XenialDog 64bit (Ubuntu 'Xenial Xerus' LTS, 64-bit)

[rufwoof]

The frugal Installations let you easily Backup and /or Restore your System in a Blink of the Eye.
Dont know if one do oneself a favor using Full Install .
Maybe there are Arguments for it .......would be interested .

The "frugal Concept " and " Saving on Demand " makes , in my Opinion ,the "Dogs " and Puppies so outstanding......and that`s why i am using and prefer them over Full Install.

I use grub4dos to boot and a single ext3 partition that I backup/restore using mksquashfs and unsquashfs to/from another ext3 partition. IME, backup's of full or frugal aren't that much different if you use a high speed compression method such as lz4.

Mostly I boot frugal using a partition save space (same partition as where the main sfs is). But create that frugal from a full install (that menu.lst chains to for booting purposes). So I can transition from frugal to full and vice-versa easily

cd /live
mksquashfs /mnt/sda1 filesystem.squashfs -e live

type process (when the main sfs is being stored in /live folder) to create a frugal from the full.

cd /live
unsquashfs -f -d /mnt/sda1 filesystem.squashfs

to extract the frugal sfs and make it a full boot type style again.

For my frugal boot I just have /home as being persistent (so a bit more complicated than the above) so that diary, browser, personal system configuration ...etc are preserved. I tend to only boot full style in order to apply system updates/security patches.

Using a frugal image of a full install from a top of tree provider (Debian in my case) provides the best of both worlds. A good level of security and program updates, Puppy like operation/desktop (frugal).

I moved over to that choice after DebianDog fell flat on its face. Dependency upon developers/security updates that potentially might vanish overnight. Not as lean as puppy, but by the time you add in all of the additional sfs's puppy requires to create a similar system (including kodi, libre office, video editing ...etc), and the difference isn't that much given the current capacities and inexpensive cost of large size HDD's. In a 2GB ram system I notice little difference in operational speed compared to even the lightest of puppies ... both tend to end up being ram resident one way or another such that speeds are comparable. The main differences are in the early minutes depending upon how programs become memory resident (perhaps loaded at bootup in which case boot up is slower, or on a program by program basis (program slower to load the first time its run than if already memory resident)). Overall IME that tends to wash (comparable overall operational speed when measured on a like for like basis).

[Doglover]

Rufwoof.....

I do not have mtpaint installed in Zesty. Where can I find it?

Edit Never mind found it

[rufwoof]

Rufwoof.....

I do not have mtpaint installed in Zesty. Where can I find it?

Edit Never mind found it

I use mtpaint mostly for desktop snaps and resizing of those.

Select a area using the mouse and then Image, Crop.

And/or Image, Scale Canvas and enter a size of 600 (as per posting to forums) for the New Width, automatically adjusts the Height by default (Fix Aspect Ratio checked).

I don't tend to use it for much else as it doesn't come intuitively to me. For drawing I tend to use LibreOffice.

[Doglover]

Hi all....
Here are some screenshots. I am also looking for an utility to monitor writes to the usb drive in realtime.

[Doglover]

PS....

This is The Flying Cat's 400mb version of Zesty, still with Xenial tags. I could not get Fred's version of Zesty to boot.

Very fast and sweet.

[Doglover]

Here is the menu.lst.

I made a squash.fs using the remaster dog. It is 1.3 gb. I would like to share it, but do not know where to upload.

[rufwoof]

Fresh frugal install to my sda2 into /casper folder i.e. copied the /casper folder from the iso to HDD.

