(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

SlaQ 8.1.6, Jan 9, 2017
Everything is explained on my blog:

http://barryk.org/news/?viewDetailed=00493

Jan 7, 2017
I have been very busy the last few weeks, building Quirky from Slackware 14.2 binary packages. Decided to name this "SlaQ".

Not yet released, but i have started this thread so as to have a forum feedback thread to link to when I write the release announcement.

SlaQ 8.1.6 should be out in a couple of days. It has SeaMonkey 2.46 and Linux kernel 4.8.15.

The download is only 222MB, which is quite good. Our pups (and puplets) have been getting bigger and bigger, so it is good to reverse the trend.

Those of you who have used Quirky will know of the "green" and "brown" themes, that have been around for too long and are getting very boring. So, there is a new theme, "peachy red" -- it will be interesting to find out what users think of this!

This is kind of exciting...

...and peachy red too?


Well, speaking for myself, to heck with upgrading one of beloved Quirky 8.0 frugal installs to 8.1.5. I am waiting for this creation to do a fresh, brand-new 'frugal' install of a slack-based Quirky!


Thank you, Barry sir, for all your creations. Never let it be said that you are not one prolific genius when it comes to puppyland.

Hello BarryK.

I'll countersign belhams2's message above!

Two questions come to my mind, one silly and one serious, or maybe
both are silly. In any case, here goes:

- This coming release is along the lines of your Quirky concept, not along
the lines of your Puppy concept. Right?

- Two weeks ago you published a Quirky based on Ubuntu Xerus
repositories. This is something I've always meant to ask an expert:

what is the difference between the Ubuntu build of a program and the
Slackware build of the same program?

Aside from drawing your water from a different well, is there a significant
difference between them ? Quality assurance, perhaps? Default libraries
provided by each distro? Anything else that would be informative for us
Beotians? Thanks in advance.

I also wish you Happiness, Health and Prosperity for this New Year!

BFN.

musher0 wrote:Hello BarryK.

I'll countersign belhams2's message above!

Two questions come to my mind, one silly and one serious, or maybe
both are silly. In any case, here goes:

- This coming release is along the lines of your Quirky concept, not along
the lines of your Puppy concept. Right?

- Two weeks ago you published a Quirky based on Ubuntu Xerus
repositories. This is something I've always meant to ask an expert:

what is the difference between the Ubuntu build of a program and the
Slackware build of the same program?

Aside from drawing your water from a different well, is there a significant
difference between them ? Quality assurance, perhaps? Default libraries
provided by each distro? Anything else that would be informative for us
Beotians? Thanks in advance.

I also wish you Happiness, Health and Prosperity for this New Year!

BFN.

One significant difference is the binary compatibility with different package repositories. The choice is a personal preference.

Slackware packages tend to have less dependencies, and everything is conceptually simpler. Less weirdness in the filesystem.

The practical outcome is that when you install a package via the PPM, there might be less deps.

There are differences in the packages, different versions, different configure options, different directory layout. This is more of an issue for developers, but it does make for a lot of work getting it all right.

Different library versions can also cause problems. Ubuntu for example is still on libpng 1.2.x, Slackware is in 1.6.x. One package that I had compiled for Xerus, needed a patch to compile for SlaQ.

Many thanks for your answer.

@Barry K

Any chance you might be able to throw in a 32bit.sfs build for your new Quirky SlaQ ?... sure would be appreciated!

Just askin!

'Thanks in advance'

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

SlaQ version 8.1.6 is out:

http://barryk.org/news/?viewDetailed=00493

Note the rather large download size, 398MB, due to the choice of gzip compression.

Note, I am planning a new type of Quirky, that will be able to use xz compression internally, even though it will outwardly be gzip compressed.

There are no choices, just one file to download. Should be very easy for Windows people to install it to Flash stick.

Posting from glittering orange rainbow Slaq
Browsing with Firefox my own language.
I notice lack of support for complete installation or help with grub installation.

