"Testing" Sensei & Sensei64

A home for all kinds of Puppy related projects
Message
Author
stifiling
Posts: 388
Joined: Sun 30 Dec 2007, 03:56

#81 Post by stifiling »

thanks a lot for that info James C...

was wondering though...would u happen to know if the nouveau driver works fine on those machines with the newer nvidia card?

User avatar
Q5sys
Posts: 1105
Joined: Thu 11 Dec 2008, 19:49
Contact:

#82 Post by Q5sys »

stifiling wrote:@Tote

thanks for the feedback.
musher0 wrote:Hello, stifiling.

I downloaded and tried your Sensei for non-PAE this afternoon.
I thought I would be getting more out of 342 Mb...

No spreadsheet, no word processor, and the pacman is nowhere to be found. Or am I cock-eyed?
What's taking so much space anyway ?

Also, no fallback console, no possibility of passing parameters at startup ? Hmm...
I understand a lot of work has gone in assembling your derivative. Still, I'm disappointed.

Respectfully,

musher0
The large size is pretty much due to the fact that every aspect of Puppy Linux has been meticulously examined and shrunk to be as small as possible, yet still functional. The same can't be said for Arch Linux. Puppy's icon themes are smaller, smbclient, etc. Also, a lot of the apps that puppy uses are written by users of the community with the goal of 'small as possible'. Frisbee, pnethood, pwireless, SNS, etc. Someone who uses Linux Mint, Ubuntu, or Arch....has never heard of those apps. Unless they use Puppy as well.

To tell you the truth, a Puppy user may look at Sensei and say, "WOW, that's HUGE!!" while an Arch user would say "WOW, that's SMALL!!". A default Arch installation, with 0 GUI apps....is over 500MB.

Another thing I'd like to help contribute to is, snapping Puppy Linux out of the, "Good for old computers" stereotype it currently has stapled to it. Every user I've ever asked in the Puppy Linux IRC chat room, uses Puppy Linux for specific sitiations (older computers, thumb drive, live CD rescue disk), and something else like, Linux Mint, Ubuntu, Gentoo, Arch Linux on their main, newer, more expensive machine. I never liked that. I always felt a lil.....uncomfortable, having Puppy Linux on this computer, and Arch Linux on this other one. I always wanted the same system...on all of them. Including my thumb drive. Simply put...Puppy Linux is faster than Arch Linux. Which is why i used it on my older computer. Yet and still there were some apps that i wanted on that older computer...that wasn't available, and was hard as hell to compile. So i just lived without them. It's also hard as hell to do a frugal installation of Arch Linux on a thumb drive. It's easier to get those 'specific' apps installed, but still Arch is slower, and doing a frugal install and booting from an NTFS partition....a rocket scientist would have a hard time figuring it out.

Archpup was the system that solved all these issues, and that's why i based Sensei off of it.

Pacman is a console package manager. you have to install apps using the terminal. I'm working on adding PacmanExpress GUI to the 32bit isos. Also adding ctl+alt+backspace, to be able to easily exit X and get to a tty prompt. I left out the Office Suite type of applications. You can install, libreoffice, openoffice, gnumeric, abiword, etc....using pacman.

Thanks for trying it, and for the reply.
Arch doesnt have seperate dev packages for programs, so each package has alot of bloat that a non dev/debugger wont use. So there is the possibility that the size may dwindle over time, if stifling decides to go that direction and 'trim' things up a bit.
But as this is his baby... he may not want to go that direction.

As for the" PuppyLinux isnt meant for new fast hardware" mentality"... it is. If it runs fast on a old P3 system... its blistering on a quad core cpu. When you take something as light as Puppy and put it on a modern powerhouse... your performance is unbelievable.
In my mind... Puppy is for older hardware... and the far edge that want blisteringly fast systems.

stifiling wrote: the fatdog64 620 kernel though...a completely different ball game. In a previous thread, the argument was raised about how FatDog64 is more 'woof-like' than ArchPup was. ArchPup didn't come with rox, jwm, or the ppm...but it did come with an initrd.gz and an sfs file. FatDog64 does come with rox, jwm, and the ppm...but it doesn't come with an initrd.gz or an sfs file. So truthfully speaking, it's as far off the mark from a traditional woof-built puppy, as ArchPup was.
Slight correction, Fatdog 620, does have an SFS file... its just inside the initrd (along with the kernel sources sfs). To my knowledge Barry has never commented on 'where' the core sfs package should reside on a Puppy release. The initrd just uses xz compression vs gz compression (hence why its not initrd.gz) And to be honest, having the .gz or .xz extension isnt important. Soreally only the compression method has changed.




