XenialDog (Ubuntu 16.04 'Xenial Xerus' LTS, 32-bit)

[mcewanw]

If "xendog" is on a ext partition you can use save to folder,

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 changes=EXIT:/xendog/

Hope it's clear now.

Fred

But is it correct, as far as I recall, that if xendog is on a fat32 or ntfs partition you can use a save file called changes.dat (in /xendog folder)? And you should construct changes.dat first, in that xendog folder, to whatever size is most suitable for you needs. And on kernel line of menu.lst you then need this part:

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changes=EXIT:/xendog/changes.dat

when underlying partition for the changes.dat save file is ntfs or fat32?

William

[fredx181]

changes=EXIT:/xendog/changes.dat

when underlying partition for the changes.dat save file is ntfs or fat32?

Yes, savefile placed on fat32 works in any case, but for ntfs, I think hibernation should be disabled (in Windows).
If it's enabled it probably won't work.

Fred

[fredx181]

Now i am facing to recording applications. No sound (Xvidcap and Precord)
Precord help told me that FFmpeg not needed for MP3.

Yes, I could not record sound with xvidcap either, thanks for reporting.
I must admit that some apps I didn't test properly yet, for next ISO release it will be different.

New version of xvidcap, 1.1.7a, install:

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apt-get update
apt-get install xvidcap

Or from Synaptic: First: Reload, then search xvidcap and install/upgrade.
Changed: removed dependency of pulseaudio, (works fine with oss driver /dev/dsp)
This way install space required will be a lot smaller also.

New version of precord, 9.0.4, install:

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apt-get update
apt-get install precord

Changed: Added dependency: lame
Or from Synaptic: First: Reload, then search precord and install/upgrade.

Changes added to Changes and fixes list

Fred

[musher0]

Hi, FredX.

I tested your XenialDog on a HP Compaq 6715b portable.

The boot process got me to the X window and jwm (?), but it was unusable: the screen
was full of triangles (such as "dented fanions with mites eating at the colors".) That
sentence sounds like poetry but it isn't! No fun at all!

Never had that problem before. I got boots to black screen now and then on a very small
number of Puppies, but this is new.

BFN

[mcewanw]

Hello musher0,

I haven't myself tried out DDXenial but will do tonight so my experiences with it may help you out since my machine is an old HP Elitebook 2530P. Most of these older HP machines are pretty similar and I can also later try out DDXenial on an HP 6730P, which one of my friends have. It would be useful to know the complete specs of your machine including processor, RAM, and the graphics chip it has, in order to make a comparison.

Also, I note there is a XenialPup now available in beta; have you tried that out? If that works for you then I expect it should be easy enough to get DDXenial working on your machine too since most of the underlying software/drivers are likely the same.

FYI, my HP Elitebook 2530P main specs (just read whilst in TahrPup) are Intel CPU Core2 Duo L9600 2.13GHz; 2 GB RAM; Intel Integrated Graphics with Kernet driver i915 (VGA controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 07) Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Device 30e1); 1200 x 800 pixel resolution LCD (your machine probably more since bigger screen);

I'll let you know my own results once I have them (never had any problem with any of the DebianDogs or Mintpup on my HP machines as yet).

William

[mcewanw]

Hi musher0 and also Fred,

On my above-mentioned HP Elitebook 2530P laptop.

Created folder called DDXenial32 on my /dev/sda7 ext2 partition, downloaded XenialDog iso and, whilst in tahrpup, clicked on it and extracted its whole casper folder (only) into that DDXenial32 folder. Used the following grub4dos menu.lst entries to boot XenialDog:

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title PorteusDog Xenial32 openbox (sda7)
root (hd0,6)
kernel /DDXenial32/casper/vmlinuz noauto from=/DDXenial32/ changes=EXIT:/DDXenial32/casper/
initrd /DDXenial32/casper/initrd1.xz

Booted fine and no X display issues on this machine as it turns out.

Only problem is that I rely on wifi for connection and Frisbee wouldn't connect, but I'm pretty sure that is simply because you have forgotten to include rfkill command again Fred, which is required for these particular HP machines to connect! ;-)

By the way, I've forgotten (assuming I ever knew) how to post screenshots in the nice uncluttered form you use Fred.

William

[saintless]

Maybe this is the problem:
Why Radeon Users May Want to Avoid Ubuntu 16.04 LTS

...HP Compaq 6715b portable...

VGA ATI Radeon X1250

... HP Elitebook 2530P...
...HP 6730P...

VGA Intel GMA 4500MHD
VGA Intel GMA 4500MHD
VGA Intel GMA X4500 HD

Toni

[mcewanw]

Ah... It seems your HP Compaq machine is very different with AMD Turion 64 X2 CPU and ATI Radeon X1250 graphics? Sorry, musher0, I can't help with that one.