BarryK wrote:SlaQ version 8.1.6 is out:

Everything works great, Barry. I've went through a lot of stuff, it all seems as rock solid as previous quirkys. I am trying really hard with this theme-ing, but, with no ability to install "redshift" on Slacko and make it operational, don't know what I am gonna do short of wearing my sunglasses when trying to use this. But I did draw the line of tolerance at the icons.....ain't no flipping way I am staring at yellows & pinks & hues of red & purple all on a peachy-scarlet-crimson background. (I did leave the paint, draw and trash icons as is in an ode to your Van Gogh attempt here) Honestly, for a few minutes the background theme was ok. After an hour? I've felt a various range of emotions from either wanting to pop acid, smoke a little weed, or just lay down & wait for whomever in the ward (I must be in some sort of ward if I am staring at this screen colour....it's supposed to calm me down, right??)..just chillin' & waitin for 'em to come get me and take me back to my room.

mirrored here: http://archive.org/details/Puppy_Linux_Quirky_SlaQ

Now posting from SlaQ 8.1.6 using Seamonkey.

My first impression is that there are no big problems that BarryK does not know about. This may change with more experience. So far, so good. Kudos for Barry.

Now, having previously annoyed Sage by telling BarryK lack of an ISO image was not an emergency, I'm going to annoy Barry by insisting that even though I agree CD/DVD images are legacy matters, they should also be made available when a full distribution is released to people beyond a testing audience. The problem is that USB flash drives are writable, and disabling this is not always simple. Yes, this is a paranoid concern, but paranoia is too often justified in this day and age.

My problem turns up when I install things on machines I do not control, particularly ones which normally run Windows, and may or may not be well-defended against malware. Using a USB flash drive does work, but opens up the possibility that the drive itself will become corrupted with malware present on machines I do not control. This can then pass malware to any number of other machines on which people attempt to install software. This is probably how Stuxnet got onto physically isolated machines in Iran. The attack is sophisticated, but once it has been developed it can be used by malicious people who are not geniuses.

When using a DVD I can close the disk so nobody can write more on it. I can even carry an external DVD drive with me which plugs into a USB port, but does not allow writing. In this way I can install software on a number of machines without worrying about anything other than the software I intend to install.

I've just been through an exercise in hardening the defenses on my LAN after someone came in from the Internet and changed LAN settings when I had remote administration turned off and a new administrator password nobody else knew. After seeing this kind of activity myself, and reading about prominent people caught by other attacks, I tend to expect an unknown system or flash drive to open me up to attacks by incomprehensible horrors from outside normal space-time. I've already seen government or business systems with USB ports blocked with superglue to prevent employees from plugging in flash drives.

Until this concern can be addressed, I will only use flash drives I trust on machines I trust. DVDs offer a cheap option for simply handing a person software to use at their own risk without endangering subsequent recipients. Flash drives are now cheap, but not cheap enough that I can hand them out as throwaway devices. It is not even easy to explain the risk of plugging a flash drive into a compromised machine to the uninitiated without promoting paranoia about all computers.

prehistoric wrote:Now posting from SlaQ 8.1.6 using Seamonkey.

My first impression is that there are no big problems that BarryK does not know about. This may change with more experience. So far, so good. Kudos for Barry.

Now, having previously annoyed Sage by telling BarryK lack of an ISO image was not an emergency, I'm going to annoy Barry by insisting that even though I agree CD/DVD images are legacy matters, they should also be made available when a full distribution is released to people beyond a testing audience. The problem is that USB flash drives are writable, and disabling this is not always simple. Yes, this is a paranoid concern, but paranoia is too often justified in this day and age.

My problem turns up when I install things on machines I do not control, particularly ones which normally run Windows, and may or may not be well-defended against malware. Using a USB flash drive does work, but opens up the possibility that the drive itself will become corrupted with malware present on machines I do not control. This can then pass malware to any number of other machines on which people attempt to install software. This is probably how Stuxnet got onto physically isolated machines in Iran. The attack is sophisticated, but once it has been developed it can be used by malicious people who are not geniuses.

