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Puppy developer news:  Older news |  Later news |
Puppy version 2.16 releasedThe release notes have been updated: http://www.puppylinux.com/download/release-2.16.htm Download from here: ftp://ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/puppylinux/ Sage
Looks good, smells god and, so far, is working for me - well done again Barry!All we need now is for someone who understands all the goodies and how they work to write a new guide to how it works and how to use it. Lobster
Woof woofMirrors and bitorrents here please http://puppylinux.org/wikka/Puppy216 Leon
Works fast and smoothly.My menu.lst Grub4dos frugal install file: title Puppy-p2.16 rootnoverify (hd0,4) kernel /bp216/vmlinuz root=/dev/ram0 PMEDIA=idehd psubdir=bp216 initrd /bp216/initrd.gz boot I hope that Xorg problem with missing display resolutions list will be solved in next release. kirk
Wow very nice!! Started to install flash 9, but then noticed it was already there. Thanks! Probably should be noted in the release notes. JohnRoberts
Woof wow* woof (...indeed!!!)(Oh my God!!!  By using "wow*", I just infringed on one of M$ 235 patents AND I'm using LINUX too!!! A hardcore criminal indeed  )Raffy
BOW WOW  - finally managed to do TFTP booting with the humongous initrd! (see the RC post below) Only 130 MB RAM is used by Puppy 2.16.Cheers!!! Raffy
[I mean, the humongous initrd is discussed in the "Puppy 2.16rc (release candidate) uploaded", the 3rd item below.]JohnRoberts
"...the
kernel alone infringes 42 M$ patents..." (Linus is still ROTFLing about
this one...). OMG, Barry that doggy of yours is p***ing all over M$'s
backyard...BarryK
Posted also on this thread as this is where Distrowatch links to:Apart from the ibiblio download site, if you live in Europe you might find the NLUUG mirror quicker: http://ftp.nluug.nl/ftp/pub/os/Linux/distr/puppylinux/ I've put the Unleashed CD together, stuffed as much as I can in it (699MB). This is a v2.16 'standard' bootable CD with the 'devx_216.sfs' and 'openofice-2.2.0.sfs' modules, kernel source, plus the complete Unleashed package 'puppy-unleashed-2.16.tar.gz' -- which has all of the packages that you find in 'pet_packages-2' at ibiblio plus tools for creating a custom Puppy as described here: http://www.puppylinux.com/puppy-unleashed.htm Get the CD from here: http://www.puppylinux.com/download/index.html Two SFS modules recommended for use with v2.16 are 'devx-216.sfs' and 'openoffice-2.2.0.sfs' and these are downloadable from: ftp://ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/puppylinux/sfs_modules-2 or http://ftp.nluug.nl/ftp/pub/os/Linux/di ... modules-2/ Download these to /mnt/home (location where your "pup_save" personal storage file is, after the first shutdown). The SFS Boot Manager is to be found in the "System" menu -- make sure you uncheck the checkbox (you'll know what I mean when you run the Boot Manager). I am following puppy since the beginning and I must say that it is growing out of the puppy fase heading into a mature platform. It is ironic that the masses again are following Windows next OS Vista despite the fact that this time it is a bloated OS. While there are these exceptional Linux compilations like Puppy Linux : small, fast, easy and very complete. There is almost no difference anymore between a Windows desktop and a Puppy desktop. The difference is huge when it comes to consuming hardware resources. The Migration from Win 98 - 2000 - XP always forced you to buy faster hardware which performance each time was cancelled out by the next OS, leaving you with no gain. Same story now with Vista. Every new version of Puppy drains about the same amount of resources and doesn't cancel out your faster hardware. I always ask my friends : what can't you do with 98 - 2000 - XP that you can do with Vista ? After 3 generations of Windows I am not going to migrate again if I still do the same things since Win98. Thanks Barry for bringing this platform into the world and giving the people a choice ! Greetings Rico |
Universal Installer bugfixeshttp://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=18149 Billcnz
Barry,
I notice that your version of the installer is only allowing to choose
a partition that doesn't already have a full install but Dougal's
version allow's to choose any available partition (which is handy for
upgrading). Just wondered if there was a reason for this.BarryK
My version is Dougal's version.Billcnz
Ok,
sorry it's just there's some different versions in that thread. The
full install I did using the last one and the wipe option worked OK
except I had to run the grub setup seperate and because vmlinuz is in
the puppy216 sub directory I symlinked it to /boot/vmlinuz for grub to
find it.
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Encryption bugfixThe reason for this assumption is that I tested xor with losetup many many moons ago -- perhaps a couple of years -- and it worked fine. The invocation was like this: losetup-FULL -e xor /dev/loop2 name-of-pup-save-file However, the kernel has changed, and the above line causes the kernel to load a module named 'xor.ko' (or at least to try to when booting), but that module has nothing to do with xor encryption as required by losetup. The solution, I found, is to invoke like this: losetup-FULL -E 1 /dev/loop2 name-of-pup-save-file The number '1' tells losetup to use its inbuilt xor encryption. Note, the only module needed to be loaded is 'cryptoloop.ko'. I have modified 'rc.shutdown' and 'init' scripts accordingly. NeverMore
Very pleased to see that is possible to have a secure filesystem!now i can really use puppy as a security linux preventing others to read my files or log in on my pc. |
Puppy 2.16rc (release candidate) uploadedThe release notes have been updated: http://www.puppylinux.com/download/release-2.16.htm Download from here: ftp://ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/puppylinux/test/ The above link also has a "humongous initrd.gz", which has pup_216.sfs and zdrv_216.sfs inside it. This can be used as you wish, including for network booting, but note the boot parameters will have to include 'root=/dev/ram0 ramdisk_size=93952' Please note, if you have ordered a CD from me in the last week, I'm holding processing of orders until 2.16final. shankargopal
Out of
curiosity, and this may not be a question anyone wants to waste time
on, what is the difference between a release candidate and a beta?metre9dmt
According to Wikipedia article of software release life cycle, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_stage:A "beta version" is the first version released outside the organization or community that develops the software, for the purpose of evaluation or real-world black-box testing. The term "release candidate" refers to a version with potential to be a final product, ready to release unless fatal bugs emerge. I hope this clarify the difference between the two terms. Have a nice day. 8-) Billcnz
Looking good and running smooth! Very nice release Barry BarryK
Yes, it it looks basically okay, I'll just change it's status from 'rc' to 'final'.Note, I've uploaded all the PET packages. Will upload 'puppy-unleashed-core-2.16' soon. Dougal
Can anyone let me know if the "xor" encryption is working? If so, how it is done...gdcrane
looks great, working great on both usb and the cf card i use as a ide driveanother great release Barry kjoe
Great
work, nice looking desktop. I've just tried gxine. wmv does not show up
correctly, whereas mpeg does (installing extra codecs pet does not
change the situation)But maybe the reason is my laptop (Fujitsu siemens C1020) Besides skype.pet installs qt-library (dependency) correctly, but needs an extra symlink in /usr/lib/ to start. Don't get me wrong - I really like puppylinux and use it regularly at home. I just wanted to mention the above said so that one can possibly fix it before pup_216 final release have a nice day kjoe [from austria, the land without an "l" or kangaroos inside ]BarryK
Dougal,
'xor', yes, I forgot to check that one. I tested it well over a year
ago and I think the xor functionality is/was built-in to losetup,
didn't need a module. I know there is a xor.ko but I don't know what
that is for. Anyone else know more on this?BarryK
kjoe,
there is no missing symlink. The post-install dialog window in PETget
tells you to reboot Puppy if you have installed a library or web
browser. Qt is a library. Reboot and Puppy will be able to find the
symlink.BarryK
Please
note! The purpose of 2.16rc is to fix any final bugs. As it turns out,
we do have some, so the final is delayed a couple of days, hopefully
fixed by 17th. Right now I'm looking into the 'xor' encryption problem
reported by Dougal, and frugal install kernel panic reported by G2 and
Lobster.vanchutr (vanchutr<at>gmail.com)
I used
the frugall instaltion: The xor wizard worked well if I put the
zdrv_216.sfs in same place with the others (vmlinuz, initrd.gz...).If I d't have the zdrv_216.sfs Pup gave me many another selection to choice, however the system work smooth. Thanks Barry John Doe
In addition to encryption:http://www.tech-faq.com/xor-encryption.shtml The xor function is used to calculate parity for mirrored raids (Raid1): http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/perf/rai MooDog
I meant
to suggest this a while back. Can Xorg Wizard be programmed to use a
lower default synchronization of 60 Hz? This is in line with the goal
of Puppy to be used on older pcs, so if a user presses the 'ok' button
by mistake he'll still get a display istead of fuzz! Happened to me a
few times, especially when I'm using an old Philips 105 CRT monitor. Thanks for the great work on Puppy! metre9dmt
Just
trying out v2.16. So far so good. I wish that the Puppy Software
Installer found in v2.15 CE is present here. It makes installing and
removing software much easier.Leon
Suggestion about how to improve frugal install:http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=18149 Suggestion about how to solve missing resolutions problem in xorgwizard: http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=18149 Leon
