Puppy 4.3.1 -- bug reports and suggestions

Please post any bugs you have found
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nubc
Posts: 2062
Joined: Tue 23 Jan 2007, 18:41
Location: USA

#41 Post by nubc »

I think Puppy has reached a point in popularity and usefulness where it could stand a little polishing.

1. The last dialog in Puppy Universal Installer asks user whether to finish or to redo Grub config. That dialog should be worded so that the answer is "YES, finished", rather than the counterintuitive "NO, finished". I believe this final dialog is responsible for much confusion about grub config, and often leaves the new user hanging and uncertain that installation is complete.

2. I'm on the East Coast of USA. When booting liveCD it seems that default settings apply to this location. So I can hand a Puppy CD to a friend and say, Just boot it up and accept default values. EXCEPT for the time zone, which is like +8 hours. So user must hunt for New York/Montreal time zone, or just page down to the bottom of the list and come up several values to Eastern Time (-5 hours). If we are gonna set up default values for East Coast USA, then let's go all the way and set the default time zone to ET (-5hrs) as well.

3. I have a slow laptop. I havent figured out the settings to make the touchpad immediately responsive, and consequently there may be lag between click and action. I try to close a browser page by clicking the "X" in the upper right corner, nothing happens, so I instinctually click again. The page finally closes, but the second click is remembered and applies to the lock icon which is unfortunately located by default in the upper right corner of desktop. Why is the desktop lock icon located under the browser page sizing/closing functions? Couldn't it be located (by default) elsewhere? IMHO there should be no clickable icons in the upper right corner of desktop, because of typical browser design.
Last edited by nubc on Wed 21 Oct 2009, 19:10, edited 2 times in total.

slackali
Posts: 9
Joined: Tue 18 Aug 2009, 13:00

liveCD uses more and more RAM

#42 Post by slackali »

System: Thinkpad T20 P3 700MHz, 512MB RAM w/ 512MB swap
Puppy: 431-2.6.25.16-intelmodems, LiveCD booted with "pfix=ram".

The computer seems very responsive, especially graphics / scrolling in app windows & GUI responsiveness. Overall 431 seems terrific. (For the record.)

I started & quit many programs (one at a time) and I never heard the CD spin up a second time.

However, regarding RAM usage:

1. After each program I started & quit, the amount of free RAM shrank (as reported by 'top'). I wasn't using the programs -- just starting them & quitting them -- but the used RAM stayed used. Also true of buffered and cached RAM, when they increased.

2. I tried mounting drives & using files on them. Using them used RAM as expected, but even when I quit the program & closed all windows, the newly used RAM was not released. If I then unmounted the drive, the RAM was immediately released.

tests, etc:

Test A). I opened Aqualung (free RAM shrank a bit) & then browsed a mounted ntfs drive (more RAM used while browsing the partition. Using a GUI to browse files used RAM in other apps also, such as Rox.)

When I selected & opened the mp3s, maybe 30MB more free RAM was used. When I stopped & quit Aqualung, no RAM was freed up. But when I unmounted the ntfs partition, the 30MB mp3-related free RAM immediately returned. (not the other Aqualung-used RAM.)

Test B). Not just Aqualung nor NTFS -- I mounted the liveCD and typed 'cat /mnt/sr0/pup-431.sfs' in a console window (musical fun!). Free RAM shrank by -- not 100MB, but close... but stopping the 'cat' window (verified stopped in 'top') did NOT release the RAM back to free RAM. When I unmounted the CD, the RAM was immediately freed.

The freememapplet display did not change in either test ("763M").

On the other hand, when I created a 100MB local file, free RAM and freememapplet both shrank by 100MB, and when I deleted the file both monitors immediately regained the 100MB.

-- One last note, FWIW: restarting JWM or X server didn't free any RAM. Exiting to prompt and restarting via 'xwin' (with or without running xorgwizard) didn't free any RAM either. Typing 'top' while exited to prompt showed free RAM (temporarily) increased by only 10MB.

PaulBx1
Posts: 2312
Joined: Sat 17 Jun 2006, 03:11
Location: Wyoming, USA

#43 Post by PaulBx1 »

Anybody else of the same opinion?
I found all the partview examples confusing.

The graphic essentially shows used space, yet the text talks about free space. Moving the free space text into a graphic displaying used space is even more confusing.

I would move all text out of the graphic, and have the text area say "25GB of 80GB free". Also, left-justify it, or justify it "by columns".

Or, if you want text in the graphic, put "sda1" in there, not anything to do with sizes.