When using a DVD I can close the disk so nobody can write more on it. I can even carry an external DVD drive with me which plugs into a USB port, but does not allow writing. In this way I can install software on a number of machines without worrying about anything other than the software I intend to install.

I've just been through an exercise in hardening the defenses on my LAN after someone came in from the Internet and changed LAN settings when I had remote administration turned off and a new administrator password nobody else knew. After seeing this kind of activity myself, and reading about prominent people caught by other attacks, I tend to expect an unknown system or flash drive to open me up to attacks by incomprehensible horrors from outside normal space-time. I've already seen government or business systems with USB ports blocked with superglue to prevent employees from plugging in flash drives.

Until this concern can be addressed, I will only use flash drives I trust on machines I trust. DVDs offer a cheap option for simply handing a person software to use at their own risk without endangering subsequent recipients. Flash drives are now cheap, but not cheap enough that I can hand them out as throwaway devices. It is not even easy to explain the risk of plugging a flash drive into a compromised machine to the uninitiated without promoting paranoia about all computers.

Prehistoric,

Never apologize for your paranoia, seriously, never. In today's world, it is justified. I keep one machine that is not allowed access to my lan nor to the internet, and when I download something (especially all these creators of pups & pup-derivatives) on other machines, that one isolated machine is where the downloaded file gets checked, unzipped/unpacked, installed on a USB, and then tested first. Still, despite all precautions (along with many others) bad things can still happen. You have to keep in mind, though, that the DVD route is still not as secure as they want us to believe...it reminds me of how years ago they used to tell people to hide their wireless SSID while many of us were rolling our eyes because we knew the idiocy & futility of this so-called security enhancement. DVDs are no different.

All this said, Barry is the only one--the only developer/creator--- I fully trust (here on murga) to run stuff on all other house machines in my house. Have a very long history in my life of using his creations. So when his checksum matches, which this one did, there is nothing wrong with a person blasting a USB SD card (which is what I did first) with the dd command to completely wipe it, and then follow Barry's instructions for gunzip/dd-ing it to the very same SD card. Everybody else? They've gotta jump trough hoops for a good long while, and if I come across something goofy, or my network firewall sniffs something funny (which has happened), I stop using that creation and move to something else.

I installed to a 16GB SDHC card.

System: Host: Lenovo-ThinkCentre Kernel: 4.4.40 x86_64 (64 bit) Desktop: JWM git-976
Distro: Quirky 8.1.6 sq142
Machine: Device: desktop System: LENOVO product: 7491B8U v: ThinkCentre M58e serial: MJ01509
Mobo: LENOVO model: N/A serial: INVALID BIOS: LENOVO v: 5HKT39AUS date: 06/17/2009
CPU: Dual core Intel Core2 Duo E8400 (-MCP-) speed/max: 2003/3003 MHz
Graphics: Card: Intel 4 Series Integrated Graphics Controller
Display Server: X.org 1.18.3 drivers: intel (unloaded: modesetting,vesa)
tty size: 181x55 Advanced Data: N/A for root
Network: Card: Marvell Device 4380 driver: sky2
Drives: HDD Total Size: 336.1GB (1.8% used)
Weather: Conditions: 28 F (-2 C) - snow low drifting snow Time: January 10, 3:03 PM EST
Info: Processes: 109 Uptime: 37 min Memory: 127.2/3830.3MB Client: Shell (bash) inxi: 2.3.7

I changed the icon set, themes, and wallpaper cause the defaults are
not my cup of tea

Added a few applications with QPM.
It's working pretty well so far,

Thanks.

belham2 wrote:...Prehistoric,

Never apologize for your paranoia, seriously, never. In today's world, it is justified. I keep one machine that is not allowed access to my lan nor to the internet, and when I download something (especially all these creators of pups & pup-derivatives) on other machines, that one isolated machine is where the downloaded file gets checked, unzipped/unpacked, installed on a USB, and then tested first. Still, despite all precautions (along with many others) bad things can still happen. You have to keep in mind, though, that the DVD route is still not as secure as they want us to believe...it reminds me of how years ago they used to tell people to hide their wireless SSID while many of us were rolling our eyes because we knew the idiocy & futility of this so-called security enhancement. DVDs are no different.

