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Kernel 6.8.1 with btrfs fscrypt

March 16, 2024 — BarryK

I posted about 52 patches available to implement fscrypt in btrfs:

https://bkhome.org/news/202403/linux-kernel-btrfs-supports-fscrypt.html

I have compiled the 6.8.1 kernel with btrfs builtin (not as a module) and those 52 patches applied. The kernel also has both overlay and aufs builtin.

For anyone who wants them, those patches are in a tarball, available here (inside build-kernel.tar.gz):

https://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/source/kernel/6.8.x/6.8.1-20240316/

Here is how I applied the patches:

if [ -f 3rd-party/filesystem/btrfs-fscrypt.tar.gz ];then
 echo "btrfs fscrypt patch..."
 cp -a -f 3rd-party/filesystem/btrfs-fscrypt.tar.gz temp1/
 cd temp1
 tar -xf btrfs-fscrypt.tar.gz
 cd ..
 cd linux-${KERNVER}
 Psorted="$(find ../temp1/btrfs-fscrypt -type f -name '*.patch' | sort -n | tr '\n' ' ')"
 for aP in ${Psorted}
 do
  patch -p1 < ${aP}
 done
 cd ..
 rm -f temp1/btrfs-fscrypt.tar.gz
 rm -rf temp1/btrfs-fscrypt
fi

...excessive "cd" operations, but it works.

The kernel was compiled in EasyOS Kirkstone-series version 5.7 and the PET is here:

https://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/amd64/packages/pet/pet_packages-kirkstone/

...there is no broadcom-sta module for it, as it failed to compile.

Note, it you are running EasyOS, there is a bit more involved than just installing the PET. The PET is used in WoofQ when building EasyOS. Developers can, however, open up the PET and extract 'vmlinuz' and the modules, then manually change to use that kernel (it is at /boot/vmlinuz).    

Tags: quirky

Linux kernel btrfs supports fscrypt

March 14, 2024 — BarryK

Well that was shortlived:

https://bkhome.org/news/202403/linux-kernel-680-with-bcachefs.html

What interested me in particular about bcachefs is file checksumming, encryption and compression.

I encountered problems with 'bcachefs-tools'; firstly, there doesn't seem to be a utility to resize the filesystem. Secondly and thirdly, it is written in rust, and has to link with a lot of shared libraries. I want to compile it statically, but that looks very difficult, or rather, the final binary will be enormous.

The 'bcachefs-tools' were originally written in C, about 6 years ago; however, the guy who took over maintaining it is a rust proponent. It looks like he is gradually porting it to rust. I find that annoying, when there are perfectly OK utilities written in C and a rust idealogue wants to turn them into difficult-to-compile and super-large binaries. And probably very dependent on the rust version to compile, as rust is still a moving target. Rant over.

However, while browsing online about filesystem encryption, I discovered that 'fscrypt' is being developed for btrfs. Not yet mainlined, currently at v5 patches:

https://lore.kernel.org/linux-btrfs/20240124195831.GA1212739@perftesting/T/#t

...I downloaded all 52 of them.

Fscrypt is particularly attractive to me, as it is the same per-folder native-filesystem encryption as in ext4. So I know how to use it.

Then, btrfs brings something to the table that ext4 lacks; read-write compression.

Btrfs is also far more mature than bcachefs, and the 'btrfs-progs' package includes ability to resize a filesystem:

https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man8/btrfs-filesystem.8.html

Btrfs-progs are written in C and readily compiled as statically-linked binaries:

https://github.com/kdave/btrfs-progs

Another important point is that I don't know of any boot manager that will recognize a bcachefs partition.      

Tags: quirky

Linux kernel 6.8.0 with bcachefs

March 14, 2024 — BarryK

The specifications for bcachefs are great, though it does seem to be still immature. It was mainlined in the 6.7 kernel, with intense development, major improvements, in the 6.8 kernel.

So, I have compiled the 6.8.0 kernel, with bcachefs enabled, builtin.

Going off on a tangent, exploring a new distro variant, using bcachefs instead of ext4. Just playing, too early to report anything more.  

Here is the website for bcachefs:

https://bcachefs.org/     

Tags: quirky

Quirky 8.8.1 unofficial release

May 16, 2020 — BarryK

Readme file:

http://distro.ibiblio.org/quirky/quirky/amd64/releases/buster/8.8.1/readme.htm

Download:

http://distro.ibiblio.org/quirky/quirky/amd64/releases/buster/8.8.1/ 

For anyone who might be interested, use it as-is, there will be no support.

