Quirky Xerus 8.6 (Aug. 16), Beaver 8.7.1 (Sept. 21), 2018

[amj]

I'm in the process of installing Quirky Xerus 8.1.5 on an Intel Compute Stick.

I bought the bottom of the range model that ships with Ubuntu because I could not bear the idea of paying a license fee to that bunch in Seattle for their detestable OS.

Wrote the QX815 image onto a microSD card, inserted the card into the stick, changed the boot order and booted into Quirky rather than Ubuntu. It's my first 'adventure' with anything UEFI.

But using Gparted to look at the Quirky partitions on the card and the Ubuntu partitions on the stick I see a small issue which, fortunately, should not be difficult to resolve.

The two Quirky partitions at 512Mb and 6.64Gb add up to 7.14Gb and that is slightly larger than the 7.12Gb internal memory of the stick with it's four Ubuntu partitions.

So it appears that I will have to shrink the QX815 image slightly in order to transfer Quirky to the internal memory of the stick.

[don570]

Barry K newest distro xerus-8.1.5 has the wacom tablet driver built-in.
This is great! No more worries about installation.

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[don570]

I used option 2 in Barry's install instructions
to make a bootable USB stick. It would boot up when I made some changes
to my BIOS to boot from a USB hard drive.

An unusual thing I noticed is that PLOP boot manager won't work with
USB stick. I think it's the result of the unusual formating of the stick
as explained in in Barry's blog.

Unique Linux install method Posted on 24 Dec 2016, 9:44 by admin
After looking around, I can't find this method of installing Linux to a UEFI-computer described anywhere else.

The idea came to me from thinking what the UEFI-firmware does at bootup. It scans looking for ESP fat partitions. It will find the main one, for booting Windows, and it will find one on, say, a plugged-in USB drive.

The UEFI-setup then offers what it finds as candidates to boot from. So, I thought, if I create another ESP fat partition on the internal hard drive, won't the UEFI-firmware discover that also, and offer it as a candidate?

Yes, it does. It is interesting that it is named "Android-IA", which indicates that the firmware is probably designed to handle dual-boot Windows-Android. So, finding another ESP-fat partition on the same internal drive, it assumes hey that must be Android.

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[FeodorF]

Just found a little issue about 'aumix' / 'PNMixer 0.5.1' .
I'm using HDA Intel with a Realtek ALC 1200 chip.

My problems are:
a) Moving the VOL slider to 100% doesn't boost the sound all the way up.
b) At each reboot VOL gets reseted to 0% - no sound.

Looking at 'urxvt alsamixer' gives some enlightenment.
slider VOL changes the 'Master' level from 0 to 100%, which is o.k.
slider Spkr changes the 'Beep' level from 0 to 100%, so this one equals the motherboard speaker, which is o.k.
slider Line changes the 'Line' level from 0 to 100%, which is o.k.
slider Pcm2 changes the 'Headphone' level from 0 to 100%, which is odd
slider IGain doesn't change anything
slider Digital1 turns 'S/PDIF' on or off

Problem a) is easy to solve - change 'urxvt alsamixer' slider 'Front' from 56% to 100%. -Solved-
Problem b) the 'aumix' data file gets written to /file/.aumixrc and to /root/.aumixrc. They are setup to the right levels but 'VOL' is still 0% after reboot.
If you open 'urxvt aumix -> file -> Load From /file/aumixrc' after reboot the VOL becomes 100%. This means that PNMixer works fine.
Ah! If you disable PNMixer in the 'Startup' the alsamixer value for 'Master' will still be set to 0% after reboot.

Has somebody the same problem?

[don570]

When i tried running the latest Blender app I got the following error

# ./blender
AL lib: (EE) UpdateDeviceParams: Failed to set 44100hz, got 48000hz instead
Error! Blender requires OpenGL 2.1 to run. Try updating your drivers.
#

Fatdog 64 will run Blender app nicely

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I will do a test with an old version of blender which doesn't require opengl 2.1

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[BarryK]

I used option 2 in Barry's install instructions
to make a bootable USB stick. It would boot up when I made some changes
to my BIOS to boot from a USB hard drive.

An unusual thing I noticed is that PLOP boot manager won't work with
USB stick. I think it's the result of the unusual formating of the stick
as explained in in Barry's blog.

Unique Linux install method Posted on 24 Dec 2016, 9:44 by admin
After looking around, I can't find this method of installing Linux to a UEFI-computer described anywhere else.