All this said, Barry is the only one--the only developer/creator--- I fully trust (here on murga) to run stuff on all other house machines in my house. Have a very long history in my life of using his creations. So when his checksum matches, which this one did, there is nothing wrong with a person blasting a USB SD card (which is what I did first) with the dd command to completely wipe it, and then follow Barry's instructions for gunzip/dd-ing it to the very same SD card. Everybody else? They've gotta jump trough hoops for a good long while, and if I come across something goofy, or my network firewall sniffs something funny (which has happened), I stop using that creation and move to something else.

belham2,

I am not worried much about things BarryK produces, that is a separate issue. My problem is that I can't simply hand someone a flash drive with an installed system, and assume that problems reported thereafter are due to the software Barry developed, and not something else which they picked up while trying it on several machines, one of which was compromised. If you close a DVD when you burn it, that disk is not going to be altered into a vector for malware with the limited resources most attackers have.

What you are describing above are appropriate for a testing audience which is fairly sophisticated, and looking for trouble. This is not the same as the vast majority of users who will pick up a system as it becomes popular.

I am open to suggestions for preventing flash drives prepared by someone trustworthy from inadvertently becoming means of spreading malware which undermines the reputation of Barry's software creations. This also affects my reputation as a distributor of software I trust.

Billtoo wrote:I installed to a 16GB SDHC card.

When QuickSetup ran at first bootup, did you tick the box to resize the partition to fill the drive?

It will then do so at next bootup.

I had a lot of trouble with that, it held up the final release. It worked on the Raspberry Pi, however the USB stick for the PC has a GPT (GUUID Partition Table) -- it needs this for booting on UEFI-based PCs.

I had used busybox fdisk, running in Easyinit ramdisk, to resize the partition. However, it can't handle GPT drives.

It used to be that we needed the 'gdisk' utility from the 'gptfdisk' package, for GPT drives, however, now the 'fdisk' in 'util-linux' has acquired GPT functionality.

So I included the full 'fdisk' in Easyinit.

Note, the way that fdisk resizes the partition is weird. It actually deletes it, then creates another, with the same starting sector. This leaves the filesystem intact, which then has to be resized to fill the new bigger partition (using 'resize2fs').

One catch, at the 12th hour, was I found the partition UUID got changed with the recreation of the bigger partition.

You will find this code in /sbin/fscheck in Easyinit. Just click on /boot/easyinit to open it -- same as before with initrd.gz files.

ISO files
Yes, I accept your point about security. I will think about this, and if I can't solve the problem will reconsider releasing an ISO.

However, what if the USB stick can be guaranteed pristine, incorruptible?

All through 2016, I have been thinking about a new type of Quicky, with enhanced snapshot/recovery and security. Experiments with device-mapper and btrfs were part of this (though ended up rejecting those two). The new name "Easy Linux" will probably be used for this new Quirky.

Getting a bit ahead announcing this, but hey, a pre-announcement at the start of 2017, it is good to be looking forward to something excitingly different.

Universal Installer
In the Setup menu. Yes, it is broken because it wants an ISO file.
Shouldn't be too hard to modify to use a .img,gz file as input.
That is next on the to-do list.

BarryK wrote:

Billtoo wrote:I installed to a 16GB SDHC card.

When QuickSetup ran at first bootup, did you tick the box to resize the partition to fill the drive?

It will then do so at next bootup.

I had a lot of trouble with that, it held up the final release. It worked on the Raspberry Pi, however the USB stick for the PC has a GPT (GUUID Partition Table) -- it needs this for booting on UEFI-based PCs.

I had used busybox fdisk, running in Easyinit ramdisk, to resize the partition. However, it can't handle GPT drives.

It used to be that we needed the 'gdisk' utility from the 'gptfdisk' package, for GPT drives, however, now the 'fdisk' in 'util-linux' has acquired GPT functionality.

