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

[musher0]

Update:

Still running everything via "frugal" install, and using (and beating the heck out of) the supposedly limited 'savefile'. Well, I installed the monster 333MB quirky-devx, and had savefile save it, and next reboot, Quirky booted like a champ and I have full compiling at my fingertips.

First up was compiling JWM-2.3.6, bringing the jwm up from the included "jwm-vgit-976" to now the full "2.3.6". I've encountered no problems.

Next, I did "JWMDesk" manager, a much cleaner and better organized window controlling everything from jwm, themes, icons, screensaver, fonts, hotkeys and menumanager all in one scrren. I removed all the individual separate menu launchers in Quirky, and now just have JWMDesk Manager.

Below is a pic of these two things: more compiling and installs (plus a few more compiling upgrades) to come. Darn good stuff, Barry, cannot believe the supposed limited "savefile" is handling with aplomb everything I am throwing at it

Valuable information, that. Thanks much, belham2.

[sszindian]

I don't see '.sfs on the fly' in the menu structure? Is the .sfs load feature not available in Quirky or did I miss it somewhere?

The new 'flash update' does the job for seamonkey but apparently there is still an issue with seamonkey itself somewhere... (in prospectingchannel.com) it loads the initial video there but clicking on additional programs, it won't display the video and requires that you back-out of there and come into it again... then the second time it will display and run the selected video.

Overall so far, the program is fast and well polished... 'Nice Job'.

>>>---Indian------>

[BarryK]

Oh, I'm sure I had a frugal install, there was an "s.sfs" in the QuirkyXerus
directory. Looking back, I think I forgot to hit the Save icon before
powering down. Puppy habits die hard!

In deference to those with a Puppy Linux background, I have changed the default to ask to save at shutdown:

http://barryk.org/news/?viewDetailed=00599

There is a checkbox in the save-window, you can turn it off, if you don't want to be asked at every shutdown.

[rufwoof]

Configured and working well



... except for seamonkey. Initially set it to run as spot at quicksetup first run, but after a while it wouldn't load. Reinstalled again (didn't complain about it already being installed) ... and it was running as root rather than spot. Re-ran first run quicksetup and ticked the run as spot option ... set it to run seamonkey as spot ... and wouldn't run/load. Tried reinstalling and it wouldn't (saying it was already installed).

I've installed firefox to post this (intend to remove seamonkey later anyway as its not one of my usual choices).

I've set the panel to be pretty bare. Just a single desktop and I've installed brightside and set the top left corner as a hot corner (mouse into that and it runs toggle show desktop) ... nice quick way to get from a full screened window to your desktop icons IMO (a bit gnome'ish).

Installed lsof (so the full version can lsof -i to show internet connections), screenfetch (that penguin ansi image/text in the above clickable image), myspell (for UK spell checks), lxterminal, firefox, brightside ... and saving/reloading changes fine when xerus 8.1.94 CD booted with q.sfs and s.sfs on HDD.

[BarryK]

In addition to 'bcm', Quirky now has 'aemenu-pango' and 'replaceit':

http://barryk.org/news/?viewDetailed=00600

[BarryK]

...almost forgot "2':

Mike Walsh's excellent Slimjet-sfs packages work awesome in Quirky. I downloaded his 'Slimjet-Version-15.0.0.0 (based on Chromium 59.0.3071.86_64)', quickly converted it to a pet, and it installed easily & is now running good in Quirky 8.1.94. Slimjet provides a nice counterpoint to the installed Seamonkey 2.48---especially when I want to get at my Netflix stuff

Hold on, I'm missing something here.

How did you do this: "quickly converted it to a pet"

[BarryK]

I don't see '.sfs on the fly' in the menu structure? Is the .sfs load feature not available in Quirky or did I miss it somewhere?

Because I tacked on support for live-cd and frugal as an after-thought, they have restricted capabilities.

Um, have to remember what I have done. Yes, Quirky has an initramfs, and the init script (inside file initrd.q -- look in the CD) has this in it:

Code: Select all

#151203 load any more sfs files...
EXTRASFS=''
for ASFS in `ls -1 ${QPATH}/*.sfs 2>/dev/null | grep -v '/[qs]\.sfs'`
do
 ANAME="$(basename $ASFS .sfs)"
 mkdir /q_ro/$ANAME
 mount -r -t squashfs -o noatime,loop ${QPATH}/${ANAME}.sfs /q_ro/${ANAME}
 EXTRASFS="${EXTRASFS}:/q_ro/${ANAME}${RO}"
 KEEPMNT=1
done

So, the same folder where you have your s.sfs saved session, if you put another sfs file there, it should load at bootup.

