Criticism of woof-CE and of the people involved in it.

[jamesbond]

Puppy pinging the Internet, to test for connection, is a normal function of connecting to the Internet.

Hmmm..I doubt that for setting up an internet connection it is a normal, let alone necessary procedure.

I wouldn't argue what's normal and not about what's involved in setting up an internet connection. That's very subjective. However, bigpup talk about "to test for connection" being part of it. Sure, you can set up a connection without testing whether that connection actually works. But that's not the Puppy way. Now you may have missed that I said about what is involved in "testing for connections" - please see here (page 2 of this thread). Happy to hear your feedback if you think that's not right.

I even doubt that Puppy is using it for this purpose, but I can be wrong.

So what do you think Puppy is doing it for?

Just fire up your browser, download manager or whatever tool you intend to use and try. If the internet is down, they will tell you with a meaningful error message - if they are properly designed.

You're not really suggesting that we fire chrome before launching PPM just to test the connection, are you? From my other post here, I said

And sometimes, just by doing the job directly (e.g. in PPM, instead of pinging ibiblio.org; just do wget ibiblio.org if what you want to do is just to grab its contents) can result in an annoying user experience where the operation will eventually fail but it takes a very long time to do so. By pinging, we can (sort of) test the network connection and if it is not sufficiently good enough, we can fail fast and tell the user about that.

To add to that, I recall vaguely (but not sure myself) that the pinging was originally added exactly because of that: because directly doing the operation when the network was on certain invalid state caused exactly the problematic delays I said above.

I can even give you a direct example, which I reported in slacko64 thread: if you fire slacko64 in qemu, the "firstrun" dialogbox will not show up (I waited for 10 mins). Why? because it was trying to do wget to ibiblio.org (perhaps to test for updates?); and that wget was hanging thanks to qemu's weired networking. I can only get the firstrun dialog if I open a terminal and "killall wget". You may claim that qemu is not a real hardware - that's beside the point. The point is, there are certain network states that can cause problems to hang indefinitely or a very long time, before finally failing and giving up. Of course, pinging is *not* the only way to handle this; but this is what Woof-CE has for the moment. If you have a better way, as mavrothal always say, "patches are welcome".

If you need to know if your internet is running then pinging can get get you this information, but only for the exact moment you ping. Can change any moment and when you then send a request to a site you *really* want to connect to, then this ping information is as old as yesterday's paper.

How true. Past performance is not an indicator of future performance. Just because your still have a heart beat a second ago does not mean in the next second you will still have it. Yet many people buy stock based on their past performances. And most likely you're still alive to read this post too. So yes, just because you've successfully ping a server a second ago doesn't mean that the internet is still up a second later. But *chances are*, it is.

As far as I can see nobody claimed that this is needed. But so is most of the information on the "Interfaces" tab. It's only an info dialog. I personally couldn't care less about my external IP address.

One man's delicacy is someone else's poison. So choose your poison carefully
E.g. those people who like to the peer-to-peer VOIP calls while behind NAT router, they need the external IP address information. And I know a few of regular puppy users who do exactly this. Just because it's not useful for you doesn't mean it's not useful for others.

[01micko]

I can even give you a direct example, which I reported in slacko64 thread: if you fire slacko64 in qemu, the "firstrun" dialogbox will not show up (I waited for 10 mins). Why? because it was trying to do wget to ibiblio.org (perhaps to test for updates?); and that wget was hanging thanks to qemu's weired networking. I can only get the firstrun dialog if I open a terminal and "killall wget".

Yes the wget thing to ibiblio was my idea.. perhaps not so clever... (self critique ) but in saying that we do need a reliable method to test connection.

You see, the new firewall is aggressive, perhaps too aggressive and perhaps needs revisiting, but to cut a long story short, it was apparently not working for browsing if you set it with default settings before connection is up, so a connection test was needed such that the button to set the firewall could be greyed out.

Perhaps what is really needed is a standard script that can test a)router connectivity, then b)internet connectivity then c)DNS resolution, which should cover all the bases.

For a) maybe simple parsing of output from 'busybox route' will do. Remember, some machines might be part of a network that does not have internet connectivity. For b) and c) probably ping is the best, especially if we consider that some may be on dialup or have very slow connections due to other reasons. If a ping response isn't returned in less than 5 seconds then we error.

Ah.. but whom do we ping? Ibiblio (and mirrors) isn't always up. Most reliable ones I can think of are one of the 13 root hint servers (duck and google it) but as has been pointed out to me that these are run or at least sponsored by corporate interests.