I'm sorry about the wrong link in my previous post. The right link is:Suggestion about how to solve missing resolutions problem in xorgwizard: http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto metre9dmt
Just
installed Puppy Software Installer (PSI). Its a bit of a work but it
can be done. Through PSI, I was able to install I would like to use. Still testing... 8-) Dougal
Another question: has the full "ls" been updated? In the alpha it
doesn't show colours, so I ended up going back to the Busybox version...BarryK
Okay, that's a strange one. /etc/profile has this:#v2.16 have gone to full ls, now need this... #auto: only creates ansi color codes if o/p to a tty, not in a script... alias ls='ls --color=auto' Which is also in /root/.bashrc. If you execute 'rxvt -e sh' then you do not get color. If you execute rxvt -e bash' then you do. But, the 'sh' is supposed to read /etc/profile, so why don't we get color? Strange thing is, when I fixed this, I thought it was fixed, but now it isn't. .... G2, you're the expert in this stuff, do you see where the problem is? GuestToo
a shell does not read /etc/profile, or any equivalent profile config file, unless it is a login shell (the --login option)in any case, i don't think aliases are exported to subprocesses, so putting aliases in /etc/profile does not work invoking a bash shell DOES read $HOME/.bashrc ... aliases in .bashrc should work but when bash is executed as sh (or when busybox's ash is executed) it behaves as sh, not as bash ... and sh does not execute .bashrc ... sh does execute a config file if it is set by the variable ENV so, if you want to setup aliases for bash, the correct place to put the aliases is in .bashrc ... if you want to setup aliases for ash and/or sh, you should set the variable ENV in /etc/profile, like this: export ENV=/root/.bashrc actually, there are a number of config files that can be used to setup quite complicated behaviour, but i think most distros keep the shell initializations fairly simple, and put most options and aliases in one file, and just source that file from the other config files, if necessary ... for example, there might be a file /root/.bash_profile which would execute if a bash login shell runs, but the .bash_profile file just sources .bashrc |
Extra modules, patched kernel source, petget fix, Dougal-remaster upgradeTed Dog and JohnDoe requested the extra modules. They are to be found at: ftp://ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/puppylinux/test/extra-modules-2.16final/ The 2.6.18.1 patched kernel source is at: http://www.puptrix.org/sources/kernel-2.6.18.1/ ...courtesy of Ted Dog who owns this site. I also uploaded the 'ksize' patch file and the '.config' file. PETget is for installing PET packages, those ending with '.pet' in the filename. PETget has a file-selection dialog for choosing an already-download package to install, and I got the impression from some posts that one or more people have tried to install a DotPup package. I didn't follow through all the logic, but this may have caused some chaos. Anyway, I have added extra screening so that only a '.pet' or '.tar.gz' file can be chosen -- the latter may be old PupGet packages. I also added an extra message in the dialog window to only choose a '.pet' file. Dougal's enhanced remaster script was last updated on Dec. 5, however I had an older one in Puppy. I've upgraded and the Unleashed package is 'dougalremaster-2.16'. klh
Just a thought.. Why not allow one to choose a .pup and let Petget call on dotpuprox.sh for "seamless integration" ?Ted Dog
Do I
need to use the devx_sfs? Two modules had a great number of symbol
errors, had to add firmware directory is it still next to the modues
directory under /lib? Also under multisession DVD the /dev directory
resets (lost DVB subdirectory) even when it is recorded correctly on
the DVD. other wises RC looks good.
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Humongous initrd, pdev1 boot-param bug fixesWith Puppy Unleashed you can now create an 'initrd.gz' file with the 'pup_216.sfs' and optionally the 'zdrv_216.sfs' file/s inside it. This means that Puppy consists of only two files, vmlinuz and initrd.gz, which is convenient for network booting of a thin station but the PC needs to have plenty of RAM -- probably 256M is okay but I have my doubts about running Mozilla apps, so 512M would be better. I tested by replacing the initrd.gz, pup_216.sfs and zdrv_216.sfs files on my USB Flash drive with the single humongous initrd.gz, then edited the syslinux.cfg file: default vmlinuz root=/dev/ram0 initrd=initrd.gz pmedia=usbflash ramdisk_size=93984 As I built the initrd.gz as a traditional ramdisk (with internal ext2 filesystem), the 'root=/dev/ram0' boot parameter is required. Also, as the ramdisk is bigger than the kernel default maximum of 16384KB, the 'ramdisk_size' parameter is requird. Note, if doing this manually, to determine the required ramdisk size, gunzip the initrd.gz file then right-click to view file properties, and file-size is shown in bytes -- divide by 1024 toget kilobytes. I will probably have 2.16rc ready in a few days, will also upload a humongous-initrd live-cd iso also. Interested persons such as Raffy and Steven can then test network booting -- you can probably leave off the 'pmedia' parameter entirely for PXE etc. booting. It should be able to create a local pup_save file on any available media. 'PDEV1' is a variable used in the 'init' script. It designates the partition that have booted from, for example 'sda1' or 'hda1'. It is unlikely to be needed, but this paramete can also be passed as a boot parameter, upper or lower-case. It will prevent Puppy from searching any further. It can even be a drive rather than partition, example 'hda' and 'sda' and Puppy will search the partitions of that drive only. Anyway, it wasn't working right and I fixed it. Raffy
Thanks,
Barry. For those curious about the use of "humongous initrd", it is to
support network booting following "DRBL", see
http://drbl.sourceforge.net/ , led by Steven Shiau.WhoDo
Quote: BarryK"'PDEV1' is a variable used in the 'init' script. It designates the partition that have booted from, for example 'sda1' or 'hda1'. It is unlikely to be needed, but this paramete can also be passed as a boot parameter, upper or lower-case. It will prevent Puppy from searching any further. It can even be a drive rather than partition, example 'hda' and 'sda' and Puppy will search the partitions of that drive only. Anyway, it wasn't working right and I fixed it." If I understand this correctly, that should mean that users booting multiple copies of Puppy 2.16RC1 should NOT need to use the Grub hide/unhide parameter to avoid picking up an unintended copy of Puppy? BarryK
WhoDo, yes, pdev1 can be used instead of hiding.JohnRoberts
Ever since I saw DRBL-Live (and what it can do...), I'm stuck with the idea that Puppy will make the ideal base. Literally "a dog to the rescue"
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chooselocale fixed, snapmergepuppy updatedForum member andrei has examined my 'snapmergepuppy' script for handling flushing of RAM to the pup_save file, and made some improvements. This is for aufs. andrei has a very sharp mind to figure out the fine details of these tricky whiteout files! I've updated to andrei's new snapmergepuppy, actually the file is now 'snapmergepuppy-aufs', as Puppy is supporting both aufs and unionfs. There is also 'snapmergepuppy-unionfs', and 'snapmergepuppy' is a symlink created at bootup that points to the correct script. Mark South
Barry, in addition to the new choose-locale process, have you added any new locales to the old set?Cheers, Mark |
Let's stay with the 'semi-obsolete' ramdisk!The previous two posts introduced issues with the initrd (ramdisk) versus initramfs (cpio archive). Right now I'm running 2.16 with an initrd, whereas previous 2.16's used a initramfs. The Puppy Unleashed system used to create Puppy, has a 'createpuppy' script that now can choose either way. Puppy will run quite happily with either. I think if creating a 'humongous initrd' for network booting, then the initramfs may be a good choice, but otherwise, I have gone back to the initrd. The initrd means that my long-term 'security monitor' idea can still be developed. It also means that potentially we can achieve better shutdown. As the initrd exists prior-to and continues to exist independent of the union f.s., it is something that can be switched back into at shutdown, to enable complete dismantling of the union f.s. This is a potential that would need to be developed. So, the ramdisk is back! But, what does that mean to the end-user? The only thing is those boot parameters 'root=/dev/ram0' and optionally 'ramdisk_size=<size>'. If you have been testing 2.16 and have removed 'root=/dev/ram0' from the GRUB, LILO, syslinux.cfg or isolinux.cfg, please put it back. Actually, it never had to be removed, as if the kernel loads a cpio initrd.gz file and finds a script '/init', then the 'root=/dev/ram0' boot parameter is ignored. I know Dougal will be happy that the ramdisk is back! Dougal, please modify the Universal Installer so that 'root=/dev/ram0' is restored to its former places. Oh, one other thing that the end-user will notice is that the /initrd directory will have the complete initial ramdisk as before, and you can even chroot into it. Sage
Although the esoterica is well beyond my own ambit, Barry, as a user, I
am extremely grateful that you took the time to outline the present
status of and your thoughts for Puppy development. Anticipating one
group of users, might I ask you, please, to extend your explanations to
those of us who use full HD installs? Additionally, many will be concerned with the escalating size of Puppy. Two fs, two mounting utilities, too (sic!) many? Quo Vadis? Elsewhere, I have advocated a compact (50Mb max.) Puppy and a comprehensive 'Muppy' style that rivals the major distros, complete with kitchen sink. JohnRoberts
Hi Barry, please excuse the off-topic...MUT's dead CDplayer symlink fixable (with a lot of Kal's help) ...in usr/local/bin copy gxineshell script to gplaycd and then edit gplaycd, replacing both [b]gxine "$@"[/b] with [b]gxine cdda:/1[/b]. After that gxine is the default CD player and autoplays audioCDs from MUT GuestToo
the