But there isn't an sfs on-the-fly support.

[L18L]

The CLI text editor 'mp' is broken. It is the old problem of the menu not working. It is version 3.2.13.

I have compiled 3.3.17 and it works, so have made a PET and it will be in the next release of Quirky.

If L18L reads this, he will probably want to remind me that the 3.x series does not support UTF-8

I still haven't sorted out the keyboard mappings of the 5.x series of mp.

Glad to see you have not forgotten that.

I have installed Quirky Xerus 8.1.94 for x86_64 (dd to a USB pendrive of 8GB)

Did some work with it on my 4GB RAM box.

Code: Select all

setxkbmap de

set my keyboard layout.

But after some reboots no reboot was possible any more.
I have read now that 4GB RAM is not enough.
But not finding a way out of this situation (fsck did not help) makes it a no go for me.
No data have been lost since access from another OS was possible.

As for the video and UTF-8, there is no problem for me in my "other" favourit OS:
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 037#959037

Regards

[BarryK]

But after some reboots no reboot was possible any more.
I have read now that 4GB RAM is not enough.
But not finding a way out of this situation (fsck did not help) makes it a no go for me.

How did you get that idea? 4GB RAM is plenty. A full install should run on fine a PC with less than 1GB RAM.

What do you mean by "no reboot was possible any more"?
What exactly happens when you boot?

[BarryK]

Updated packages:

PeasyPort 2.2
http://barryk.org/news/?viewDetailed=00601

PupSysInfo 2.7
http://barryk.org/news/?viewDetailed=00602

New packages:

UrxvtControl 1.3
http://barryk.org/news/?viewDetailed=00603

JWMDesk 2.3
http://barryk.org/news/?viewDetailed=00604

[belham2]

...almost forgot "2':

Mike Walsh's excellent Slimjet-sfs packages work awesome in Quirky. I downloaded his 'Slimjet-Version-15.0.0.0 (based on Chromium 59.0.3071.86_64)', quickly converted it to a pet, and it installed easily & is now running good in Quirky 8.1.94. Slimjet provides a nice counterpoint to the installed Seamonkey 2.48---especially when I want to get at my Netflix stuff

Hold on, I'm missing something here.

How did you do this: "quickly converted it to a pet"

(hmmmm, my sub 800x600, only 244kb pics are not being posted by the murga-board....give me a sec to figure out what's going on....ah, ok, figured it out...here the two pics are)

[BarryK]

- in xerrs.log
ls: cannot access '/root/.pup_event': No such file or directory

This error message doesn't matter, but I have fixed so that it doesn't appear.

Thanks for the feedback.

[recobayu]

Updated packages:
JWMDesk 2.3
http://barryk.org/news/?viewDetailed=00604

I think jwm must be update to 2.3.6.
It has aerosnap, and we can make it looks like i3wm by setting height=1
But the theme configuration is different with vgit version.
We can control the movement window by shortcut. It is stickyjwm here:
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 550#910550

[rufwoof]

There are changes in jwm configuration syntax ... so if you upgrade to 2.3.6 you'll have to go through the jwm configuration files to update/change those https://joewing.net/projects/jwm/config.shtml

[belham2]

There are changes in jwm configuration syntax ... so if you upgrade to 2.3.6 you'll have to go through the jwm configuration files to update/change those https://joewing.net/projects/jwm/config.shtml

I read that too before I compiled 2.3.6, but decided against changing any config-syntaxes from what came in the iso. After compiling and installing 2.3.6, I cannot find one problem with 2.3.6 versus the vgit-976 version that "jwm -v" showed as in there. By now, I would think, as much as I've modded my overall jwm settings, at least one (and probably) several problems should have popped up and/or I should've seen something. So, I don't know, but recobayu may be on to something.

[ETP]

Hi Barry,

To follow up on item 1. in my previous post:

1. Despite the return to retrovol the set master volume level still does not survive a re-boot
returning to zero every time. Suspicion falls on Aumix which perhaps should also have
been removed or some change that was made to the alsa config to accomodate Aumix in the
first place needs to be reverted. In particular /etc/init.d/aumix is still present
together with 3 related config files in /etc. (aumixrc, aumixrc1 & aumixrc2)

After today's tennis final I moved /etc/init.d/aumix to a backup directory.
Set audio volume levels were then preserved across multiple reboots so Aumix was the culprit.

That was my shortest lived Pup ever..... 2days.
Looking forward to your next release.

