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coady - 21.10.2006, 14:53 Uhr
Titel: New User: apt-get error

Hi, I am a new Kanotix user and need some help.

I am a long time windows user and want to switch to Linux. I have decided that Kanotix is one of the best distros and the best option for me. Before doing a full HD install and moving more fully to a debian/GNU environment (probably still dual-booting with windows for a while), I have opted for the PMI while I learn my way around. That is, I have set up to boot in the following way (in summary):
running Kanotix 2006-01-RC4 (Oct.)
set partitions for kanotix, home, config, swap, and FAT32 share
used the tohd
set permanent home
set config
and so boot from CD with
fromhd=/dev/sda2 home=/dev/sda3

Everything seems to work OK. I have been able to set a su password using the console, i.e.:
su
passwd, etc.

However when I try to do an apt-get (in the console) or update DEB:APT using Kpackage, I get the following error:
W: Not using locking for read only lock file /var/lib/apt/lists/lock
W: Not using locking for read only lock file /var/lib/dpkg/lock
E: Unable to write to /var/cache/apt/
E: The package lists or status file could not be parsed or opened.

Now, although I am new to this, I can follow the advise from the many forums available, however, I would be grateful for some advice on this problem.

Is the problem because I am using a PMI, and therefore it would be resolved by doing a full HD install? Should apt-get work anyway, and it is a problem of user level access, or disk/partition protection?

Also, while I am on this. I write my PhD (in philosophy) and therefore use desktop office apps all the time. What is the situation with Kanotix and OpenOffice? Will it be included in the next release, and/or, is it OK to install it in the current release, or is there a stability problem? Is Klik the only option to add applications with a PMI version of Kanotix?

coady Frage

hey_ian - 21.10.2006, 15:09 Uhr
Titel: RE: New User: apt-get error

Type apt-get update in the console first, then it should work

coady - 21.10.2006, 15:35 Uhr
Titel:

I tried
"apt-get update"
and
"sudo apt-get update"

On both I get the following error (in summary):
[...]
Failed to fetch http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/dists/t ... Sources.gz Could not open file /var/lib/apt/lists/partial/ftp.de.debian.org_debian_dists_testing_non-free_source_Sources - open (30 Read-only file system)
W: Not using locking for read only lock file /var/lib/apt/lists/lock
W: Not using locking for read only lock file /var/lib/dpkg/lock
E: Unable to write to /var/cache/apt/
E: The package lists or status file could not be parsed or opened.

Any further ideas?

Also, any advice about the difference between a PMI and full HD install of Kanotix?

Thanks,
coady

CrashedAgain - 22.10.2006, 04:29 Uhr
Titel: Re: New User: apt-get error

coady hat folgendes geschrieben::

...
Is the problem because I am using a PMI,

Short answer: Yes.
PMI copies the CD to HD but it still runs as if it is a read-only CD. You cannot upgrade the system with apt-get, you can only install new packages with klik.
If you do a full HD install you will be able to upgrade and install any Debian packages available, including Openoffice. AFAIK there is no stability problem with Openoffice although there can be occasional (temporary) problems with any package as new versions are released.
My guess is that Openoffice is not included with Kanotix purely for space reasons...it is a really big package and only so much space is available on the CD.

bluewater - 22.10.2006, 06:29 Uhr
Titel:

hmmmm i may be way off track here with your setup:

However: fix-unionfs will allow you to install new apps in ram space
Traditionally once you power down the Live-CD anything you have newly installed is gone.

To overcome this a persistant home can be created and a good FAQ
onthe persistant home subject in the FAQ.
http://kanotix.com/FAQ-id_cat-63.html#q334

And yes openoffice is a large app suite to install ooo

first: apt-get remove --purge ash-kanotix ooo-kanotix openoffice.org2 [if present] then, for [DE] : apt-get install openoffice.org openoffice.org-kde openoffice.org-l10n-de myspell-de-de openoffice.org-thesaurus-de ; or,for [EN]: apt-get install openoffice.org openoffice.org-kde myspell-en-us openoffice.org-thesaurus-en-us (myspell-en-gb)

coady - 22.10.2006, 13:26 Uhr
Titel:

CrashedAgain and Bluewater... thanks for your responses. I will follow up your advice and let you know the result...!

Regards,
coady Sehr glücklich

coady - 23.10.2006, 13:10 Uhr
Titel:

OK, the unionfs fix seems to work. In the process, however, the system became a little wobbly. It crashed and blew away my config settings.

