Gena's motto is fun, freedom, and flexibility.

As a newcomer here (but not to the PE universe) that sounds good.  I'm looking forward to experimenting with my first Gena-based PE build.  And I sincerely hope that the freedom and flexibility includes a little more tolerance for "rebel" efforts (someone else's word, not mine) than seems apparent elsewhere.  Rebellion is not, after all, an entirely negative attribute under some circumstances.

Anyhow, without wishing to say too much, I just wanted to express my personal thanks to Galapo for helping me in "another place" to sort out my befuddlement about the current situation.  And I'm very sorry if my confusion there contributed in any way to the "excommunication" that was imposed on you as a consequence. 

Hi Arvy,

Nice to see you here!

My post to you at the other forum was meant solely for you. Since you had helped me out a lot in the past with the PHP project manager for LiveXP, I thought I should point you in the direction which our development has taken. (Of course, my post there was used for other purposes by certain people, but oh well.)

Concerning Gena, you can either use the WB Download Centre or BlueLife_ExactServer to download the project, or you can wait a day and I'll have a ZIP download of the project available (just getting things sorted out for it at the moment).

Regards,
Galapo.

Got it.  I downloaded everything ("complete" level) from the galapo.net/gena server location, including the Gena-Sweets.

Good grief, Man!  This thing is humongous.  I don't have that many apps and utilities installed on my regular triple-boot (XP-Vista-Win7) working box set-up.  I'll condsider it a personal triumph if I live long enough just to find my way through and understand all of its PE1 build options.   It's gonna be a lot of fun! 

Yes, that's why the Complete (what we'll be calling "Sweets") option is not what we recommend for most builds. There is the "Share Scripts" script under Tools where you can quickly and easily disable (and re-enable) the Sweets scripts.

Regards,
Galapo.

Well, that was almost too easy.  I'm typing this from my first Gena-based PE1 build. 

Disabled the "Sweets" as you advised and added a few scripts for my own favourites (Acronis TI and DD, UltraEdit, etc.) along with the driver for my NIC and that was about it.  Almost everthing else was defaults, except that I chose to use the BootDI option for creating an image that I could copy to my eSATA drive and add to my Grub4DOS menu along with all my other PE WIMs, Recovery ISOs, etc., etc.  I think this one may replace a few others.  Great stuff!

You might want to consider unlinking those "Sweets" as the default setting if that's what you're recommending in most cases.  Just for your info, Windows "Security Essentials" is suspicious of the build process and popped up a couple of warning messages.  The only other slightly scary part was my unfamiliarity with that initial PrepPE process which seemed to spend a lot of time "thinking" with no apparent progress.  But definitely a very thorough job of checking for any inconsistencies.

My compliments to all of the "Gena People."  To top it off, that boot screen sure does stand out from the crowd. 

Hi Arvy,

Welcome, and thanks for the Good news, nice to hear good things before Galapo release next package,

Well, that was almost too easy.  I'm typing this from my first Gena-based PE1 build. 

This personally give me a great smile,
You are pretty lucky, after 9 Months of heavy* development of Gena resulting with initial release, and last 3 months to clean things found or reported by a set of members around, with not finding or getting anymore important things in project for a long while now, I began to believe Gena became %99 solid and easy to use, and your above comments really made me personally happy.   

Yep we already agree with you, Gena Sweets will be an addon on next packed distribution 
http://theoven.org/index.php?topic=115.0

Windows "Security Essentials" is suspicious of the build process and popped up a couple of warning messages.

If you can write where/what popped up, we can pinpoint 
Generally, these "security blabla" stuff do not like upx compressed files, I guess we missed 2 of them.
To speed up PrepPE there,
put following !ScriptManager.script
http://www.mediafire.com/?5wz81h4a634ibbi
to \Projects\Gena\Tools
and
put following 1 PrepPE.script
http://www.mediafire.com/?51ofxklng4szd36
to Projects\Gena\Basic

I hope they help ??

See you 

Hi Lancelot.

The effort that has been put into the Gena package is very obvious.  And that forum posting that you linked makes the multi-level development path very clear.  I really should have read it and some of the other info here before plunging into my first build, but I was too anxious to try it out.  As the old saying goes: When all else fails, read the instructions. 