William

EDIT: Yes, Toni, I think the same - didn't notice your post since was just posting my above response at about same time...

[Pelo]

mcewanw m'a écrit :
"Correct me if I am wrong Fred, but I think with porteus boot you cannot save changes to directory if ntfs or fat32 but you can save to these formats if you instead use changes.dat save file. Otherwise, Pelo, yes, you could create separate ext2 partition and use changes to directory with porteus boot. "

My goal was saving on my pendrive, it's my usage at home.
Now i save on Hard drive, linux Partition formated ext3.
I erased what i wrote on the forum about my failing tries,
one of them was partioning pendrive in one fat32 section (ISO) and the second ext2 for my data. At reboot the computer made a continuous sound, nothing started.
Conclusion : what i am interested in is what applications are available for download which i could not install with a classic Puppy. So i will keep save on my Hard drive, it's not a huge handicap, just a change in my habits.

[Pelo]

about lame missing for audio recording, to-day i saw thar Asri edu has lame available in its blog. If anyone knows where lame is available elsewhere, i would not refuse the information.
Solved : available in the packages. Recording voice with Precord without trouble.

[musher0]

Ah... It seems your HP Compaq machine is very different with AMD Turion 64 X2 CPU and ATI Radeon X1250 graphics? Sorry, musher0, I can't help with that one.

William

EDIT: Yes, Toni, I think the same - didn't notice your post since was just posting my above response at about same time...

Many thanks, William and Toni.
Quite informative. BFN.

[mcewanw]

Hi Fred,

Just confirming that I got my wlf1 wireless connected after first installing rfkill. Did have problem getting Frisbee to connect (had to go to Diagnostics and Edit config to allow restart networks). Presumably Frisbee connection would be fine if I first remastered with rfkill included. I haven't remastered.

William

[mcewanw]

about lame missing for audio recording, to-day i saw thar Asri edu has lame available in its blog. If anyone knows where lame is available elsewhere, i would not refuse the information.

That lame you mention is a dotpet for Puppies of course. In Debian/Ubuntu Dogs you can, as Fred said, simply install lame with:

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apt-get update

followed by:

apt-get install lame

or via GUI package manager 'Synaptics'

lame is available in the other DebianDog OS's already and Fred will include it in next iso for XenialDog.

Note that you also need to change some habits when using Debian-style package management. Pretty much all available Linux software is available straight from the Debian/Ubuntu repositories. You can search for packages using Synaptic Package Manager or via commandline using 'apt-cache search'. For example:

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apt-cache search abiword

which returns a whole lot of info including the needed one:

"abiword - efficient, featureful word processor with collaboration"

which you could then install from the commandline (including its auto-resolved dependencies) with:

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apt-get install abiword

(assuming you have already or recently run 'apt-get update')

Or again, if you prefer, you can find and install using GUI package manager from StartMenu -> System -> Synaptic Package Manager

If you ever want to get rid of it (or any other program installed) you can either use Synaptic Package Manager to do so or at command line:

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apt-get remove abiword

or more thorough removal to (include the apps configuration files) with

apt-get purge abiword

Occasionally the underlying packaging database system (dpkg) tells you some stuff has been left behind but is not being used. You can then remove such junk with:

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apt-get autoremove

Similarly, it very occasionally happens (more often when using dpkg utility directly rather than the apt utility) that some dependencies haven't been fully installed. You generally can get that auto-fixed by typing command:

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apt-get install -f

Worth mentioning also that Fred has created/included some utilities for creating sfs (squashfs) files from apt fetched packages (rather than installing them directly). For example in MainMenu -> Module Tools -> AptToSfs. Note also that you can create a special small sfs for ffmpeg from MainMenu -> Module Tools -> FFmpeg2sfs. You can activate/load/unload these sfs files directly from File Manager via provided right-click activate/deactivate module commands. And you can quickly remaster your installed system via MainMenu -> System -> RemasterDog. Its a very very flexible system. You can also stick your squashfs files (which should have that extension) inside your casper folder and that causes them to be auto-loaded at boot time.

William

[dancytron]

Correct me if I am wrong.

The one thing to remember about remastering, is that it includes the things that are in any *.squashfs files you've loaded but that those things are not included in the database that is keeping track of all the installed files.

So remember to unload any *.squashfs files before remastering so apt-get doesn't get confused later on.

[Pelo]

Mcewanw, merci, your information is useful. My computer has to produce what i ask it, not me to satisfy what is provided.
lame was not found by XenialDog packags manager. lame-3.98.4-i686.sfs: 512 K provided via adri edu repo, to be tested
XenialDog with recording not available was not worth leaving Puppy Linux.
What i Miss in Puppy is stuff for video editing, and recording the audio is part of it.
I have Dolby system in my computer and NVIDIA Optimus. Until now both are not usable by Linux. But i don't really them for my comments.
The goal is to extract from national videos the part concerning the local soccer teams. and join them to other local information, mostly cultural... free of charge

[fredx181]

@Pelo

lame was not found by XenialDog packags manager.