...
As a side note, I I boot with the
fromhd=/dev/sda2 home=/dev/sda3

I have been having trouble when including the parameter
myconfig=scan (or, myconfig=/media/sda5)

So I have been omitting this parameter and the system boots with the config that was present at the last session. Now I also add
unionrw=/home/knoppix/unionfs
...

Back to the main issue: after I set up the unionfs and rebooted, the apt-get update works. I encountered a problem with two library files, but I removed the one noted by the error message. This worked. I then downloaded the microsoft true type fonts (as a test), and they installed and were retained on reboot. But when I try to do a full update and upgrade with Kpackage it runs for a long time and then I get an error:

Errors were encountered while processing:
irda-utils
modemlink-kanotix
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

I get the same error when attemping this on the console. This is some kind of dependency issue (I think?), but anyway, I am not too sure how to proceed.

Regards,
coady Traurig

mzilikazi - 23.10.2006, 13:19 Uhr
Titel:

coady hat folgendes geschrieben::

I am not too sure how to proceed.

Regards,
coady Traurig

This type of installation is great for experimenting with Linux and might work for some specific applications but your best bet is to get both feet wet and do a proper installation. You can shrink your current Windows NTFS partition and install Linux right along side of WIndows. Smilie

bluewater - 23.10.2006, 14:27 Uhr
Titel:

YOU SHOULD NEVER DO A DIST-UPGRADE WHILST IN X nor should you do it with adept or synaptic!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

"""Always check Current Warnings on the KANOTIX main web site. Log out of KDE. Go to Textmode by doing Ctrl+Alt+F1 ; logon as root, and then in type init 3 ; apt-get update ; apt-get dist-upgrade ;run fix-fonts ; run fglrx or nvidia script if xorg updated and you have such a graphics adapter otherwise do ; init 5 && exit
[DO NOT DIST-UPGRADE [or UPGRADE] with adept or synaptic] """

Then there is also the h2 d-u script .. read the latest threads for the h2 d-u script
http://kanotix.com/PNphpBB2-viewtopic-t-19305.html
the h2 site is here
http://techpatterns.com/forums/about736.html

coady - 23.10.2006, 16:08 Uhr
Titel:

Bluewater,

You are right. I should have read these notes first. As a matter of fact, the system does not seem to be too happy as a result, and appears to be broken. I will take care to read the links you have suggested and get back to you. Thanks. (PS. Sorry for being so stupid...!)

Regards,
coady Verlegen

coady - 23.10.2006, 16:21 Uhr
Titel:

mzilikazi hat folgendes geschrieben::

coady hat folgendes geschrieben::

I am not too sure how to proceed.

Regards,
coady Traurig

Actually, you are right. I think this would make sense as the next step.... Given I am running on a laptop with a relatively small HD (40GB) and I have a lot of files on the NTFS partition that I would prefer to leave there, what size partitions can I comfortably use for "/" and "/home" (considering I will be using it mostly of for office/daily-desktop type functions)?

Can I get away with, for e.g., following the FAQ (in GB):
NTFS = 20
/ = 8
/home = 5
FAT32 = 5
Swap = 0.5 (note I have 2GB RAM installed)

Regards,
coady

CrashedAgain - 23.10.2006, 16:43 Uhr
Titel:

coady hat folgendes geschrieben::

Can I get away with, for e.g., following the FAQ (in GB):
NTFS = 20
/ = 8
/home = 5
FAT32 = 5
Swap = 0.5 (note I have 2GB RAM installed)

Regards,
coady

Those should be adequate. I use less than that; I have
/ = 5
/home = 3
swap = 1

The rest is FAT32 in two partitions..one for windows (I'm the last remaining user of winME!) and one for data. I don't really need 1 G swap but I put it in when I was playing with some video editing.

I also have a laptop with only a 6G HD on which I am getting away with 2.5G for Kanotix, no swap, & the rest FAT32, again in two partitions. Kanotix will install on 2.5G but then you have to be fairly brutal about stripping it down & diligent about cleanup...it will accumulate collections of log files & silly stuff like thumbnails pics. Even in that space I still have room for both kde & openoffice.

DeepDayze - 23.10.2006, 18:45 Uhr
Titel:

Well, Crashed, bet you should soon be able to dump the WinME soon (bet that's where you got your nick from Winken

)

mzilikazi - 23.10.2006, 22:14 Uhr
Titel:

coady hat folgendes geschrieben::

mzilikazi hat folgendes geschrieben::

coady hat folgendes geschrieben::

I am not too sure how to proceed.