Maybe a traceroute with a limit of 4 hops is enough as it should return something from your ISP and with some really clever regex maybe we can grok that out!

Any suggestion is welcome but seriously, if anyone suggest we don't do tests then we are heading backwards as far as being 'man's best friend' is concerned.

[Karl Godt]

Hmm .. have not read the whole thread ..

ABOUT PING :

Slacko-5.3.X had weird code in /usr/sbin/delayedrun .

That was the worst case of nested if I have ever seen in Puppy : some 1-2 dozen if just to ping google.com to tell the F****** childish USER some bullshit ..!

Barry Kauler does not use functions much, but even if code is called only once ,
functions allow to escape code easily without huge mountains of if's .
Sometimes I doubt, he even was a professor, and if he was, then I understand he retired,
because learning from him is to learn by mistakes !

WOOFWOOF !

[Karl Godt]

Yes the wget thing to ibiblio was my idea.. perhaps not so clever... (self critique ) but in saying that we do need a reliable method to test connection.

Hmmm .. /etc/resolv.conf is needed by firefox !

Code: Select all

test -s /etc/resolv.conf
grep '[[:alnum:]]' /etc/resolv.conf

And since i have an USB 3G Stick with 2G plan on usbnet.ko, cdc-ether.ko,e1000e.ko being eth1 :

Code: Select all

ifconfig | grep -E 'wlan|eth|ppp'

If these fails, tell USER to ping manually his favorite site like

Code: Select all

ping murga-linux.com || ping github.com

!

[darry1966]

PostPosted: Today, at 00:27 Post subject: Reply with quote
darry1966 wrote:
Ok lets cut to the chase the older Pups namely in this case 5.11 Lucid never included this Icanzahip stuff in ipfinfo and worked without said feature as seen in this scrot. So the question is why is it needed in the new ones?????

You may want to look at line 21 of the /usr/sbin/ipinfo in luci-511 Wink

Ipinfo is actually in all the puppies since 2009, always querying icanhazip for the external IP. However, all the old puppies (till a couple of years back) never offer the option to inactivate this step.
As jamesbond explained above, there is no way to get that info unless you actually connect (not ping) somewhere.

Thank you Mathrothal and MochiMoppel for the clarifications. I shall look at line 21.

[Karl Godt]

PostPosted: Today, at 00:27 Post subject: Reply with quote
darry1966 wrote:
Ok lets cut to the chase the older Pups namely in this case 5.11 Lucid never included this Icanzahip stuff in ipfinfo and worked without said feature as seen in this scrot. So the question is why is it needed in the new ones?????

You may want to look at line 21 of the /usr/sbin/ipinfo in luci-511 Wink

Ipinfo is actually in all the puppies since 2009, always querying icanhazip for the external IP. However, all the old puppies (till a couple of years back) never offer the option to inactivate this step.
As jamesbond explained above, there is no way to get that info unless you actually connect (not ping) somewhere.

Thank you Mathrothal and MochiMoppel for the clarifications. I shall look at line 21.

Can not confirm that ipinfo script was in Puppy 4.3 in year 2009 . Even lucid-218 as testing iso for lupu-511 did not include ipinfo in northern hemisphere autumn 2010 .

ipinfo should have its own thread here somewhere on murga-linux.com/puppy .

[darry1966]

I can confirm that Icanzahip was in Luci on the line suggested, I changed it to Startpage. Is there any other changes required to change ping setting?

[stemsee]

...because learning from him is to learn by mistakes!

"If it doesn't kill you it makes you stronger!"

[mavrothal]

I can confirm that Icanzahip was in Luci on the line suggested, I changed it to Startpage. Is there any other changes required to change ping setting?

Startpage can not provide this functionality ie inform you of the external IP.
http://www.icanhazip.com is specifically designed to return your external IP on an http request (click on the link and see what your browser will show )
You can also see that unless you use a static IP, this is NOT the IP that your machine has, but an IP from the range your ISP owns...

[eric52]

I misunderstood. This is a legacy of PONG.

[bigpup]

I hope everyone understands, that anytime you access the Internet, you are doing exactly what is done by pinging.
You are just adding to the information, sent and what you are asking to be sent to you.

The ping program will send a 'ping' (actually an ICMP (Internet Control Message Protocol) echo request message) to the named computer. The pinged computer will respond with a reply. The ping program will count the time expired until the reply comes back (if it does). Also, if you enter a domain name (i.e. www.yahoo.com) instead of an IP address, ping will resolve the domain name and display the computer's IP address.