Another idea might be to keep it as you have it, but put the "free" text to the right of the graphic, since the free area in the graphic is on the right side. In other words, for sda1, show "sda1: 18G total", then the sda1 graphic, then "8.78G free".

A modification of that would be just to have column headers "Total size" and "Free space". Then the line for sda1 would show only "sda1: 18G", then the graphic, then "8.78G".

Also, I think we only need 2 significant figures, not 3. In other words, "8.8G" rather than "8.78G". One can have too much information...

You might use a different color in the graphic to indicate mounted volumes. Since green dots are used in the icons, might use green for mounted volumes. Then no need for a button to switch back and forth between mounted only and all volumes.

BTW I am pleased with 431 because it cleaned up two major problems with 412: corrupted text display in forums, and my sound card choking half-way through a movie. At least I think that is cleared up.

slackali
Posts: 9
Joined: Tue 18 Aug 2009, 13:00

Magic 20-second delay mounting drives or starting ROXwindows

#44 Post by slackali »

System: Thinkpad T20 P3 700MHz, 512MB RAM w/ 512MB swap
Puppy: 431-2.6.25.16-intelmodems, LiveCD booted with "pfix=ram".
---Or: 412-2.6.25.16 frugal install,
---or: 412-2.6.25.16 from liveCD w/ "pfix=ram".

Hi. Occasionally my computer enters an odd mode: mounting or unmounting drives, or opening a ROX window (e.g. from the Menu button) incurs a 20-21 second delay in whatever window / GUI I used. The computer otherwise remains perfectly responsive during the delays, and 'top' shows no spike in CPU or RAM usage.

If I click on a desktop drive icon to mount it, there's a 20-second delay before the green dot appears next to the icon... and then another 20-second delay before the ROX window opens for the drive. If I click on the desktop drive icon (w/ Rox, etc. closed) & choose 'unmount [partition | optical drive]', there's a 20-second delay before the dot disappears.

If I just open a ROX window for the _root_ folder, from the Menu button OR from command line, there's a 20-second delay before the window appears.

If I __mount a drive from the command line__, the command takes 20 seconds to 'finish' (return to the prompt). The desktop icon dot also takes 20 seconds to appear. But if I open another console, I can browse the contents of the mounted drive right away, while the original 'mount' command is still in its 20-second delay.

Once the computer enters this mode, I can't get out of it without rebooting. Clearing the ROX thumbnail cache*, restarting JWM &/or X server, even switching from Xorg to Xvesa &/or vice versa has no impact. After I exit to prompt, mount/umount commands finish right away, but restarting X returns to delay mode.

Unfortunately I can't figure out what events OR what code might be causing this. I will try to see if I can reproduce it on other computers or kernels.

* often I don't use thumbnails so the thumbnail cache is nonexistent

slackali
Posts: 9
Joined: Tue 18 Aug 2009, 13:00

unclear instruction in Xvesa Wizard

#45 Post by slackali »

A small note:

When using Xorg, if I choose Menu > Setup > Xvesa Wizard, the response is:
'Can't run while in Xorg; run Xorg Wizard to switch to Xvesa.'

Is this outdated advice? Xorg Wizard doesn't say any of its choices allow switching to Xvesa. Maybe the Xvesa wizard should say:
'Choose `Menu > ... > Exit to prompt` and then run Xorgwizard again, but choose Xvesa at first prompt instead of Xorg'?

Or even better, offer to do that automatically?

PaulBx1
Posts: 2312
Joined: Sat 17 Jun 2006, 03:11
Location: Wyoming, USA

#46 Post by PaulBx1 »

Just got around to actually trying an upgrade, from 4.1.2 (from which I had uninstalled all pet packages). Wow, the upgrade process is seriously broken. :(

Here is a screenshot of my icons, including folder icons in a rox window. Also note the missing menu icons, and that there is no yellow dot on sda2. The bootmanager/icon issue shouldn't be a problem here because I am not loading anything with the bootmanager:
Image

Here is another. In this one I was looking for the versioncleanup directory in /tmp. I found it in /initrd/pup_rw/tmp, but not in /tmp. This tells me unionfs is not working right:
Image

Another item is that I had set up a root password in 4.1.2, but this did not come across in the upgrade. In other words, I was automatically logged in as root without password, the standard Puppy setup.

This is a shame. Booting pfix=ram looked very good for me. Not sure what to do now.