The idea came to me from thinking what the UEFI-firmware does at bootup. It scans looking for ESP fat partitions. It will find the main one, for booting Windows, and it will find one on, say, a plugged-in USB drive.

The UEFI-setup then offers what it finds as candidates to boot from. So, I thought, if I create another ESP fat partition on the internal hard drive, won't the UEFI-firmware discover that also, and offer it as a candidate?

Yes, it does. It is interesting that it is named "Android-IA", which indicates that the firmware is probably designed to handle dual-boot Windows-Android. So, finding another ESP-fat partition on the same internal drive, it assumes hey that must be Android.

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Hi, a correction about that quote from me.

That is in relation to a full install into partitions of the internal hard drive of the computer.
My blog post is here:
http://barryk.org/news/?viewDetailed=00475

I haven't tried plop, so can't comment as to why it doesn't work. I guess that I will have to add that to my to-do list!

[don570]

Plop boot manager hasn't been improved since 2013 and I am using an old version 5.0.12

https://www.plop.at/en/bootmanager/download.html

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The nice thing about using quirky xerus 8.1.5 --->

If I am not using hard drives or another USB stick my noisy fan will shut off, so it's like using a raspberry pi computer.

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Dropbear package can be installed easily
http://distro.ibiblio.org/quirky/quirky ... x86_64.pet

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[linuxcbon]

Hi Barry,
can you please make a barebone version too, with only PPM ? So we install only what we need.
Cheers.
Happy new year

[belham2]

Hi Barry,
can you please make a barebone version too, with only PPM ? So we install only what we need.
Cheers.
Happy new year

++++++++1 !!

That would be extremely ripper!


I know we can (or are supposed to) do the re-master thing and all if we want to remove stuff and/or get a Quirky like we like it, but sometimes when you re-master, you sit there as a frustrated user (realizing your limits) and truly wonder if you got everything (docs, libs, /usr files, /bin files, and/or hidden files) of some program and/or programs removed.

Having a barebones Quirky install, with only the PPM, would allow us all to build only the Quirky we want. Come to think of it, has any puppy developer ever attempted to do this? Why not? So many puppies nowadays come chockers!

Why can't we in the puppy-verse have the beauty & freedom of a barebones PPM-only (especially the beauty of one of Barry's works) without the re-mastering headaches???

Sensing that this would go over completely gangbusters if Barry would do this

[don570]

I was able to compile gimp 2.8.18 by disabling fu-script and python
I had to disable python because of the following warning during compile

checking for headers required to compile python extensions... not found
configure: error:
*** Could not find Python 2 headers.
*** Please install them, or skip building the python scripting extension by
*** passing --disable-python to configure (but then you will not be able
*** to use scripts for GIMP that are written in Python).

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[don570]

I was able to run an old version of blender that didn't require opengl 2

http://download.blender.org/release/Ble ... 64.tar.bz2

I extracted in /opt and then ran executable 'blender'.
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[eowens2]

I have installed Quirky Xerus 8.1.5 to a USB stick using alternate method option#1, ‘4install-quirky-to-drive-gpt’ and ‘xerus64-8.1.5.usfs.xz’.

The system boots to desktop without problem, but on initial setup the wifi fails to activate. I have tried Simple Network Setup and Frisbee without success.

The loopback network interface is present, but wifi and ethernet interfaces are both absent. The iwlwifi kernel module is loaded.

A few months ago Barry K posted a wifi- firmware update .pet. I installed the update but it did not solve the problem.

I am running another linux distro on the same hardware (Asus Zenbook UX305FA), and the wifi works fine.

Any suggestions as to how to get these network interfaces up and going?

[belham2]

I have installed Quirky Xerus 8.1.5 to a USB stick using alternate method option#1, ‘4install-quirky-to-drive-gpt’ and ‘xerus64-8.1.5.usfs.xz’.

The system boots to desktop without problem, but on initial setup the wifi fails to activate. I have tried Simple Network Setup and Frisbee without success.

The loopback network interface is present, but wifi and ethernet interfaces are both absent. The iwlwifi kernel module is loaded.

A few months ago Barry K posted a wifi- firmware update .pet. I installed the update but it did not solve the problem.

I am running another linux distro on the same hardware (Asus Zenbook UX305FA), and the wifi works fine.

Any suggestions as to how to get these network interfaces up and going?