Grub4dos menu.lst entry added to save on exit (Porteus boot style)

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title XenialDog
find --set-root /casper/vmlinuz
kernel /casper/vmlinuz from=/ changes=EXIT:/casper/
initrd /casper/initrd1.xz

Booted to black screen (nvidia card and TV as monitor). Had to create an appropriate xorg.conf file in /casper/changes/etc/X11/xorg.conf before it would boot (nomodeset and/or modeset=0 kernel boot parameters didn't resolve the problem). My hardware specific xorg.conf being

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Section "Monitor"
   Identifier   "DVI-I-2"
   VendorName   "Monitor Vendor"
   ModelName    "Monitor Model"
Modeline "1280x720_60.00"   74.50  1280 1344 1472 1664  720 723 728 748 -hsync +vsync
   Option "PreferredMode" "1280x720_60.00"
EndSection

Ran apt-get update;apt-get upgrade
Removed Firefox 27 (portable) and installed the latest version.
Installed pulseaudio and pavucontrol, along with libreoffice.

Having some problems with screen centralisation (a common problem for my setup), tends to jig and then latch to a partially offscreen/off-centre display position. To avoid having to reach for the TV remote to do a Position menu based adjustment I've added a script in ~/Startup that both starts pulse audio and adjusts the screen resolution from one choice and back to the preferred choice ... which tends to result in the display being correctly positioned afterwards.

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#!/bin/bash

pulseaudio --start &
sleep 10
xrandr --output DVI-I-2 --mode 1280x768 --output DVI-I-1 --off
sleep 2
xrandr --output DVI-I-2 --mode 1280x720_60.00 --rate 59.86 --output DVI-I-1 --off 

Tried the upgrade kernel and it worked really well (reverted back to the original kernel version however purely as a personal choice).

I didn't bother downloading the locales sfs and instead just installed it from the main repositories (apt-get install locales). Did dpkg-reconfigure locales to set up a UK choice. Also set the timezone and keyboard configuration using the Xenialdog provided menu options.

My changes folder has expanded heavily out to around 1.7GB and some of the saves did take quite a while to run through (several minutes). Not surprising because I did install a load of KDE files as per a earlier posting in order to get pulseaudio working.

I've opted for the lxpanel bottom panel and pcmanfm doing the deskop icons desktop choice. Conky is showing script text for external network rather than the intended output of that script. Looks as thought that might be down to java/javascript (clickable thumbnail)


I am seeing some red text error messages flashing by on shutdown. Looks like something to do with being unable to unmount /mnt/live ... type folders/mounts. Those error reports don't seem to be causing any problems however.

A really feature and configuration rich Dog. Fantastic masterpiece Fred.

[fredx181]

Thanks rufwoof !!

Code: Select all

Booted to black screen (nvidia card and TV as monitor). Had to create an appropriate xorg.conf file in /casper/changes/etc/X11/xorg.conf before it would boot (nomodeset and/or modeset=0 kernel boot parameters didn't resolve the problem). My hardware specific xorg.conf being
Code:	
Section "Monitor"
   Identifier   "DVI-I-2"
   VendorName   "Monitor Vendor"
   ModelName    "Monitor Model"
Modeline "1280x720_60.00"   74.50  1280 1344 1472 1664  720 723 728 748 -hsync +vsync
   Option "PreferredMode" "1280x720_60.00"
EndSection	

I would like to add a link to your post (for those having the same problem with a nvidia card) but I guess your xorg.conf is hardware specific.

Would you mind writing a small howto of what you did ? (e.g. identifying monitor etc...)
Then I will add link to that in the second post (I cannot test or reproduce and don't know much about these things)

@ All: the conky config files need a fix for the "NET: EXT:" display (website "http://ip.tupeux.com" for to show IP is down, probably forever)
Extract the attached archive "xenialdog-conky-fix.tar.gz", then open folder "xenialdog-conky-fix" and copy the files .conkyrc-live and .conkyrc-port to /root (overwrite existing)
Or: if you don't need the "NET: EXT:" display just delete only this string in the existing conkyrc-.. files:

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${color grey}NET: EXT: ${alignr}  ${execi 3600 wget -O - http://ip.tupeux.com | tail}

(but make sure to leave "${if_up eth0}" (don't delete) on that line.

