Quirky Xerus 8.1.4 for Raspberry Pi2 and 3

[TeX Dog]

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WARNING: You are going to run omxplayer with -r/--refresh and you don't have xset and xrefresh installed (x11-xserver-utils package on Debian/Raspbian), this can cause black screen when it finishes playing.
Press any key to continue or Ctrl-C to quit.
# 

That seems like a helpful msg. are those packages easy to get? -- YES used package manger found them with x11- search and also found ace-of-Penguins games

Video playback fixed. FINALLY

[pakt]

pakt,
If you have your 8192cu dongle handy, would you mind trying this?
You would have to do a reboot, or reload the module.

I have a rtl8192cu USB adaptor that would load but not make a connection
in version 8.1.1 . I will try your fix and see if a connection can be made.

Oh, I have just realised that fix won't work, as the Pi kernel does not have the rtl8192cu.ko module.

Didn't work for me either, then I saw the page you referred to had rtl8192cu.ko instead of Quirky's 8192cu.ko module. That explained why dmesg reported

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[   10.254374] 8192cu: unknown parameter 'swenc' ignored

I spent some time trying to get my head around this wlan code, but didn't get very far with that

I get the feeling the problem lies with wpa_supplicant somehow. I found the repetition in wpa_profiles/EC:08:6B:XX:XX:XX.WPA2.conf
suspicious (in case it's not apparent, I've modified the strings )

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ctrl_interface=/var/run/wpa_supplicant
ap_scan=1
update_config=1

network={
	ssid="my_ap_ssid"
	scan_ssid=1
					#psk="my_wpa2_password"
	psk=acb4b6236c1068213c4babc38633fb13822bf9c8fe08040fbff1b22bf9c8fe08
	#psk="my_wpa2_password"
	psk=acb4b6236c1068213c4babc38633fb13822bf9c8fe08040fbff1b22bf9c8fe08
		#psk="my_wpa2_password"
	psk=acb4b6236c1068213c4babc38633fb13822bf9c8fe08040fbff1b22bf9c8fe08
	#psk="my_wpa2_password"
	psk=acb4b6236c1068213c4babc38633fb13822bf9c8fe08040fbff1b22bf9c8fe08
			#psk="my_wpa2_password"
	psk=acb4b6236c1068213c4babc38633fb13822bf9c8fe08040fbff1b22bf9c8fe08
	#psk="my_wpa2_password"
	psk=acb4b6236c1068213c4babc38633fb13822bf9c8fe08040fbff1b22bf9c8fe08
		#psk="my_wpa2_password"
	psk=acb4b6236c1068213c4babc38633fb13822bf9c8fe08040fbff1b22bf9c8fe08
	#psk="my_wpa2_password"
	psk=acb4b6236c1068213c4babc38633fb13822bf9c8fe08040fbff1b22bf9c8fe08
				#psk="my_wpa2_password"
	psk=acb4b6236c1068213c4babc38633fb13822bf9c8fe08040fbff1b22bf9c8fe08
	#psk="my_wpa2_password"
	psk=acb4b6236c1068213c4babc38633fb13822bf9c8fe08040fbff1b22bf9c8fe08
		#psk="my_wpa2_password"
	psk=acb4b6236c1068213c4babc38633fb13822bf9c8fe08040fbff1b22bf9c8fe08
	#psk="my_wpa2_password"
	psk=acb4b6236c1068213c4babc38633fb13822bf9c8fe08040fbff1b22bf9c8fe08
			#psk="my_wpa2_password"
	psk=acb4b6236c1068213c4babc38633fb13822bf9c8fe08040fbff1b22bf9c8fe08
	#psk="my_wpa2_password"
	psk=acb4b6236c1068213c4babc38633fb13822bf9c8fe08040fbff1b22bf9c8fe08
		#psk="my_wpa2_password"
	psk=acb4b6236c1068213c4babc38633fb13822bf9c8fe08040fbff1b22bf9c8fe08
	#psk="my_wpa2_password"
	psk=acb4b6236c1068213c4babc38633fb13822bf9c8fe08040fbff1b22bf9c8fe08
	proto=WPA2
	key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
	pairwise=CCMP TKIP
	group=CCMP TKIP
}

Oh, yes, I was going to add some details of the Wi-Fi dongle I was testing:

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[    2.778054] usb 1-1.2: New USB device found, idVendor=0bda, idProduct=8178
[    2.778083] usb 1-1.2: Product: 802.11n WLAN Adapter
[    2.778095] usb 1-1.2: Manufacturer: Realtek

It has the same Vendor / Product as the TP-LINK TL-WN823N v1

[minimalist]

Hi guys,
I am considering getting a Pi3 and running Quirky Xerus 8.1.2. Are Seamonkey for browsing and email and Abiword for simple WP acceptably fast for home use? How about the ROX filer file manager? I am using CAT5 cable, not WiFi and don't do sound/video streaming.

Thanks,
Santa Claus

[TeX Dog]

@minimalist more than capable, QX has been the fastest RPi3 OS so far speedwise. However you may need to ask about printing, does come with fully LibreOffice suite. Abiword has been crashing / compile issues so most are avoiding it for the time being.

