Re: AV Linux MX Edition is here!

Re: AV Linux MX Edition is here!