Chihuahua Alpha6 plus Lassie_Office

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tronkel
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Chihuahua Alpha6 plus Lassie_Office

#1 Post by tronkel »

I'll upload both the latest Chihuahua and Lassie_office (Abiword 2.6.2 with english and german spell checking courtesy of Aspell. Also latest Gnumeric 1.8.2.

98MB go here:
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=28482

Chihuahua now has a hacked Blinky. When you right-click the Blinky icon on the taskbar, there is now an option there to kill or restart the internet. There is also a red stop button that does the same thing - as a belt and braces thing - just in case Blinky itself gets killed while no internet connection is available.

Abiword 2.6.2 is now the default word-processor. If you need the plugins and spell checking, you need the Lassie_Office sfs module.

Clicking on the desktop browser button will bring up the network wizard if there is no network connection available - otherwise the browser will start up.

The is also a little desktop icon that kills Conky if required.

What a bloomin' awful job I had with that Lassie_Office module.
In order to get spell checking to work I had to recompile Abiword because of a wrong configure option. Then Gnumeric refused to appear in the Unionfs for some reason. Despite trying everything I could think of, had no joy at all. Then I remembered something.

A few weeks back, Barry mentioned that PBurn would not run because of whiteout files in the Unleashed directory. I then checked my Unleashed directory and found umpteen of them. Deleted them all and rebuilt Chihuahau - success!

So if you are using Unleashed and things don't appear to be functioning as you'd expect - check for the whiteout (.wh files).

To find the blighters, just run this command from a terminal, inside your Unleashed directory. Thanks to Barry for this.
find ./ -mount -type f -name .wh.*
I'll upload both later today
Last edited by tronkel on Sun 27 Apr 2008, 08:51, edited 2 times in total.
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Lobster
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#2 Post by Lobster »

Image
Very good - I particularly like the Firefox beta and the themes
Some might think the themes over the top
be interested what people think

The hotplug icons appeared top left, overlapping
if you click on the browser icon it does not start firefox
- you have to use menu or the icon on taskbar

It seems very speedy
What happens next?
Last edited by Lobster on Sat 26 Apr 2008, 16:24, edited 1 time in total.
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#3 Post by tronkel »

@lobster

Your screen shot shows a previous wallpaper from a previous version.
You are probably using a pup_save from the earlier version.

Have a go with it using pfix=ram and see what happens.
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#4 Post by Lobster »

:)
The image is after minimal tweaking . . .
I indeed used pfix=ram and changed the wallpaper
which is available in alpha 6 . . .
Last edited by Lobster on Mon 28 Apr 2008, 04:58, edited 1 time in total.
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#5 Post by gerry »

Where can I find it?

Gerry

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#6 Post by tronkel »

Life is too short to spend it in front of a computer

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prehistoric
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Chihuahua alpha 6

#7 Post by prehistoric »

@tronkel,

You've got two threads announcing this. http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=28482

Why not edit the start of this thread to include links and put a link on the other?

On my Latitude D600, which seems to be a problem child, I still get a black screen when doing reboot/shutdown. This prevents me from reading the dialogues for creating an initial pup_save file. Exiting to a prompt and doing a reboot also produces problems: the first save dialogue appears, but when I hit enter to select "save to file" I get a prompt followed by some black squares in the middle of the dialogue screen. Both attempts failed to create pup_save.

Finally, found I could exit the X window system with control-alt-backspace, then type reboot to get a working save dialogue and create my first pup_save on a USB flash drive.

This problem has been with me ever since the change to Icewm. Don't understand why it doesn't show up on some machines.

Added: First clue about the problem! I just got a normal shutdown where I could read the messages. Went back, tried again; now, get last screen before X window shutdown, background only with mouse cursor frozen in position. The problem is timing dependent, we have a race condition between different processes involved in stopping X window system. This generally does not show up on fast machines, but, at this point, I don't know if it is caused by cpu or gpu speed.

I still find the P.U.I. messages confusing, and consider "hit enter not to wipe all files, any character plus enter to wipe all files" positively dangerous.