To view a web page from your browser, the following sequence happens:

You either type an address (URL) into your "Address Bar" or click on a hyperlink.
Your browser sends a request to your ISP server asking for the page.
Your ISP server looks in a huge database of internet addresses and finds the exact host server which houses the website in question, then sends that host server a request for the page.
The host server sends the requested page to your ISP server.
Your ISP sends the page to your browser and you see it displayed on your screen.

[anikin]

jamesbond,

Does FatDog have these or similar pinging scripts? If it does, what destinations do they ping and when?

[gcmartin]

A decade and a half, prior to Puppy Linux, this discussion is IDENTICAL! There were some who felt that use on the LAN was detrimental to PC users and security. A decade later, WIfi becomes affordable and same discussion erupts from vocals. Then it seemingly hits Puppy Linux ever so often, now.

Again, I must reiterate that a policy statement need be made OR a blanket Pre-FirstRUN screen is ONE way to minimize this discussion (as I am certain, it wont stop it).

If you've ever been in a corporate security meeting, histeria is there as well over exposure and information sensitivity. This is why they publish policy documents....and its different depending on which company you go to.

No matter how much evidence is provided to show safety, it wont address everyone. But, if there is a clickable Preamble to FirstRUN, it certainly paves the way for every user to have an helpful understanding.

Greatest problem we all face in the ever changing landscape of the technology we use for home benefit.

IMHO, everyone of us should be aware that we exist and use home devices that allow us access to additional information BOTH IN AND OUT OF THE HOME! This is not 1982 when a PC was a single autonomous system which may/may not have a modem. That was the horse&buggy days before we stepped into the jets our PCs are today.

No user, in today's world, should be a network administrator in order to use their system, whether handheld or stationary,

We already have Linux distros and PUPs that can do that if anyone desires. These distros are built and hardened for a specific community of users, many of which are aimed for knowledgeable users.

But to expect that a "General Use" system is to be hardened requiring a masterful or LAN administrator to open it for use may not meet an agenda that would be generally desired.

I didnt come to Puppyland because it cannot see or ping outside of my house. I came expecting that it does this Out-Of-The-Box (OOTB). ... like my MACs...like my other OSes ... like my smartPhones...like my TVs...like my ...

Puppy Linux, to my knowledge in my decade of use, has not demonstrated to have exposed ANY sensitive data outside of my home because of its design(s). No one, as far as I know, has shown a pathway in how PUPPY does things, for a vehicle outside of the home to locate and harvest data from a PUP because of this debated design over the decade.

Unless there surfaces a real threat that has been exposed which has been concretely shown, this discussion, like all similar ones of the decades before, might not bring exposure.

[jamesbond]

jamesbond,

Does FatDog have these or similar pinging scripts? If it does, what destinations do they ping and when?

Haha, I know where you're aiming at
Here's my answer which I think you already guess (I will bold it so it is easy for others to see): No pinging scripts in Fatdog, as far as I can recall.

But before you say "Look, I rest my case - even Mr. Bond does not walk his talk - so why should we listen to his trash talking!", please consider this: A lot of other stuff in Puppy are also missing in Fatdog. No comprehensive FirstRun (in fact, I resisted this for years). No built-in Samba4. Fatdog's on-the-fly SFS loader is much simplified and spartan. Different choices of applications, window managers. Different network manager (wpa-gui). Different OS installers (not PUI). Fatdog runs in frugal only. Initrd is totally re-written; totally different command line parameters. Core applications are re-written too. And many others.

All these lead to this: Fatdog's target audience is different from Puppy. And in fact, if you've been in Fatdog thread long enough, you'll see people complain that Fatdog is not user-friendly; well at least not as friendly as Puppy. Some potential Fatdog users were turned off because of these convenient features that they know and love from Puppy are missing (I'm not talking specifically about the pinging, but Puppy features in general). This is not my guess: there are explicit posts comparing Fatdog to Lupu and the author decided to go with Lupu for that reason.

But I have no problem with that, because, as written in its blurb:

Fatdog64 Linux is a small yet versatile 64-bit multi-user Linux distribution. Originally created as a "fatter" (=more built-in applications) derivative of Puppy Linux, Fatdog has grown to become an independent, mature 64-bit Linux distribution while still keeping true to Puppy Linux spirit: small, fast and efficient.