problem with unmounting the pup_save file when Puppy shuts down would
not affect you at all, if you do a full install to a dedicated
partition ... because you don't have a pup_save file to unmount ... one
of the advantages of a full installBarry Kauler
No Sage, the size of Puppy is not increased. Supporting both unionfs and aufs only adds about 50K (uncompressed) to the size. These are unerlying technical details, they don't really impact the end user. Puppy works as before, same size, no more complex. |
Having a bet both waysI have been using various experimental, alphas and betas of 2.16 for sometime and I'm very happy with both the cpio initramfs and aufs. So, what's the problem? The older initrd (ramdisk) system formed part of a long-term plan. I designed it to remain in memory while the main Puppy filesystem is running. My thinking was to use this as a kind of security monitor, as it is created prior-to and is totally outside the main union f.s. The initramfs however, cannot exist after the switch is made to the main f.s. -- it is a temporary thing at bootup only. Hence my long-term plan, however vague, is thwarted. Another issue is shutdown, and this is something we are debating right now on the main forum. The union f.s., whether it is unionfs or aufs, has a problem with shutting down cleanly. The problem is very specific -- if the 'pup_save' file is mounted directly on the /initrd/pup_rw layer of the union (the top read-write layer) then it is always busy and can't be remounted ro nor unmounted, not even lazy-unmount. This means that at next bootup a f.s. check shows some errors. In the case of unionfs, these errors seem to be harmless, as GuestToo explained in the forum, and are easily fixed at the f.s. check at bootup. Aufs on the other hand causes many more errors, but these also seem to be repaired at bootup okay. I've been running 2.16's with aufs for sometime, and there has been no problem. The pup_save files may be shutdown not quite 'clean', but are repaired okay at bootup. Please note that this situation has always been with us in earlier pups. I'm just a bit concerned that aufs leaves the pup_save in a less 'clean' state than does unionfs. On the other hand, when the pup_save file is in a Flash drive, the unclean shutdown problem does not occur. This is because the pup_save file is not mounted on /initrd/pup_rw, instead on /initrd/pup_ro1, the next-down layer in the union and mounted read-only (read-only in the union, but it can still be written to directly). So, I decided to have a "bet each way". Puppy 2.16 now supports both unionfs and aufs! The 'init' boot script decides which to use. If booting from a Flash drive, uses aufs, otherwise uses unionfs. If you want to force usage of aufs, just put the string 'aufs' into the boot parameters in your syslinux.cfg or whatever. This gives us cleaner shutdown of the pup_save file for non-flash drives, plus the advantage of true flushing of ram to pup_save for Flash drives that aufs offers. We may go fully to aufs in a future version, if we can more properly solve the shutdown issues. This is where the ramdisk comes in... which I will explain in the next post. BarryK
Forum thread where we have been discussing shutdown:http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=17987 |
initrd versus initramfs, unionfs versus aufsAll puppies up to and including 2.15CE have used an initrd and unionfs. When Puppy boots, the file initrd.gz loads into a ramdisk, /dev/ram0 -- this is a complete self-contained Linux environment, very small. After that, the pup_xxx.sfs gets loaded and Puppy switches over to that. The pup_xxx.sfs is setup in an overlay system known as unionfs, that is described elsewhere. Puppy 2.16beta has moved to a initramfs and aufs. At bootup, the initrd.gz file is loaded, but it is what is called a cpio archive and it loads into what is called a initramfs, not into a ramdisk. Nearly all of the major distros have gone this way. To quote from official kernel docs: The older "ram disk" mechanism created a synthetic block device out of The initramfs also means that we no longer need the 'root=/dev/ram0' boot parameter, nor the 'ramdisk_size=<value>' parameter, which particularly interested me as convenient for creation of very large initrd.gz's for network booting -- again, that's another story. Major distros that use unionfs have also moved to aufs. We have done so as aufs has improved handling of whiteout files, plus allows true flushing of RAM to the 'pup_save' file for Flashdrives. But, I have reservations and have reconsidered these moves. I'll explain further in the next post. |
Full readlink, new rev utilityTherefore I have moved to the full 'readline', in the 'coreutils' package. Note, the Busybox applet was at /usr/bin/readlink, but in Vector the location is /bin/readlink, so I have changed to the latter. The 'unionctl' script requires the 'rev' utility, from the 'util-linux' package. I have placed this at /usr/bin/rev. Note, this is a weird little program -- it reverses the order of characters on each line, so if a line is "one line in a file" it becomes "elif a ni enil eno". hairywill
not sure how big rev is but you can duplicate its behaviour using a script with sed that is 59 bytes#!/bin/sh sed '/\n/!G;s/\(.\)\(.*\n\)/&\2\1/;//D;s/.//' $1 VSh
How big is sed? alienjeff (alienjeff<at>charter.net)
VSh:Hint #1: sh-3.00# which sed Hint #2: sh-3.00# ls -la /bin/se* -aj hairywill
sed is in puppy already and used by many things so its free, nada, 0 bytes
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Puppy 2.16beta availableRead the Release Notes here: http://www.puppylinux.com/download/release-2.16.htm Pay particular attention to the upgrade notes, as the exp3 and alpha releases will have copied the zdrv_216.sfs and pup_216.sfs files off the CD to the same place as the "pup_save" file (/mnthome). Download from here: ftp://ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/puppylinux/test/ Henry
Well, it looks good, Barry. It's been a real treat watching you work on this - an education and edification!A bit of juggling the icons and all my stuff is comfortably working in 2.16beta. I did find it necessary, as you suggested, to use puppy pfix=clean with my current .2fs. (Otherwise X would not start.) Thanks and congratulations! Henry Zigbert
The releasenotes tells that Pfind 1.0 follows Puppy 2.16. I would request Pfind 1.2, to get the latest bugfixes.Sigmund Lobster
[i]Well, it looks good, Barry. It's been a real treat watching you work on this - an education and edification![/i]:) I agree. Great to see so many other developers involved too. That is very inspiring. Have created a forum thread for bugs http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto Be intererested if the new Sheep + Frisbee game is popular. Someone posted a 10k or 30k version of tetris (a very popular game) that might suit too . . . BarryK
Zigbert, I missed that one! Ok, Pfind is updated to 1.2 for the final release.kirk
Very
nice! One thing, RipperX is not listed in the Menu under Multimedia, I
thought it was removed, but it's still there in /usr/local/bin. Needs a
menu entry. I like RipperX because of it's CDDB support, glad to see
it's still in there!Ron
BarryThanks for adding Dougal's boot option "debug". If there were a way to capture all of the scrolling debug boot text, many things could be learned about the boot process. Hats-off to Barry and Dougal Regards Ron alphasurfer
Ive
been following puppy for about 2 years now, I always enjoy reading your
daily progress... Nice release by the way. I just wish I would try to
learn how to program puppy apps, So I can contribute something good for
the puppy community... Take care!!!!Raffy
Puppy with the usual sparse but more stylish look! It has lots of innovations as usual. :)Did I miss a tip about how to use Puppy with a big initrd, or will that be implemented in the next version? ted dog
sh-3.00# modprobe or51132sh-3.00# modprobe dvb-core sh-3.00# modprobe cx88-alsa FATAL: Module cx88_alsa not found. sh-3.00# modprobe cx88-blackbird FATAL: Module cx88_blackbird not found. sh-3.00# modprobe cx88-dvb FATAL: Module cx88_dvb not found. sh-3.00# modprobe cx88-vp3054-i2c FATAL: Module cx88_vp3054_i2c not found. sh-3.00# modprobe cx88xx sh-3.00# modprobe cx8800 sh-3.00# modprobe cx8802 sh-3.00# almost there. JohnRoberts
Hi, Barrycan you please check on your machine if normal audio CDs are directly playable? The audioCD "CD Player" sym-link in MUT works? I am trying with 2.13, 2.14 and 2.15CE on a few different machines to figure out if it is hardware related...no luck so far, only GXine works... Barry Kauler
JohnRoberts,There is a problem, some CD players used in Puppy require an audio cable from the drive to the motherboard, which some PCs do not have, even though the sockets are there. Gxine does not need that, recodes the audio directly from the CD. Steven Shiau
Barry,It's nice to see a new version with a lot of new things. How about the question Raffy asked ? i.e. How to use Puppy with a big initrd, or will that be implemented in the next version? Barry Kauler
Steven,
Puppy Unleashed, the environment used to build puppies from individual
packages, can build what I called a 'humongous initrd' puppy. I can
create and upload one of those, have been preoccupied. ...I'll try and
make time to create it and test before the 2.16final, make sure it
still boots okay.JohnRoberts
Tks
Barry, it's clear now...I have stopped connecting the audio out plug
myself, to reduce cabling and improve airflow and cooling. Will keep in
mind for the future.Dougal
The xor ("Light") encryption doesn't seem to be working.I tried doing it manually and after you give losetup the password it gives an error: ioctl: LOOP_SET_STATUS: invalid argument I tried different size save files and it didn't help. I also tried probing the "xor" module first and it didn't help. |
Final additions before 2.16betaGINS patched by MU, updated, now v0.9.1. The latest Universal Installer update from Dougal, dated circa 9th May. Zigbert's Pbackup updated to v2.0.1. After conversation with GuestToo, trying some variations in remounting the pup_save and ntfs partitions read-only, in the rc.shutdown script. Terrence Day (tday<at>ispwest.com)
Not sure