Overall, this feels pretty solid. Get rid of that black screen of death and we'll be talking betas.

BTW: Are you sure you don't spend your life in front of a computer? I spend a few hours off-line and find I'm working on an old version.

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#8 Post by gerry »

Hi... I tried Puppy 3.02Alpha6 as a live cd. I found some problems. My printer, Canon i965, is not catered for by Gutenprint, so I have to install the Canon driver, which CUPS allows. From Puppy 2.17 to 3.01, I was not able to print an open document in Abiword, as it was set up only with the Generic Postscript option, which assumed that a Gutenprint driver would be used. Barry fixed this in Dingo.

I have to download a lib file that the driver needs. When I unzipped it, it got installed in /initrd/pup_rw/usr/lib, whereas it should be in /usr/lib/.

Then I tried to install the Ted pet, using the puppy package manager (Ted does usually print ok). But it did not appear on the menu, and would not run from the console. I found it installed in /initrd/pup_rw/root/Ted. No wonder it won't run.

.So something is wrong. Alpha 7??

Gerry

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black/frozen screen + free memory

#9 Post by prehistoric »

@tronkel,

More progress on the screen problem that shows up on my Latitude D600, one cause of trouble is definitely the Hotpup daemon. Disabling that allows me to use the menu entry to exit to prompt and reboot from there, with the console dialogues for creating a pup_save file. I am still getting problems with the reboot/shutdown menu entries, but, with a way to get that first save, this is less critical. I'm sure about problems with Hotpup. I was so successful at reproducing problems I clobbered my pup_save file and had to rebuild this almost from scratch.

I've tried killing a number of processes before exiting to see if that solves a problem. So far, the Hotpup daemon is the only one I've found, and it only solves part. Conky and gkrellm don't make any difference. Neither do several other plausible things like cupsd. It has to be something modified for Icewm, but, so far, I haven't found any process I can kill separately which resolves the problem.

While reinstalling things, I left conky running to watch memory change. What I saw was bizarre. I'm currently running this machine with no hard drive, using a USB flash drive for persistent storage. This means I have no swap, also. Conky shows a 256 MB HD with a few MB in use. As I install pets this number goes up. Now, here comes the surprise. The freemem applet shows available memory going up! It started at about 320 MB. With about half that imaginary HD used, it was saying I had 486 MB on a machine with 512 MB RAM and a 512 MB pup_save file. Any light you can shed on this behavior?

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#10 Post by alienjeff »

tronkel wrote:@gerry

get Chihuahua here:

http://www.puppylinux.ca/tpp/tronkel/pu ... irefox.iso
An md5sum would be nice.
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#11 Post by tronkel »

@prehistoric

There certainly are issues with HotPuP. It's an extremely complicated script, that has never been sorted out. Might never be. Barry has mentioned going over to a system based on udev, but that's something for the future. Again, hardware is a big factor as to whether it works OK or not. Some people get little or no trouble at all from HotPup.

The main cause of your invisible shut-down screen is very likely to be icewm. I can't reproduce this fault reliably to order here, but I have seen it before - especially in 2.16CE I think it was. Since the icewm used in Chihuahua is a cut-down version made by ttuuxxx to reduce space in the ISO, it may be an idea to simply install a full version over the top of this and see what happens. EzPup 3, or even an older icewin dotup which I believe exists in MU's repo might be possibilities to try. Also in icewm if you hit Ctrl + Alt + Del, you get a window up with buttons for reboot, logout etc. Try that as well and see what happens

When I build the ISOs I never test them by burning to CD - this would be very expensive! What I do, is copy the files directly from Unleashed over to a new directory on the home partition and then adjust Grub (menulist file) to point to this directory. This is effectively a frugal install. All I have to do, when a new version is created is copy over only the latest pup_302.sfs file and the new frugal version is then live. To check if your system has a problem, maybe related to the live CD, set up your system as a frugal install by copying vmlinuz, pup_302.sfs, initrd.gz and the zdrv.sfs files over to a new directory - and then try your shutdown. There is a chance that your pup.302.sfs is being mounted from the live CD itself, maybe due to lack of system memory. At shutdown there could then be a problem of unmounting it from the read-only CD system.