Hi eowens2,

You don't say what your wireless is on your ASUS? Is it Broadcom? In my HP atom-based laptop, it uses Broadcom/B43-related wireless firmware. Barry K posted this on his blog about firmware that was left out of Quirky 8.0. The problem still exists for me in later Quirky versions, even 8.1.5. To get around the problem at that time (if this Broadcom-B43 thing applies to you), see this thread here:

http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... bd21923ceb

It is easily solved using a Quirky Werewolf 7.2 ISO that you can download from Ibiblio, or you can try Bill's pet he wrote (see above thread). Plus, Slavvo's Quirky edition also has all the correct Broadcom firmware and you can copy from his Quirky version.

I honestly thought this Broadcom/B43 problem was going to be solved by the time Quirky 8.1.5 came out, but I'll be danged if I still don't have to get the firmware from a Quirky Werewolf-edition just so that my HP netbook can have wireless when I'm using the latest Quirky 8.0 & up to & Including 8.1.5 builds.

Hope this helps & applies to your situation.



[Edit: I just did a search of the Asus Zenbook UX305FA, it says it is Intel wireless. Boy, there are a ton of complaints that Google brings back just on the wireless alone with this laptop. From wireless not functioning to just plain very slow perfromance to very short range reach of it to many different routers. Also, it says Intel has released new wireless firmware, a few times for this ASUS model. Have you installed the last & latest Intel firmware for your model? That might be something to check. Sorry I can't help any further. Only other thing I can suggest, is to download the latest Fatdog64 and see if it immediately sets up on your laptop and if the wireless works. If Fatdog64 works (or maybe even try Tahr64), you'll know the problem is inside Quirky. I don't know why, but I have never had any Fatdog64 version fail to setup the wireless on any machine I've ever tried it on, from mine, to my familys, to friends and others...and this includes very old machines with ancient wireless up to brand new ones with the latest wireless wizardry.]

[BarryK]

Hi Barry,
can you please make a barebone version too, with only PPM ? So we install only what we need.
Cheers.
Happy new year

Yes, this Quirky has got a bit fat.
A surprise is on the way. It won't be barebones, but will be much slimmer.

Note, it would be possible to modify the PPM to uninstall builtin packages, that is, not just those you have installed.

Libreoffice, for example, could be uninstalled.

The PPM checks dependencies when you choose to uninstall a package, so in theory you could uninstall packages without breaking the system.

Just thinking how someone could try it... one way would be to write a script that converts everything in /root/.packages/builtin_files into the .files format that gets created when you install a package.

Then... rename 'woof-installed-packages' to 'user-installed-packages' and create an empty 'woof-installed-packages'

Then run PPM and start uninstalling.

Finally, rename user-installed-packages back to woof-installed-packages.

Something like that, not sure if I have left out some vital detail.

Afterward, take a snapshot, using the Snapshot Manager, and in /audit/snapshots you will have an SFS of your new small filesystem. Which could be used to create a new usb stick. Take an unused Quirky usb stick, mount the second partition, delete almost everything in it (where the contents of your new sfs will be written to) and write /dev/zero to a file to zeroise the entire partition. Then copy the contents of your new SFS.
Again, can't guarantee I haven't left out some vital detail.

[eowens2]

Hi Belham2,

Thank you for your rapid response to my problem.

Yes, my wireless hardware is from Intel. I mentioned the kernel module but not the manufacturer, sorry!

I mentioned ‘another linux distro’ on my laptop; it is indeed Fatdog64_710-final, and with it the wifi works flawlessly.

I felt like experimenting, so in Quirky Xerus 8.1.5 I renamed the firmware directory to ‘oldfirmware’, and in its place I dropped the firmware directory from Fatdog64. And after reboot, the wifi in Quirky Xerus 8.1.5 works great! (I hope hiding the original firmware doesn’t break something else.)

After updating the Quirky Package Manager, I downloaded Chromium, but unfortunately it would not activate from the menu or desktop icon. Invoking it from the command line with ’#chromium’ yielded about 40 lines of error messages. Now I am not too smart about this kind of stuff, but I think the gist of the error messages was that Chromium does not want to be run as root. I think I read a solution to this somewhere, I’ll try to dig it out.

[eowens2]

O.K. Here's what I found by forum member dancytron at http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 2&start=94 in a discussion about Chromium on Quirky 8.1.4 for Raspberry pi 2 and 3.

dancytron said:

Try

Code:
/usr/bin/chromium-browser --no-sandbox


or
Code:

/usr/bin/chromium-browser --user-data-dir=/root/chrome/user --disk-cache-dir=/root/chrome/cache --no-sandbox

So in Menu -> Setup -> Default Applications Chooser -> Browser I entered

Code: Select all

chromium --user-data-dir=/root/chrome/user --disk-cache-dir=/root/chrome/cache  --no-sandbox

and clicked on 'apply'.