where to post this, but beta 16 is the first puppy that works with the
built-in wi-fi on my Dell Inspiron 2200. Goodbye PCMCIA wi-fi card.Barry Kauler
The only
difference from 2.14 that would account for that is the firmware
contributed by tempestuous, so you have him to thank. |
JwmConfig updated, new pdfprinterhttp://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=17853 Jcoder24 has done something wonderful! He has enhanced the PDQ printing system with print-to-PDF-file. This has many uses, one of which is any application can now output a PDF file, another is that if you can't print from Puppy then you can create a PDF file and print elsewhere. I have named the Unleashed packages pdfprinter_pdq_gs-0.2 and pdfprinter_pdq_ad-0.2. Forum thread: http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=16910 I had to modify jcoder24's 'pinstall.sh' scripts to suit the Unleashed package. The problem is paths. In Unleashed, the current directory will be <path>/rootfs-complete when the pinstall.sh executes, whereas when the package is installed as a separate package by PETget the current directory will be '/'. The pdfprinter_pdf_gs pinstall.sh was easy to modify, but the other a bit more involved -- I don't know if I got it right. I'll upload the packages to ibiblio in a day or so, for jcoder24 or anyone to look at -- well, expect the 2.16beta to come out soon also. Dougal
Barry, I updated the Universal-Installer on the Murga forum.While I'm here, a couple of little things: - the code for minixcal isn't on puptrix -- you might want to add it, in case it gets removed from the Murga forum. - You mentioned somewhere pupmode 3. I assume that is a full-install on flash media. When I was working on the Universal Installer I noticed that pupmode 3 doesn't seem to be allowed: flash media are only allowed frugal installs. Any reason for this? BarryK
Dougal, okay, uploaded minixcal, also puppyserialdetect 1.1d and the latest gins patched by MU.PUPMODE 3.... I experimented with that ages ago. Off the top of my head, I don't see why it should be blocked. If I have done so, it may be more of an oversight than anything else. It would be an interesting option. |
2.16beta coming soon |
Universal Installer, Mini-volume, Grafburn updatedThe idea then was there were various separate scripts for installing to different media and I thought that I could get it more consistent, streamlined and powerful by having one integrated "swiss army knife" installer. Recently, Dougal has enhanced the code, see this forum thread: http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=17500 I have updated Puppy with the enhanced script posted by Dougal on 1st May. Kirk posted that the Network Wizard was not working properly as it needs some files in /etc/WAG/. Actually, the Wireless Access Gadget (WAG) was an earlier project, superceded by rarsa's Network Wizard (well, that's another script I started, now admirably enhanced by rarsa), but is seems that /etc/WAG/ (files therein) are still needed. So, I have placed those files into the net_setup-2.15-1 Unleashed package (rarsa's Network Wizard package) and renamed it to net_setup-2.15-1.1. I have upgraded rarsa'a Mini-volume applet (the thing you see in the taskbar for controlling volume) to version 0.7. The Unleashed package is mini_volume-0.7. Nathan has updated his Grafburn CD/DVD burner application to 0.10, so I have also updated the Unleashed package, named grafburn-0.10. Nathan Fisher
There was
a bug in dvd burning with the 0.10 Grafburn package, so I had to do
another minor release to fix it. The package is in the same forum
thread as before. Sorry about that
|
Improved mouse and keyboard detectionDougal recently had a look at the source and activated the extra detection of USB and PS/2 mice. Jesse then did some code cleanup and further improvements and also added detection of USB and PS/2 keyboards. The forum thread for this: http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=17575 I'm not sure, there seem to still be some issues from some posts to that thread. However, I have upgraded to the new puppyserialdetect version 1.1d posted by Jesse, and made some basic mods to /etc/rc.d/rc.local0 to accomodate it. The main thing that I appreciate is detection of a PS/2 mouse, and this has further improved accuracy of mouse detection. Serial mouse detection is still not perfect, but I made a note in an earlier blog post that manual selection of a serial mouse can be used to override automatic detection, and this required a small mod to rc.local0 also. Note, I'm not using the new keyboard detection feature of puppyserialdetect, as the current detection seems to be working fine. If we get any keyboard detection problems then we can certainly look at this again. Note also, I am sticking with '/dev/psaux' for the PS/2 mouse, as other scripts expect that. Also, I don't have any reason to change it, even if /dev/input/mice does work. |
SheepPool gameLvds discovered this. It's a Flash game, so runs in a browser. Darn stupid sheep, I can't even get one of them into gate number 1 ...maybe I'm just getting too old, my daughter could probably do it easily. Anyway, here is where lvds announced it: http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=17317 I've made it into an Unleashed package and it will be in 2.16beta. andrei
I managed
to do the first three. But the fourth sheep, I just start laughing and
cannot stop. I tried it several times, same effect. Ted Dog
Good thing
I have goat and cows, Until now I did not know that sheep explode. I
was able to get them all toward first pocket but after half got into
pocket the others in the group blew-up, the electric fence is a bit to
strong.YFNGN
Only a bit? Exploding sounds like it was way towards being strong. Unless you mean "too strong".- Your Friendly Neighborhood Grammar Nazi |
PRename batch file renamerhttp://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=16016 Note, this is a great tool. A long time ago, the only equivalent we had was a script written in Perl, with a GTK1 GUI -- man oh man, the overheads you need for that! Basically, the GTK bindings for Perl (or Python for that matter) are a no no for a no-bloat distro like Puppy. PRename uses Gtkdialog3 for the GUI interface. Then there's rarsa's favourite, Gnocl for Tcl. Also, you should see what Brad and Mark have done with GINS! -- fantastic GUIs for any scripts. Informative GINS forum thread: http://www.puppylinux.com/forum/?1172392169 Nathan
I've been
having a lot of success with the new gtkdialog too. Of all the
approaches it still seems the easiest to me, and definately there is a
ton of flexibility in laying out an interface.JWM Config manager which fits on smaller screens. Latest Grafburn largely redesigned in gtkdialog3. Also uses half the temp space now. Anyway I'm really impressed with what can be done. My applications can have menubars, toolbars, and tabbed windows now. Icons for buttons, windows, and menu entries can be gtk stock icons. Text markup possible. New style file and directory selctor. I'm still discovering new things that can be done with it. I'd have to say I'm even more impressed by what Rarsa is able to accomplish with Gnocl though. His volume mixer is fantastic, and the remotedesktop client is nice and elagent. |
Xorg Wizard updateWith reference to that forum thread, note that I am using the version posted on 24th April, not that of 28th. I have also modified it very slightly, as explained in the thread, due to this problem: When testing X, clicking the OK button to verify that the test succeeded, hangs my laptop. The other way of verifying is to press CTRL-ALT-BACKSPACE, which works fine for me. However, on some PCs CTRL-ALT-BACKSPACE is caught by the BIOS and shuts down the computer! The problem of the computer hanging when you click the OK button appears to be due to particular video hardware and this is the more common problem. Therefore, I modified the message displayed when testing X to emphasise that you should press CRTL-ALT-BACKSPACE to verify, and clicking the OK button is second method if first fails. This way, only a very few people will get a nasty surprise. Changing the subject, I have taken 'probedisk' and 'probepart' back to the original versions as used in Puppy 2.14 and earlier. This is because of unresolved issues with the scripts. |
puppylinux.com, puppylinux.com now hosted on ibiblioI've been getting too many Internet-related bills, so wanted to simplify things re the hosting. The ibiblio people have very kindly agreed to provide virtual hosting for us, with a modest amount of space for web pages. Now, Ted Dog is in much worse situation than me, financial and health-wise. He has registered puppylinux.com but the hosting account expired. So, we have got together and pointed puppylinux.com and puppylinux.com to the new ibiblio site. Ibiblio require us to point both domains at the same front page. My plan is not to renew my Netirms account, which hosts all the 'puppylinux' domains and I will park those domains somewhere with redirection to the puppylinux.com/net site -- I think it's also possible to emnbed an instruction to search engines to use the redirected-to domain in future? I will probably move my blog to puppylinux.com. Ted Dog will be involved with the ibiblio site. I think that we will be able to host some small puplets on the ibiblio puppylinux ftp download site and Ted Dog will be maintainer and coordinator of that, plus maybe some other stuff. Note, Ted Dog also has puptrix.org, for which hosting is paid-up for another year. The ibiblio people have been very kind, and I do have to be careful not to take too much advantage of that. As much as possible should be hosted elsewhere. Everything hosted by ibiblio has to be non-commercial, and I can't sell CDs, so have removed that from the download page. However, CDs can be sold from the puppylinux.org site, hosted by Servage. Due to sales referrals, this site is paid up until 2012! The main problem with that site is bandwidth -- we ran into limits sometime back, but it's been good for awhile. klhrevolutionist
Barry, I
really wished you had asked the community for more help on this. What I
meant is maybe a fundraiser or some contest to create more revenue.