Next suspect is Xorg. Barry brought out a few fixes for this, that I included in Chihuahua. Could be something to do with these upgrades. Barry is revisiting this in Dingo according to a recent blog post. He's not happy with Xorg in Dingo at the moment. So this could also affect Chihuahua even although it's based on a 3 series Puppy.

BTW 2.16CE has an older version of EzPup/icewm installed, so it might be just as quick to download and burn a live CD of this version and test the shutdown from there.
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#12 Post by tronkel »

Gerry wrote:
I was not able to print an open document in Abiword
Gerry, in Abiword try setting the lpr custom string to:

lpr -P "exact name of your printer" (no quotes)

Hope that works.
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#13 Post by ttuuxxx »

The lite icewm package I built basically is the full icewm with nothing removed plus added blinky, freememory applet and a couple of small themes. I called it "lite" Just because ezpup which is the most famous icewm pet package was 22MB compared to my 0.6MB pet (savings of 21.4MB) :)
Plus I've been using my package ever since I built it without problems on 3.01, 3.01 retro, 2.17
The only minor thing I would like to change in it is the abiblity to use more icons in the open windows on the taskbar.
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black/frozen screen + conky + network

#14 Post by prehistoric »

@tronkel,

Just tried control-alt-delete exit from inside Icewm. The buttons come up, as advertised, but the result is the same as exit through the menu - frozen screen.

This is not necessarily true of any Icewm. I've had FireHydrant and Muppy running on this exact machine without problems. I'll try installing Icewm over this installation next.

Already checked that the pup_302.sfs was coming off the flash drive. When I ran the latest tests the CD was not in the machine.

Meanwhile, back to the idea some people may want to turn conky off. The killconky icon makes that possible, if they guess that it controls the display of information. Nothing on the display says conky. Having to display a message about going to the menu is clunky. Why not a launcher which checks to see if conky is running? If so, it kills the process, if not, it launches a new one. No message required to explain, just label the icon "conky".

Of course, the next time they boot, conky will be launched again. My solution to disabling conky, without changing anything else, was to set updates in the conkyrc script to 1, so it exits on first update. (I was concerned it might be doing things used by other parts of GUI startup.)

My wireless networking card (rt2500) keeps running after the network "stop" button does its thing. There is a message that dhcpcd is not running. Restart also fails. I can keep using browser on the internet, so the interface is still working. Not going to stop an attack.

I'm now using the Flash player 9.0.124 pet from Big_Bass with Firefox 3b5. No obvious problems at this point. Seems pretty stable.

@ttuuxxx,

That explains what to look for. I've already tried killing blinky before exit, without effect. Freemem applet is next. If no change there, I'll replace the theme.

Added: The bug is cornered! Killing the freemem applet tray process before rebooting via the menu allows me to see the shutdown messages. (I've tried this repeatedly and it always works.) Rebooting via control-alt-delete brings up a window with buttons, but pressing the reboot button leads to a frozen screen. The extra processing connected with that window takes too long on a relatively slow machine.
Note: Doing a Shutdown via the menu still leads to a black screen, even without the freemem tray applet process. That should narrow things down a great deal.

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#15 Post by alienjeff »

ttuuxxx wrote:The lite icewm package I built basically is the full icewm with nothing removed plus added blinky, freememory applet and a couple of small themes.
In the real world, this is called deceptive advertising. The "full" version of anything with stuff added doth not make a "lite" version thereof.

I downloaded and tried this alpha last night on my daily beater set up which faithfully runs Puppy v2.12: an HP Pavilion with a Celeron 600, 256M of RAM and a very common Dell CRT monitor. In the xorgwizard, no selection of Xorg resolution or color would work. I was always dumped to the command prompt. And the highest resolution that would work in xvesa was 800x600, which looks just simply ridiculous on a monitor this size.