Found it! (see screenshot)

The choice of packages is over 53000 !

You have to click the 'Reload' button first, maybe that's the reason you couldn't find.

BTW, As I mentioned earlier: xvidcap should work now recording sound, just install it (will install newer fixed version)

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apt-get update
apt-get install xvidcap

@William, yes, again forgot to include rfkill, will be in next iso.

Fred

[Pelo]

well, well, i will do it from apt-get.. Did you try Precord with it if recording was working ? I will check taht later, on next Sunday, and will feed back.
When i 'Taste' a new distro, I sort by date applications in /usr/share/applications. But Precord, You Tube, and wireless connection are in my check list each time.
When beginning with Puppy Linux (2012), Lucid 528 had no sound.
Wireless now is needed because sun shines as soon as 9 AM outside, in my terrasse (translation will arrive)
Saturday : Precord and Xvidcap 1.1.7a now serviceable

[fredx181]

Did you try Precord with it if recording was working ?

Yes, it works with mp3 recording, only thing is that I'm always having trouble to find the right setup in alsamixer.
It depends on soundcard probably but anyway see screenshot how I set up record from soundcard (stereo-mix)

Fred

[mcewanw]

NOTE: See last method (/etc/modprobe.d/alsa.conf) by gentoo for my preferred 'fix'.

I'm currently trying to get sound working even for playback on an HP Probook 650 - doesn't show any expected controls at all in alsamixer - just three entries named SPDIF, SPDIF2,SPDIF3. I am just about to google about the machine - so maybe the actual sound card hasn't been automatically selected... who knows...!

William

EDIT: My sound issue is actually occurring in currently installed MintPup, but I think same would be the case for XenialDog on this HP ProBook 650. It's getting late here so haven't had time to try possible fix. Seems the machine is using HDMI device by default rather than correct PCH device, so I'll need an asoundrc to fix that according to:

https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/20 ... 00562.html

Tomorrow will tell...

So, problem was HP ProBook 650 has HDMI audio as default audio hw:0,0
One side-effect of that is that the tray volumeicon doesn't appear on boot cos it uses default audio and needs it to be PCM one.
I therefore needed to PCM audio as default instead. It's Intel audio card. First attempt, creating the following /etc/asound.conf seemed to fix the issue:

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pcm.!default {
 type hw
 card 1
 device 0
}
ctl.!default {
 type hw
 card 1
}

Mplayer, for example, now played sound okay, and Precord would work though I think I had to click the Precord audio checkbox to select card 1

But life is oddly never so easy cos I discovered that HTML5 videos on YouTube wouldn't play audio (I read that Flash audio will work but I didn't have Flash installed). Then I found an alternative fix, which was to put the following at the end of my menu.lst kernel line:

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snd-hda-intel.index=1,0

But IMPORTANT... to get that working I had to also totally remove the file /etc/asound.conf

So now audio seems to work fine on this HP Probook 650 machine with every app I've tried now including HTML5 youtube videos. Still, I don't consider this situation perfect since I don't like that it is so fussy as to require complete removal of that /etc/asound.conf file. What if I want to use asound.conf to modify other alsa properties??? But maybe that won't be a problem as long as I'm not changing default sound card in there - I haven't tried since too busy with other priorities now.

The google links I predominantly relied on for the above 'fix' were:

http://docs.slackware.com/howtos:hardwa ... _slackware

and

https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/ALSA#HTML5 ... ox_browser

EDIT:

Note that that gentoo link gives another method to fix the HTML5 audio problem which I have now tested as also playing HTML5 audio and mplayer etc correctly.

I think this /etc/modprobe.d/alsa.conf solution may be the best one here, so I am adopting this method for now:

Laptops with HDMI audio output

Some laptops with an HDMI audio output will map /proc/asound/card0 as HDMI and therefore makes it default output device for applications as stated above in the Firefox section. Another way to remap is to add these two lines to /etc/modprobe.d/alsa.conf

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# Set this to the correct number of cards.
options snd cards_limit=2

options snd-hda-intel id=PCH index=0
options snd-hda-intel id=HDMI index=1

Verify the order change by checking this command
user $cat /proc/asound/cards

Note that the command:

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aplay -l

(note that's a small ell as the command argument) can be used to list all your audio cards (PCM and HDMI).

William

[Pelo]

well weel well. Precord works Unless exception. I reintroduce my pendrive to day, to go further with XenialDog ( which promises more than PuppY Linux)
Hardware and sounds cards are the step forward. If interested PF6 in alsamixer allows you to choose card for recording if you are linked to a tape player, for instance.
Alexandra, video collection manager is one of my missing apps because not compiled in Puppy. I use it with windows 7. But that is a pity, because alexandra is a Linux apps.