DebianDog - Wheezy

[musher0]

(...)
Do I need to add pool (whatever that is)? Is firmware specific to a distribution?

Hi Sindi.

Quick answers:
A "pool" is Debian and Ubuntu parlance for "software repository".

AFAIK, firmware is NOT specific to a distribution. Rather, it has to be
compatible with the Linux kernel version.

IHTH. BFN.

[sindi]

From a terminal type xterm -fs 14x20 -fg green -bg black

This produces a smaller font, green on black. 13x18 is also nice and a bit smaller.

Debiandog wheezy has no rxvt or urxvt only xterm (much larger). apt-get install urxvt or rxvt found no such package.
I also could not find fonts.alias (a list of short names of fonts with their pixel sizes) and made guesses.
Other guesses produced scrawny looking fonts.

Where is the font specified for framebuffer console?

[perdido]

Is firmware specific to a distribution?

Firmware is specific to the driver so the firmware depends on which version of the driver was compiled. Firmware is not distro specific. Firmware is not kernel specific.

That means the firmware can be ok for a variety of driver versions across different distributions.

.

[fredx181]

I could not find a way to set time in Wheezy dog, and the Time Zone setting dialog box flashes on and off and is not
usable (on the Gateway anyway). Someone please confirm.

I can't confirm, works ok for me, maybe try from terminal

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dpkg-reconfigure tzdata

Since wifi works I tried to install the firmware package from the DELL (where wifi slot died):
dpkg -i firmware-ipw2x00...
but it wants debconf which cannot be found.

Strange... can't understand why that wouldn't work
If you have network connection, better use apt-get then

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apt-get install firmware-ipw2x00

(but probably you have no network, so that's why you use dpkg -i ... ?)

Debiandog wheezy has no rxvt or urxvt only xterm (much larger). apt-get install urxvt or rxvt found no such package.

It should have rxvt, did you search from synaptic ?
If not, it looks like there's still something wrong with the repo sources, you did "apt-get update" recently ?
I think config for xterm is '/etc/X11/app-defaults/XTerm'

Fred

[sindi]

I found Synaptic and was poking around in it. I tried to get a list of packages (I forget how):

GPG error: http://www.smokey01.com ./Release: The following signatures were invalid: NODATA2

Repository could not be contacted.

I got a similar message doing apt-get update with the word BADSIG in it followed by saintless <saintless@abv.bg>.. It does not complain about debian archive files. I should probably not have ignored this, but youtube-viewer downloaded so I assumed things were working.

Might this be somehow related to timezone being Greenwich Mean not local on at least two laptops? I tried manual tzselect too. Nothing changes. Certificates are fussy about times/dates.

apt-get install firmware-ipw2x00 cannot find the firmware in the package lists. I am online via ethernet. I have the firmware from it a few years ago (before wheezy went obsolete) but it also wants wireless-tools (non-free) and cannot find that. Would firmware from puppy install?
Wireless-tools from puppy? Debian is too automated for me to understand.

Has anyone else used Wheezy DebianDog on 2003 or 2004 laptops? Perhaps it expects newer hardware when setting time zone?

No wifi is not a major problem since 5/7 of the tested laptops have dead wifi slots, but it is a symptom of other problems to come, and the time zone problem could interfere with browsing.

[sindi]

HP dv5000 from 2006. Tahr has no sound but lupu2016 works. Win7 has no sound through speakers only headphone jack. An HP netbook has the same driver problem.

Someone pasted over the keycaps combined Russian and Hebrew characters.

Wifi works in Win7 and lupu and tahr. b43

apt-get update worked with no complaints about signatures.
apt-get install youtube-viewer and also firmware-ipw2x00 downloaded and installed b43 was already present and loaded itself.

set time zone (from the menu) put a dialog box on the screen which stayed there and let me set time zone correctly. The script may have been confused by the wrong hardware time setting (2002) in the older laptops with wrong time and bad clock battery..

I can set time in BIOS when I boot.

Nice enough sound. youtube-viewer 720p uses 42% of CPU (half as much as a 2004 ASUS). Wide glossy screen good for Youtube.
The 2003-2004 narrower matte screens are better for email and lynx.
I could put two laptops in each room.

I installed Win7 Starter on here and even disabled antivirus and it still runs at a crawl. Win7 took a week to finish updating. Debiandog took no more than 20 min to download, extra, add three lines to menu.lst, edit one file, update, and get youtube working.

[sindi]

The DELL has time set correctly in BIOS and a good clock battery.
Puppies display the correct time. I set them to synch with North America.
DebianDog Wheezy, after I run either of the time zone setting programs,
displays a time four hours behind. 18 instead of 22.
The HP dv5000 displays the correct time.
The ASUS and Gateway display time 8 hours ahead (Greenwich Mean)

'date' displays and sets the date and the time.

date --set=22:56 works but it is not automatic.