If I get time tomorrow I can try to test this on my quad monitor quad core system. Are the latest Nvidia drivers avail for DL, so I dont have to compile them? Im running dual Nvidia Quadro NVS cards.

User avatar
sszindian
Posts: 807
Joined: Sun 25 Apr 2010, 02:14
Location: Pennsylvania U.S.

WiFi

#83 Post by sszindian »

stifiling wrote:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
could you try extracting this file...and placing the rt2870.bin file in /lib/firmware, and then doing

Code:
rmmod rt2800usb
modprobe rt2800usb
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

OK first... I posted a reply to this an hour or two ago... it didn't post (although it said it did?)

Anyway, placing the rt2870.bin file in /lib/firmware did the trick... you probably should include that in your system to save headaches for yourself down the road!!!

I had to use another version of puppy to extract the gn.zip file you posted above as I just could not find an un-zip utility in your program to save my life! If there is one in there, appreciate knowing how to access it! Anyway, the transfer went well and WiFi is working well... in fact, even survived several reboots and auto confg'd itself on startup.

WiFi has been tested to the max in the past few hours by my wife, if it can be broke believe me, she can break it :lol: It will get some heavy use over the next few days so we'll see then.

I told James C to hang in there in the post that didn't take but I see he's doing OK since then.

OK... on to new areas of testing.....

>>>---Indian------>
Cloud Computing For Every Puppy (a .pet)
[url]http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=69192[/url]

User avatar
James C
Posts: 6618
Joined: Thu 26 Mar 2009, 05:12
Location: Kentucky

#84 Post by James C »

stifiling wrote:thanks a lot for that info James C...

was wondering though...would u happen to know if the nouveau driver works fine on those machines with the newer nvidia card?
Yes, nouveau generally works fine with the newer Nvidia cards in Slacko,Precise,Raring etc.. On some releases there is a little problem with missing menu icons but that is easily fixed by adding nouveau.=noaccel=1 to the kernel line.

User avatar
James C
Posts: 6618
Joined: Thu 26 Mar 2009, 05:12
Location: Kentucky

#85 Post by James C »

Just to make certain I'm running from a FatDog multi-session dvd at the moment.

Code: Select all

19.082] (II) NOUVEAU(0): NVEnterVT is called.
[    19.082] (II) NOUVEAU(0): Setting screen physical size to 361 x 203
[    19.082] resize called 1366 768
Was pretty sure it used nouveau..... too many machines running too many different distros.... :lol:

Code: Select all

# uname -a
Linux fatdog64 3.4.4 #1 SMP Sat Jun 23 18:31:59 GMT 2012 x86_64 GNU/Linux
# 

stifiling
Posts: 388
Joined: Sun 30 Dec 2007, 03:56

#86 Post by stifiling »

@Q5sys

I'd appreciate it if you'd try it out. no, the proprietary nvidia driver hasn't been compiled for it.... I know u know a lot about 64-bit puppies. If it happens to work right on your machine, and you happen to like it....it would also be appreciated if you'd compile the nvidia driver....and upload it for us.

@sszindian

I will definitely be including that firmware in the next upload. i'll be including unzip as well. for now though you can install unzip with pacman:

Code: Select all

pacman -S unzip
or do you mean a GUI app for extracting? yes, i'll add in xarchiver or xarchive.

@James C

I'm thinking it might be safe to do out with nv....and just use only nouveau in Sensei64. So i'll be making those adjustments.



i just added the dev.sfs for sensei. so compiling and installing from the AUR should now work. hopefully there's no file conflicts when installing packages while it's loaded. if so....please make it known which package you were trying to install when you had the conflict. So i can correct that issue in the system.

if you have a conflict you can force install the app using:

Code: Select all

pacman -S --force packagename
this will overwrite the conflicting file. and the package should install normally.

User avatar
Q5sys
Posts: 1105
Joined: Thu 11 Dec 2008, 19:49
Contact:

#87 Post by Q5sys »

stifiling wrote:@Q5sys

I'd appreciate it if you'd try it out. no, the proprietary nvidia driver hasn't been compiled for it.... I know u know a lot about 64-bit puppies. If it happens to work right on your machine, and you happen to like it....it would also be appreciated if you'd compile the nvidia driver....and upload it for us.
If I can, I'd be happy to, however a few questions...

