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Koozali SME v10 Alpha 5 - coming soon, we hope!

Offline ReetP

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Koozali SME v10 Alpha 5 - coming soon, we hope!
« on: June 12, 2020, 12:24:11 PM »
If you hang out on Rocket.Chat with us you will know that Jean Philippe, Terry Fage and a few others have been spending literally days of their lives fixing things so we can get a Alpha 5 out soon. Some heroic efforts are going on back there.

They are trying to resolve some install issues with anaconda and kickstart - it really is a minefield, and makes me shake with fear just watching them!

There is also work ongoing with a new server-manager written in Mojolicious. And importing contribs to test in v10 which needs masses of work.

For those who are really brave and want to mess with bleeding edge development then please ask for a login to Rocket and come and talk to us and have a go at testing for us.

We need some testing on bare metal as most of have Prox boxes for testing so if you have a machine then come and try it with us.

We'll announce a full release as soon as we can.
...
1. Read the Manual
2. Read the Wiki
3. Don't ask for support on Unsupported versions of software
4. I have a job, wife, and kids and do this in my spare time. If you want something fixed, please help.

Bugs are easier than you think: http://wiki.contribs.org/Bugzilla_Help

If you love SME and don't want to lose it, join in: http://wiki.contribs.org/Koozali_Foundation

Offline TerryF

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Re: Koozali SME v10 Alpha 5 - coming soon, we hope!
« Reply #1 on: June 13, 2020, 04:02:36 AM »
I only try and break things, but JP and a group that includes a Chris a Catton a Michel and a Brian have really lit the torch.

Its close, very close :-)
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Offline Fumetto

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Re: Koozali SME v10 Alpha 5 - coming soon, we hope!
« Reply #2 on: June 15, 2020, 09:06:19 PM »
I recovery one HP ML110G4... try to install version 10 as soon as I can...

Offline TerryF

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Re: Koozali SME v10 Alpha 5 - coming soon, we hope!
« Reply #3 on: June 16, 2020, 05:28:10 AM »
Wait for the A5 ISOs to appear on the repos, but it is alive :-) and worth the wait, maybe a little sooner would have been better.

Importantly however all install methods now are useable, standard ISO, DVD, USB, Netinstall, and tada UEFI systems

If you want to give the USB install a drive around the block the app or method you use to create the USB is more than important, see this CentOS wiki entry https://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/InstallFromUSBkey however I have found that the  liveusb-creator now called Fedora Media Writer 4.1.5 appears to be bug effected, version before, 4.1.4 works under windows as does Rufus 3.10

Rufus is not recommended as some settings can create a dud USB boot. works for me tho with default settings

FedoraMediaWriter-win32-4.1.4.exe is the one to get

Downloads should appear next 24-48 hrs or so

Enjoy
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Offline toothandnail

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Re: Koozali SME v10 Alpha 5 - coming soon, we hope!
« Reply #4 on: July 02, 2020, 10:45:57 PM »
Downloaded the full A5 iso, wrote it to a flash drive (dd from an Arch Linux boot), then tired several bare metal installs. Two different machines - an old Dell machine (dual-core Pentium, 4GB memory, HP 8000 Elite, core2duo 2.8 GHz, 8 GB RAM). In both instances, never got as far as an actual install. The installer was very slow to respond, and kept coming up with unexpected errors and terminating. The errors were in not consistent in where they appeared on any two attempts.

I tried to save the report to one of my own machines, but failed - I'll have to see about getting something like an FTP server running to get that to work.

Not being sure if the flash drive was ok (I seem to remember having problems with a flash drive install with A4), I burnt a DVD and tried that. Same problem, just slower...

Both the machines that I've tried have run SME (9.2 in the case of the Dell, earlier 10 alphas in the case of the HP). The HP has has also had Nethserver installed when I was first testing it.

I also downloaded the netinstall iso. Tried that. Still slow, but got further on the HP than I had earlier. Trouble is, I'll have to make some adjustments to the machine before I can go any further (I've got a working A4 install, don't want to lose it, so I'll need to drop another drive in), will try that tomorrow.