Then clicking on Desktop Browser icon, Chromium boots.and so far seems to be working OK...I am posting from it now.

If one enters

Code: Select all

chromium --user-data-dir=/root/chrome/user --disk-cache-dir=/root/chrome/cache  --no-sandbox

from the command line, Chromium also boots, but gives you a whole page of errors/warnings for the process, but so far I don't see any malfunctions of the browser..

As Chromium starts up, it adds a 'Protest Bar' at the top of the page, informing you that this arrangement (running as root) is sub-optimal.

Does anyone see any problems continuing with this arrangement?

[Billtoo]

@eowens2

Hi,

I updated QPM and then installed chromium-browser, then reran QuickSetup first-run settings and chose to run it as spot.
It starts up with no errors, I added the ublock extension.

[belham2]

Hi all,

I know that having a full install of Quirky on its own paritition, the .pet package (service-pack_8.0_TO_8.1.5-xerus64.pet) works with no problems, at least for me. It updates, goes to 8.1.5 version, and all is ok (as long as it is a 'full' install to Quirky on its own partition/SD card/USB drive that this is happening on). I also know (and have tested), using Billtoo's method & tips, getting a fresh Quirky 8.1.5 installation installed and up & running using the now-deleted 8.1.5 ISO (which I idiotically deleted off my saved ISOs & no longer have, which would solve all the following problems below).

But my question concerns frugal installs/running only. One one of my old Seagate 180GB IDE USB enclosure drives, I've grub4dos installed. There's about ~10 pups along with Quirky 8.0 'furgal' on there. All are used during the week and all are kept up to date as much as possible (usually means compiling some things). So, one of the 'furgal' installs on this Seagate external is a beloved Quirky (64-bit) 8.0 "furgal" install. This install, many months ago, has been modded quite extensively in terms of icons, themes, add'l programs, shortcuts, rotating backgrounds, redshiift, etc, etc and such.

I made a backup copy of this Quirky 8.0 "frugal" install. Then I again ran the Quirky Package Manager, which always throws up that popup of "Service Pack Available, The current version of Quirky: 8.0, The highest available upgrade version: 8.1.5..click OK to download & install the Service Pack". I've avoided this message like the plague, for fear it would decimate my frugal install.

Well, since I made a backup, I took the plunge. For the past two frustrating days I have struggled to get this QPM 8.0-to-8.1.5.pet update to not only install, but also not decimate my system. Applying the update via the .pet is just absolute destruction. I even downloaded the update .pet separately, unpakced, and studied the script, and I can follow nearly all of it until you get to the part where there is a command to completely wipe the current /home contents and directory as part of the upgrade. I am not expert enough to understand what Barry was trying to do at this juncture, but all I know is the update completely wipes everything, won't even apply the 8.1.5 upgrades, and sends my frugal install back to a pristine 8.0 frugal setup.

Does or has anyone here run a "frugal" Quirky setup (Stemsee, you still around??) and have had success going from a 8.0 Quirky "frugal" install to a 8.1.5 Quirky updated version of the very same frugal install using this .pet service-pack Barry K made up and is available on ibiblio??

Thanks for any replies.

(as a side note, I hated/hate BTRFS and the snapshot function in OpenSUSE, and is recently why I finally gave up with it & left the distro for good...BTRFS is still crap, in my experience, as it just wrecks havoc on older system resources plus, the worse, it is still unstable as a drunk wallaby but yet lethal as a inland taipan. Why? Developers continually write script workarounds for their implementation of BTRFS' shortcomings and problems. The SUSE team is notorious for this; just read their forum and look at what the most talked about topic is. For Quirky 8.1.5 here, is the update in the 8.1.5 only this BTRFS stuff as implemented by Barry, or are there important, regular security updates too it? If there are important updates, and would it be possible to just apply those security updates (via copying them from a working 8.1.5 full partition install) to my current 8.0 frugal install??)

[Billtoo]

@belham2

Hi,

I used the alternative install method to a 32GB SDHC card which is
plugged into a Verbatim usb card reader.
It's a fairly fast card but not too pricey.

Anyway, it's working pretty well.

[don570]

GMIC plugins 1.7.9 for GIMP app will work in
Quirky Xerus 8.1.5 for x86_64
REQUIREMENT: fftw compiled for multiple threads

http://gmic.eu/files/linux/gmic_gimp_linux64.zip
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