[rufwoof]

I moved /etc/init.d/aumix to a backup directory.
Set audio volume levels were then preserved across multiple reboots so Aumix was the culprit.

Changing /etc/init.d/aumix lines 34 and 35 to

Code: Select all

SAVEMIXER="no" # save and restore mixer setting by default
HANDLEALSA="yes" # do not save and restore if ALSA detected by default

also preserves alsa settings across reboots (/var/lib/alsa/asound.state however still disappears after a reboot i.e. if created using alsactl store).

[linuxcbon]

Quirky Xerus 8.1.94 for x86_64

- are there missing files for keyboard settings ?

Code: Select all

# /usr/sbin/quicksetup
grep: /etc/X11/xkb/rules/xorg.lst: No such file or directory
grep: /root/.packages/user-installed-packages: No such file or directory

- 2 bugs for adding a new user :
1/ the /home folder should exist by default (mkdir /home)
2/ the file /etc/shadow contains 3 bad entries (surely typos)
messagebus:!:0:99999:7::: should be messagebus:!::0:99999:7:::
haldaemon::0:99999:7::: should be haldaemon:::0:99999:7:::
uucp::0:99999:7::: should be uucp:::0:99999:7:::
That file should be manually corrected as shown above.
And then adding a new user will be bug free.

[rerwin]

I am attempting to run xerus64-8.1.94 by booting from CD but with q.sfs and s.sfs files in folder /xerus64-8.1.94 on /dev/sda1 (ntfs). The PC has 2G of RAM.

After booting from the CD, I added the b43 firmware to /lib/firmware and saved the session. I then "remastered"* the CD to preserve the name of the folder containing the saved session. But on booting from the remastered CD, the desktop was as if there were no saved session.

Here is what I see during boot-up:

• Creating compressed zram, using 1433046K of RAM
  Setting up layered file system, zram on top, Quirky SFS underneath
  Copying q.sfs to RAM
  Loading session from sda1, folder /xerus64-8.1.94, into RAM
  mkdir: can't create directory '/partition/xerus64-8.1.94/s_sfs': Operation not permitted
  mount: mounting /dev/loop0 on /partition/xerus64-8.1.94/s_sfs failed: No such file or directory
  cp: can't stat '/partition/xerus64-8.1.94/s_sfs/*': No such file or directory
  umount: can't unmount /partition/xerus64-8.1.94/s_sfs
  Performing a switch_root onto the layered file system
  Making the filesystem usable...[etc.]

Why is the mkdir not permitted?

As an experiment, I created the s_sfs directory in /xerus64-8.1.94, and rebooted. The boot-up hung at "Loading kernel modules...". But after a manual power-off and new boot-up, the desktop appeared and the /lib/firmware directory contains the b43 directory!

So, the issue is about the not-permitted mkdir.

* Instead of actually remastering the entire quirky CD, "remastering" in quirky is actually the creation of a boot- or initialization CD that relies on the q.sfs and s.sfs files saved on the hard/flash drive in the directory specified for the first "save" operation (default: /xerus64-8.1.94). Please consider a more accurate term and description, to avoid confusing or misleading users.
Richard

[radky]

Hi Barry,

Thanks for your consideration of JWMDesk in Quirky.

A couple of issues in JWMDesk-2.3 are now corrected in the new JWMDesk-2.4.

http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 688#869688

1 - The pinstall script is now Woof compatible and the JWMDesk-2.4 pet should be usable in both Woof and conventional installations.

2 - Quirky's unique PuppyPin backup script in /root/.xinitrc assumes the defaultpaint icon is always present on the desktop. Consequently, the Icon Layout option of JWMDesk-2.3 is broken.

In /usr/local/desksetup/func of the new JWMDesk-2.4, PuppyPinBACKUP syncs to the new PuppyPin and the Icon Layout option is now Quirky compatible. If you prefer a different solution, I'm open to suggestions.

The Icon Layout option also has a button to save the current desktop icon configuration as a custom arrangement. If one saves the default Quirky icon configuration as the custom arrangement, it is easy to return to the default desktop as any time, including the unique icon options to install or save Quirky.

3 - JWMDesk supports an optional second panel (accessory tray similar to wbar). This works fine for horizontal trays in Quirky's jwm vgit-976, but vertical trays are broken in vgit-976. Earlier or later versions of JWM do support vertical trays.

4 - In JWMDesk-2.4 the GUI width parameter is stored in /usr/local/jwmdesk/preferences/window_width rather than /usr/local/jwmdesk/window_width. I apologize for this inconvenience to your busy schedule.

The new Quirky is running smoothly for me.

Thanks!