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`f00
Posts: 807
Joined: Thu 06 Nov 2008, 19:13
Location: the Western Reserve

#47 Post by `f00 »

For my limited use it's all pretty much good to go - as a bugfix to p430 'ironed out'. About the only minor nits for me are
1) some uncommenting of /usr/bin/restartwm, wmexit, wmpoweroff and wmreboot (3 lines towards or at end) to enable plogout, etc without having to 'kick' action with ctrl+alt+bs .. thanx for the hint from elsewhere, runtt21 :) - could this be an issue for anyone else?
2) maybe wakepup2 could be updated to see other fs than fat16/32? or .. was trying to boot to thumbdrive (formatted .3fs) without liveCD as part of the ongoing adventure in trying other ways (old BIOS only has floppy, CD and HDD) and I finally gave up (stepping thru little things like 'does the name need an _ rather than a -' and commands I haven't much clue about gets old quickly for me :| )
3) remaster went fine, was fairly simple to fix the 'upgrade'/restoring 'official' stuff .. and this time I even got acpi=force into isolinux.config so a full poweroff is standard on my vintageware

addendi-re to previous posts..
p1- @gerry, simply rename (example ._2fs) the extension works for me 100% of the time *oops*, tempting the gremlins ;) "..interesting" I've seen when the dog finds tasty savefile(s) on hdd or *wherever* and gulps without asking, gnz11 :lol:

user option of free or used displayed as % of available-total or #/# - gui can be tricky and displaying such for optical drives is probably better left to burner s/w, imvho

yep, nubc - one of the reasons I like to clear the deck (especially something like a lock or any encrypt/password/etc), when buttonmasks were working for jwm I even did the x as a Q to remind myself of the usual key

hmmz, /tmp/versioncleanup definite for me (with switch of 'dummy' 1st savefile to a copy/rename of p425's in another pup and then 2nd p431 boot)

mmya - there's a lot to be said for the (standard on liveCD multi) user-choice of save/no_save .. may have touched on that in ref to save2flash option on the last real testreport I did (p425?)

fwiw, I think the save for all the personal adds I did started back around .. maybe up476 and p431 suffers them well :)

Bruce_n_Duane
Posts: 71
Joined: Wed 02 Nov 2005, 01:40
Location: Washington State

OpenOffice Documents via ROX

#48 Post by Bruce_n_Duane »

I installed Pup_431.iso on USB Flash Drive.
Added OpenOffice_311_sfs4.sfs to /mnt/home

Have icons for OpenOffice apps on desktop.

How do I modify the system and/or ROX configuration to be able to click on the filename of an OO saved file and have it start OpenOffice and open the file?

I would like to support wordprocessor files (.odt, .doc, .txt, .docx ....)
spreadsheets (.ods, excel, ....)
and soforth for all savable OpenOffice file formats.

Please be detailed. Thanks,

I want to automate this so I can pass out disks of Puppy 431 with OpenOffice
to every Windows User I meet!!!

-Bruce.

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shinobar
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Location: Japan
Contact:

Re: Swap labels in Partview

#49 Post by shinobar »

DemostiX :Labels are in the wrong place in the recent .pet
ecube wrote:Good point!
Anybody else of the same opinion?
/Olov
I do agree.

We can do some as like:
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mawebb88
Posts: 246
Joined: Sun 13 Jul 2008, 09:54
Location: France nr Lyon

412 to 431

#50 Post by mawebb88 »

PaulBx1 wrote:Just got around to actually trying an upgrade, from 4.1.2 (from which I had uninstalled all pet packages). Wow, the upgrade process is seriously broken. :(

Here is a screenshot of my icons, including folder icons in a rox window. Also note the missing menu icons, and that there is no yellow dot on sda2. The bootmanager/icon issue shouldn't be a problem here because I am not loading anything with the bootmanager:
Image

Here is another. In this one I was looking for the versioncleanup directory in /tmp. I found it in /initrd/pup_rw/tmp, but not in /tmp. This tells me unionfs is not working right:
Image

Another item is that I had set up a root password in 4.1.2, but this did not come across in the upgrade. In other words, I was automatically logged in as root without password, the standard Puppy setup.

This is a shame. Booting pfix=ram looked very good for me. Not sure what to do now.
I had the same problems as you in a 412 to 430 upgrade (I have since done also 430 to 431). I got the icons back by using the "Desktop Icon Switcher". I had not un-installed the pets in 412 like you before the upgrade but that's a very good idea. I had to in the upgraded 430 do the re-install of all my pets to get them into the package manager. I also lost my root password prompt at bootup so had to edit /etc/inittab.

Other than that most things work. The only major thing not working is ALSA which had no master volume and the volume icon on the system tray is always muted on boot up and does not change the volume either. This has been reported several time but no response so far. Also the Network wizard is still shaky for me so I still avoid this and use my own script (as I had to do in 412) to get WiFi/WPA working. A recent major improvement at least for me was to rename /etc/rc.d/rc.network to something else so it does not clash with my own script otherwise I was getting 2 wpa_supplicant sessions running.