Added to Changes and Fixes List (7)

Fred

[rufwoof]

Would you mind writing a small howto of what you did ? (e.g. identifying monitor etc...)

I have my TV that I use as a monitor plugged into a nvidia cards DVI port. I did try connecting the TV to the PC via a HDMI cable some time back, but the quality seemed to be lower than when using the DVI port connection.

For me, running xrandr on another working Puppy/dog produces a list of the cards and available modes. From experience I know that the TV that I use as a monitor is plugged into the second choice of DVI port, that xrandr identifies as being named DVI-I-2.

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root@xenial64:~# xrandr
Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1280 x 720, maximum 8192 x 8192
DVI-I-1 connected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
   1024x768      60.04    60.00  
   960x720       60.00  
   928x696       60.05  
   896x672       60.01  
   960x600       60.00  
   960x540       59.99  
   800x600       60.00    60.32    56.25  
   840x525       60.01    59.88  
   800x512       60.17  
   848x480       60.00  
   700x525       59.98  
   640x512       60.02  
   720x450       59.89  
   640x480       60.00    59.94  
   680x384       59.80    59.96  
   576x432       60.06  
   512x384       60.00  
   400x300       60.32    56.34  
   320x240       60.05  
DVI-I-2 connected 1280x720+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 1920mm x 1080mm
   1280x720_60.00  59.86*+
   1920x1080     50.00 +
   1680x1050     74.89    69.88    59.95    59.88  
   1600x1024     60.17  
   1400x1050     74.76    70.00    59.98  
   1280x1024     75.02    60.02  
   1440x900      59.89  
   1280x960      60.00  
   1360x768      59.80    59.96  
   1152x864      75.00    75.00    70.00    60.00  
   1280x768      59.87  
   1024x768      75.05    60.04    75.08    75.03    70.07    60.00  
   960x720       75.00    60.00  
   928x696       75.00    60.05  
   896x672       75.05    60.01  
   960x600       60.00  
   832x624       74.55  
   960x540       59.99  
   800x600       75.00    70.00    65.00    60.00    72.19    75.00    60.32    56.25  
   840x525       74.96    69.88    60.01    59.88  
   800x512       60.17  
   700x525       74.76    70.06    59.98  
   640x512       75.02    60.02  
   720x450       59.89  
   640x480       60.00    75.00    72.81    72.81    75.00    60.00    59.94  
   720x400       70.08  
   680x384       59.80    59.96  
   576x432       75.00    75.00    70.00    60.06  
   512x384       75.03    70.07    60.00  
   416x312       74.66  
   400x300       72.19    75.12    60.32    56.34  
   320x240       72.81    75.00    60.05  
root@xenial64:~# 

However the standard list doesn't include a 720 resolution level as per the 720p that the TV is (it is shown in the above as I've since added that). i.e. the 720p TV supports 1280 x 720 resolution and it indicates 60Hz, so I ran

cvt 1280 720 60
which produced

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root@xenial64:~# cvt 1280 720 60
# 1280x720 59.86 Hz (CVT 0.92M9) hsync: 44.77 kHz; pclk: 74.50 MHz
Modeline "1280x720_60.00"   74.50  1280 1344 1472 1664  720 723 728 748 -hsync +vsync
root@xenial64:~# 

For more recent 1080p TV's you'd be looking to run at perhaps 1980 1080 60 (assuming 60Hz) resolution

Armed with that set of info/values I created a /etc/X11/xorg.conf that just contains

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Section "Monitor"
   Identifier   "DVI-I-2"
   VendorName   "Monitor Vendor"
   ModelName    "Monitor Model"
Modeline "1280x720_60.00"   74.50  1280 1344 1472 1664  720 723 728 748 -hsync +vsync
   Option "PreferredMode" "1280x720_60.00"
EndSection

The lines that would be different on other hardware would be the Identifier, Modeline and the Option "PreferredMode" values (that just points to the Modeline quoted name/value).

