forum.excito.org

Hi,

I've just released version 1.18 of the Bubbagen live-USB image for B3 on GitHub.




What is new?
Well, nothing really. And at the same time everything. Shortly after the 1.17 release in which I took a partial advance on Profile 23 to allow easier conversion between OpenRC and Systemd init systems, the Gentoo devs marked Profile 23 stable and at the same time added rules to the older Profile 17 that denied the use of the merged usr filesystem. To overcome this issue I've decided to fully adopt Profile 23 at an early stage, which should guarantee support for this operating system for years to come.

All packages have been brought up to date as of April 21, 2024.


Privacy notification
Logitech Media Server has now officially become open source and is in the process of being renamed Lyrion Music Server with all references to former owner Logitech removed. Part of the transition involves the leading devs having set up an analytics service to gather (anonymous) information what would need to be kept and consequently what may be dropped as nobody uses it. Since the main project doesn't actually support Gentoo at all this doesn't really apply to us but the Report Analytics Data plugin will still be activated by default. Should you object to any information about your LMS setup to be shared you can disable this plugin in the server settings.


Existing users
This is a chain breaking release. Your system will NOT automatically upgrade to this state. If you like to upgrade to Profile 23 yourself please follow the instructions from the Gentoo news channel (execute `eselect news read`). Note that this involves a complete rebuild of your system which will take a considerable amount of time.


Key features:

• Kernel version 6.6.13
• Familiar GUI for basic management (users, network, firewall, predefined services)
• Logitech Media Server version 8.5.1
• Wireguard VPN prepared (works with e.g. an Android phone)
• The Onion Router (TOR), get access to sites that are blocked by some geographic location rule
• Out of the box Windows and Mac compatible file sharing service (NAS)
• Will connect to any existing network (with a DHCP server) or create one itself (when connecting you will receive an IP in the range 192.168.10.x)

Known issues:

• When changing the time zone the web interface may show you an incorrect time on some pages (the extensible clock on the right is actually javascript and thus should show your client's time rather than the B3's). To align them all you should restart the B3 (or at least apache2 and bubba-adminphp services).
• Changing the network profile may completely destroy networking on the B3 if you have wifi enabled or added custom interfaces and/or bridges. If you need to change the profile please do so before making any changes to the default network setup and then never touch it again.
• When switching to systemd you will no longer be able to view system messages through the web based GUI. The associated links are hardcoded to show the OpenRC messages file. Messages from services that write their own log files, e.g. Apache webserver, Samba (windows compatible) file sharing, Logitech Media Server, can be viewed as normal.

Further information and details may be found here

Enjoy,
Gordon



No obligations of course, but if you like my work please consider to

Hey Gordon,
Thank you again for bringin this effort for the few of us left in this forum. I can not download the image for the new bubbagen version. Erroro 404. Can you check please?
Greetz

Hi, sorry about that. Turns out I had made a small typing error in the file name. Link should be fine now.

Thank you!

Gordon,
Thank you for this work.
I intend to upgrade one of my B3 servers (running 1.14.5) later this month.
We will see how the process goes (What did I forget?)

I will do Live USB First, before committing to writing to server’s HD with backup files.

greg
Chicago

beatgr wrote: 13 Jul 2024, 18:46 Gordon,
Thank you for this work.
I intend to upgrade one of my B3 servers (running 1.14.5) later this month.
We will see how the process goes (What did I forget?)

I will do Live USB First, before committing to writing to server’s HD with backup files.

greg
Chicago

Worth noting that network settings won't transfer from Systemd to OpenRC.

Just out of curiosity, as you state to be running 1.14.5, did you never run updates because the GUI doesn't offer it or because you rather like to stick to
the release version?

Thank you for reminder to jot down my network settings.

When a release (version) is very stable, I tend to stay with that version —
unless Security vulnerabilities are reported or noted.

Not having Updates on the GUI discourages action (good & bad feature).

greg

Thanks.

It's actually pretty tricky to offer updates through the GUI or even schedule to run automatically because sometimes updates want to change etc files which should always be reviewed in person and the routine would come to a halt because of this.

Gordon,

Completed the B3 version 1.18 (Gentoo Profile 23) upgrades for both of my Excito B3 servers,
earlier this week. I hope to use the Logitech music server later this year.
As always, a few hiccups — along the way !

bubbagenb3img-1.18.0.xz

I used MS Windows tools (XZ Util and Win32 Disk Imager, noted with instructions),
and found that De-compressed image file was missing its “.img” extension.
Renaming the file (adding the img), corrected that surprise.
So, the Win32 Disk Imager program (MS Win) can now find the file !