[TeX Dog]

...

I wonder if bluetooth works from inside that metal case?

Yes only has to go about 6 ft no walls and floors like the WiFi. but my combo blue-tooth keyboard ( best I owned so far, have a few horrible first gen stuff ) doesn't get accepted by the QX wizard. it sees it as keyboard, but aborts early, newer FatDog64 sees it and understands it as a touchpad/keyboard no codes needed just accept pairing.

[TeX Dog]

That Puppy Package Manager has lots of linux games, also installed a ray tracing program. ( give the metal case a heat sink workout ) pingus works, got ScummVM, super Tux, superKart.(massively large???).

[Sage]

Some users seem to be amassing quite large total file counts? What is the preferred strategy? SD card boot, expensive 128Gb SD card for boot and storage, (USB boot?), USB stick storage, external USB HD storage, ssd ditto?
How reliable is SD long term? USB sticks have had a chequered history over lifetime and write/rewrtie limitations? Not sure ssd s are completely exonerated either and still vastly overpriced, although relatively low power consumption relative to their capacity. Experience suggests that (mobile) USB HD s are now reliable with mtbf matching expected lifetime of the many long-term supported distros, notwithstanding they are old technology involving moving parts.
Would welcome advice and suggestions, please.

[pakt]

I wonder if bluetooth works from inside that metal case?

Quite well, surprisingly. The antenna in the die-cast case even picked up a BT speaker I had across the room, about 3 m (~10 ft) away.

The case has narrow cutouts for cables (GPIO, camera, etc) and I would think that the radio signals easily pass through these openings, although not evenly in all directions.

[pakt]

EDIT: An important note regarding the stress tests made below. The Raspberry Pi 3 runs in a Powersaving mode by default. With the Pi3 in this mode, the CPU is only running at 600MHz and running the stress test will result in a deceptively low final temperature.

To check the power mode the CPU is running, in a terminal, run this command:

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cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_governor

By default, it should report:

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powersave

The CPU is only running at max 600 MHz!
To get the correct results for the stress test, run this command:

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echo performance > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_governor

Checking again:

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cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_governor

It should now report:

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performance

The Pi3's CPU is now running at a constant 1.2 GHz

END EDIT

I've been thinking about the stress test I made earlier that surpisingly showed that the passively-cooled metal case kept the SoC temperature significantly lower than when the SoC was cooled with a large heatsink and fan.

What I forgot about, and that which is not seen in the product photos, is that the bottom half of the case has a large slug that lines up with the RAM chip attached to the bottom of the Pi2 & Pi3 boards.

The effect is that when the screws that hold the case together are tightened, the metal 'posts' on the top half and the slug on the bottom half (marked by red ovals in the attached image) pinch the board quite hard.

The bottom slug is in close contact with the large metal mass of the case, so it would probably carry away most of the heat from the board.

All this is assuming a thin layer of some kind of thermal padding (dough) is placed between the metal and the chips they're aligned with. The top surfaces of the metal posts and slug are not even - no machining done here, just the limitations of die-casting. So some kind of thermal gap 'filler' is needed.

I'm including the chart I posted earlier with temperature readings using the same script ExplainingComputers ran. The 1st & 2nd columns are from the tests done by ExplainingComputers (@ 22 C room temp). The 3rd column has the readings I made from the metal case (@ 20 C room temp).

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Heatsink only  Solution w/heatsink & fan  Geekworm case only (NO FAN)
-------------  -------------------------  ---------------------------
temp= 43.5 C	temp= 40.2 C               temp= 39.7 C
temp= 70.9 C	temp= 59.1 C               temp= 47.8 C
temp= 76.8 C	temp= 59.1 C               temp= 48.3 C
temp= 78.4 C	temp= 59.6 C               temp= 49.4 C
temp= 80.1 C	temp= 60.7 C               temp= 49.4 C
temp= 80.6 C	temp= 60.7 C               temp= 50.5 C
                                          temp= 50.5 C
                                          temp= 50.5 C
                                          temp= 50.5 C
                                          temp= 51.5 C
                                          temp= 51.0 C

Note that I ran the stress test twice as long (10 iterations instead of 5) to offset the thermal buffering effect of the metal case.

The chart clearly shows the slower temperature rise with the Pi3 in a metal case, the case acting as a thermal buffer, warming up more slowly.

I've attached a couple of photos I made that show the 3 contact points of the metal case.

[TeX Dog]

@sage the cmdline.txt file can be edited like this

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dwc_otg.lpm_enable=0 console=tty1 root=/dev/sda3 rootfstype=ext4 elevator=deadline rootwait quiet splash ramdisk_size=32768

To use a usb harddrive /dev/sda3 as its root / this keeps the problems down. sdcards are still very expensive per M. in my setup do a bunch of testing then write to sdcard after getting it comfy. do wish kparted came in QX so I can pull apart the image file. Hem wonder if its in package manager, found a race car simulator with openGL took hour to download! and it ran SO slowly..