WoofQ has some updates for this Quirky build:

http://distro.ibiblio.org/quirky/quirky/project/woofq/ 

Tags: quirky

Quirky Linux now officially retired

December 17, 2018 — BarryK

I have sent an email to jesse Smith at distrowatch.com, informing him that Quirky Linux is now a discontinued project.

The Quirky Linux homepage now has an announcement:

http://bkhome.org/quirky/

Which states this:

ANNOUNCEMENT
From December 16, 2018, Quirky Linux is a discontinued project.
Documentation and downloads may still be available, but not guaranteed indefinitely.

The ibiblio.org download host will remain up indefinitely, but I cannot guarantee how long. It does host some Puppy-stuff as well, such as Wary Puppy and Racy Puppy, and there is still some interest in those.

http://distro.ibiblio.org/quirky/

Quirky started, um, about 2013, so has lasted almost 6 years. It was an experimental distro, un-Puppy-like in that it was originally designed for full-install only. Though, live-CD and frugal install came later. 

Tags: quirky

The end of Quirky Linux

October 03, 2018 — BarryK

I have been thinking about closing down Quirky Linux for sometime. The fundamental problem is that my efforts get spread too thin. To do a "good job", I need to be focused, and something has to go. My baby now is EasyOS, which is where most of the development goes, and although I released new versions of Quirky recently, they had minimal testing.

There is a review of Quirky 8.6 on Distrowatch:

https://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20181001#quirky

...to which I responded, see comment 101.

I know that there are many people who like Quirky, and will be unhappy that I am retiring it.

In future, I intend to develop EasyOS only, and with some restrictions:

Quirky and EasyOS are built with woofQ, which can use the binary packages of any distro -- for example Quirky 8.6 is built from Ubuntu DEBs. However, I am intending to stop all of that, and only build EasyOS from packages that I have compiled from source -- that is, the entire distro is compiled by me from source. Currently, this is the "Pyro" series of EasyOS.

So, Easy Beaver, EasyOS built with Ubuntu DEBs, will also be retired.

There will only be a x86_64 and aarch64 builds of EasyOS, no 32-bit.

Someone who wants a highly polished distro, with a huge repository, will have to go elsewhere. An offical Puppy Linux release may suit such a person.

Which brings me to another issue...

I may stop using the Puppy Linux Forum for discussion of Quirky and Easy. I will probably start another forum just for EasyOS, or someone might volunteer to undertake that responsibility.

The reason is, I am concerned about the confusion on the Puppy Forum. It is no longer clear what "Puppy Linux" is. I have been increasingly moving to the viewpoint that if a distribution is built with woof-CE (the Community Edition Puppy Linux builder), or a remaster of one, then it is OK to be on the Puppy Forum. All of the other offshoots should get off.

Or the forum be redesigned so that the offshoots are clearly distinct and cannot be mis-identified as a "Puppy Linux".

Of course, this is a decision for the administrators of the Puppy Forum. I have my doubts that there is enough motivation to make any significant changes, or any changes.

Finally, repeating what I posted a couple of days ago:

I retired from leading the Puppy Linux project in 2013, now just dabbling in some experimental distros, Quirky and EasyOS.

Furthermore, Quirky and EasyOS are very much just hobbies. I'm not really interested whether they become mainline or widely-adopted distributions. So, I am not trying to develop them toward suitability for a wide user-base. On the otherhand, if a wider user-base find them useful, that's OK also.

My interest is in the technology, just to play around with ideas, and have something usable for myself, and usable also for those involved in providing feedback and testing.

If you want to discuss this, I suggest start a thread on the Puppy Forum.

Tags: quirky

Quirky Beaver x86_64 version 8.7.1 released

September 22, 2018 — BarryK


NOTICE:
Quirky Linux is a discontinued project. This is the last release.
Retirement announcement is here: http://bkhome.org/news/tag_quirky.html 


Quirky Xerus x86_64 version 8.6 was released only a few weeks ago:

http://bkhome.org/news/201808/quirky-xerus-86-released.html

The transition has been made to building with Ubuntu Bionic Beaver 18.04.1 DEBs, and now codenamed "Quirky Beaver", first release is version 8.7.1, for x86_64 PCs. Some announcement blurb:

Quirky Linux 8.7.1 is the first in the "Beaver" series, binary-compatible with x86_64 Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS, though built with woofQ and architecturally very different from Ubuntu.
 Quirky is an experimental distribution, that forked from Puppy Linux a few years ago, and has followed a different path, exploring some new ideas. Continuing the Puppy tradition, Quirky has a "complete" suite of applications, drivers and utilities, in a very small size.
 Version 8.7.1 is very similar to 8.6, but with a complete upgrade of package versions. The kernel is now 4.18.9.