Installing Bubbagen on your B3's Internal Drive (Option)

b3 ~ # /root/install_on_sda.sh
Install Gentoo -> /dev/sda (B3's internal HDD)

August 3
The First (b3w, wi-fi version) had no issue. Worked as advertised.
Surprisingly, hard drive files/file structure were maintained (unexpected).
==
August 17
The Second (b3) hard drive was a challenge.
—
Message appeared early. “ grep: warning: stray / before - “
* Gentoo forums reported this issue due to recent changes.*

Step 1 of 5: creating new "dos" partition table on /dev/sda...
** this process had issues, locked up.
*This may be partition table damage from power outage, a month earlier.*

Pulled the 3 TB drive, and used disk tools (wipe partitions/drive data, GPT) to clean the disk (blank).
That took an afternoon !
==
Starting Again :
b3 ~ # /root/install_on_sda.sh
Install Gentoo -> /dev/sda (B3's internal HDD)

Gordon/Sakaki script then proceeded with the b3 server, as expected.
===
Two functional Excito servers with latest Gentoo B3 v1.18
Now to Restore some directories and files.

greg
chicago

beatgr wrote: 21 Aug 2024, 11:11 As always, a few hiccups — along the way !

bubbagenb3img-1.18.0.xz

I used MS Windows tools (XZ Util and Win32 Disk Imager, noted with instructions),
and found that De-compressed image file was missing its “.img” extension.
Renaming the file (adding the img), corrected that surprise.
So, the Win32 Disk Imager program (MS Win) can now find the file !

I may have been focussing too much on Linux being the host platform for writing the USB image. On Linux you can extract the archive straight to the USB without needing an intermediate file. I'll make a note to keep '.img' in the base name for the next release.

Installing Bubbagen on your B3's Internal Drive (Option)

b3 ~ # /root/install_on_sda.sh
Install Gentoo -> /dev/sda (B3's internal HDD)

August 3
The First (b3w, wi-fi version) had no issue. Worked as advertised.
Surprisingly, hard drive files/file structure were maintained (unexpected).

That is correct. If the partition table already matches the intended layout the installer will not touch it and also not reformat the data partition. Because of this it is actually possible to loop mount the extracted Bubbagen image file on the data partition and run the installer from there. I use that method myself to switch between various setups.

The Second (b3) hard drive was a challenge.
—
Message appeared early. “ grep: warning: stray / before - “
* Gentoo forums reported this issue due to recent changes.*

Step 1 of 5: creating new "dos" partition table on /dev/sda...
** this process had issues, locked up.
*This may be partition table damage from power outage, a month earlier.*

Pulled the 3 TB drive, and used disk tools (wipe partitions/drive data, GPT) to clean the disk (blank).
That took an afternoon !

That is actually good information. Seems something is going wrong with the hard drive detection, possibly related to that warning, and the installer attempts to use the disk as being at most 2.1TB size. I'll have a look into that.

Gordon -
Follow-up on my Excito Gentoo server update.

1.) This Gentoo B3 1.18 has faster responses on my home Internet. Nice surprise, nimble.
Temperature of the server is warmer (45-50° C) according to B3 interface.

2.) The Logitech Media Server (LMS) is now Lyrion Music Server.
Lyrion web site
https://lyrion.org/

The old Squeezebox servers were shutdown earlier this year (2024).
https://lyrion.org/lms-server-repository/

greg

beatgr wrote: 28 Aug 2024, 17:57 1.) This Gentoo B3 1.18 has faster responses on my home Internet. Nice surprise, nimble.
Temperature of the server is warmer (45-50° C) according to B3 interface.

Corresponds to what I see on my own system. 45°C on the production system with 3TiB Red disk, 48° on the dev machine with 2TiB Green Disk, I actually have 59° on a second production system running on a 512GiB SSD

2.) The Logitech Media Server (LMS) is now Lyrion Music Server.
Lyrion web site
https://lyrion.org/

The old Squeezebox servers were shutdown earlier this year (2024).
https://lyrion.org/lms-server-repository/

This is known. The 1.18 release actually already has the MySqueezebox integration disabled even though at the time those servers were still up. Your players will still want to access the closed down internet servers though. To counter this you need to both enable the community firmware in LMS and upgrade to the latest ebuild in the bubba overlay as this fix is bound to that version of LMS.

Current stable release in fact still carries the Logitech brand. The rebranding is part of the 9.0 beta and is as of present still incomplete.


Edit: Should you want to run @world updates to get LMS up to date, please make sure to update the Bubbagen package first. Gentoo devs made an extremely nasty update to the environment that unless addressed properly causes their package manager to enter a state from where it can never recover. The updated Bubbagen package will make the necessary changes for you to prevent this.