[Sage]

Yes, pakt, that's all very fine, but I suggest you adopt a more rigorous engineering approach! Those pillars look as if they're 'as-cast'. Risky as they could penetrate that appalling plastic material you insist on using. Need to file the high spots machine-flat. Insert aluminium shims between your chip surfaces and pillar-top-shim combo using silver-loaded dag between all surfaces. You may need to use engineers' blue in try-out mode to align for position and thickness + pressure.
Overall, this is not a good configuration. Why do you want to put the little board in a case? Just screw it onto a piece of old melamine chipboard and leave it in free air - it won't hurt the dog, it only runs at 5V! You might get better cooling just by screwing an old PSU fan at right-angles at one end of the board to flow a faster airstream across the whole device. It really isn't rocket science; you can rely on manufacturers to come up with neat boxes for just about anything if there's a profit to be made.
Will try to post picture - didn't work last time! You've got it by PM! -tried twice more!!
Thanks TXD for your comments.

[TeX Dog]

he wanted soundless, however a tester tried just a fan in a case ( no heatsinks )and got good results just a C or so above with heatsinks, what is your take on newest ceramic heat sinks? Wonder if they make small squirrel fans, they are extra quiet.

[Sage]

It's very difficult to have quiet and airflow, (cf. the jet engine!) Always compromises. Newer PSU s have bigger 4" or 5" fans which shift more air but a lower speed, less noise. With ducting and padding miracles may be possible but you may need to move into the shed.
Ceramic HS is an oxymoron - everyone knows silver is the best conductor, although copper is a close second (and copper dag used in motor engineering is readily available from motor factors and much cheaper).

[daturach]

Hello

I just installed the distro (8.1.2). Excellent
I added Dropbear. I can connect with Putty, WinSCP and from Ubuntu running in VirtualBox.

One comment: is it possible to add a Swiss French keyboard in the keyboard list (Quick Setup)?
In the meantime, I updated the file 10-evdev-puppy.conf (in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d):

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        Option      "XkbRules" "xorg"
        Option      "XkbModel" "pc102" #xkbmodel0
	Option      "XkbLayout" "ch" #xkeymap0
        #Option      "XkbVariant" "fr" #xkbvariant0

Thanks

Walter

[don570]

to daturach
I came across this tip in forum. I need to test it.

for 2 layouts: ch de / ch fr pressing Alt Shift keys at the same time

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 640#500640

________________________________________

[don570]

I've successfully installed x11vnc. It has the advantage that a document
can be edited simutaneously on two machines --->
the raspberry pi and another linux machine. (I use fatdog 710 64 bit)

x11vnc allows one to view remotely and interact with real X displays (i.e. a display corresponding to a physical monitor, keyboard, and mouse) with any VNC viewer. In this way it plays the role for Unix/X11 that WinVNC plays for Windows.

http://www.mydrive.ch

USER: porteus@don570
Password: porteus

x11vnc-v7-0.9.13.pet

_______________________________________________

Instructions:

1)install pet on raspberry pi
The other computer must have a vnc viewer
2) I suggest turning off firewall so that port 5900 will be default.

3)on raspberry pi you type 'x11vnc' in terminal
(Alternative: Type 'x11vnc -ncache 10' for more speed )
Instructions will be printed. The port that is used by x11vnc will be printed.
This is very important!! It is possible to have a password as well. Read instructions.

4) in other linux computer launch your vnc viewer app
and type

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192.168.1.103:5900

where 192.168.1.103 is your raspberry pi network address
and 5900 is the port number. This is my situation. Yours will be different

______________________________________________________

One problem that I noticed is that my scroll-up and down keys don't work and my numpad doesn't work.

________________________________________

[BarryK]

Here it is finally, a Service Pack, to upgrade 8.1.2 to 8.1.3:

http://barryk.org/news/?viewDetailed=00458

It is a bit "big" at 20.3MB, however that is because it has a new Linux kernel, up from 4.4.19 to 4.4.34.

Up until now, I was using a precompiled kernel, but yesterday I downloaded the source and compiled it.

...um, I had better post the details on my blog, that is, how I compiled it.

[BarryK]

Have documented how the 4.4.34 kernel was compiled:

http://barryk.org/news/?viewDetailed=00459

There is a kernel source PET, so now anyone who wants to compile a 3rd-party driver can do so.

[TeX Dog]

lost mouse control (non-functioning) after upgrade. On first reboot had a number of missing lib warnings. On a different version QX so if log files exist in broken updated version I can post them if you can tell me where those exist.
I used puppy package manager and updated for repos first. Also added a bunch of other stuff ( still working ok )prior to update if that could be an issue.
Backup first!

[technosaurus]

@Barry (and others) When you post links on your blog to a section of a thread, it would be helpful if you linked to the post (http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 824#933824
) instead of the page number which is completely useless if your profile is set to display most recent posts first.

Currently the following (intentionally unlinked) link takes me to the first post:
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... &start=390
in a day or so it will be the second page and a week or so later - who knows

You can get it from the little paper icon next to "Posted:" in the top left section of each post.... Bonus it will go to the exact post so no one has to go searching that page for it even if it is the right page.