Do you have a devx package built for it? Or is gcc and the required stuff already prebuilt in? Are the Kernel sources already included in the release?

Cause I'd need those to be able to compile it.


Edit: I just saw the bit in your prior post about the dev sfs.

stifiling
Posts: 388
Joined: Sun 30 Dec 2007, 03:56

#88 Post by stifiling »

Q5sys wrote:Do you have a devx package built for it? Or is gcc and the required stuff already prebuilt in? Are the Kernel sources already included in the release?
i need to upload the kernel source and a devx. I'll upload the kernel source now....the devx is gonna take a lil longer. but gimmie just a moment.

User avatar
Q5sys
Posts: 1105
Joined: Thu 11 Dec 2008, 19:49
Contact:

#89 Post by Q5sys »

stifiling wrote:
Q5sys wrote:Do you have a devx package built for it? Or is gcc and the required stuff already prebuilt in? Are the Kernel sources already included in the release?
i need to upload the kernel source and a devx. I'll upload the kernel source now....the devx is gonna take a lil longer. but gimmie just a moment.
Take your time... im about to go to bed. I'll try to make time tomorrow to test it.

stifiling
Posts: 388
Joined: Sun 30 Dec 2007, 03:56

#90 Post by stifiling »

i added the kernel source and devx for sensei64. also uploaded a new iso with some necessary adjustments in it.

The devx solution in Sensei and Sensei64 is different from traditional puppy. reason being is because it's using 3 sfs files and i plan on doing more sendesk.sfs files to be able to easily switch desktop environments. so to keep the system from file conflicting when the dev.sfs is loaded...i will be making the desktop dev files available via pacman.

So for a full devx solution, using the default sendesk64-xfce_001.sfs....u'd download the dev-sen64full_001.sfs and also install:

Code: Select all

pacman -S dev-sen64xfce
here's dev-sen64xfce-001-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz if you'd rather not redownload the full iso again at this moment. the way to install a local package using pacman is:

Code: Select all

pacman -U /path/to/dev-sen64xfce-001-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz
i have to make these same adjustments in the 32-bit system...so i'll be reuploading all the 32-bit files.......shortly.

jamesbond
Posts: 3433
Joined: Mon 26 Feb 2007, 05:02
Location: The Blue Marble

#91 Post by jamesbond »

Q5sys wrote:
stifiling wrote: the fatdog64 620 kernel though...a completely different ball game. In a previous thread, the argument was raised about how FatDog64 is more 'woof-like' than ArchPup was. ArchPup didn't come with rox, jwm, or the ppm...but it did come with an initrd.gz and an sfs file. FatDog64 does come with rox, jwm, and the ppm...but it doesn't come with an initrd.gz or an sfs file. So truthfully speaking, it's as far off the mark from a traditional woof-built puppy, as ArchPup was.
Slight correction, Fatdog 620, does have an SFS file... its just inside the initrd (along with the kernel sources sfs). To my knowledge Barry has never commented on 'where' the core sfs package should reside on a Puppy release. The initrd just uses xz compression vs gz compression (hence why its not initrd.gz) And to be honest, having the .gz or .xz extension isnt important. Soreally only the compression method has changed.
Thank you Q5sys for the clarification.

@stifiling,
If you need to extract the kernel from Fatdog, you can just ask rather than moan left and right about an irrelevant issue 8)
Extracting Fatdog64's kernel is easy, it especially super easy now in the latest release.
1. Get the Fatdog iso. The kernel is "vmlinuz"
2. To get the kernel modules, extract kernel-modules.sfs from Fatdog's initrd (inside the ISO). It is as easy as "cpio -i kernel-modules.sfs < /path/to/fatdog/initrd" --- kernel-modules.sfs will be extracted in the current directory. That SFS contains *all* the kernel modules and the firmware.
3. To get the kernel sources, go to http://distro.ibiblio.org/fatdog/sfs/600 and get "kernel-source-x.x.x.sfs" where x.x.x is the kernel version (currently 3.8.7).
I am not watching this thread so don't expect me to reply here. If you need further assistance you know where to contact me :wink:
Fatdog64 forum links: [url=http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=117546]Latest version[/url] | [url=https://cutt.ly/ke8sn5H]Contributed packages[/url] | [url=https://cutt.ly/se8scrb]ISO builder[/url]

stifiling
Posts: 388
Joined: Sun 30 Dec 2007, 03:56

#92 Post by stifiling »