Regards,
coady Traurig

That should be plenty. You really don't even need the swap w/ 2G of RAM. I use a multiple partition layout and after removing KDE and alot of the other apps I don't use this is where I stand on a fresh 2006-04 installation:

Code:

$ discus

Mount           Total         Used         Free       Prcnt      Graph

/               952.3 MB     171.7 MB     780.6 MB    18.0%   [**--------]

/home            2.80 GB      2.10 GB     710.1 MB    75.2%   [********--]

/opt             2.80 GB     759.3 MB      2.06 GB    26.5%   [***-------]

/var             1.86 GB      1.10 GB     773.4 MB    59.4%   [******----]

/usr             9.78 GB      1.36 GB      8.43 GB    13.9%   [*---------]

coady - 24.10.2006, 08:18 Uhr
Titel:

mzilikazi hat folgendes geschrieben::

Code:

$ discus

Mount           Total         Used         Free       Prcnt      Graph

/               952.3 MB     171.7 MB     780.6 MB    18.0%   [**--------]

/home            2.80 GB      2.10 GB     710.1 MB    75.2%   [********--]

/opt             2.80 GB     759.3 MB      2.06 GB    26.5%   [***-------]

/var             1.86 GB      1.10 GB     773.4 MB    59.4%   [******----]

/usr             9.78 GB      1.36 GB      8.43 GB    13.9%   [*---------]

OK, my learning curve is pretty steep here, so can I ask a couple of dumb questions...? It seems I have plenty of disk space to allocate partitions (the NTFS partition is about 66% free inc. WinXP). But:
(1) could you explain (or point me to an explanation) about how and why to use partitions for "/opt", "/var", and "/usr"?
(2) will Kanotix (like Ubuntu does, I think) force me to allocate a swap?
(3) why do you remove KDE?

Sorry for the simplistic questions...

Regards
coady

wegface - 24.10.2006, 12:13 Uhr
Titel:

You can just use one partition as / and one as swap if u need it. Thats all ive used, i never put my home on another partition, its never brought me any problems.

coady - 24.10.2006, 13:14 Uhr
Titel:

wegface hat folgendes geschrieben::

You can just use one partition as / and one as swap if u need it. Thats all ive used, i never put my home on another partition, its never brought me any problems.

I can see very good reasons for using a separate partition for "/" and "/home" (the same arguments stand for windows...) but I would still like to know more (or hear others' experience) about using separate partitions for:
/usr (for applications?)
/var (ftp and web?)
/tmp (temp files?)
/opt (non-default software and add-ons?)

This must be more that a matter of personal preference...

coady Frage

severin - 24.10.2006, 13:23 Uhr
Titel:

I got /, /home and /root - the latter being a matter of personal preference, but I can definitely recommend separate /home. Used to have /var to keep an evergrowing apt-cache from blocking my entire system (and to share it between different debian installations), but decided recently it's not worth the effort. I honestly don't even know if sharing the apt-cache is such a good idea once the debians in question are SID versus Etch; I'd suggest apt can tell the packages apart, but I would at least not recommend it to novices

mzilikazi - 24.10.2006, 13:43 Uhr
Titel:

coady hat folgendes geschrieben::

(1) could you explain (or point me to an explanation) about how and why to use partitions for "/opt", "/var", and "/usr"?
(2) will Kanotix (like Ubuntu does, I think) force me to allocate a swap?
(3) why do you remove KDE?

Sorry for the simplistic questions...

Regards
coady

1) Well /usr gets huge because all of your binaries are stored there, /var changes quite a bit in size depending on what you use your system for and /opt can be used for any number of things. I compile an alternative desktop in /opt so I like lots of room. There are a few apps that get installed to /opt as well.

2) I don't think you are forced to use a swap unless you don't meet the minimum requirements of 512M RAM. Not absolutely positive about that - I still prefer to use the text mode installer and edit the config by hand. Then it just does what you tell it to do - no questions asked.

3) KDE just isn't my style of desktop so it gets nuked. Smilie

I like E17

No need to apologize for questions. We like noobs and encourage anyone that wants to learn about an OS based on the Linux kernel to ask as many questions as they like.

coady - 24.10.2006, 14:14 Uhr
Titel:

mzilikazi hat folgendes geschrieben::

No need to apologize for questions. We like noobs and encourage anyone that wants to learn about an OS based on the Linux kernel to ask as many questions as they like.

Thanks... your response is very helpful and encouraging. I am really so impressed with Kanotix and the Kanotix community. Perhaps like others, I have threatened to switch to Linux every time windows, MS, or Bill annoyed me, and with the current set of LiveCDs and the big (corporate?) push by Ubuntu, now it is easier than ever. But I was still having second thougts until I tried Kanotix. Converted me immediately, and it think it is really important to support distros like this.

