Hi,
I have been watching the genode project for quite a while now - seems like at least 10 years, if not more. I have tried it off and on, over the years, but until recently didn't really give it more than a quick run through. Now, I'm getting more interested.
I've got a Thinkpad T430 and it seems to mostly work with Sculpt 22.10 running on a 32GB USB 3 drive. I have a few questions:
1. Is Wifi on the T430 supposed to work? I couldn't get it to do more than scanning. There are some teensy tiny error messages in the logs, so if it helps I could get out my magnifier and share them, but if there's a known issue, I figured y'all would know that without the specific error message. The wired connection works, so I'm ok with that as a fallback (but it makes it less mobile).
2. Persistence - what about persistence? I picked the ram-fs per the getting started document, but I would like to save SOME stuff- say bookmarks and source code, how do I do that?
3. I read that the genode folks use Sculpt as their daily drivers - so I'm guessing they don't boot from USB, build their environment up from scratch, add in firefox, terminal, whatever and so on, every day, just to start doing other productive things. Is there somewhere where typical workflows are described?
Oh, and thanks for doing this - I like the modularity and exposed dependencies.
Thanks,
Will
Hi Will, I can offer a fellow-user perspective on this, but I’m sure the Genode developers can say more.
- Is Wifi on the T430 supposed to work? I couldn't get it to do more than scanning. There are some teensy tiny error messages in the logs, so if it helps I could get out my magnifier and share them
I haven’t used the default wifi driver so can’t say specifically, but in porting the ath9k one I dug into the wifi code a bit so if you post the error I can give it a look if you like.
- Persistence - what about persistence? I picked the ram-fs per the getting started document, but I would like to save SOME stuff- say bookmarks and source code, how do I do that?
If Sculpt recognizes your storage it will show you the partitions available. If you create a partition called “GENODE”, you can then make it active (“GENODE*”) and Sculpt will recognize it by default. This is documented in the Sculpt instructions here: https://genode.org/documentation/articles/sculpt-22-10. If your storage isn’t recognized is it NVMe? There was an issue affecting that driver that’s since been fixed: https://github.com/genodelabs/genode/commit/8bd548416d0b6a5f532151b97f2133df...
- I read that the genode folks use Sculpt as their daily drivers - so I'm guessing they don't boot from USB,
You can boot Sculpt from a hard drive (if you use grub already), simply copy the ”boot” folder to a hard drive partition and amend your system’s main grub cfg copying the commands in boot/grub/grub.cfg.
Hope it helps — Colin
Hi Colin,
Thanks for the tips. I'll be reading up and trying stuff out. The log's got a lot of stuff, but I think this is the culprit:
Error: firmware 'iwlwifi-2000-6.ucode' is not in the firmware whitelist.
I'm open to suggestion as to what next :)!
Will
On 12/22/22 2:00 PM, Colin Parker wrote:
Hi Will, I can offer a fellow-user perspective on this, but I’m sure the Genode developers can say more.
- Is Wifi on the T430 supposed to work? I couldn't get it to do more
than scanning. There are some teensy tiny error messages in the logs, so if it helps I could get out my magnifier and share them
I haven’t used the default wifi driver so can’t say specifically, but in porting the ath9k one I dug into the wifi code a bit so if you post the error I can give it a look if you like.
- Persistence - what about persistence? I picked the ram-fs per the
getting started document, but I would like to save SOME stuff- say bookmarks and source code, how do I do that?
If Sculpt recognizes your storage it will show you the partitions available. If you create a partition called “GENODE”, you can then make it active (“GENODE*”) and Sculpt will recognize it by default. This is documented in the Sculpt instructions here: https://genode.org/documentation/articles/sculpt-22-10. If your storage isn’t recognized is it NVMe? There was an issue affecting that driver that’s since been fixed: https://github.com/genodelabs/genode/commit/8bd548416d0b6a5f532151b97f2133df...
- I read that the genode folks use Sculpt as their daily drivers -
so I'm guessing they don't boot from USB,
You can boot Sculpt from a hard drive (if you use grub already), simply copy the ”boot” folder to a hard drive partition and amend your system’s main grub cfg copying the commands in boot/grub/grub.cfg.
Hope it helps — Colin
Genode users mailing list users@lists.genode.org https://lists.genode.org/listinfo/users
Hi Will,
thanks for joining the mailing list and for giving Sculpt a try!
I just want to add another few points in addition to Colin's hints.
- Is Wifi on the T430 supposed to work? I couldn't get it to do more
than scanning. There are some teensy tiny error messages in the logs, so if it helps I could get out my magnifier and share them, but if there's a known issue, I figured y'all would know that without the specific error message. The wired connection works, so I'm ok with that as a fallback (but it makes it less mobile).
The Wifi driver on the T430 is expected to work. I'm sometimes running the current version of Sculpt on a T430s.
To investigate the issue, you can browse the log much better in the inspect view [1] by opening /report/log in vim. This also gives to a way to save (and report) the log by copying it to disk.