Anyway, I am glad that you are able to manage what is on your plate ! I was told to give a look at these fellas: http://www.site5.com/ A fellow irc member & puppy user directed me to that website and he is now using them over nearlyfreespeech.net Mark South (marksouth2000<at>yahoo.co.uk)
Barry, I
would be more than willing to help with the Internet bills and would
also be happy to help out with the hosting issues. The present state of
the net permits a fair level of lateral thinking to be applied to how
large files are hosted for download. I've already done quite a bit of
research on the subject for a couple of other projects that i've been
working on.Please do contact me by email, you already have my email address and I've put it in this post to make it even simpler. Cheers, Mark Ted Dog
Mark,Educate us dude. I have a idea to setup a directory for sfs, pet, & pups, that our torrent client would be configured to use. That way easy sharing and we have a way to tell what can be pruned from the servers. I have looked into this but lack the server side know-how. Barry Kauler
Thanks for the sentiments guys!What has happened is good, as ibiblio is free. Also, they have new hardware and their site is faster. As longer as the University of North Carolina wants to keep supporting ibiblio as a free host, all is fine... Ibiblio require us to have a .net or .org as their hosting is non-commercial, and an additional .com is allowed. That's why we need the puppylinux.com for ibiblio -- and it makes sense to have that domain name for the "official" non-commercial site. Another big plus with ibiblio is the mirrors, and no bandwidth limit. The only thing they warn about is not to use them as a place to host stuff that could be hosted elsewhere. So, ibiblio is a good solution, but of course we need more hosting for the heaps of other stuff we have, such as SFSs, DotPups, a myriad of puplets (some very big), wikis, forums, etc. Since I'm setup okay with ibiblio, I'm thinking that what we should aim for is a community-supported site that is a host for downloads, like puppylinux.org (which is really our community information/wiki site) -- puppylinux.org has worked well, as referrals have made it paid-up until 2012. There could be donations going directly to this new community site to maintain it, rather than involving me. Mark, what you have already wetup could be the basis of this site? ...well, I suppose it already is, but we could make it a bit more formal, with a donation mechanism to sustain it. I'm thinking too, I could hand over the 'puppylinux' domains to this community site, if they are wanted. Maybe I could give the 'keys' to Ted Dog or Mark and they could be pointed at the community download site -- only if you want to keep alive the 'puppylinux' name. MarkUlrich
yes, especially isos and sfs need a reliable solution.I was planning to spend the donations I got meanwhile for another domain, just for new files, to reduce traffic. But if we could use ibiblio.org - perfect. I then would keep the donations to pay the next year-rates for puppyfiles.org only as a dotpup-repository (packages in general), and drop puppyisos.org. puppyfiles.org will get a webinterface to allow easy uploads like in the murga-forum, but based on Ftp. So it still will make sense to use it, as a "quick and dirty" upload place, while ibiblio.org could be used as an archive mirror. The dotpups might be mirrored then on a montly base from puppyfiles.org to ibiblio.org. I think ibiblio.org will not allow "quick" uploads by "suspicious" users, at least this was an issue when I got the offer to host files on the Suse/Debian servers by Max Plack Institute. Mark Hi, as always I want to thank Barry and all others for hard work. Cheers! Might I suggest that Torrents are the answer for all files. Correct me if I am wrong but... A Torrent run from a server will always use less bandwidth than the equivalent number of downloads (Assuming more than 1 other person is connected? It is scalable, when a new Puppy is released the more that connect to download the more available it becomes. Puppy members are so helpful I am sure they would keep seeding for a while (I know I would be very happy to help that way) If all Torrents were kept at one site then it would be less frustrating to find files which tend to be in a number of different places in my experience, a fair number of whom tend to be down.) Perhaps the primary download link could be for Torrent with a more tucked away direct link in case of lack of Torrent client (I think most people nowadays have such a client) or other problems All the best Tony (veronicathecow) lvds
Hi Barry,May be it would be good to think at a business plan for puppy. Such things can be done easily nowadays and contribute also to consolidate a strong linux distribution. Many users are willing to help you for your puppy distirbution, even though they do not always know how to. Having a business plan would canalise everybody's efforts. To tell you how easy it is, when we have decided over here to publicly distribute our remastered puppy (which was aimed at support for the gamers community of Dofus) we created one in an hour. Well it was more than a test to check viability of such a plan instead of really willing to gain money. The test proved to be efficient and in the context of your puppy distro it could help better. As a worldwide used distribution, i believe users would be more than happy to contribute at supporting their preferred distribution, and moreover it would not cost anything to anyone. ps: i don't know if this is the right place to discuss this, but while at work the firewall prevent me from access to www.murga-linux.com forum (though i have access to all other forums, there might be something setted up differenlty on www.murga-linux.com) Best regards, Laurent. Barry Kauler
Mark, I
think that you have misread my post. I think that I wrote it
ambiguously. What I intended to convey is that ibiblio.org cannot be an
archive for other than the main official Puppy plus perhaps a couple of
small puplets. My proposal was a separate host like your puppyisos.org,
that will be directly supported by a donation mechanism.Eric/caneri (ericmulcaster<at>gmail.com)
Barry..I
loved the pictures of your trip. My little project for free
space/bandwidth for the pup is still on track. I have just talked with
the provider (Monday May 7) and they are still interested in supplying
puppy with space etc. It is just a slow process with such a large
corporation. I have a asked for 10-20 gb space and 5-15tb /month of
bandwidth. Although I can't make promises, I think there may be a
positive outcome from this...I can only hope.Cheers Eric/caneri Mark Ulrich
ok, I see.So I will continue to look for a practicable solution. The MaxPlanck servers would be great, but we would need a rsync computer with DSL. I found no appartment yet, so can not do that on my own. Erics proposal looks interesting, too. Puppyisos currently has 40-25060 GB traffic/day, but it gets deactivated when 100GB were reached. So an account with 1 terabyte would be fantastic. Also the thing posted by Kenny looks interesting, though I'm sceptical about "traps". Servage also seemed fantastic at first sight, and it certainly is for this price. But these cheap prices always have some limitations of course. Mark Mark Ulrich
oops... should be "40-260 GB traffic/day"Raffy
This is a test - CGI error was here in previous two visits. Why not make the ibiblio site as a top domain for Puppy Linux, like puppylinuxweb.org or the current puppylinux.org, maintained by Barry himself? This is consistent with what was already done with pupweb. And ibiblio will be happy with a .org name. If Barry decides on using the latter, the current website can be given another name. |
|
I've
been at this since before dawn until after sunset ...I was determined
to nail this one, and finally got there, after much travails. Dear oh dear... As mentioned in the previous post, I upgraded 'cdrtools' from 2.01.01a10 to 2.01.01a26, but had to roll back the 'mkisofs' utility. Then I used my little 'burniso2cd' program but it crashed -- which I found is due to the new 'cdrecord' utility. Oh dear, 'cdrecord -scanbus' outputs a different format than before -- it was this that broke my script. How many other scripts are going to get broken, I wonder? Anyway, I have rolled 'cdrtools' completely back to v2.01.01a10. We should checkout the Debian fork of this project, I think. I found a peculiar problem with 'growisofs', the utility in the dvd+rw-tools package for burning to a DVD. Up until now I have used the '-speed=4' parameter, however on one of my PCs this causes an error and growisofs aborts with a "cannot change speed" message. I think that I used this drive with an earlier version of Puppy, so perhaps this is something to do with the 2.6.18.1 kernel? Anyway, I simply removed that parameter and growisofs worked. Having successfully saved a session (finally), there was an error at bootup as Aufs failed to create the union of layers. I found the reason for this. If sufficient RAM, pup_216.sfs is copied into RAM, specifically into /pup_rw which is the top layer of the union. However, pup_216.sfs is itself mounted on /pup_ro2 via loop back device and that is the second layer of the union. Unionfs accepts this, however not Aufs. I had to create a separate tmpfs in which to copy pup_216.sfs, then Aufs worked. I haven't tried a CD yet, but fairly confident it will work too. Barry Kauler
I have compiled the Debian fork, 'cdrkit' version 1.1.5.1.Their utility 'wodim' is the same as 'cdrecord' and has the same output format as the latest 'cdrecord' in cdrtools. I don't want to mess around any more, will stay with the older cdrtools package. Flash
Thanks, Barry! You must feel like you ran a marathon.