One question - there is a prompt while the GUI installer is starting to use inst.txt if the GUI fails. I assume that requires an edit of the Grub boot line, but I'm not clear on the syntax and a couple of attempts I made failed dismally - GUI installer stared and failed each time. Can anyone give me an example of how to start the text installer?

Offline ReetP

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Re: Koozali SME v10 Alpha 5 - coming soon, we hope!
« Reply #5 on: July 03, 2020, 12:06:27 AM »
Thanks for testing.

Your X bug is here

https://bugs.contribs.org/show_bug.cgi?id=10991

Try and grab some shots on a camera if all else fails. If you can repeat it open a bug.

If you PM me a name and email address I'll add you to Rocket & you can chat directly to the people doing the work!

They might be able to offer some things to try.


...
1. Read the Manual
2. Read the Wiki
3. Don't ask for support on Unsupported versions of software
4. I have a job, wife, and kids and do this in my spare time. If you want something fixed, please help.

Bugs are easier than you think: http://wiki.contribs.org/Bugzilla_Help

If you love SME and don't want to lose it, join in: http://wiki.contribs.org/Koozali_Foundation

Offline toothandnail

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Re: Koozali SME v10 Alpha 5 - coming soon, we hope!
« Reply #6 on: July 03, 2020, 12:27:46 AM »
Thanks for testing.

Your X bug is here

https://bugs.contribs.org/show_bug.cgi?id=10991

Sorry, can't have explained clearly enough - X is starting without problems, but the installer itself is failing. Failure point is quite variable.

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Try and grab some shots on a camera if all else fails. If you can repeat it open a bug.

Will do. Trouble is, the details view doesn't seem to be changeable and it is too small to show all the traceback data. I'll have a look at enabling an FTP server on one of the other boxes and try uploading the report next time.

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If you PM me a name and email address I'll add you to Rocket & you can chat directly to the people doing the work!

:) I'm already on Rocket, but was having problems with my browser - I had it bookmarked in Seamonkey and found that Rocket has problems with that browser. I'll move the details to Firefox or Chromium and see how that goes. Hopefully tomorrow after I have another look at installing to the HP box.

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They might be able to offer some things to try.

Hope so. I would really like to see an updated version become available. While I've used Nethserver successfully a few times, there are a number of things that I'm not fond of, would much prefer to be able to continue using SME.

Offline TerryF

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Re: Koozali SME v10 Alpha 5 - coming soon, we hope!
« Reply #7 on: July 03, 2020, 12:54:22 AM »
Good stuff, not seen the behaviour on test boxes and VMs to date, which just means we have a small hardware pool :-) important to get to the bottom of it, re txt installer, get back to you..

I can see an old box or two being resurrected from the garage to have a play :-)
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Offline TerryF

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Re: Koozali SME v10 Alpha 5 - coming soon, we hope!
« Reply #8 on: July 03, 2020, 01:11:28 AM »
re variability of fails, have had VMs go west during install when using one of my prox storagas and not another, different brand HDs, also how hard the little HPN54L is chugging away with other VMs when I install a new one.

I had hells own trouble getting a USB install to work during initial QA, it was only when I went back to the Fedora Media Writer version 4.1.4 and Rufus 3.10 although it was not recommended, that I had success, will run one up using dd on my home server, yes I am a heathen sit in front of a overworked win10 PC :-) thanks for jumping in..the more that test particularly bare bones you find issues like this...

keep safe
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Offline ReetP

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Re: Koozali SME v10 Alpha 5 - coming soon, we hope!
« Reply #9 on: July 03, 2020, 01:12:26 AM »
For Rocket on my linux desktop I tend to find Chromium works best. I have 2 instances in a tab each, and I rarely get issues. Odd refresh to clear stale sockets but that's it.

Best place to chat this stuff through!!
...
1. Read the Manual
2. Read the Wiki
3. Don't ask for support on Unsupported versions of software
4. I have a job, wife, and kids and do this in my spare time. If you want something fixed, please help.

