MEPIS Community Forum

I've been developing a new linuxrc script for antiX. We are planning to include it in the next antiX release. I've made sure it is still compatible with Mepis. It has a lot of advanced features including debugging, persistence, md5 checking, and remastering.

It is much faster and much more robust than the linuxrc script it replaces (which was derived from the script you are currently using). It includes an updated busybox which makes some of the more advanced features possible. For example, it recognizes disk labels (and UUIDs) so you can specify the boot device by label. A few of the more advanced features require userland scripts and optionally a few init scripts. These are also available. They run in a GUI (with yad) and can also run on the command line.

Even if you don't want to use any of the advanced features, it is a vast improvement over the linuxrc you are currently using (which is about 80% cruft and needlessly complicated). For example, the rootdelay option is never needed with the new script because we automatically retry if the squashfs can't be found. IMO, this alone is a huge improvement. This, in turn, allowed us to get rid of a bunch of ad hoc delays in the script that were designed to reduce the chances of the user having to use rootdelay. A complete re-write was required in order to do this.

If any of you (Mepis devs) are interested in giving this a test-drive, I would be happy to help you. To try it, you just need to replace the initrd.gz on an iso or usb-stick with a new one. Some HTML documentation is also available. The code is all GPLv2 or higher.

That's nice, can you please e-mail the info to dev at mepis.org so Warren will be able to include if he likes it?

I already sent him the link. What I would like to see is for this to be incorporated into our Git repo.

That's a good idea, since this is created by BitJam I extend him the invitation to join the group on Github, he can create the repo for it if he wants.

Find us at: https://github.com/organizations/MEPIS-Community
Started a new project: https://github.com/MEPIS-Community/linuxrc
PM us with the Github username to be added with full access to the repo.

I would prefer not to deal with Github ATM as I am concentrating on getting userland scripts finished for the next antiX release and I'm short on brainspace. I hope to have more free time for you in a few weeks. I wanted to give you a heads-up so someone can give it a test-drive and look at the documentation and decide if this is something you are interested in pursuing.

What would be ideal for me is if I could deal with just one or two people and email them the new linuxrc, a working initrd.gz, and a tarball of the html documentation. I'm updating the documentation now to reflect changes (mostly name changes) that were made in the last few months.

The only person that you need to deal with is Warren, he will decide if he will include that or not, we are just amateurs who help with what we can, but we have no decision power about what goes into MEPIS DVD.