|
cdrtools problemsWhen saving the first session to DVD-R, 'growisofs' calls 'mkisofs', but the latter exited with the totally useless error message "mkisofs has failed". Curses. I tried running mkisofs directly from the commandline, same error. Went back to the old mkisofs, works fine. I don't know if it will cause any trouble, but I upgraded the cdrtools Unleashed package to the 'a26' release but kept the 'a10' mkisofs executable. Hmmm, I also found my laptop will not boot a multisession DVD -- I was hoping the problem occurred only for a CD as reported earlier, but no such luck. pakt
Barry,
you might check Acer's website if they have updated firmware for your
drive. You can also check 'The Firmware Page'
http://forum.rpc1.org/portal.php - they have a huge collection of
firmware upgrades for optical drives. I've upgraded my drives a number
of times.Paul Ted Dog
Sounds like a BIOS problem we have with laptops since the beginning of multisessions v1.01.It doesn't seem fixable, I've looked into it for a long time, and only thing I've seen work was a boot-loader not based on current el-torrio, that ignores the failure cd/dvd scan due to a common laptop BIOS bug. I have lossed the work I was doing due to a HD failure, but It might be on a back-up. That boot loader was very ugly to look at, and written in assm. Named after a criptic under used assm command. I have not written in assm. since 6502 or Z-80 days. |
Multisession-CD on a laptopHowever, I ran into a very old bug. I'm testing with CD-Rs on my laptop, and when I save a session 'cdrecord' program opens then immediately closes the tray -- at least it does sometimes. The problem with that is that the laptop does not have automatice closing of the tray, so it opens and then you wonder what has happened -- you can manually close the tray and saving will continue, but that is also problematic. So, I have tackled this problem first. The rc.shutdown script now detects if the tray is not closed when it should be, then asks you to do so. On the first test it worked okay ...but then I discovered that my laptop will not boot a CD with more than one session on it. The same CD boots fine on a "normal" PC. I haven't tested a DVD yet. Okay, I have the session saving okay, but then we get a kernel panic at bootup, as reported by Puppy-testers. I have implemented 'pfix=debug' as suggested by Dougal, however the thought occurred to me for a simple improvement to 'pfix=rdsh' -- instead of dropping out of the 'init' script to a shell near the end of the script (before switch_root), I have also made it drop to a shell on any error. That is, on entry to the 'check_status' function with an error status, after displaying the error messages there is a drop to shell -- but only for 'pfix=rdsh' boot param. Next thing I will do is find out what is causing the kernel panic. Aufs is failing to create the union on pup_new, with the enigmatic error message that "/pup_ro2 is overlapped". I'll work on this a bit later today. JohnRoberts
Barry, please excuse the off-topic...but until this: http://puppylinux.com/forum/?1173087234 , I didn't realize that you were in contact with Steven!!! I have used both their Clonezilla-LiveCD and DRBL-LiveCD to backup/clone my chubbier systems. I was so thrilled with their tools that I actually wrote a how-to in www.linuxquestions.org... [http://www.linuxquestions.org/linux/answers/Applications_GUI_Multimedia/How_to_Backup_Restore_Your_Installation] What struck me almost instantly when using DRBL-LiveCD (it is based on an "Etch" image...) is the (...remote it seemed then...) possibility of using Puppy as a base!!! Or - even better - the DRBL set of tools to evolve as a dotPUP!!! That would lead to a sort of super-powerful "Rescue"-Puppy or "Clone"-Puppy (...if one includes GParted as well...) being able to backup/restore/clone and rescue complete systems ranging from Linux to Windows... Definitely worth a try! Flash
Barry, I
don't have a laptop, but my brother does. He reports the exact same
thing as happened to you. He burned a multisession CD-R which booted on
his laptop, then seemed to save the session to the CD when he shut
down. The laptop will not reboot the CD but his desktop will, and all
the programs he installed before he saved the session are there.Jeffrey
Reply to John's off-topic backup issue...John, I've just spent some time using Puppy to do this and found that it already has almost everything that I want. The Pudd script will back up files, a partition, or an entire drive with compression over Ethernet to a remote machine. I had thought that I was innovative in some of my ideas but they were implemented ages ago by others in Puppy's standard toolset. Try out Pudd yourself (Menu/Utility/Pudd). BarryK
I wrote
Pudd ages ago, and it has been very neglected for well over a year. I
do recall someone reporting a problem with it, but never followed it
up. Any feedback on its performance is welcome.
|
GParted fixed in 2.16alpha/bin/nice is from the Coreutils package. Puppy never had it before as Busybox has 'renice' which does basically the same thing. It is normal for a Linux distro to have 'nice' though, so it is now in. GParted is now happy. JohnRoberts
Barry,
any possibility of upgrading GParted to version 0.3.3 with all needed
utils? Older versions do not work with XFS. If this is hard to do (too
much space required...) what would be needed to have 0.3.3 as an add-on
package?multiguy
Hi,I know that this is not relevant, but I would really like to ask whether or not you are planning to release any 64bit version or even any 32bit but SMP version. Working with puppy at the moment leaves half of my CPU power out of the play. Thanks, Multi.G. multiguy
I forgot to ask, we will ever see Beryl and/or Compiz in some future version of Puppy?Barry Kauler
GParted in 2.16alpha is 0.3.3.64bit? no. SMP-enabled kernel? sometime perhaps. JohnRoberts
Tks Barry!!! That should do the trick!! I'l have a try with it on some XFS-formatted disks and provide some feedback...JohnRoberts
...maybe
I'm wrong, but I think one of the key ideas behind Puppy is to be a
compact bloatware-free OS. Beryl/Compiz may be spectacular to show off,
but they are merely eye candy, not true tools (...and hence fall
definitely under the "bloatware" category...). Going for maximum
cross-compatibility and earlier hardware compatibility, pure 64bit does
not help at all!! Even as a fork it would be extremely complex to
handle...About the case for SMP, I'm not sure either...Puppy is not
power-hungry, nor CPU-hungry. Even with one core it can deliver...and
all this talk about next generations of CPUs incorporating
media-locks...I would prefer to stick with legacy!!!JohnRoberts
...Barry
beside GParted, memtest on 2.13 did not seem to work as well...Wouldn't
it be a good idea to have a proper memtest86+ version included as a
separate boot option on the Puppy ISO. It is very small...multiguy
JohnRoberts and Barry, dropping 64bit idea for the time being, makessense, until Puppy reaches a very mature version. You would want to compile everything both 32bit and 64bit. However, dropping it entirely you will have to drop too many future fans. As for the SMP what you say JohnRoberts, doesn't make sense. CPUs currently are all multicore. Usually one would like to use all the computational power available. Have you ever thought that there may be some developers who are not satisfied with SuSE or Gentoo e.t.c. and they want a simple alternative as a developing and/or testing platform? What you say over there sounds as if you want a laptop just to boot your PC. If your computational needs are enough for one processor to handle then fine. Then probably you will never want to buy a laptop again. If you want more though then currently you have to drop Puppy as it will only see one CPU. Barry, is it so hard to compile an SMP kernel and maintain 2 puppy distros at least in 32 bit? Or there is much more to be done for the SMP than a simple kernel recompilation? |
Holiday snapshotshttp://www.puppylinux.com/bkauler/tomprice2007.html Lobster
Welcome back. Great scenic pics. Raffy
Quite informative page, and the viewer tends to feel as one of the two bearded gentlemen savoring the scenery... Back home, moka5 is whipping thunder with its "LivePC in USB". moka5 must have come from those ancient rocks. A spectacularly beautiful place. You are fortunate that it is so inaccessible, and thus able to keep it from being "modernized" to accommodate hordes of tourists. alphasurfer
Excellent pics barry! I need a trip to a place like that.... I'll have
to settle for a trip to six flags soon... I love rollercoasters....
