Fatdog64-630 & 631 Final (May 12 2014)

[joaomcteixeira]

Hi there,

a naive question:

why is that fatdog continuously runs kswap0 (consumes 25% of my CPU) and puppy linux precise does not?

is there any way to disable this process? can that even be done?

I am using Folding@Home in FatDog with 3 cores performing continuously. With kswap0 consuming also the remaining core.. things go a bit slowly sometimes and CPUs heat up ...

regards

[kirk]

why is that fatdog continuously runs kswap0 (consumes 25% of my CPU)

I don't have that. Is there some sequence of events that will trigger that for you or does it do it all the time and immediately after booting? Hmm...there does seem to be a lot of google hits for that.

Has anybody tried to get Pipelight working in any puppies?

First I've heard of it. I'll take a look.

get the same result as you. I never get "resume" to work with my radeon-based laptop. Kirk has been more successful with Intel graphics. I don't have a solution here unless you can point out a version of Puppy (Slacko, Dpup or whatever) that has the suspend feature working for you; and perhaps we can apply the lesson from them.

FD600 works fine, for example Wink And did from the ground up. Same machine.

This is usually a kernel bug in one module. If you can find which module is causing it to hang then you might be able to unload the module before suspend and reload after. The script to modify would be /etc/acpi/actions/suspend.sh. You might get some clues by looking in /var/log/messages.old after you reboot. If it's radeon hanging it, you're probably out of luck.

[Billtoo]

Installed to a 16gb SDHC card, computer is a lenovo ThinkCentre.

video-info-glx 1.5.3 Fri 14 Feb 2014 on Fatdog64 630 Linux 3.12.9 x86_64
0.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation GT216 [GeForce GT 220] (rev a2)
oem: NVIDIA
product: GT216 Board - 0682vb12 Chip Rev

X Server: Xorg Driver: nvidia
X.Org version: 1.15.0
dimensions: 1920x1080 pixels (524x292 millimeters)
depth of root window: 24 planes

direct rendering: Yes
server glx vendor string: NVIDIA Corporation
server glx version string: 1.4
OpenGL vendor string: NVIDIA Corporation
OpenGL renderer string: GeForce GT 220/PCIe/SSE2
OpenGL core profile version string: 3.3.0 NVIDIA 304.119

Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU E8400 @ 3.00GHz
Core 0: @2003 1: @2003 MHz

So far so good, I got the proprietary nvidia driver installed.

[Ted Dog]

there is a issue with icon on last partion on a usb flashdrive (quirky6 tahr on flfs ) flashes on off continues til reboot not happens everytime..Also a modprobe for a pci:?????????? errors out repeatively. Shows up on full terminal during shutdown.
Tested 621 with all ati extra drivers and all had issue and turns out newer 630 works better then past and next kernel number is said to fix speed with ATI to unheard of levels without anyone able to figure why.

[prehistoric]

I've switched to frame buffer graphics on this machine with embedded Nvidia video. I never could avoid either video hangs on some boots or having the cursor disappear after some hours. A compiled Nvidia driver would be nice.

When I tried the screensaver option on the desktop, it said it was already set to 600 seconds, and blanking by turning the display off, but this never happened. Tried to turn it off and back on, in hopes this would trigger an event which would start it working, but nothing happened.

My post about the missing message in the package manager may have been in error because I was testing on different displays. It is possible my edit changed the format so that the file name was visible, when it was previously too long to show because of initial whitespace.

I confess I was quite happy with the ugly but informative command line window in Puppy package managers, so I may be prejudiced.

[Billtoo]

Installed to a 16gb usb 3.0 flash drive, computer is an Acer laptop.

video-info-glx 1.5.3 Sat 15 Feb 2014 on Fatdog64 630 Linux 3.12.9 x86_64
2.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Device 0166 (rev 09)
oem: Intel(R) Sandybridge/Ivybridge Graphics Chipset Accelerated VGA BIOS
product: Intel(R) Sandybridge/Ivybridge Graphics Controller Hardware Version 0.0
X Server: Xorg Driver: intel
X.Org version: 1.15.0
dimensions: 1366x768 pixels (361x203 millimeters)
depth of root window: 24 planes
direct rendering: Yes
server glx vendor string: SGI
server glx version string: 1.4
OpenGL vendor string: Intel Open Source Technology Center
OpenGL renderer string: Mesa DRI Intel(R) Ivybridge Mobile
OpenGL core profile version string: 3.3 (Core Profile) Mesa 10.0.3

Working well.

[don570]

Nice feature of Fatdog is built in wacom tablet driver
that works out of the box

Just plug in tablet and set the mtPaint preference
stylus to screen etc.