[1] https://genode.org/documentation/articles/sculpt-22-10#Leitzentrale_subsyste...
- Persistence - what about persistence? I picked the ram-fs per the
getting started document, but I would like to save SOME stuff- say bookmarks and source code, how do I do that?
Have you already had a look at [2]? If the documentation leaves some of your questions unanswered, please tell us. So we can improve it.
[2] https://genode.org/documentation/articles/sculpt-22-10#Storage_device_access...
In short, instead of selecting the RAM file system for "Use", you need to "Use" an ext2 file system on a disk or partition of a USB, AHCI, or NVME device.
If you want to dedicate your T430 to Sculpt without dual booting another OS, the simplest way is to write the downloaded Sculpt disk image directly to the block device using 'dd' on a live Linux. So instead of writing the Sculpt base system to a USB stick, write it directly to disk. You should then be able to boot directly into Sculpt without messing with GRUB.
Once booted into the Sculpt system, follow the "Expand" step described in the link above to extend the Sculpt partition (partition 3) to the full disk size.
Later updates from one Sculpt version to the next can be done by updating the files (image.elf.gz and hypervisor) at the /boot directory of the Sculpt partition.
- I read that the genode folks use Sculpt as their daily drivers - so
I'm guessing they don't boot from USB, build their environment up from scratch, add in firefox, terminal, whatever and so on, every day, just to start doing other productive things. Is there somewhere where typical workflows are described?
In [3], you can find quite a few directions to explore.
[3] https://genode.org/documentation/articles/sculpt-22-10#Further_exploration
The first stepping stone is usually to set up a VM with a Linux guest in order to attain a known-good baseline of functionality. Setting up the guest-host integration (like shared folder, shared clipboard) allows for a pretty seamless integration of the guest OS and Genode. Once you feel comfortable with that, you can explore native Genode components (like moving your browsing habits to Genode's Falkon browser) step by step.
I hope you'll enjoy the ride!
Cheers Norman
Hi Norman,
This is great. Just the info I was looking for. Now, I'm off to figuring out if I added a wifi card or if it's just some whitelist issue with my T430 and dedicating it to Sculpt.
Thanks,
Will
On 12/23/22 4:48 AM, Norman Feske wrote:
Hi Will,
thanks for joining the mailing list and for giving Sculpt a try!
I just want to add another few points in addition to Colin's hints.
- Is Wifi on the T430 supposed to work? I couldn't get it to do more
than scanning. There are some teensy tiny error messages in the logs, so if it helps I could get out my magnifier and share them, but if there's a known issue, I figured y'all would know that without the specific error message. The wired connection works, so I'm ok with that as a fallback (but it makes it less mobile).
The Wifi driver on the T430 is expected to work. I'm sometimes running the current version of Sculpt on a T430s.
To investigate the issue, you can browse the log much better in the inspect view [1] by opening /report/log in vim. This also gives to a way to save (and report) the log by copying it to disk.
[1] https://genode.org/documentation/articles/sculpt-22-10#Leitzentrale_subsyste...
- Persistence - what about persistence? I picked the ram-fs per the
getting started document, but I would like to save SOME stuff- say bookmarks and source code, how do I do that?
Have you already had a look at [2]? If the documentation leaves some of your questions unanswered, please tell us. So we can improve it.
[2] https://genode.org/documentation/articles/sculpt-22-10#Storage_device_access...
In short, instead of selecting the RAM file system for "Use", you need to "Use" an ext2 file system on a disk or partition of a USB, AHCI, or NVME device.
If you want to dedicate your T430 to Sculpt without dual booting another OS, the simplest way is to write the downloaded Sculpt disk image directly to the block device using 'dd' on a live Linux. So instead of writing the Sculpt base system to a USB stick, write it directly to disk. You should then be able to boot directly into Sculpt without messing with GRUB.
Once booted into the Sculpt system, follow the "Expand" step described in the link above to extend the Sculpt partition (partition 3) to the full disk size.
Later updates from one Sculpt version to the next can be done by updating the files (image.elf.gz and hypervisor) at the /boot directory of the Sculpt partition.
- I read that the genode folks use Sculpt as their daily drivers -
so I'm guessing they don't boot from USB, build their environment up from scratch, add in firefox, terminal, whatever and so on, every day, just to start doing other productive things. Is there somewhere where typical workflows are described?
In [3], you can find quite a few directions to explore.
[3] https://genode.org/documentation/articles/sculpt-22-10#Further_exploration
The first stepping stone is usually to set up a VM with a Linux guest in order to attain a known-good baseline of functionality. Setting up the guest-host integration (like shared folder, shared clipboard) allows for a pretty seamless integration of the guest OS and Genode. Once you feel comfortable with that, you can explore native Genode components (like moving your browsing habits to Genode's Falkon browser) step by step.
I hope you'll enjoy the ride!
Cheers Norman
-
Colin Parker -
Norman Feske -
Will Senn