Help us test the new Indonesian DVD image!

We’ve been working on an Indonesian DVD version of Endless OS, and if you have a DVD burner, a blank DVD and some spare time we’d love your help testing it on different PCs and DVD drives.

Help us test!

With this first DVD-sized release, we are interested in learning if Endless OS can boot successfully from a DVD on different computers, in spite of the known issues listed below. Please download the 3.2.4.1 Indonesian DVD ISO, burn it to a DVD, and reply to this forum post with the following information:

  • Make & model of your computer
  • Amount of RAM in your computer
  • Whether your computer has BIOS or EFI firmware (if you know)
  • Make & model of your DVD drive, if it’s not built into the computer On Endless OS, you can download it with Transmission, and burn it to DVD with Brasero
  • Did Endless OS boot successfully from the DVD? If so:
    • Did you see anything strange during the boot process?
    • Try running some apps while booted from the DVD. Do they work?
  • If the DVD didn’t boot successfully:
    • What did you see? Please send photos if possible
    • If you have time, download the Ubuntu 17.04 ISO and burn it to a DVD. Does it boot on the same computer?

If the DVD booted successfully, collect a debug log while booted from the DVD and attach it here. If it didn’t, and your computer already runs Endless OS, please collect a debug log there. This will include the technical information above.

Background

There were two problems preventing us making Endless OS DVDs:

  1. The Full versions of Endless OS are all too big to fit on a DVD
  2. If you burned a small-enough Endless OS ISO to a DVD, it didn’t boot properly

For the first problem, we created a cut-down image which contains all the Indonesia-specific apps from the Indonesian Full image, but removes enough other large apps to make the ISO smaller than 4.7 GB. For the second problem, we have added a workaround—which, anecdotally, is used in other Linux distributions too—to allow the boot process to succeed.

Known issues

  • Boot speed: currently the DVD takes around 7 minutes to boot, with very little feedback. We’re working on this. Be patient: if the DVD is still making noises, it’s still booting!
  • Debug output visible: on some computers, some of the time, the first boot experience times out before it’s finished loading, then restarts. In the gap between it timing out and it restarting, you can see text-mode boot messages.
  • Reformat speed: if you use the DVD to reformat your PC, it can take up to half an hour to verify and write Endless OS to the hard disk.

Other languages

At the moment, we’re only building a DVD-sized image for Indonesia. The regular Basic ISO for 3.2.4.1 should work on a DVD, too, though the Indonesian ISO contains everything that’s in the Basic ISO, and more: you can just change the language on the first page of the first boot experience.

If there’s interest, we may make DVD-sized images for other languages in future!

ASUS F556U
Intel i5-6200u
8GB RAM
SSD 256GB

Created the DVD on Endless OS using Brasero with 5.7x average speed.

DVD booted as expected with all known issues.
~25s until Endless logo shows up
~5m35s until I see the screen with debug output messages
~6m15s until I see the desktop background
~7m40s until the FBE select language shows up

I haven’t tested it to format a computer.

All apps work, including the knowledge apps and minetest, although app open time is quite slow, but tolerable. eos-diagnostic-170815_102121_UTC 0700.txt (511.0 KB)

The only issue I encountered was that I wasn’t able to access USB sticks.

I opened the DVD on Windows and looks okay, but I haven’t tried installing dual boot or creating a USB. Will try that next.

This error is, I think, because polkit, the service responsible for checking whether users are allowed to take certain actions, takes so long to start that udisksd, the service the file manager uses to access USB sticks, gives up:

Agu 15 09:53:04 endless dbus[664]: [system] Activating via systemd: service name='org.freedesktop.PolicyKit1' unit='polkit.service'
[...]
Agu 15 09:53:22 endless polkitd[685]: Started polkitd version 0.113
[...]
Agu 15 09:53:29 endless dbus[664]: [system] Failed to activate service 'org.freedesktop.PolicyKit1': timed out
Agu 15 09:53:29 endless ModemManager[659]: <warn>  failed to create PolicyKit authority: 'Error initializing authority: Error calling StartServiceByName for org.freedesktop.PolicyKit1: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.TimedOut: Failed to activate service 'org.freedesktop.PolicyKit1': timed out'
Agu 15 09:53:29 endless accounts-daemon[660]: error getting polkit authority: Error initializing authority: Galat sewaktu memanggil StartServiceByName untuk org.freedesktop.PolicyKit1: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.TimedOut: Failed to activate service 'org.freedesktop.PolicyKit1': timed out
Agu 15 09:53:29 endless accounts-daemon[660]: Failed to initialize daemon
Agu 15 09:53:29 endless udisksd[676]: Error initializing polkit authority: Error initializing authority: Error calling StartServiceByName for org.freedesktop.PolicyKit1: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.TimedOut: Failed to activate service 'org.freedesktop.PolicyKit1': timed out (g-dbus-error-quark, 20)
[...]
Agu 15 09:53:29 endless polkitd[685]: Loading rules from directory /etc/polkit-1/rules.d
Agu 15 09:53:29 endless polkitd[685]: Loading rules from directory /usr/share/polkit-1/rules.d
Agu 15 09:53:32 endless polkitd[685]: Finished loading, compiling and executing 10 rules
Agu 15 09:53:32 endless polkitd[685]: Acquired the name org.freedesktop.PolicyKit1 on the system bus

Unfortunately this probably means that reformatting will not work either, since it uses the same API (udisksd) to get write access to the hard disk. I have not seen this problem in my testing but I guess that is just luck.

I tried booting the same DVD to another machine:

ASUS X441SA
Intel Celeron 3060
2GB RAM
500GB HDD

And it was able to read the USB, it also booted faster, about 1 minute less until I see the select language FBE.

I test reformatting the computer above with the DVD and it took ~28m36s.

eos-diagnostic-170817_130142_UTC 0700.txt (498.5 KB)