So I included the full 'fdisk' in Easyinit.

Note, the way that fdisk resizes the partition is weird. It actually deletes it, then creates another, with the same starting sector. This leaves the filesystem intact, which then has to be resized to fill the new bigger partition (using 'resize2fs').

One catch, at the 12th hour, was I found the partition UUID got changed with the recreation of the bigger partition.

You will find this code in /sbin/fscheck in Easyinit. Just click on /boot/easyinit to open it -- same as before with initrd.gz files.

No, when Quicksetup ran at first boot I didn't notice the box to resize the partition to fill the drive.

I've run gparted now and added a new partition, after clicking on FIX the new partition was created.

I did a new install to a 32GB usb-3.0 flash drive.

I couldn't get the partition to resize so I tried running gparted in
Gecko Linux and that worked.

System: Host: HP-Pavilion Kernel: 4.4.40 x86_64 (64 bit) Desktop: JWM git-976 Distro: Quirky 8.1.6 sq142
Machine: Device: desktop System: Hewlett-Packard product: p7-1246s serial: MXX232077R
Mobo: Foxconn model: 2ADA v: 1.00 UEFI: AMI v: 7.12 date: 06/07/2012
CPU: Quad core Intel Core i5-3550 (-MCP-) speed/max: 1600/3301 MHz
Graphics: Card: Intel Device 0152
Display Server: X.org 1.18.3 drivers: intel (unloaded: modesetting,vesa)
tty size: 185x53 Advanced Data: N/A for root
Network: Card-1: RaLink Device 5390 driver: rt2800pci
Card-2: Realtek RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller driver: r8169
Drives: HDD Total Size: 2032.4GB (0.8% used)
Weather: Conditions: 41 F (5 C) - light showers rain Time: January 11, 2:47 AM EST
Info: Processes: 140 Uptime: 14 min Memory: 111.5/11973.2MB Client: Shell (bash) inxi: 2.3.7

I added some applications with QPM and also downloaded and installed
lxrandr-0.3.1-x86_64-1.txz (Fatdog64-710 package) to setup for 2
monitors.

iso is not becoming legacy, it is the most used format for distributions :
https://linuxmint.com/download.php ---> iso
https://www.debian.org/distrib/netinst ---> iso
https://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop ---> iso
etc. etc.
For size : I don't have a 8Gb flash stick, my flash stick is only 2Gb.
Iso is easy to install "dd if=file.iso of=/dev/sdb"
Iso can be installed to CD or DVD or flash sticks.
Please Barry also release an iso version.

belham2 wrote: I am trying really hard with this theme-ing, but, with no ability to install "redshift" on Slacko and make it operational, don't know what I am gonna do short of wearing my sunglasses when trying to use this. But I did draw the line of tolerance at the icons.....ain't no flipping way I am staring at yellows & pinks & hues of red & purple all on a peachy-scarlet-crimson background. (I did leave the paint, draw and trash icons as is in an ode to your Van Gogh attempt here) Honestly, for a few minutes the background theme was ok. After an hour? I've felt a various range of emotions from either wanting to pop acid, smoke a little weed, or just lay down & wait for whomever in the ward (I must be in some sort of ward if I am staring at this screen colour....it's supposed to calm me down, right??)..just chillin' & waitin for 'em to come get me and take me back to my room.

I have been looking at it for several days now, seems OK to me!

Billtoo wrote:I did a new install to a 32GB usb-3.0 flash drive.

I couldn't get the partition to resize so I tried running gparted in
Gecko Linux and that worked.

Oh, that partition resizing is supposed to work now.

Regarding your earlier comment about adding another partition, an alternative would have been to re-run QuickSetup -- see the Setup menu.

That's if partition resizing is working.

Anyone else tried the partition resizing?

Note, in QuickSetup, I tried to make it un-missable, a red rectange with bold white text, alongside a checkbox offering to resize the partition.

Perhaps I should make it default to "ticked", so even if the user doesn't see the checkbox, it will resize at next bootup.