As you can see, "user-friendly" or "for Windows-refugee" is not mentioned, as Fatdog was never specifically targeted for those. When Fatdog first went 64-bit in 2009, its target system was a high-end enough system that it is unlikely to become the OS of choice for those who are just trying to dip their foot in the Linux waters using secondary or older machines.
___________________________________________

Puppy on the other hand is a completely different beast. Puppy *is* meant to be the OS of choice for "Windows-refugee"; it is targeted towards users who are long-time Windows users but their machines are left behind by newer Windows that they don't have a choice other than to migrate to a different OS. This kind of use case calls for priority in user-friendliness and ease-of-use. As an example, one of Puppy's specialty is is "wizards"; to help beginners and newbies climb comfortably through the steep learning-curve of Unix-like OS. It attempts to help the user as much as possible; trying to avoid situations that a beginner may encounter, but can't solve (e.g: can't connect to the Internet, and suggestion is to "search google" --- well, if you can't connect to the Internet, how can you google???, etc).

I am not Puppy builder. There is a reason for that: other than the fact that I don't have time to juggle too many projects; I also actively avoid to become a Puppy builder for a simple reason: I have a strong bias for Fatdog. If you let me drive Puppy development, it will at the end turn into a Fatdog It would be horrible thing if it ever happens, don't you agree?

That being said, I have a lot of respect for Puppy builders - both independent builders and those who have chosen to pool their efforts at Woof-CE; both full-fledged Puppy builders or people who contribute packages, patches, apps, translations, wallpapers, icons, github gatekeepers, new radical ideas, infrastructure providers (repos, websites, downloads), website admins, etc (you know who you are). They keep Puppy alive, and grow, sometimes taken unexpected path. I don't have to agree with or even like their decisions, but I retain my respect: I was once Puppy user too; and I experience firsthand the diversity of ideas that lays scattered around Puppy root (in fact, Fatdog is but one of the outgrowths).

With that, I can understand the motivation behind the inclusion of the pinging and connection testing etc that goes into Woof-CE; and thus my repeated conclusion - decisions have to be made, and in the end we can't make everybody happy. Some decisions that kirk and I made for Fatdog definitely makes some users unhappy and drives them away.

______________________________________

If you read all my posts in this thread, all I did was to try to explain why certain actions are done they way they are - from my arm's length view of an observer. Not a Puppy builder myself, I can never say it should or should not be done. That's up to the developers, the builders, those who do the actual heavy-lifting, who spend hours debugging and fixing and perfecting and polishing the OS; and it is their choice to either listen to me, to you, to someone else, or to nobody at all.

Let me give you an example. You may or may not be aware of my effort to re-juvenate Woof-CE by creating a new experimental branch called "woof-next" last year. The main radical idea in this branch are two folds:
a) you can build puppy in minutes instead of hours (at that time - the discrepancy in duration has since been reduced thanks to Iguleder's work)
b) it uses the parent distro's native package manager instead of PPM.
==> both addressing the two most commonly aired issue about Woof-CE and Puppy at that time.

I aired the idea, but there were no takers.

So what the heck, I said to myself. I started coding it myself, and when it's usable, I forked off "testing" branch of Woof-CE and created the "woof-next" branch. I brought it up to a working state (=boot to graphical desktop and wired networking), but I stopped there - because I don't want to become a Puppy builder for reasons I already said above. I hoped and expected seasoned and not-so-seasoned Puppy builders to take the torch from me and grow it to the point that it could build *real* Puppy.

It did not happen.

Was I disappointed? Yes.
Was I discouraged? No.
Will I do it again if I feel it is needed? Of course.
So what did I do? I retired the project.
If suddenly people are interested in woof-next, will I resume the project? Well why not.

That is just the nature of community development. Sometimes things don't turn out the way we want. I obviously think my woof-next idea is better than the current way of Puppy development but I'm not doing the thinking for 01micko or iguleder or mavrothal etc - they all have different ideas of what's best for Puppy; based on their view of the world and based on feedback they hear from here. They can think too, and they are allowed to hold a different opinion from mine - and the Puppy they produce reflects their consideration.

If I were you, and I am trying to change direction of Puppy's development, I will attempt to convince these people why I should be heard and why my idea is worth considering. I may even submit patches and codes and apps. But again, at the end of day, despite all my efforts, it could be that they decide to do something against my recommendation or suggestion or requests; because - well, decisions to be made - because I'm not the only one with visions and I'm not the only one affected if Puppy direction changes.