To set the time to match the hardware clock type:
hwclock --hctosys
After which the time is 4 hours behind again. The DELL appears to be reading the hardware clock incorrectly. Odd bug in debiandog.
How do I set the time to hwclock plus 4?

Having things not work right at first is very educational.
cal - displays this month's calendar. cal May 2019

Alt-F1 does not work on the first try on DELL and Gateway but works henceforth after I right click for the menu.

Vertical scroll did not work on the HP touchpad.

The fix: synclient VertEdgeScroll=1

Where do I add this so it happens at boot time? Puppy has rc.local.
I would have expected this as the default.

[fredx181]

GPG error: http://www.smokey01.com ./Release: The following signatures were invalid: NODATA2

Repository could not be contacted.

I got a similar message doing apt-get update with the word BADSIG in it followed by saintless <saintless@abv.bg>.. It does not complain about debian archive files. I should probably not have ignored this, but youtube-viewer downloaded so I assumed things were working.

Might this be somehow related to timezone being Greenwich Mean not local on at least two laptops?

Yes, probably the incorrect time is the reason for the errors.

I tested from Menu "Set Timezone" and selected eastern time (EDT) and got the correct time

Code: Select all

# date
Thu Apr 18 03:22:04 EDT 2019

Note that "ntp" is installed by default in Debiandog-Wheezy-JWM, it runs as a daemon, so if you have internet connection it gets the correct time automatically for the timezone set, even if the BIOS time is wrong.

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# ps aux| grep ntp
ntp       2587  0.0  0.1   5372  2068 ?        Ss   03:13   0:00 /usr/sbin/ntpd -p /var/run/ntpd.pid -g -u 101:112

Has anyone else used Wheezy DebianDog on 2003 or 2004 laptops? Perhaps it expects newer hardware when setting time zone?

I don't know, I have laptop from 2007 and it works OK.

The fix: synclient VertEdgeScroll=1

Where do I add this so it happens at boot time? Puppy has rc.local.

It's /etc/rc.local in Debiandog

Edit: you may need to change UTC to LOCAL in /etc/adjtime, then it takes the time set in the BIOS, same as Windows does, I guess.
(however, as said above, with internet connection, the time should be set correctly by ntp anyway)

Fred

[sindi]

Setting /etc/timadj to LOCAL fixed the timezone problem on the Gateway 200 ARC 2003.

The BIOS clock setting is correct. Timezone and time shown on X in lower right are correct (they match).

apt-get update still complains of a bad signature.

The DELL from 2004 displays the correct time. The ASUS from 2004 has the same problem as the 2003 Gateway and will be set to LOCAL (BIOS time is correct),

Alt-F1 for menu did not work after booting. Right click for menu, Alt-F1 still did not work. Select something from the menu with the mouse (Terminal) and now Alt-F1 works. Odd bug.

I do not need synclient to scroll on the Gateway because it has a cute little scroll button at the bottom of the touchpad. A menu item and script to set synclient for vertical scroll would help other new users.

Everything seems to work now except for the bad signature on two laptops which had time zone problems. Because of this, the ASUS 2004 is unlikely to download and install ipw2x00 firmware. How do I install it directly using files downloaded by the 2007 HP?

And the DELL 2004 halts instead of powering off. Debian from 2015 may not have been thoroughly tested on 2003-2004 laptops.

[fredx181]

Setting /etc/timadj to LOCAL fixed the timezone problem on the Gateway 200 ARC 2003.

The BIOS clock setting is correct. Timezone and time shown on X in lower right are correct (they match).

apt-get update still complains of a bad signature.
...

Maybe (?) it might work to start fresh again on these laptops, and first thing to setup the time and repos correctly and then apt-get update, worth to give it a try (?), the apt configuration could have been corrupted by first tries with the wrong time.

Fred

[sindi]

[quote="fredx181"][quote="sindi"]Setting /etc/adjtime to LOCAL fixed the timezone problem on the Gateway 200 ARC 2003. ...

Maybe (?) it might work to start fresh again on these laptops, and first thing to setup the time and repos correctly and then apt-get update, worth to give it a try (?), the apt configuration could have been corrupted by first tries with the wrong time.

Fred[/quote]

The problem does not stay fixed.

I rebooted after renaming changes.dat, edited sources.list, changed /etc/timezone from Sofia to New York, changed /etc/adjtime from UTC to LOCAL, and set the time with date --set 12:15.

apt-get update worked
Alt-F1 worked.
I could install the firmware (but the wifi slot in this Gateway is dead).
I made some scripts as a test.
I installed youtube-viewer. GTK-Youtube viewer in high RAM mode works at 720p.

