Operating System

Read more about the article Meilix Blank Screen

Meilix Blank Screen

Meilix has recently faced a blank screen issue where while booting the system, it leads to a screen as follows:

We thought it to be virtual machine issue, and build the Meilix ISO in local system from scratch. But it still coming up with the same error.

Then we started to search for the commit which seems to be breaking the ISO. There is no such commit which actually breaks the ISO. So we can’t remove/revert to any particular commit.

Then we started searching in the history to search for the latest working ISO and found that this commit actually gives a working ISO 6f287ea and below this commit, none of the others are giving an ISO which works.

So we started to look into the particular commit to find the code which is breaking the system, but actually none of them actually seems to do so. It raises more unobvious issue.

If I searched for the error, it doesn’t seems to be error from the ISO side.Even I tried building the ISO locally and test it, it is giving the same result.

It looks like it’s more than a hardware error than the error on the iso side. I tried different qemu, virtualbox, VMware on different machines.

Another Idea tried for working of the ISO

  1. initramfs is a small linux shell. please use ls and cd to find the file containing the file system filesystem.squashfs. in this black shell (initramfs)
  2. try to mount the ISO file manually

I local mount using:

sudo mount -o loop /home/meilix.iso /home/user
sudo umount /home/user

 

I mount the March 18 (good) and the closest April (bad)l ISO image and run a diff between both directories. the result is possibly large.

Finally tabesin made a commit dce3b08 which resolves the issue. It just the removal of language pack.

We can find the ISO link: https://github.com/fossasia/meilix/releases/tag/untagged-e337428be18400673be6

References:

USB Boot Issue

Initramfs error

Continue ReadingMeilix Blank Screen
Read more about the article Configuration for Auto-hiding Panel in Meilix with LXQt desktop

Configuration for Auto-hiding Panel in Meilix with LXQt desktop

In the new LXQt desktop, we can intelligently hide the panel. For that purpose, we’ll just need to patch a new file in a location under the meilix-default-settings metapackage.
Originally the file lies in the lxqt folder of the .config of the OS with the name panel.conf like .config/lxqt/panel.conf but since we have to make changes in the metapackage, we need to patch it here meilix-default-settings/etc/skel/.config/lxqt/panel.conf. Files in etc/skel/ will be put in each users’ new home folder, a folder which does not exist yet when we build the ISO.

panel.conf

1. [panel1]
2. alignment=-1
3. animation-duration=0
4. background-color=@Variant(\0\0\0\x43\0\xff\xff\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0)
5. background-image=
6. desktop=0
7. font-color=@Variant(\0\0\0\x43\0\xff\xff\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0)
8. hidable=true
9. iconSize=22
10. lineCount=1
11. lockPanel=false
12. opacity=100
13.panelSize=32
14. plugins=mainmenu, desktopswitch, quicklaunch, taskbar, tray, statusnotifier, mount, volume, clock, showdesktop
15. position=Bottom
16. show-delay=0
17. width=100
18. width-percent=true

In the line number 8 , hidable=true is doing all the jobs. It is the only line which hides the panel by default.

How we find this approach?
Originally LXQt panel is not hidden, they are shown by default. I first try to locate panel.conf file which will carry out the configuration for the panel. I try to find the code responsible for hiding the panel, but I can’t find that. Then I copied the panel.conf in a file and then by GUI I hide the panel and reopen the config file. Then I compare the changes between this file and the old config.panel file in which I found that the new file has a new line hidable=true. We introduced the changes in this PR.

How this approach actually work?
We are using meilix-default-settings metapackage to make the things work. We made an .config file which contains the configuration file. And the .config file is present under skel folder which gets copied under the home folder of the user. Thus ultimately we get a configuration file which will overwrite the original one to get the desired changes.

Other Uses of panel.conf
The file panel.conf could be used to customize all related settings to the LXQT panel, like its alignment, volume bar, quick launch, show desktop, etc.

References:
LXQt panel hiding
Customize LXQt desktop

Continue ReadingConfiguration for Auto-hiding Panel in Meilix with LXQt desktop
Read more about the article Debuilding the meilix-default-settings Metapackage

Debuilding the meilix-default-settings Metapackage

In the Meilix code repository you find a metapackage named meilix-default-settings which contains custom settings in directories as debian, etc, and user. In these directories one can make changes to make them be included in the build ISO. As Meilix runs on Debian we package our custom user settings in a Debian package to be installed along all the other software packages. The process and utility to make a Debian package is called debuild.

Directories in the meilix-default-settings:

What is debuilding?

It’s Debian slang for “making a deb package” and that stirred quite some confusion in our communications. Debuild is actually a rebuilding of the metapackage. But as to rebuild the Debian package you usually type debuild -uc -us therefore I stick to the language

Suppose someone has edited a configuration file in the metapackage according to its desires to achieve a specific result in the ISO it won’t get in unless he rebuilds the metapackage.He has not only to edit the metapackage but also to rebuild it to get the desired output in the ISO. To make the process automated, we have made a tiny script which will debuild the metapackages during each and every build, we only need to modify the metapackage.

Actually the first meilix-default-settings folder is the only metapackage and inside of it is the sub-metapackage which is responsible to get the changes applied in the ISO. To see a change in the ISO, we only need to edit the meilix-default-settings usr or etc folder in the first layer. Then, we need to debuild the metapackages.

Code-Base:

This file is present here

1. #!/bin/bash
2. rm meilix-default-settings_*                                    
3. cd meilix-default-settings                                      
4. debuild -uc -us

Let’s go through the whole code base line by line:
Line 2 deletes the previous meilix-default-settings binary packages.
Line 3 in this we changed our directory to the metapackage folder that is of our concern.
Line 4 is the most important line, it builds the whole metapackage and brings back all the binary packages and metapackages after making the desired changes.

Follow the example below to know that actually how it works:

This pull request is responsible to turn off system sounds by default in the generated ISO. Pull Requests files in which I only edited the this file and rest of the files get changes in the process of debuilding the metapackage (ignore .travis.yml file).

References:
Required files under debian directory
Debian directory guideline

Continue ReadingDebuilding the meilix-default-settings Metapackage