A community development is one of a compromise - and a compromise can go both ways. Don't be discouraged when it seems that your suggestion goes nowhere. Chances are, with a community as diverse as Puppy, there will be one who listens and shares your concern/goals; and will produce a puplet that is close to your needs. I've recommended Puli in my previous post; it looks like it is a very privacy- and security- oriented Puppy that may be suitable for you. Will its features ever go to mainstream Puppy? I doubt it - but it isn't necessary for Puli to be useful.

And, that, my friend, is the beauty of Puppy Linux; and why we want to keep it alive for all to share and enjoy.

[anikin]

... Haha, I know where you're aiming at
Here's my answer which I think you already guess (I will bold it so it is easy for others to see): No pinging scripts in Fatdog, as far as I can recall.

Yup ... that was a little ambush plan of mine

Thanks, jamesbond, very nicely written!

I do really hope that bold part above will not escape the attention of this community!

If you folks don't mind, I'd like to bring you back to my earlier post, that for some reason went unnoticed. Any objections, or maybe alternatives to that proposal?
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 714#874714

[01micko]

Ok, we can put 'pinging issue' (or non-issue, depends on your perspective) to bed once and for all.

Code: Select all

#!/bin/sh

# designed to disable pings if wanted

# first test for /etc/resolv.conf
# this only says that you have a connection to a network.

func_resolv() {
	grep -q 'nameserver' /etc/resolv.conf 2>&1 >/dev/null #noisy if it fails
	ret=$?
	return $ret
}

# second test to ping URL
# this tests internet connectivity and DNS resolution.
func_ping() {
	ping -4 -w10 -q -c1 duckduckgo.com #dies after 10 seconds
	ret=$?
	return $ret
}

# if '.nopings' exists in user's home then we only test for local network
# which may or may not be an active internet connection
if [ -f "$HOME/.nopings" ];then
	func_resolv
	status=$?
	exit $status
else
	func_resolv
	status=$?
	if [ "$status" = '0' ];then
		func_ping
		ping_status=$?
		exit $ping_status
	else
		exit $status
	fi
fi
 
  

Simply test the exit value. If its not zero then no connection.

Call it "con_test" or something and all scripts that check connectivity can call it. A checkbox in firstrun to create '.nopings' could be added.

[jlst]

I think the best way to get it working is a Mailing List, but an active one.

THe GitHub page should contain links to useful information, such as:
1) How to contribute
- guides

2) Versions (needed for the scripts in woof to work properly)
- bash 4
- yad 25
- cdrtools 3.01a30
etc

3) TODO

So everything is clear, and everyone knows what to do

There is something missing, people to send patches, people to comment, people to ..

If you have write access, you read the forums, you understand there is a patch, a solution somewhere... you don't have to wait to apply it, nobody is going to tell you "I need to merge this into woof ce". Unless they explicitely tell you "I don't want this in woof ce, it's mine it's mine", then there should no problem..

[Ibidem]

There are several tests of connection:
(a) is there an interface up? (ifconfig)
(b) is it configured? (ifconfig)
(c) is there a route from the system? (route)
(d) is DNS working? (nslookup/dig)
(e) is there a working route to and from some specific host? (ping)
(f) does regular traffic to and from a specific host work? (wget)

If you want to test whether there's an internet connection, use nslookup.
If you want to test whether a specific destination is up, use ping, wget, or such.

[slavvo67]

My biggest criticism is the criticism. Helpful suggestions would be a more proper title. I think some of the people working on Woof-CE walked away because of the "Criticisms."

[jamesbond]

My biggest criticism is the criticism. Helpful suggestions would be a more proper title. I think some of the people working on Woof-CE walked away because of the "Criticisms."

For helpful suggestions, there is already such a thread, although, the title may be misleading: woof-CE needs you.

The problem is, whatever you do, you can never please everyone. Each of us have our own pet concerns; which we like to be addressed in our *particular* way of thinking, or else ... and that's what this thread for.

The presence of this thread to let everyone know that Woof-CE and the people who are behind are open to all sort of feedbacks. Everyone are encouraged to vent their spleen about Woof-CE here. Of course we are not expecting personal insults or trolling; but any genuine concerns are welcome here. Hopefully conveyed in a civil way.

That being said, whether those concerns will be addressed or not - that totally depends (on many factors). At the end of the day, the "C" in Woof-CE stands for "Community". And that "community" is you. Things will happen if you make things happen.