Tick the opacity etc boxes
__________________________________________

[prehistoric]

@don570,

Nice, now all I need is desk space for that 18"X12" tablet.

----

Minor problem: when I click download arrow on the Nightly toolbar, and ask to open the Download folder, I get three windows. Can anyone guess why?

Positive note: no more video problems while using FB driver.

Never had problems on the machine with Intel graphics.

[jamesbond]

@don570,

Nice, now all I need is desk space for that 18"X12" tablet.

----

Minor problem: when I click download arrow on the Nightly toolbar, and ask to open the Download folder, I get three windows. Can anyone guess why?

Positive note: no more video problems while using FB driver.

Never had problems on the machine with Intel graphics.

Prehistoric, I posted nvidia drivers - nvidia-legacy and nvidia. I tested nvidia-legacy, it worked (ie it boots and youtube plays fine). I see that Billtoo has compiled his own nvidia drivers (the legacy version) and it also works fine. I don't, however, have any hardware to test the new nvidia driver, so YMMV. They are in the FPM (or you download directly from ibiblio/nluug as usual).

FD600 works fine, for example Wink And did from the ground up. Same machine.

Not fair ! FD600 is using (by today's standards) ancient kernel; a lot have changed between then and now. You need to find an example that works with a recent kernel. As kirk said, it's probably one of the kernel modules.

After having installed some KDE Science Apps (including, of course, KDE...) with just a few clicks in slacko, I was wondering, if there might be some automated process in FD, too.

No, sorry, because nobody has compiled (either from scratch or from other distros) KDE and KDE related apps yet ... I missed stellarium too.

[Fabio T]

Version 630 final works well, it is easy to fix all little bugs in it.

I like very much the option of filesave not packed in .sfs file (no risk to hang system when install a large package).

I would to list some little problems:

-QuickApps link that is in root directory don't works. Fix is to create a link with fatdog-quickapps.sh in this directory but without delete QuicKApps directory otherwise link no longer works;

-Bluetooth finally works out of the box (in FatDog64 630 RC2 it was necessary to create a little script in directory Startup that starts bluetooth service) but BlueTooth icon in taskbar after a few reboots is disappearing... perhaps conflict with an .SFS?

-The more annoying problem is losting of configuration of wireless Wi-Fi network: I must enter at EVERY REBOOT the configuration in net-setup.sh and after i must launch Puppy Network Wizard and to set same parameters to obtain Wi-Fi working.

I have a hidden network with restricted access (MAC) and WPA2 encryption (it was recognized as a WPA). but unfortunally, wpa_gui and Puppy Network Wizard work better in FatDog 630 RC2 (I don't like net-setup.sh)

I would to get rid of wpa_gui and net-setup.-sh: there is a chance to obtain a copy of Frisbee (It works fantastically to me in LightHouse)?

Thanx

Fabio

[prehistoric]

...
Prehistoric, I posted nvidia drivers - nvidia-legacy and nvidia. I tested nvidia-legacy, it worked (ie it boots and youtube plays fine). I see that Billtoo has compiled his own nvidia drivers (the legacy version) and it also works fine. I don't, however, have any hardware to test the new nvidia driver, so YMMV. They are in the FPM (or you download directly from ibiblio/nluug as usual).

I had misunderstood that 630 was not compatible with those drivers. I'll try and report results.

[chiron²]

FD600 works fine, for example Wink And did from the ground up. Same machine.

Not fair ! FD600 is using (by today's standards) ancient kernel; a lot have changed between then and now. You need to find an example that works with a recent kernel. As kirk said, it's probably one of the kernel modules.

Slacko64 should be recent enough? It needs the power button to wake up after suspend to ram, but does not crash.

But I figure it's the AMD/ATI graphics, and I don't have enough insight to fiddle around in that area.

[jamesbond]

...
Prehistoric, I posted nvidia drivers - nvidia-legacy and nvidia. I tested nvidia-legacy, it worked (ie it boots and youtube plays fine). I see that Billtoo has compiled his own nvidia drivers (the legacy version) and it also works fine. I don't, however, have any hardware to test the new nvidia driver, so YMMV. They are in the FPM (or you download directly from ibiblio/nluug as usual).

I had misunderstood that 630 was not compatible with those drivers. I'll try and report results.

The old ones didn't - I have posted them just yesterday. Look for the ones that say they are for kernel 3.12.9.

Slacko64 should be recent enough? It needs the power button to wake up after suspend to ram, but does not crash.

It does. If that works for you (ie no blank screen), then let me take a look. If I can make it resume from suspend with working screen on my laptop, I'll see what I can do. If it doesn't ... well ...