I think what happens in my case is that the system boots assuming the first DVI port (that seems to only support a lower 1020x768 resolution), whilst my 'monitor' (TV) is actually connected to the second graphics card port ... so I end up with a black screen. With xorg.conf telling the system otherwise (i.e. use the second port as the default instead) it boots up as expected. Once booted when I run lxrandr (graphical version of xrandr) that enables the second dvi to be turned off and when saved produces a file in
~/.config/LXRandR autostart
that is a .desktop file and part of the content of that filoe is

Exec=sh -c 'xrandr --output DVI-I-2 --mode 1280x720_60.00 --output DVI-I-1 --off'

I copied out that exec value i.e. the
xrandr --output DVI-I-2 --mode 1280x720_60.00 --output DVI-I-1 --off
part as a indicator of what xrandr command line value to use within a terminal/console.

lxrandr is part of the LXDE suite but can be installed if not available using
apt-get install lxrandr
(as a side note, lxterminal and lxappearance are two other relatively small but good programs to also have installed IMO).

[rufwoof]

@ All: the conky config files need a fix for the "NET: EXT:" display (website "http://ip.tupeux.com" for to show IP is down, probably forever)
Extract the attached archive "xenialdog-conky-fix.tar.gz", then open folder "xenialdog-conky-fix" and copy the files .conkyrc-live and .conkyrc-port to /root (overwrite existing)
Or: if you don't need the "NET: EXT:" display just delete only this string in the existing conkyrc-.. files:

Code: Select all

${color grey}NET: EXT: ${alignr}  ${execi 3600 wget -O - http://ip.tupeux.com | tail}

(but make sure to leave "${if_up eth0}" (don't delete) on that line.

Changing the URL in the conky rc file from http://ip.tupeux.com to http://ipinfo.io/ip works for me
i.e. for me using porteus boot, editing line 115 in ~/.conkyrc-port to

Code: Select all

${color grey}NET: EXT: ${alignr}  ${execi 3600 wget -O - http://ipinfo.io/ip | tail} ${if_up eth0}

[rufwoof]

I have the older 4.3 style (not newer beta) Skype working under pulseaudio now

After having added pulseaudio and pavucontrol I also ran install kde-baseapps as per this posting and added pulseaudio --start to a script in my Startup folder. Not the best way as that kde baseapps is large ... but disk space is inexpensive so I couldn't be bothered to shrink things down.

Temporarily added a Ubuntun partner repository

deb http://archive.canonical.com/ xenial partner

to /etc/apt/sources.list, then

apt-get update
dpkg --add-architecture i386
apt-get update
apt-get install skype
apt-get install libpulse0:i386

At least I think that is all that is needed. I tried a number of different things most of which didn't work, so there may be something I've missed out, for instance I did also instal paprefs and then ran that to set most of the options as being ticked (make network discoverable, add virtual output for simultaneous playing on all local sound cards ...etc.)

I like the older version as the new linux beta versions dialpad doesn't tend to work for me and I need that as I make quite a few calls that require pressing keys during the call.

(I've also installed Kodi and that seems to be working fine (I mostly use if for listening to radio stations so with DogRadio already in XenialDog I have less need for kodi)).

A trick with skype is that you can set it to auto load/login at startup, but not in a very secure manner as you have to hard code in your password

echo username password | skype --pipelogin

If you set Skype preferences to start minimised then each time you boot has skype in the tray ready to go.

[rufwoof]

Used the Quick Remaster ... and it ran through very quickly. 1.2GB 01-filesystem.squashfs filesize now (and a empty changes folder) that boots quickly and is pretty good considering the amount of stuff I've added (pulseaudio (and all of the kde stuff that also pulled in), kodi, skype, libreoffice, latest firefox (53.0.3)) ... and considering that lz4 compression/decompression speed comes with the overhead of less tight compression.