Take care!Richard
Thanks
for sharing that with us, Barry. I agree about the colours that don't
get caught by the camera, same goes for the Flinders Ranges too.But that's another story :) Sage
Wonderful pictures, wonderful country.How to stop the greedy despoilers? You already have the largest, deepest pit in the world, and far too much uranium in your rocks for comfort. You simply cannot avoid politics if you want to save the lands for future generations. Otherwise, you'll become like 'God's Own Country' !!! Capoverde
A most
interesting and involving page you give us! Thank you very much. Seeing
Tom Price from Google's satellite views raised my curiosity, which now
is satisfied enough (except for a video of a rock-wallaby jumping up the cliffs...).
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Bug reports for 2.16alphaA thread has been created in the main forum where you can provide feedback about 2.16alpha: http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=17601 Also here: http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=17592 BarryK
Note,
I have to drive about 1,500 kilometers (about 930 miles) and will be
sleeping in my car tomorrow night, maybe even two nights. Eating at
diners ...anyway, I'll be offline, so "see" ya soon!Read about Tom Price (my destination) here: http://www.tompricewa.com.au/ |
Puppy 2.16alpha available for testingftp://ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/puppylinux/test/ It should also filter through to the ibiblio mirrors. It's 2.55pm on Wednesday 25th April right now, and this evening I have to go to a function, then tomorrow morning depart on an adventure to the mining town of Tom Price. I will have sporadic Internet access, so will keep in touch with feedback on the 2.16alpha, plus I'll have my laptop with me so will keep developing. This 2.16alpha is basically what 2.16-final will be, so is the recommended environment for Puppy developers and testers. There will be some changes, maybe some package upgrades, definiely some bugfixes, then there will be 2.16beta before the final release. Some notes on 2.16alpha: 1 There may be an issue with the SFS Boot Manager if you upgrade from an existing pup_save file. I did so, then chose to load the openoffice-2.2.0.sfs module, but the icons didn't appear on the desktop. It may have just been something peculiar about my pup_save file, don't know yet. Worked fine with a new pup_save file, adding and removing the SFS module. 2 The Boot Manager is in the System menu, but it will popup when you bootup with a new pup_save file. 3. If upgrading from 2.16exp3, do NOT use the pup_save that you may have tested it with, and be absolutely certain to delete pup_216.sfs and zdrv_216.sfs that will be found in the same partition as the pup_save file. 4. Which leads to another point: Puppy will copy .sfs files off the CD into the same hd partition as the pup_save file, for faster loading. 2.16exp3 was the first to do this, hence you have to get rid of them. 5. You may not like the grey desktop background -- too stark? weird? ...well, you are welcome to design something. I want very simple, light color, without 'noise'. 6. Booting from Flash drive now has true flushing. I have only tested from USB Flash, but I presume IDE CF card will work the same. The concept can be applied to multisession-CD/DVD but I have not yet implemented that. 7. On the subject of auto-saving to Flash drive, a message pops up every 30 minutes -- if that becomes too annoying, I'm open to suggestions, like maybe something more discrete. To find out what is new, you will have to read down this blog. But, I think the most exciting things from user's viewpoint are the SFS Boot Manager and the true flushing for Flash drives. There's lots of stuff we will be testing on the 2.16alpha platform, for example from Dougal, Rarsa and Zigbert, for intended inclusion in 2.16beta. This alpha seems pretty solid to me ...let me know what you think. Note, my Developer Forum is currently experiencing some problems, so probably best to discuss on John's main Puppy Forum. BarryK
Oh
yes, the 'test' directory at ibiblio also has openoffice-2.2.0.sfs,
which has enhancements that the new Pup makes use of. These are
outlined earlier in this blog, but basically it is the support for
desktop icons and scripts in /etc/init.d/ and /etc/profile.d/.So, this is the ideal SFS module to test with the new Pup. Lobster
Good news (downloading now) I am confident (based on past experience) that I can transfer day to day testing and usage to this Alpha. I will be releasing a new Puppy presentation using Open Office, either today or tomorrow. Will include Alpha screen shot . . . I look forward to the stark grey background. I do rather like the neutrality of grey - it can like black and white be used in a variety of ways, and the glass icons in 2.15 were a popular use of grey . . . The Puppy 2.14 sparkle was also step in the right direction. Simple, small elegant. Summary of 2.16 "Puppy Luv" http://puppylinux.org/wikka/Puppy216 Have a great adventure any pics welcome on wiki . . . :) Leon
This is the fastest Puppy I ever use. It works very well and I don't have any problem so far.Thanks for fixing frugal install. Personally, I like colors and will keep the old Puppy look and feel. Leon
Another good news! Gxine can play flv files, both video and sound.Sage
No
problems with d/l and booting. New issue with the MBR after full
install - 'Yes' no longer functions! Neither did the separate MBR
installer from the menu. This is a new feature, but will investigate
whether it is a generalised problem.It was told to us many moons ago by the ultimate PC guru, Paul Mullen, that the most rational and elegant background, as well as screensaver, is BLACK! Black means no pixels are lit - it prolongs screen life and reduces power. It also looks terrific due to the stark contrast with icons, etc. In the greener environment we should all be using black backgrounds! gdcrane
So far so good Barry -I did not have the problem with the bootloader you mentioned Tested so far :- cfcard Copied initrd.gz, vmlinuz,pup_216.sfs,zdrv_216.xfx to usb and cfcard renamed initrd to init216;vmlinuz to linuz216, copied pup_save.sfs to pup_save.216.sfs added entry to syslinux.cfg booted and took 216 option off menu The system did its version upgrade - copied the icewm menu back - exit to prompt the xwin icewm opend bootmanager - it showed my 2 sfs files myprefs.sfs and wine934.sfs tested TotalCommander (main wine app) worked perfectly tested seamonkey (wine version) worked perfectly so the bootmanager appears to have retained the configuration george Sage
Strange MBR install phenomenon seems to be related to old exptl3
fragments remaining on HD. Guess BK's warnings about old .sfs files was
the portent to troubles. Easiest way was to reformat the drive -
problem disappeared.Today is world penguin day! BarryK
Ted
Dog and John Doe, note, I didn't put the new kernel modules into the
zdrv file. I will upload them separately soon -- it will just be a
matter of install them then run 'depmod' for the system to recognise
them.gdcrane
okay have now tested on a USBand I get that incredibly annoying screen message about flushing - pls do not do anything..... which i simply ignore as i am not going stop what i am doing every 30 minutes. That needs removing - or suppressin in my view. What exactly is the advantage of flushing and is there a way to be able to choose not to use it, or at the least suppress the message or change the timings my system sees the cf card as a hard drive so I do not experience the same issues thank heavans george Pizzasgood
The
reason it flushes is a compromise. It can't just access FLASH media
like a normal harddrive because that would wear out the drive very
fast. So instead it keeps everything you do in ram and saves it during
shutdown. But that's bad for two reasons. For one, if the power dies,
all your data is gone (even if you "saved" it, since it only saved to
ram). For another, it eats your ram. So, to compromise Puppy will flush
to disk every thirty minutes. That way stuff gets saved every so often
and the ram gets freed up.A simple control panel could be handy though, where you could enable or disable the popup, and change the save-interval. Now that there's a Save icon it would be a little more safe to not flush at all, and just do it by hand every once in a while. Personally though, I'd rather it defaults to the thirty minute flush. Pizzasgood
Clarification: When I said "even if you save it, since you're saving to
ram" I meant if you just hit the save button in Abiword or whatever.
The save icon on the desktop that I referred to is different, that
flushes it.I haven't actually used this alpha yet (I'm in class atm) so I don't know first hand how annoying the message might be. I also don't know if it would show up if you were, say, watching a full-screen movie or playing a full-screen game. Would it stay underneith, or come on top, or mess up the whole full-screen thing (think alt-tabbing out of a game in Win98)? I'll have to install this to my jumpdrive sometime and play. Also, you can probably manually tweak the timeout by editing /usr/sbin/savepuppyd, or even disable it completely. Though the structure is probably different from what I remember. kirk
I
like the new Desktop icons. Very sharp, well, except the "home" icon.