jamesbond wrote:Thank you Q5sys for the clarification.
that's great it cleared it up for you, but it cleared up 0 for me. I mean, not even 1 little bit of anything he said....made FatDog64 more woof-like than ArchPup to me. They both have the same amount of differences, from a traditional woof-built puppy.
jamesbond wrote:@stifiling,
If you need to extract the kernel from Fatdog, you can just ask rather than moan left and right about an irrelevant issue 8)
Extracting Fatdog64's kernel is easy, it especially super easy now in the latest release.
1. Get the Fatdog iso. The kernel is "vmlinuz"
2. To get the kernel modules, extract kernel-modules.sfs from Fatdog's initrd (inside the ISO). It is as easy as "cpio -i kernel-modules.sfs < /path/to/fatdog/initrd" --- kernel-modules.sfs will be extracted in the current directory. That SFS contains *all* the kernel modules and the firmware.
3. To get the kernel sources, go to http://distro.ibiblio.org/fatdog/sfs/600 and get "kernel-source-x.x.x.sfs" where x.x.x is the kernel version (currently 3.8.7).
I am not watching this thread so don't expect me to reply here. If you need further assistance you know where to contact me :wink:
thanks for the info. because yes, when i first opened the iso i had plans to use it the way i would a traditional woof-built puppy. but the first thing i thought was "Man damn! why'd they have to change it?" thanks for not putting me through the torture of having to 'read' up on the new and 'different' FatDog64.

if the kernel i'm presently using winds up a failure, i may need your assistance. so i'm hoping i'm given a warm welcome, as would be the case if it was the other way around.

User avatar
Q5sys
Posts: 1105
Joined: Thu 11 Dec 2008, 19:49
Contact:

#93 Post by Q5sys »

stifiling wrote:
jamesbond wrote:Thank you Q5sys for the clarification.
that's great it cleared it up for you, but it cleared up 0 for me. I mean, not even 1 little bit of anything he said....made FatDog64 more woof-like than ArchPup to me. They both have the same amount of differences, from a traditional woof-built puppy.
Did I make a comment in my post about those two corrections making fatdog64 more woof-like?
No, I didnt.
I had no intention of trying to convince you of fatdog64's woof-like nature or lack there of. So please do not read into my comment that I was trying to sway your opinion on the matter.I made two simple factual corrections, nothing more.

I didnt make a comment about fatdog64 being more woof-like due to those two issues, because that's not what I wanted to discuss, nor do I think those two corrections matter in the long run. Woof-like issues only matter if something is about being an 'official' release. Otherwise it means squat. I did make comments about fatdog64's woof origins in the old ArchPup thread, because that was the topic of discussion in that thread. However that discussion is over and done with and I dont think there is any decent reason to try to go through that drama again.

I just wanted to make those two simple clarifations regarding the SFS issue in Fatdog64, and the compression method.
Neither of those comments were meant to indicate any woof-like comparisson betweedn Fatdog64 and ArchPup.

I try to be a succinct as possible on forums, and say exactly what I mean and not imply anything. Implied meaning is so easily misunderstood, that I try to eschew away from it. 99% of the time, the words I write are exactly what I mean. I didnt make a woof-like comment because I didnt think it would add to the discussion about Sensei, and because I was intentionally trying not to get into a woof-like debate.
I didnt comment on it, because I had nothing to say on that issue. So please dont read into my initial comment that I was trying to imply any woof-like behavior comparison between the two, I was simply making two simple factual corrections... nothing more.

Besides, this is a thread about your work on Sensei, Its kinda silly for us to get into a discussion about the differences of two other releases that neither of us develop. lol

Hopefully I'll be able to set aside a few hours today to play around with Sensei. Are you running your own pacman repo... or just using the official sources? If you're using the official repos, are there known conflicts that I should avoid when using pacman?

User avatar
Q5sys
Posts: 1105
Joined: Thu 11 Dec 2008, 19:49
Contact:

#94 Post by Q5sys »

stifiling wrote:@Q5sys

I'd appreciate it if you'd try it out. no, the proprietary nvidia driver hasn't been compiled for it.... I know u know a lot about 64-bit puppies. If it happens to work right on your machine, and you happen to like it....it would also be appreciated if you'd compile the nvidia driver....and upload it for us.
Well I hoped it would be a simple matter. However Sensei wont boot at all on my machine. It starts to load fine, gets to where it starts alsa, cups, etc. Then black screen, nothing else. No respsonsiveness, I cant do anything.
Since there isnt a boot splash where a user can input kernel switches... I'll have to tweak the cfg file on the cd and then burn another copy to try. In order to compile the full nvidia driver I'll need to blacklist nouveau before starting.