I've also tweaked the fonts/display and also installed

apt-get install ttf-mscorefonts-installer
apt-get install ttf-liberation

as part of that (non-free true type fonts). That also includes a full set of locales (a lot of wasted space i.e. 75MB of (uncompressed) /usr/share/locale folder content size (installed using apt-get install locales).

By the way of comparision my debian setup has a 1.7GB filesystem.squashfs size for a similar setup ... and that uses lzo (more tighter) compression.

[fredx181]

Hi rufwoof,

Thanks for your explanations and other info !!

Added links to your posts about xorg.conf, xrandr etc.. to Changes and Fixes List (Tips and Tricks)

Fred

[rufwoof]

After installing firejail (apt-get install firejail) edit /etc/firejail/firefox.profile and comment out the noroot line in that file ... and you can run firejail as root i.e.

firejail firefox

which runs firefox in a sandbox like container, that has all your bookmarks etc. but can't save files outside of your desktop or downloads folders, or

firejail --private firefox

that starts a fresh instance of firefox as though just installed, and deletes everything when closed.

Similar for skype (comment out the noroot in /etc/firejail/skype.profile and run using firejail skype)

Make sure no other versions of firefox are running before running firejail firefox, otherwise it wont be sandboxed (it just appends to the existing firefox session).

I've set my panel firefox to use firejail and have two desktop icons for firefox, one for 'normal' the other uses firejail

[belham2]

Hi Fred and all,

Question: what firewall we supposed to be running in DD64 (or even DD32)? When I check the old Debian standby of UFW/GUFW, it is talking nearly 90mb of download and install. Isn't there something lighter we can use, like Bob's Firewall and/or PeasyFirewall that are available in pups, that take up hardly no space at all?

Thanks

[backi]

Hi belham !
Look in Synaptic for firewall-puppy ......

[belham2]

Hi belham !
Look in Synaptic for firewall-puppy ......

Hi Backi!

Thanks! 205KB for firewall-puppy. Installed it just a second ago.

Only question now, is there a way I can see the firewall is on and/or off, like an icon, that sits in the tray as in other pups??? Should I just install peasyscan (for firewall or something) and maybe that'll do the trick??

[backi]

Hi !

Only question now, is there a way I can see the firewall is on and/or off, like an icon, that sits in the tray as in other pups???

This is what i ask myself too.
When Installed ... you will find it in Menu>System>Firewall-puppy.....start it ....configure it ....
so i did ....but never was sure if activ.......i just assumed it does....
Also like to know if it does for sure ......

Does anybody know???

[belham2]

Hi !

Only question now, is there a way I can see the firewall is on and/or off, like an icon, that sits in the tray as in other pups???

This is what i ask myself too.
When Installed ... you will find it in Menu>System>Firewall-puppy.....start it ....configure it ....
so i did ....but never was sure if activ.......i just assumed it does....
Also like to know if it does for sure ......

Does anybody know???

Hi Backi,

This is the best I can do for now. Peasy Firewall Monitor, but its not exactly active as in being able to look at an icon and instantly know whether it is "on" or "off".

After the original xterm message upon startup (from the puppy-firewall install via synaptic, and it occurs every time you boot up), I've got peasy-firewall-monitor able to run, and it detects the firewall, but bugger be all I cannot get the icon to go over in the actual system tray and be 'active". I'll keep looking at it....there's gotta be something easier out there, this is Debian for heaven's sakes, lol. I'll look again tomorrow and see if I can figure it out.

[rcrsn51]

I've got peasy-firewall-monitor able to run, and it detects the firewall, but bugger be all I cannot get the icon to go over in the actual system tray and be 'active".

I don't understand. Your screenie shows PFM running in the system tray as it should.

Do you also want an icon that shows the current status? Go to the PFM thread (Hardware > Networking) and get the "two-state solution".

It might be worthwhile to set up PFM in a regular Puppy so you can see how it is designed to work.