Package versions may be seen here: 1 2

More details, including an overview of the release history of Quirky, is here:

http://distro.ibiblio.org/quirky/quirky6/amd64/releases/beaver-8.7.1/release-beaver64-8.7.1.htm

The primary download site is courtesy of ibiblio.org:

http://distro.ibiblio.org/quirky/quirky6/amd64/releases/beaver-8.7.1/

As usual, there is a choice of an image file to write to a USB-stick, or an ISO, instructions are here:

http://distro.ibiblio.org/quirky/quirky6/amd64/releases/beaver-8.7.1/howto-install.htm

Feedback is courtesy of the Puppy Forum:

http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=106460 

EasyOS

I would like to mention also EasyOS, the latest version released yesterday. EasyOS is also built by woofQ, and mostly the same packages as for Quirky, so they are very similar. The difference is that EasyOS is a fundamental rethink of the underlying architecture, so, another experimental distribution. EasyOS is also available as the "Pyro" and "Beaver" series. See announcement of the latest EasyOS, "Easy Beaver", version 0.9.3:

http://bkhome.org/news/201809/easy-beaver-093-released.html

And, for an overview of what EasyOS is all about, see here:

http://bkhome.org/easy/

Note that EasyOS gets most of my attention these days, and perhaps ultimately Quirky will be retired. Though, the future is completely open at this stage.

Have fun!

Note, there was a Quirky Beaver version 8.7, with a brief life of two days. There was a security advisory for the 4.18.8 kernel, requiring an upgrade to 4.18.9, and youtube-dl (Youtube downloader script) did not work, also requiring an upgrade. 

Quirky Beaver 8.7.1 Bug reports

20180923
So far, one bug found. 8.7.1 has the Busybox 'fdisk', not the full 'fdisk' from the 'util-linux' package. If running from live-CD, and run the Quirky Installer, the advice for configuring GRUB is wrong, due to the less-functional Busybox applet. The fix is easy, just install 'fdisk' from the Ubuntu repository. The bug and the fix is discussed in the forum: 1   

Tags: quirky

Quirky Beaver x86_64 version 8.7 released

September 19, 2018 — BarryK

NOTICE: Quirky Beaver 8.7 was only released for two days before being replaced by 8.7.1, with important bug fixes. Please go here:

http://bkhome.org/news/201809/quirky-beaver-x8664-version-871-released.html


Quirky Xerus x86_64 version 8.6 was released only a few weeks ago:

http://bkhome.org/news/201808/quirky-xerus-86-released.html

The transition has been made to building with Ubuntu Bionic Beaver 18.04.1 DEBs, and now codenamed "Quirky Beaver", first release is version 8.7, for x86_64 PCs. Some announcement blurb:

Quirky Linux 8.7 is the first in the "Beaver" series, binary-compatible with x86_64 Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS, though built with woofQ and architecturally very different from Ubuntu.
 Quirky is an experimental distribution, that forked from Puppy Linux a few years ago, and has followed a different path, exploring some new ideas. Continuing the Puppy tradition, Quirky has a "complete" suite of applications, drivers and utilities, in a very small size.
 Version 8.7 is very similar to 8.6, but with a complete upgrade of package versions. The kernel is now 4.18.8.

Package versions may be seen here: 1 2

More details, including an overview of the release history of Quirky, is here:

http://distro.ibiblio.org/quirky/quirky6/amd64/releases/beaver-8.7/release-beaver64-8.7.htm

The primary download site is courtesy of ibiblio.org:

http://distro.ibiblio.org/quirky/quirky6/amd64/releases/beaver-8.7/

As usual, there is a choice of an image file to write to a USB-stick, or an ISO, instructions are here:

http://distro.ibiblio.org/quirky/quirky6/amd64/releases/beaver-8.7/howto-install.htm

Feedback is courtesy of the Puppy Forum:

http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=106460 

EasyOS

I would like to mention also EasyOS, the latest version released yesterday. EasyOS is also built by woofQ, and mostly the same packages as for Quirky, so they are very similar. The difference is that EasyOS is a fundamental rethink of the underlying architecture, so, another experimental distribution. EasyOS is also available as the "Pyro" and "Beaver" series. See announcement of the latest EasyOS, "Easy Beaver", version 0.9.3:

http://bkhome.org/news/201809/easy-beaver-093-released.html

And, for an overview of what EasyOS is all about, see here:

http://bkhome.org/easy/

Note that EasyOS gets most of my attention these days, and perhaps ultimately Quirky will be retired. Though, the future is completely open at this stage.

Have fun!

Tags: quirky