Newer Puppy versions which include the new Xorg FAIL on this very common, albeit dated, computer. This is a show stopper for Intel i810 video machines.

Too bad we don't have an inside plant at Intel ... oh, nevermind. Make believe I never said that.

Other matters of note: "vmlinuz" is labeled "VMLINUZ." (note the ".") and "initrd.gz" as "INITRD.GZ" when extracted from the iso. Unless there's some crying need for this convention, might lower-case filenames reduce the chance for confusion? During my initial boot of my frugal install, I was prompted "can't find pup_302.sfs" or some such ... and it froze. This was a result of the ALL CAPS naming convention of the file. I quickly renamed the file to lower case and was off and running, but a rank n00b won't be so nimble with a fix.

With just the desktop up, Conky reported only 27M of RAM being used, with a significant amount of RAM cached. BusyBox's "free" reported over 200M of RAM being "used," which we've all been over before (the BusyBox vs CoreApps display from "free"). However ...

... I then opened gxine and played a relatively small (140M) video. Guess what? Even in the small, default display size, gxine froze up. Unlike w/v2.12's JWM, right clicking on gxine in the taskbar didn't offer a "kill" option, so I was left with having to issue "killall gxine" from a terminal. This community really needs to rethink the way we so promiscuously boast "runs on only x-amount of RAM."

And this is the first version of Puppy I've tested (and I've tested many) that I couldn't get connected to my network by using the network wizard. I didn't bother hitting the command line to ascertain whether the driver was missing or there was a snag in the wizard/GUI/wrapper.

Bottom line for me? This version is nowhere near beta status.
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#16 Post by ttuuxxx »

Well I just tried this version for the first time and as it sits, I had no problems with connecting to the internet, actually I've had no problems at all:)
Pburn&Pfind need updating but still work,
I do like the new Pburn with small graphic theme that it has as an option. maybe next release??
The Smooth-Saphire theme is 563kb so I did the old transfer to my lite theme package and now its 188kb
I'll included it as a pet package.
I'll keep testing and report any problems.
I like the Gtk2 theme also the firefox them
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#17 Post by tronkel »

Alienjeff wrote:
In the real world, this is called deceptive advertising
You can always ask for your money back if you are dissatisfied with the goods.
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#18 Post by tronkel »

@ttuuxxx

OK thanks for the reduced-size Saphire theme. I'll replace the older larger version with this one in the next version of Chihuahua.

@prehistoric

OK, good work with nailing this bug. Freememapplet has been suspect for ages in other respects as well. Could be time to replace it - if such a replacement exists. I used something in 2.16CE but forget what it was. I'll have a look in the 2.16 Unleashed directory.

I'll alter killconky to toggle itself rather than restart from the menu item.
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#19 Post by ttuuxxx »

tronkel just wondering which pmount are you using?
when I mount cd or hdd it displays mini-filemgr.xpm
when it should be showing mini-hdisk-green.xpm & mini-cd-green.xpm
also it doesn't show my usb swap drive. I have a 1 gig swap usb flash drive that I use on this pc. But conky shows its being used.
Pmount on my 3.01 retro FH shows the usb swap.
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#20 Post by tronkel »

ttuuxxx,

Pmount is the latest one from Barry, V3.96 Jan 2008
As far as I remember, probepart was also replaced in Chihuahua by a later version from someone or other.

I'm not sure if Dingo has had further alterations made to it since.
Maybe worth a try to try the Dingo versions of both and see if that helps. My hardware here has had continual problems with USB, so it's hard to test.

Puppy Linux has on-going problems with USB from what I know. This is one of the things in 3 series Puppies that needs fixing.

edit:
Pmount on my 3.01 retro FH shows the usb swap
So it looks like another kernel issue that affects older hardware. That makes sense. Wonder if there is a kernel patch for Puppy that fixes this.
Last edited by tronkel on Sun 27 Apr 2008, 18:03, edited 1 time in total.

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