In any case, as you say, my "smooth sailing" experience very luckily had the benefit of a lot of prior input and bug chasing.  I'll give those linked updates a try during my next build and report back.  (Probably in a day or two.)  But I should make clear that neither the PEprep process nor the MSSE popups were major issues so far as I'm concerned.  They were more a matter of my own inexperience with the package.   I just wasn't expecting the PEprep to take quite as long as it did without any progress bar movment.  And I see a few nervous false positives from MS "Security Essentials" with almost any WinBuilder package build.  But I will make more careful notes on the next run and let you know more precisely where I see them with the Gena package.

Once again, my compliments to all on a great PE1 development effort.  I think I'm hooked. 

Hi Arvy,

Glad to hear your sucess!

I've uploaded a new version of the ScriptManager script which (aside from a few other things) handles the verification of script dependencies. The new version has a progress bar so you aren't left waiting not knowing if the program has stalled or not.

Regards,
Galapo.

Found some unfilled spare time and so am now typing this from build #2.

The updated PrepPE script that Lancelot provided seemed somewhat faster, but everything seemed subjectively quicker this time as I'm getting better acquainted with its build processes.  There were still some fairly long delays with no progess updating while PrepPE tests ImDisk (fsutil) for successful installation and write to disk capability.  But that may be unavoidable and it's much better to pre-test than to have it fail at the end of the exercise.  I'll try your new update next time, Galapo.

In any case,  PrepPE is certainly faster than my chosen BootDI.script option.  But I became accustomed to waiting for that one long ago and, since I like BootDI's resulting .IMG file that I can boot on my eSATA drive with all my other Grub4DOS options, I'll put up with the time it takes.

There were no popups at all by MS "Security Essentials" during my second build.  Either your updates fixed it, or else MSSE has given up since I cancelled its warnings the first time.

Jeez, I sure do love this thing -- the way it remembers and handles drive letter assignments -- its abilty to pick up added JMicron and other external storage even when added after booting -- EVERYTHING!!!  The blood, tears and sweat were well worth it, guys.

P.S.:  Forgot to mention that, if you want to run a new Gena PE build from within a booted existing build, the BootScreen.script requires the makecab.exe executable to be added to the %windir%\system32 folder.  Everything else required for running a Gena PE build is already available in a build created with default settings.  Adding makecab.exe to the default system file copies might not be a bad idea anyhow.

Hi Arvy,

Following your Good idea  having makecap.exe available to build Gena from a Gena (default) boot 
CMD Adds.script updated ( \Gena\Components\Core\1 System)
on server, and here is a copy
http://www.mediafire.com/?0bnjnir3i4d4nf0
(ehm  and caused zip package disturbance reply http://theoven.org/index.php?topic=143.0 hihihi, only joking, thanks a lot)

As experienced user, you can disable some of prechecks at prepe, also I guess you are using wb077rc2,
although Gena supports both wb080rv3 and wb077rc2, we prefer wb077rc2 for speed 
(personally, I use wb077rc2, I do not remember last time I made a build with wb080rv3)

There are very nice stuff unselected default at Components, some having Test buttons, which I am sure you will like too.
Also with "Share Scripts", updating projects with personal scripts now quite easy (without manual copy..)
check here
http://theoven.org/index.php?topic=96.0
and here
http://theoven.org/index.php?topic=90
also check backup restore as bonus for your tests.
http://theoven.org/index.php?topic=87.0
I very frequently use this backup-restore to test & improve scripts.
....
we had quite fun with these stuff when developing, I hope you spend some nice time when practicing. 

Thanks, Lancelot.  I've updated my Gena package with ALL of the updates currently available from the server and I'll be running build #3 very soon now.

I'm sure that you and all of the "Gena People" had plenty of fun during development.  I am very definitely having a lot of fun playing with it.  And having read the "Only One Main Goal left" under the Future Goals comments tucked away inside the tools scripts, it looks like there's lots more "fun" still to come.  I'll be following that final step with great interest.  When it comes to any of life's competitive universe of ideas, the "free market" approach is always the best IMO.  So I'll be wishing you they very best of good luck in that last step of the Gena devlopment process. 

__
P.S.:  HOORAY!!! I can now edit the sloppy mistakes in my own postings! 

Now typing from build #3.  Built it while running build #2 (with makecab.exe added) and the run was perfect, or nearly so.  The makecab.exe file is now included by default as you noted above.