I rebooted saving changes.

Alt-F1 does not work.
The time is again 7 hours ahead (UTC).
apt-get update complains of a bad signature for smokey01.

If I change time again manually, still a bad signature.

I don't have these problems with puppy.
What might I change in wheezy to work with my older hardware?

I researched GPG error and it has something to do with expired keys.
A key on here expired March 2018. I did not understand the rest.
apt-key list | grep expired
pub 4096F/473041FA 2018-03-05
I should use apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keys.gnupg.net 473041FA

gpg: no ultimately trusted keys found.
Still will not update.

The two laptops (so far) with this problem do not work with lupu but the Gateway has 768MB RAM and works with Tahr and Wary. The ASUS video is screwy and only works right with Wheezy so far.

What sources.list is correct for jessie?

[fredx181]

I rebooted saving changes.

Alt-F1 does not work.
The time is again 7 hours ahead (UTC).
apt-get update complains of a bad signature for smokey01.

If I change time again manually, still a bad signature.

There's a lot that I don't understand, please answer:
So are you sure the save went correct ? e.g. did the change in /etc/adjtime survive ?
And if you did set the timezone correct, did that setting survive ?
Also if you have internet connection it should set the time automatically (from correctly set timezone with ntp), as I said earlier.
I wish I could reproduce these errors, but I can't, works all fine for me, but only can test on 2 laptops from 2007.
I'll try to figure out what's needed for Jessie sources.list, I'll let you know one of these days, but I'd be surprised if Jessie makes a difference for the problems you describe.

Fred

[sindi]

All the changes I made got saved - adjtime, timezone, sources.list, scripts, installed youtube-viewer.
But the signature problem is back and Alt-F1 does not work until I use a mouse to access the menu.
Puppy does not have timezone problems on the Gateway and probably not on the ASUS.
The DELL time problem fixed itself somehow.

I will test other 2003-2004 laptops with 2003 855GM Intel graphics/memory chips.

My 2007 laptop needs a 2.6 kernel for nouveau video. The 2006 one works with wheezy debiandog.

95% of my laptops are pre-2007 because I prefer the non-glare non-wide screens. The older laptops show more lines of text
(1024 or 1150 or 1200, not 720). The new ones are okay for Youtube not email or text-only browsing.

One solution is to download and install everything I can think of before first rebooting (and losing the ability
to install things like firmware). I recall one of these two laptops refusing to read changes.dat that I copied
from another computer so I cannot just make later changes and copy them over.

[sindi]

2004 Laptop in usable condition - missing one foot, dead vol knob on side, loud fan, dead CMOS battery (we replaced it), dead wifi slot, missing 40GB hard drive and caddy ($5 on ebay free shipping),

Donated to the charity that I fix up and sell computer stuff for. (Nothing sells except the dead newer gaming laptops).

Intel Extreme Graphics 2 852GME with similar problems to the two laptops with 855GM - 7 hours ahead on the time (after changing timezone and adjtime). With the time adjusted correctly apt-get updates works. Then tzselect sets the time back to 7 hours ahead.

When I set the time with date --set it lists EEST time. How do I set EDT instead?

I predict it will have the same problems as before, after reboot.

The Intel graphics is causing problems in Wheezy and also in puppy:

Tahr - boots but no icons
Lupu 2016 - no video
Wary 5.5 - boots but crashes on exit (from X?)

Sulu2 works but no fbcon (huge text in console mode). I also had to use Sulu2 on a 2004 Acer 4001LCi laptop with 855GM which is likely to have similar problems with mpv in Wheezy debiandog.

Both have matte screens and are widescreen.

Sulu1 has a PAE kernel and this is not a PAE capable laptop (nor is the Gateway or other 2003-2004 laptops with Pentium or Celeron M).

768MB RAM, 1.3GHz Celeron cpu. So I was going to test how well youtube-viewer plays at 720p. It displays solid blue, directly or with cde-exec package.

Sulu1 with the youtube-viewer pet plays at 480p 95% of cpu, properly.
So perhaps the Jessie kernel will behave properly with this graphics chip.

I have a 2003 Thinkpad T42 with 855GM, matte, non-widescreen. Works well except someone removed most of the keycaps before donating it.

All Pentium or Celeron M, pc2100 or pc2700 memory.

How does a graphics chip mess up the time by 7 hours?

Vertical scroll did not work in sulu (set VertEdgeScroll=1 by default) but it does in Wheezy after I set it that way.

[sindi]

Un disabling screen stretch in BIOS fixed the blue screen problem with mpv.
1280x800 pixels. Stretched screen does not properly display our 1986 DOS CAD program.

Sulu1 with cde-exec youtube-viewer played at 480p 95% cpu.
Wheezy debiandog youtube-viewer in X at 720p uses 90% cpu.