[Ted Dog]

I have built kernels in the past but never for 64bit or Fatdog64. Are there any gotchas I need to be warned about?
The next higher kernel than the one in Fatdog64 has been shown to greatly improve ATI speed. So I would like to try compiling and since its near enough to current that it should be no major config file changes..

[kirk]

If that works for you (ie no blank screen), then let me take a look. If I can make it resume from suspend with working screen on my laptop, I'll see what I can do. If it doesn't ... well ... Cool

It's possible I've configured something wrong with Radeon as far as suspending goes, but I don't know what it might be. I did some googling, it seems sometimes the back-light doesn't come back on. The test for that seems to be plugging in an external monitor and then trying to suspend and resume. I don't think the external monitor's back light is controlled by the laptop. There's a thread here:

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-9 ... 51eb483aef

And they mention that along with something called radeontool that lets you turn the back light on/off among other things. The usage is:

Code: Select all

usage: radeontool [options] [command]
         --debug            - show a little debug info
         --skip=1           - use the second radeon card
         dac [on|off]       - power down the external video outputs
         light [on|off]     - power down the backlight
         stretch [on|off|vert|horiz|auto|manual]   - stretching for resolution mismatch 
         regs               - show a listing of some random registers
         regmatch <pattern> - show registers matching wildcard pattern
         regset <pattern> <value> - set registers matching wildcard pattern

I've compiled from git and attached the tool. If an external monitor works, you might want to try installing this pet and modifying /etc/acpi/actions/suspend.sh. Look at about line 54 and try something like this:

Code: Select all

# stop networking
/etc/rc.d/rc.network stop
kill -9 $(pidof wpa_cli)
killall dhcpcd-wpagui
killall dhcpcd
killall wpa_supplicant
radeontool light off  #This line added for radeon problem

#suspend
echo mem > /sys/power/state 

# wakeup - restart network
modprobe ehci_hcd
/etc/rc.d/rc.network
/etc/init.d/50-Wpagui start
radeontool light on  #This line added for radeon problem

I have built kernels in the past but never for 64bit or Fatdog64. Are there any gotchas I need to be warned about?
The next higher kernel than the one in Fatdog64 has been shown to greatly improve ATI speed. So I would like to try compiling and since its near enough to current that it should be no major config file changes..

I've attached the kernel instructions. They might not be completely up to date, but I looked over them quickly and they seem OK. You probably don't need to build AUFS utils unless you use hard links. If you do want to build them, you can just build them gcc. They'll be a lot bigger, but that's easier.

You'll also need the kernel configuration. Copy /proc/config.gz somewhere and uncompress it. For 3.12 we also patched in the squashfs parallel decompression patches and patches for making user name spaces work with xfs. I know the squashfs patches made it into 3.13, not sure about the name space patches. That might not matter to you anyway. When you run make oldconfig you'll probably want to look here: http://cateee.net/lkddb/web-lkddb/ for help with the new options.

[p310don]

I'm a little confused by the VDPAU thing with Fatdog.

VDPAU is included and enabled apparently. Sounds great. Then the media player is VLC 2.0.8a. VLC has hardware decoding from 2.1 onwards.

Am I missing something? But does Fatdog have a media feature included that the media player can't use?

[kirk]

Am I missing something?

Yep. VDPAU isn't just for media players. VLC2.1 exposes a bug in the version of glibc that Fatdog64-630 uses. So no VLC2.1, well unless you don't need streaming to work.. One of the reasons that this is the last of the 600 series. Not getting VLC2.1 to work was a real bummer.

Quote:
Has anybody tried to get Pipelight working in any puppies?


First I've heard of it. I'll take a look.

Depends on Wine, so I'm not sure what the point would be. Maybe a Windows browser running under Wine can't run Silverlight?

[p310don]

Yep. VDPAU isn't just for media players.

I guess I'm still missing something then? Trying to learn now, can you expand on what it's function is in Fatdog?

[Ted Dog]

turns out I was mistaken. The current kernel is the one with the ATI speed improvements..
Great now nothing can be done to improve speed of ATI it was ALMOST fast enough to watch HD videos without proprietary drivers... but that one crashes..
Thanks for the info. will compile Apple modules instead.

[kirk]

turns out I was mistaken. The current kernel is the one with the ATI speed improvements.. Embarassed
Great now nothing can be done to improve speed of ATI it was ALMOST fast enough to watch HD videos without proprietary drivers... but that one crashes..

The open source driver has always had better 2d acceleration than Catalyst for my card.

I'll package Catalyst 13.1 along with Xorg-server-1.12.4. It might take a few days before I get the time to do it. Xorg-server is pretty small compared to Catalyst and AMD/ATI takes forever to catch up