Also, I mean't to say I love your interpretation of Ubuntu. It kills me every time I read it. My wife is a professor who works on international relations and peace research. She has worked on the peace commissions in South Africa and is very familiar with the philosophy of 'ubuntu'. She is sceptical about the "export of peace" which has become a big product for South Africa, and when I told her there is now a big software project under the name of Ubuntu she flew into a rage about the cynicism of it, and said I bet it is full of pictures and quotes from Nelson Mandela...
And sure enough...

coady

CrashedAgain - 26.10.2006, 04:49 Uhr
Titel:

DeepDayze hat folgendes geschrieben::

Well, Crashed, bet you should soon be able to dump the WinME soon (bet that's where you got your nick from Winken

)

Actually no, I got it from crashing Linux!

My first successful Linux installs were Knoppix about version 3 or so which default installed to an ext2 filesystem. When the partition got near full, fsck reported an error but no idea how to fix it. I reinstalled, it happened again & so I posted somewhere (linux magazine forum I think) that "CrashedAgain has crashed again". Someone told me to use ext3 & that fixed it. I still use ext3 even though the trend seems to be to reiser.

I seldom use windows any more but I'm still using winME since I have it, it runs all my old software and I don't have to deal with NTFS issues. Once or twice I thought of upgrading it but I don't have a disk for XP or 2000.

mzilikazi, you may remember me from a couple of years ago when we were both making Knoppix remasters. I switched to Kanotix largely because of your advice. Are you now using Ubuntu? I'm still running a Kanotix BH9 system which I'm having trouble replacing...2005-04 won't survive an upgrade to latest xorg & 2006-01 gives segmentation errors trying to run tuxracer. Should I try Ubuntu? What are the pros & cons?

Back to topic...Definitely you should have a separate partition for /home and for / just like you should have a separate partition for your operating system and for data in windows. That way, if your O/S crashes, you shouldn't lose your valuable and maybe hard to replace data. I don't see much reason for having more partitions than that, however. /var and /usr can get pretty big but having them on a separate partition doesn't save any space and they are an integral part of the O/S so if something crashes & you have to reinstall you will have to replace them anyway. Leave /root (root home) on the main partition...if something happens to your /home partition you can then still log in as root & try to recover.

All I do for /home is have a partition which I mount as /home by editing /etc/fstab after a virgin install:

Code:

(edited fstab segment)...

/dev/hdb4  /  ext3  defaults,errors=remount-ro  0  1

#/dev/hda5 /mnt/hda5 ext3 auto,users,exec 0 0

/dev/hda5 /home ext3 auto,users,exec 0 0

....

The original /home directory remains on the / filesystem unused; the /home partition just gets mounted in it's place. If anything happened to the /home directory, I could just edit fstab while running from the CD & start up using the original /home directory instead of the /home partition. It would be a bit out of date but it should run.

severin, how do you share apt-cache between systems? I have also attempted to share package cache between systems since I have a relatively slow net connection but I would just copy the downloaded package cache into /var/cache/apt/archives for the system I wanted to upgrade. I kind of gave up on that too since the archive pile (located on a data partition) would keep growing & management was impossible. Cleaning out older packages which had been replaced by newer versions had to be done manually; it became much easier to just trash them all periodically & start over.

mzilikazi - 26.10.2006, 13:21 Uhr
Titel:

CrashedAgain hat folgendes geschrieben::

mzilikazi, you may remember me from a couple of years ago when we were both making Knoppix remasters. I switched to Kanotix largely because of your advice. Are you now using Ubuntu? I'm still running a Kanotix BH9 system which I'm having trouble replacing...2005-04 won't survive an upgrade to latest xorg & 2006-01 gives segmentation errors trying to run tuxracer. Should I try Ubuntu? What are the pros & cons?

Me? Running Ubuntu? Geschockt

Surely you jest!

CrashedAgain - 26.10.2006, 16:06 Uhr
Titel:

Guess I was reading something into your tagline that wasn't really there...since for me Kanotix is an ancient Linux word for "easiest way to install Debian". I'll have to try again though as the latest Kano versions are a no go.

h2 - 26.10.2006, 20:54 Uhr
Titel:

CrashedAgain, Mzilikazi is merely doing his part in helping spread culture and education. Many people have heard about the Ubuntu stuff, but few people are actually aware of its origins, linguistically speaking.

I know some may be surprised that there even was an ancient African word that dealt with Debian at all, but that just goes to show how much we need to be educated. Africa is, after all, the cradle of civilization, so it's only natural that they would discuss one of the more civilized operating systems. But of course, back then, debian was much harder to install than it is today, so ancient africans had specific terms for people who could not actually get debian installed.