My chosen BootDI.script had a little problem dismounting one of its ImDisk drives, but that minor glitch was easily bypassed with a manual dismount.  I've seen it happen occasionally in the past and there doesn't seem to be any clear pattern to its occurence.  If it happens again on another build run, I'll let you know.  Otherwise, however, I suggest that you just ignore it as one of those random "gremlin" events with no definite cause capable of being pinned down.

Apart from that, I've got just about everything exactly as I want it and can't really think of anything else to bellyache about -- unless, perhaps, the Chefs could be persuaded to include a lobster thermidore and a half litre of some nice dry white wine. 

unless, perhaps, the Chefs could be persuaded to include a lobster thermidore and a half litre of some nice dry white wine. 

I'd like that!

The ImDisk dismount issue is known, hence the checks that the dismount has occurred and if not then pause so that the user can dismount from the context menu or whatever. It's generally caused by antivirus accessing the filesystem or similar.

Regards,
Galapo.

I'm sure that you and all of the "Gena People" had plenty of fun during development.  I am very definitely having a lot of fun playing with it.

We are living times playing with PE1 along with Gena is quite fun since everything works as expected.   

Sadly we lost a lot valuable time among years, Even starting Gena and coming to current state took 1 year, along with many helps and good lucks (Special Thanks to Saydin77 & BlueLife)

Imagine What could have done If time used effectively in the past 2.5 years 
Still Gena Baby Wonderfull today 

You really have Sharpe eyes  , There is no button and not viewable etc. to read these notes, they taken for historic reasons (historic notes), to remember today when memory still clear. Nice Catch 

When it comes to any of life's competitive universe of ideas, the "free market" approach is always the best IMO.

Well I would comment with yes and no.
Yes: Having Alternatives are good for everybody 
competition is not the only way....
No: We are not in competition, (besides I personally proud with Gena and all work.)


My idea from first day:
We are pe fans and gathering all nice stuff to get a nicer pe giving right reference and respect to authors.
With Fans competing each other each will have some extras but missings.....
This is not only my idea, currently the success of Gena, Win7peSE, MakePE3 lies behind their authors having same perpective.

Sadly all 3 have some weak points (to me), all 3 requiring a good pluginer.....

more on the way:
win5pe of saydin77 already available standalone building pe1, and he helped us on Gena (we call saydin77 core).
sadly he could not find time to finish pluginer.........
a X builder-pluginer (via script engine) is on the way, capable of building pe1 pe3 etc... (a lot time passed, and it seems some a lot will pass)
a Y PE1 builder is on the way to build PE1. (very recent news)

(I already have contact with X and Y authors and helped as much as I can, but since not annouced I can not give more details, only writing here to show there is hope for future  )

who knows, X builder maybe used in far future with Gena....

There is nothing to compete from my side, having more options is good.
Gena's only "left" weak point using wb pluginer, helps us to maintain project to better but annoys power users a lot. It would be nice having others which would help building faster and tidier.

Even I personally have lots of unfinished - even not started pe1 ideas to implement Gena, (well main lines finished  ).
To me Gena will always be gathering point of PE1 as long as Galapo continues.   

Having some spare time in future (some years) to focus on coding, who knows, even I can start a pluginer  but I hope a Real Good Programmer do such thing much before me 


Himm, I feel we can use "White Wine", "Read Wine", "Lobster Thermidor" to name some new things in future.   

To avoid any possible misunderstanding, I should make it very clear the I was speaking about a "free market" universe of competitive IDEAS.  Whether or not that is handled as a competition amongst people and their personal vested interests is an entirely different issue and depends largely on the individuals involved.  Fortunately, most people are able to embrace a wide range of perspectives without arousing personal animosity.  Unfortunately, there are also some who can't.

 

Maybe  I am too eager to explain things widely to avoid misunderstandings since our work and goals misinterpreted(ing) (manupulated(ing)) a lot.

I fully agree with you 

Hi Arvy,

here is updated Misc Tools.script to \Projects\Gena\Tools
http://www.mediafire.com/?7h4l3j0arc2eut8
now having "Install Startup" and "Uninstall Startup" buttons we talked earlier...., I hope this helps. 

Thanks, Lancelot.  I'll give a try later.  At the moment I'm still tearing my hair over that multiboot setup.