Rgds Mike
EeePC901

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ecube
Posts: 88
Joined: Fri 11 Jul 2008, 17:00
Location: Västerås, Sweden

PartView revision

#51 Post by ecube »

Thanks Shinobar! Much better. I have revised PartView accordingly. :D
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mawebb88
Posts: 246
Joined: Sun 13 Jul 2008, 09:54
Location: France nr Lyon

Re: OpenOffice Documents via ROX

#52 Post by mawebb88 »

Bruce_n_Duane wrote:I installed Pup_431.iso on USB Flash Drive.
Added OpenOffice_311_sfs4.sfs to /mnt/home

Have icons for OpenOffice apps on desktop.

How do I modify the system and/or ROX configuration to be able to click on the filename of an OO saved file and have it start OpenOffice and open the file?

I would like to support wordprocessor files (.odt, .doc, .txt, .docx ....)
spreadsheets (.ods, excel, ....)
and soforth for all savable OpenOffice file formats.

Please be detailed. Thanks,

I want to automate this so I can pass out disks of Puppy 431 with OpenOffice
to every Windows User I meet!!!

-Bruce.
Easy. Right click on a document you want to open and choose "Set Run Action". Enter "scalc "$@" (WO quotes) to open a Oo spreadsheet. Swriter for the word processor etc. Click on "Use Command" to apply your run-action

Rgds Mike

PaulBx1
Posts: 2312
Joined: Sat 17 Jun 2006, 03:11
Location: Wyoming, USA

#53 Post by PaulBx1 »

Mike, that desktop icon switcher app only changes the icons that already exist (e.g., the connect icon) and does nothing with those other things that are just missing (e.g. my browse or write icons). Oh, it did bring the menu icons back though.

I have no problem with ALSA or the tray volume slider; maybe Barry also sees no problem and thus cannot fix them. Well, my alsamixer settings did not come across in the upgrade, kind of a small thing.

I'm still worried about unionfs not working properly.

mawebb88
Posts: 246
Joined: Sun 13 Jul 2008, 09:54
Location: France nr Lyon

Missing Icons & Alsamixer

#54 Post by mawebb88 »

PaulBx1 wrote:Mike, that desktop icon switcher app only changes the icons that already exist (e.g., the connect icon) and does nothing with those other things that are just missing (e.g. my browse or write icons). Oh, it did bring the menu icons back though.
Perhaps my recollection is wrong but in any case all the icons are now fine. Mike

PaulBx1 wrote: I have no problem with ALSA or the tray volume slider; maybe Barry also sees no problem and thus cannot fix them. Well, my alsamixer settings did not come across in the upgrade, kind of a small thing.
I think this is just a Eee thing as on my Acer Aspire 5100 Alsamixer and the tray volume work fine. I have put a post about this in the Extra's for the 2.6.30.5 thread where some specials for Eee PC's are developed.

Mike

Bruce_n_Duane
Posts: 71
Joined: Wed 02 Nov 2005, 01:40
Location: Washington State

OpenOffice via ROX

#55 Post by Bruce_n_Duane »

Thank Mike, that works great!!!

Mike = mawebb88 wrote:

Easy. Right click on a document you want to open and choose "Set Run Action". Enter "scalc "$@" (WO quotes) to open a Oo spreadsheet. Swriter for the word processor etc. Click on "Use Command" to apply your run-action
-bruce.[/quote]

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vtpup
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#56 Post by vtpup »

I tried again to upgrade from 4.1.2 (2.6.25.16 kernal) frugal to 4.3.1 final (late kernel). I renamed a copy of my pup-save to pupsave and booted.

X kept crashing this time. Couldn't even get past xorgwizard. Tried xvesa and xorg. No go. Xwin couldn't start the windows.

When it dropped me to terminal mode I did see some error messages --

Code: Select all

setenv command not found
/etc/profile.d/libglib2.csh: line 28 syntax error: unexpected end of file
/etc/profile.d/qt.csh: line 10: syntax error near unexpected token '('
/etc/profile.d/qt.csh: line 10:      foreach q+d ( /usr/libqt-*)'
(sorry for any typos above -- I had to hand copy that into my normal scribble, and then hunt and peck it into here)

Edit: snipped. Problems were resolved by:

1.) removing files /etc/profile.d/libglib2.csh and qt.csh, while leaving the.sh versions of those same files intact. Bash tries to run the Cshell programs on startup. Equivalent bash programs are already in place.
2.) recognizing that when xorgwizard runs from the command line and xvesa is chosen the subsequent console prompt does NOT mean that xwin failed to start. This is a different action from the xorg choice. Xvesa must be started by explicitly typing xwin after choosing Xvesa. When I did this I was able to start x in 431 and then work on the other problems from the GUI.
3.) realizing that nv is gone in the later kernel modules. Downloading and compiling and installing proprietary kernel drivers from NVIDIA and allowing the installer to modify xorg.conf. Then running the NVIDIA configuration tool. This brought back full xorg video.
4.) the only problem I have left is that the shutdown menu choices don't seem to do anything. I'm now re-booting and shutting down by using the terminal.
Last edited by vtpup on Mon 26 Oct 2009, 18:33, edited 1 time in total.

Sage
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Joined: Tue 04 Oct 2005, 08:34
Location: GB

#57 Post by Sage »

Why does the PDF utility constantly pop up when using the disc transfer utility?

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vtpup
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#58 Post by vtpup »

re. my report above, don't know if it has any bearing on the 4.1.2 upgrade process, but, also, my personal savefile is light encrypted

PaulBx1
Posts: 2312
Joined: Sat 17 Jun 2006, 03:11
Location: Wyoming, USA

#59 Post by PaulBx1 »

Sage, what disk transfer utility?

I was able to set one of my unset icons (the play icon) by first right-clicking on it and selecting "show location", which pointed me to defaultmediaplayer in /usr/local/bin. I right-clicked that and selected "set icon" and set it to /usr/local/lib/X11/pixmaps/multimedia48.png, taking a hint from one of my functional icons. This gave me the correct icon. I think it's the correct icon, anyway.

What I'm wondering is, why are all these icons left unset by the upgrade process?

I also noticed a collection of icons in /root/.thumbnails/normal, apparently taking up space in my pupsave. Are these really necessary? There is also /root/.icons/ROX/MIME, which has more icons.

It seems like the icon setting process in Puppy is overcomplicated and error-prone. I wonder what it means to "set icon" in Rox? I imagine it just puts an entry in a file somewhere, but unfortunately the process is masked from me making this hard to fix. What a mess.

<later>
OK, I got a screenshot of my pfix=ram icons so I knew what they looked like, then I used the above procedure to set all the rest of the icons manually. Not the smoothest upgrade. <grumble>

scsijon
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4.3.1 arrived, ..but

#60 Post by scsijon »

cd arrived from barry
1 hour later (or maybe a little less)
put in cd drive of "testcomputer-l"
looked in workbook to see which spare partition I can use, added info to workbook. Each of my systems have their own, else I have no idea on what's on them or where it is.

attempted startup from CD

failed to start x after setting X up
- had this problem before with this machine as it only uses the internal Intel 82945G video
started x manually
OK

everything seemed to run and link ok so used puppy ui to do a full install to parn 7 (hd0,6)

ok

mounted parn with grub,
edited existing grub menu.list with what was in "grub update message" (nice idea someone, rather than just overwriting it as in the past) I thought it was all ok.

closed down, removed cd, rebooted
selected partition from grub menu
...booting

PROBLEM 1 - with solution

Kernal Panic - not syncing
VFS:Unable to mount root fs on unknown block(0,0)
etc

GRUMBLE GRUMBLE

restarted from CD loading with ram only
everything was ok
back to check the grub menu.lst in case of a typo
compaired it to doc on cd
AH HA, v4 uses sda not hda as v2/3 was
fixed spelling
shutdown, etc

rebooted, all OK now to load
- however any v2/3 parn's want hda in grub, not sda (at least mine do)


Problem 2 (?is to me anyway) - not solved
Row of devices shown on bottom was incomplete, no DVD's or CD Tower drives visable/shown
Found they didn't appear UNTIL there was something in them!
Except the Floppy drive always shows even when empty
THIS IS INCONSISTANT
How do I fix it, please, or will it remain as a bug we have to put up with?

Problem 3 - not solved
Copied other .sfs from cd to /mnt/home as listed to use
Started Puppy Setup
Picked Bootmanager to add them to the startup

error: Sorry there are no SFS files in directory /mnt/home (or they all have the wrong *_nnn.sfs version number. You will need to download and place one there first.

Checked location, ok
copied to same place with shortened name _431.sfs
checked permissions, ok

still same error

help please.

problem 4 - not solved

how do I set the "modem speaker volume" without changing the whole volume?
doesn't worry me as i'm seriously deaf, but it's creating hell with those around me :wink: :lol: :lol: :lol:

that's all for now, enough to start with anyway.

Otherwise for a first play I like the beast.

scsijon

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