Might just be me, but this puppy seems faster, AUFS maybe? There is
probably some good reason for the switch from MUT to PMount on the
desktop, if not, MUT is a lot more easy to look at. Might just be that
I'm use to looking at MUT though. PROBLEM: Tried to connect to a WPA wifi AP with the network wizard, no luck. Had to copy /etc/WAG from 2.14 to get it to work. That directory is missing in 2.16a. gdcrane
hey
pizza yeah i do understand that, which is why for some time I have kept
link on my icewm taskbar that does exactly that - in fact I think it
was a pup that you did that gave me that idea in the first plcaethat way i click on it when i want and not at some arbritrary , and inconvenient interval. I am not against automating the process, or even the icon on the desktop, just the fact that i have no choice in the matter. Even MS lets you choose to do this automatically or manually George gdcrane
Flush to usbOkay i think I see why it was so annoying - i was getting the pop-up every 5 minutes now in my syslinux config file the option for the usb drive is shown as append initrd=init216.gz PMEDIA=usbflash quiet so I modified a few of the lines in savepuppyd - #check PMEDIA is usbflash or ideflash... LOOPDELAY=6 SLEEPTIME=900 #save every 90 minutes. #if not a flash media, can save more frequently... #[ "`echo -n "$PMEDIA" | grep "flash"`" = "" ] && SLEEPTIME=50 #save every 5 minutes. and now I can live with it George John Doe
I'm as excited as ever for this one, I'm just having two main problems:http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto Also, drvc.so is missing from either gxine extra codecs or gxine. I get this error when I try to listen to my beloved c-span.org as rtsp stream. MooDog
Hi, Barry -Sofar 2.16 has been running smoothly here, thanks! Just wanted to highlight here that Pmount needs a 'unmount' option so it will fully replace MUT's functions. BarryK
MooDog, what do you mean? Pmount does have unmount.Gdcrane, I don't understand. For pmedia=usbflash or ideflash, that code in savepuppyd will cause saving every 30 minutes. The variable PMEDIA has the string 'flash' in it, so the condition is not satisfied and the SLEEPTIME is not changed to 50. gdcrane
you
are right Barry - it didnt do what I had thought and i am still getting
the popup every 5 minutes on the lenovo. - I tried 216 out on a
different machine - and I get the desktop icon and the initial warning
about do not remove your usb drive, and the popup did not appear every
5 minutesSame usb drive, same syslinux config, So now I am really puzzled - bottom line though is that on the lenovo intelligent terminal I get an annoying orange popup every 5 mins when I run off of a usb drive. not sure what to try next - apart froom that its working like a champ - you do good work Barry George MooDog
Oops - sorry!I didn't realise that if you click the mounted partition icon it will unmount! I was looking for an 'unmount' icon next to the drive, I guess.. Thanks for clearing that up! KJ
How
about a 'manual save only' option? Not justfor flash drives but hard
drives as well. Often I use my system to surf the web and would prefer
that nothing be saved for the whole session so a 'manual save only'
option would be perfect ... if I want to save something I can ...but I
don't need to why do it.. I would welcome this option for my use in
general ... not just for flash driver but for hard drives as well. One
of the things I really liked about the old Flonix live CD distro.
Please add this capability.Pizzasgood
That
would be nice, now that it can truly flush and not eat the ram. One
"hacky" way you might be able to do it now is if you trick Puppy into
thinking you have a flash drive by setting pmedia=ideflash, or
pmedia=usbflash if you have a sata drive. I'm not certain that will
still boot and function correctly, but I think it will.gdcrane
pizzathat sort of work around when i try it gets some real funky results I echo KJs senttiments which is which i liked the savepuppy pup you did george alphasurfer
Excellent work barry! I love this release and is working great as far as I can tell.... Thanks...ddomains
216a
is GREAT! I tried and tried to get 215ce installed on my old Thnkpad
Laptop and it would not work. First time with 216a and it all works
even auto loaded the pcimcia lan card with the wizard. I also love the New Icons and simple look, grey is awsome. Am off to DL the OpenOffice and see how it runs ;) PaulBx1
On
that USB flash save, how about doing it the old Puppy way, copy instead
of flush - most of the time? Only annoy the user with the flush warning
if ram is getting low and a flush really is needed? Just a thought...On the issue of deleting old SFS files, can that be made more idiot-proof? For example, with the boot script checking dates or md5sums or something like that, to determine that the sfs in question is an old one that ought not be used? |
A project to improve mouse detectionAs I am almost about to upload 2.16alpha, I won't put Dougal's program into it. It would involve rewriting some of the code in /etc/rc.d/rc.local0 and there are some issues, such as use of /dev/input/mice instead of /dev/psaux for ps/2 mouse. But, it will be very easy for 2.16alpha-testers to test Dougal's new program, and we can also work on required mods to rc.local0 and test that too. The same thing goes for Dougal's improved xorgwizard and puppyinstaller scripts. Otropogo
I
sometimes need to use a serial mouse together with a USB mouse, but so
far, Puppy (2.13 through 2.15) can't manage to detect both at startup.
If ONLY a serial mouse is present, it recognizes and runs it. But then
it won't recognize the USB mouse when it's plugged in. The change mouse
utility doesn't fix this.If both are attached at startup, the serial mouse isn't installed at all. |
NTFS support improved1. FUSE package upgraded to v2.6.3 and compiled statically with uClibc as need static 'fusermount' in the initramfs. 2. FUSE package compiled normally. A new kernel module, also goes into the initramfs, plus a Unleashed package and relevant components into the 'devx' module. 3. Ntfs-3g usermode driver upgraded to v1.417. Compiled with uClibc as need static 'ntfs-3g' for the initramfs. 4. ntfs-3g package compiled and installed normally, created new Unleashed package and components into the 'devx' module. 5. Ntfsprogs upgraded to v1.13.1. New Unleashed package. 6. Parted upgraded to v1.8.6. New Unleashed package and components into 'devx' module. 7. Gparted upgraded to v0.3.3. Compiled statically with gtkmm libs. I found that the gtkmm '.a' static libs were missing from the 'devx' module, so had to recompile them and fix the 'devx' module. New Unleashed package. Note, tha above steps had to be done in that order due to dependencies. ted dog
I can hardly wait.... and check out the other thing we talked about, its working ayyyy! BarryK
Ted
Dog, yes, so it is! There was a bit of a delay, partly because they
didn't work over the weekend. It's catching me at a bad time though, as
I'll be out of action for a few days, but I might get online Thursday
night and I'll do some more work on our "project" -- I'll send you a
p.m. I'm supposed to get 2.16alpha ready today, and I'm supposed to be
going out to a function this evening, then tomorrow morning taking off
on my trip ...hmmm. One reason for my urgency is I have broadband
access now but it will probably only be dialup for the next 9 - 10 days.
|
Mouse mis-detection bug workaroundAnyway, the workaround is that if you manually choose the mouse in the Xorg Wizard or in the Mouse/Keyboard Wizard, if you choose a serial mouse, it will stick and puppyserialdetect result will be ignored. There does need to be some degree of autodetection, as a usb flash drive can bootup on different PCs with different mouses. USB mouse detection seems reliable, so that remains autodetected. Note, I never figured out how to autodetect a ps/2 mouse, so that is chosen if a serial or USB mouse is not detected -- with the change now that if you choose serial manually then it will stick on that. This is not going to affect many people, as the vast majority will be using ps/2 or USB mouses, for which autodetection continues as before. Sage
Not
necessarily, Barry. I am seeing instances of error messages about
serialmousedetect even though I haven't used a serial mouse on a Linux
distro for many years. Exptl 3 is particularly prone to throw out this
message, but 2.15CE and other late 2-series sometimes do this as well.Dougal
I
actually contacted Jesse and asked him to have a look at
puppyserialdetect, hoping he might be able to write a simpler program
to just get what we need (there seems to be much irrelevant code in it
from the origibal library)...Will Jesse be our saviour? Barry Kauler
If
puppyserialdetect says there is a serial mouse present when in fact
there isn't one, that is a more serious situation, that I haven't
catered for. I haven't had that happen, don't recall anyone else
reporting that.Dougal
Barry, I might have some good news. Please look here:http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=17575 You might want to wait with it for the BETA, ut I don't know how many people will bother to test it for me, so maybe it will be best to put it in the ALPHA (assuming it passes your tests...) Jesse
Hello,Puppyserialdetect prgram has been very much improved, bugs fixed, posible serial io delays reduced, and a few minor features added too. Up to edition 1.1d, but there may still be things to fix/add, more info here: http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. Jesse |
2.16alpha coming real soonThis will be al |