Bugs are easier than you think: http://wiki.contribs.org/Bugzilla_Help

If you love SME and don't want to lose it, join in: http://wiki.contribs.org/Koozali_Foundation

Offline TerryF

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Re: Koozali SME v10 Alpha 5 - coming soon, we hope!
« Reply #10 on: July 03, 2020, 02:49:27 PM »
Sorry, can't have explained clearly enough - X is starting without problems, but the installer itself is failing. Failure point is quite variable.

Will do. Trouble is, the details view doesn't seem to be changeable and it is too small to show all the traceback data. I'll have a look at enabling an FTP server on one of the other boxes and try uploading the report next time.

I might be worth also having a look at your iso, I know JP was sorting an issue with the md5, also, when I was having issues with the creation of a USB install device had lots of trouble with the app used, latest fedora image writer seemed to be faulty, ended up going back to the version before and all was good, also used Rufus, even though not recommnded by CentOS wiki
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Offline TerryF

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Re: Koozali SME v10 Alpha 5 - coming soon, we hope!
« Reply #11 on: July 03, 2020, 03:43:20 PM »
In the interim, you could do a A4 install, using the text installer, I found that was working OK, and do a yum update, its 590mb of updates and then 868packages to be updated, will end up with an A5, tested and working OK
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Offline toothandnail

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Re: Koozali SME v10 Alpha 5 - coming soon, we hope!
« Reply #12 on: July 03, 2020, 04:07:17 PM »
Good stuff, not seen the behaviour on test boxes and VMs to date, which just means we have a small hardware pool :-) important to get to the bottom of it, re txt installer, get back to you..

Found the error with the text install - message was flashing by a bit fast. This morning I saw that it should have been inst.text, not inst.txt, which is what I'd used. Had a quick look, but I think I need to read up on the text install before I try it...

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I can see an old box or two being resurrected from the garage to have a play :-)

:) Well, in the collection of SME machines I look after, there are a couple of old HP Microservers (dual core Turion CPU), a dual core Xeon 3040 (in an IBM System x3250 rack), a Lenovo rack which has two Xeon E5-2420 CPUs plus a current generation HP Microserver with an AMD Opteron X3216 dual core. Memory ranges from 4 GB to 8. Plus two Lenovo E series desktops with early i5s.

I'm hoping to be able to determine what, if any, hardware upgrades are needed before I try migrating them all to SME 10. Some of the systems are pretty big these days, don't fancy having to try fresh setups and migrating old mail to any of them...

Offline toothandnail

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Re: Koozali SME v10 Alpha 5 - coming soon, we hope!
« Reply #13 on: July 03, 2020, 04:11:30 PM »
For Rocket on my linux desktop I tend to find Chromium works best. I have 2 instances in a tab each, and I rarely get issues. Odd refresh to clear stale sockets but that's it.

Best place to chat this stuff through!!

I've now got that setup, also decided to try Chromium - Firefox is probably too close to Seamonkey, which was having some strange problems with Rocket. I'm on a night shift tonight which should leave me quite a bit of free time, so will try it then.

Offline toothandnail

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Re: Koozali SME v10 Alpha 5 - coming soon, we hope!
« Reply #14 on: July 03, 2020, 04:18:40 PM »
In the interim, you could do a A4 install, using the text installer, I found that was working OK, and do a yum update, its 590mb of updates and then 868packages to be updated, will end up with an A5, tested and working OK

Just finished a net install, which worked without any real problems (apart from having to turn the primary ethernet port on when the installer first started). Took a while and caused me a bit of confusion when it said that the root user was disabled - forgot about the first reboot setup that SME normally performs.

I'll have a play with that in the next few days. I've also got a Turion-based HP microserver which I use for testing purposes, so I'll see what I can get out of the full install iso on it. It doesn' t have any sort of optical drive, so I'll rewrite the iso to another flash drive and see what it does on that hardware. It also has only one ethernet port and is a royal pain to install a pci-e card, so it will be a stand-alone server at best...