FYI, I run dual Quadro NVS 420 Cards in my machine... and they are normally supported by the nouveau driver; dont know what conflict there might be.

stifiling
Posts: 388
Joined: Sun 30 Dec 2007, 03:56

#95 Post by stifiling »

Thanks Q5sys...for the testing and the help. really i'd like it if u'd help me perfect the system. i'm sure the interested users would be overjoyed with that as well.

at the black screen....does ctl+alt+backspace get you to a tty prompt? i've got a script in the system...that's automatically loading 'nv' for nvidia cards....need to switch that up. but if you were to maybe edit the xorg.conf file...changing the module name from nv to nouveau....and installing:

Code: Select all

pacman -S xf86-video-nouveau
if that will get the video working. maybe even 'modprobe nouveau'.

stifiling
Posts: 388
Joined: Sun 30 Dec 2007, 03:56

#96 Post by stifiling »

Q5sys wrote:Are you running your own pacman repo... or just using the official sources? If you're using the official repos, are there known conflicts that I should avoid when using pacman?
i'm using the official arch repos. i have one set up as well but there's only a couple things in there. it's what i'm using to be able to reinstall the /usr/include dev files as well as the /usr/share/locale files from the sendesk-xfce sfs. doing it this way will keep the system from being almost 350MB...and should be a clean and neat way to get all the dev files in. there are no known file conflicts that i'm aware of.

User avatar
Q5sys
Posts: 1105
Joined: Thu 11 Dec 2008, 19:49
Contact:

#97 Post by Q5sys »

stifiling wrote:Thanks Q5sys...for the testing and the help. really i'd like it if u'd help me perfect the system. i'm sure the interested users would be overjoyed with that as well.

at the black screen....does ctl+alt+backspace get you to a tty prompt? i've got a script in the system...that's automatically loading 'nv' for nvidia cards....need to switch that up. but if you were to maybe edit the xorg.conf file...changing the module name from nv to nouveau....and installing:

Code: Select all

pacman -S xf86-video-nouveau
if that will get the video working. maybe even 'modprobe nouveau'.
Nope, couldnt drop out to shell... actually ctrl-alt-delete wouldnt work either. Had to do a hard reboot.

You have to compile the nvidia drivers from shell, so it doesnt matter what x.org has configured to use. The nouveau driver cant be loaded with the kernel at all in order to compile. You have to disable it before /etc/modprobe.d is processed.

ftp://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux ... blems.html
See Section 8.1

I'm a big arch fan... so I hope this project flourishes.

stifiling
Posts: 388
Joined: Sun 30 Dec 2007, 03:56

#98 Post by stifiling »

Q5sys wrote:Nope, couldnt drop out to shell... actually ctrl-alt-delete wouldnt work either. Had to do a hard reboot.
what if you were to just use the main.sfs....deleting the desk and apps sfs's....and trying setting it up that way? using pacman to install xorg-server...xf86-video-nouveau....and xorg-twm, xterm.....and seeing if you can get X to start...

User avatar
Q5sys
Posts: 1105
Joined: Thu 11 Dec 2008, 19:49
Contact:

#99 Post by Q5sys »

stifiling wrote:
Q5sys wrote:Nope, couldnt drop out to shell... actually ctrl-alt-delete wouldnt work either. Had to do a hard reboot.
what if you were to just use the main.sfs....deleting the desk and apps sfs's....and trying setting it up that way? using pacman to install xorg-server...xf86-video-nouveau....and xorg-twm, xterm.....and seeing if you can get X to start...
I was using the FULL ISO... I'll try the BASE ISO and go from there.

stifiling
Posts: 388
Joined: Sun 30 Dec 2007, 03:56

#100 Post by stifiling »

Q5sys wrote:
stifiling wrote:
Q5sys wrote:Nope, couldnt drop out to shell... actually ctrl-alt-delete wouldnt work either. Had to do a hard reboot.
what if you were to just use the main.sfs....deleting the desk and apps sfs's....and trying setting it up that way? using pacman to install xorg-server...xf86-video-nouveau....and xorg-twm, xterm.....and seeing if you can get X to start...
I was using the FULL ISO... I'll try the BASE ISO and go from there.
the barebones iso, has the exact same sensei64-001.sfs. if u have the full...the barebones isn't needed.

Post Reply