I hope not to need any more firmware.

It is still 7 hours ahead. Sofia time?

Next the Thinkpad T42. I have a spare keyboard with the right keycaps.

[sindi]

This laptop boots to lupu but the leftmost part of a dialog box for SNS is missing. Wheezy displays perfectly, but is again 7 hours ahead (and most likely will have the Alt-F1 problem, and missing or expired key). I installed ipw2x00 and python and youtube-viewer and have not yet rebooted.

88% of cpu to play 720p with youtube-viewer. 1.6GHz cpu Pentium M.

Most of my other laptops from this era have i900, ATI or Nvidia video.

vertical scroll works (synclient again - this should be the default).

[sindi]

Vertical scroll is now working with lupu2016. Wifi works with it, but Wheezy's frisbee does not see any wireless networks. rfkill unblock wlan did not help. There is no physical wifi switch. Youtube with Wheezy and Palemoon 28.4 says I do not have the right browser, but Palemoon 27.9.3 in Lupu2016 plays Youtube.

I did not bother to reset the time in Wheezy after trying tzselect. Wifi did not work before that either.

This laptop has dead CMOS battery like the ASUS (which also has wifi that works in lupu).

lspci in wheezy finds the wifi card. Intel 2200BG(N?)

[fredx181]

All the changes I made got saved - adjtime, timezone, sources.list, scripts, installed youtube-viewer.
...
When I set the time with date --set it lists EEST time. How do I set EDT instead?
...
It is still 7 hours ahead. Sofia time?
...
How does a graphics chip mess up the time by 7 hours?
...

I wonder if you do the right thing to set the timezone, how you do it ?
Here's what I did and works without problems:
- From Menu > Settings > Set Timezone
Selected New York (just to test) (see pic)
In /etc/timezone it should be then:

Code: Select all

# cat /etc/timezone
US/Eastern

Then the date command shows the New york time and timezone EDT

You can use tzselect also, but I think it needs editing ~/.profile manually.

The Sofia time is the timezone set by the author of the ISO, so if you still have Sofia timezone, something went wrong in how you set it up, I guess.

How does a graphics chip mess up the time by 7 hours?

That seems very unlikely to me.

EDIT: Attached, altered sources list for Debiandog-Jessie (JWM), remove fake.gz extension
EDIT2: You can also try "peasyclock" for setting the time(zone), it's from rcrsn51 made for Stretch, but works on Wheezy too:
https://fredx181.github.io/StretchDog/i ... .4_all.deb
Install (needs internet connection and working apt, to install dependency ntpdate)

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dpkg -i peasyclock_1.4_all.deb
apt-get -f install     # needs internet connection and working apt, to install dependency ntpdate

EDIT Or if apt not working, install this ntpdate deb
http://archive.debian.org/debian/pool/m ... 2_i386.deb

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dpkg -i ntpdate_4.2.6.p5+dfsg-7+deb8u2_i386.deb

Somehow peasyclock doesn't show in the Menu, so run from terminal:

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peasyclock

Or:

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update-menus

And it will show in Menu
First time start it shows message about config setting, then just run again.
Peasyclock info:
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 956#972956

Fred

[sindi]

2003 Gateway with dead clock battery. F2 to change time in BIOS setup each time I turn on the computer.

Booted to wheezy, where Alt-F1 etc. do not work.
Deleted changes.dat.
Rebooted.
Alt-F1 works.
Changed sources.dat.
Time is 16:17, date 16:17 EEST.
From menu 'set time zone' - chose Eastern.
Checked that /etc/timezone = America/Easter, adjtime is UTC
date is now 9:19 EDT (correct local time).
apt-get update, installed firmware, python, youtube-viewer
edited rc.local to mount /dev/sda8
created two small scripts

Rebooted saving changes.

The time is still correct but the usual other problems are back:

Alt-F1 no longer works
(until I click on menu or right click and choose an item).

The two scripts are missing (not just empty).

rc.local remained edited.

apt-get update tells me GPG error. http://www.smokey01.com ./
Release: The following signatures were invalid: NODATA 2.

VertEdgeScroll works after using synclient. The touchpad also has a scroll button that worked before using synclient.

Wheezy is usable now except for apt-get.
I downloaded the updated sources.list (gz) for Jessie and will try it next.

[sindi]

Banias Pentium/Celeron M processors, the earliest Pentium M's from 2003 to August 2004, do not display the PAE flag and will not boot PAE kernels without forcepae. I have at least two of these, out of the five laptops that do not work right with puppies, so had to use sulu2 instead of sulu1 (PAE kernel).

I downloaded the 2015 original jessie, and also the 2016 PAE-kernel version. Can I use vmlinuz from the former in the latter? Also the firmware from the latter in the former?