EasyOS version 2.3.2, June 22, 2020

Message

BarryK · #451 Post by **BarryK** » Fri 23 Feb 2018, 07:54

Have been busy, implemented a Service Manager for EasyOS and Quirky:

http://bkhome.org/news/201802/pupevent- ... nager.html

Done that, now I will look at rerwin's above post!

belham2 · #452 Post by **belham2** » Fri 23 Feb 2018, 08:17

BarryK wrote:Have been busy, implemented a Service Manager for EasyOS and Quirky:

http://bkhome.org/news/201802/pupevent- ... nager.html

Done that, now I will look at rerwin's above post!

Hi Barry & all,

Nice, on the new Service Manager. In your link above to the page about it, it says at the bottom:

"...So, this Service Manager will only be in the next releases of EasyOS and Quirky. However, it will be possible to create a PET package for other pups and puplets...."

If you and/or anyone creates this Pet, could they post it here (or somewhere in one of the sub-forums for "Additional Software (Pets & stuff)" w/ a notice in this thread) so I could try the new Service Manager in some of my other pups?

Thank you

BarryK · #453 Post by **BarryK** » Fri 23 Feb 2018, 10:12

rerwin wrote:I have continued to work on refinements to networking in Easy

rerwin's post is above. Link:

http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 596#982596

I have implemented the upgrade to Frisbee 1.4.7 and other network fixes, see blog post:

http://bkhome.org/news/201802/network-u ... e-147.html

don570 · #454 Post by **don570** » Sat 24 Feb 2018, 17:30

A tip from James Bond...

To format a SD card in linux ...
First zero out card, then format with gparted.

just do "dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/<flash-drive-device-name> bs=1M count=1". After doing this Gparted will regard you flash drive as completely empty and will offer to create a new MS-DOS partition table - which you should accept.

don570 · #455 Post by **don570** » Sat 24 Feb 2018, 17:32

A gui for mpscan

BarryK · #456 Post by **BarryK** » Thu 01 Mar 2018, 00:52

OK, version 0.8 released, see blog announcement:

http://bkhome.org/news/201803/easyos-py ... eased.html

The kernel is now 4.14.20, has the nvm driver, requested by scsijon.

BarryK · #457 Post by **BarryK** » Thu 01 Mar 2018, 09:35

Just thinking, what is stopping me from bumping this up to "beta quality", then final 1.0...

Two things mostly.

Firstly, the instability on some systems, hanging.

Secondly, the immaturity of the container mechanism. I haven't worked on that for sometime.

The instability bothers me more than anything, as I can't reproduce it myself, and have no idea whether it is caused by the design of EasyOS (the way the layered filesystem and partitions are put together), or just some buggy software somewhere, such as something eating up file handles, or a memory leak.

Whatever, it seems to only be on certain hardware.

I will think about what to do, to test this problem.

Sage · #458 Post by **Sage** » Thu 01 Mar 2018, 11:31

0.8: Excellent, no instability on any of my kit. Only problem is ADI 1888 sound chip not recognised and not sure how to load extra drivers, if available. Think method has been described before but forget - HW more my end of the business.
Only other comment - not sure default saving of my wlan p/w onto USB stick is always best strategy for a portable OS?!

BarryK · #459 Post by **BarryK** » Thu 01 Mar 2018, 11:48

I have had a thought about a possible cause for instability, involving aufs/overlay.

Would appreciate feedback, from anyone who has this lockup problem.

Running Easy on the same PC that experiences the lockup, do you have this file?:

/mnt/q_ro/q.sfs

If yes, it means that q.sfs was copied into RAM at bootup (by the init script in initrd).

If no, then q.sfs is mounted from where it is in the working partition, on /mnt/q_ro/q_sfs

There is a possibility that the latter case is causing a problem for aufs.
Maybe.

BarryK · #460 Post by **BarryK** » Thu 01 Mar 2018, 11:52

Sage wrote:0.8: Excellent, no instability on any of my kit. Only problem is ADI 1888 sound chip not recognised and not sure how to load extra drivers, if available. Think method has been described before but forget - HW more my end of the business.
Only other comment - not sure default saving of my wlan p/w onto USB stick is always best strategy for a portable OS?!

Was that sound chip recognised by any other pups? That is, out-of-the-box without needing an extra driver to be installed?

Sage · #461 Post by **Sage** » Thu 01 Mar 2018, 14:18

Was that sound chip recognised by any other pups? That is, out-of-the-box without needing an extra driver to be installed?

Other issues have popped up - investigating. ADI signs on as SiS SI 7012 on ECS7610ultra board. Difficult to get 'Mute' to stay off and chosen %vol to stay selected between boots. New problem, loaded devx and lost video! Lots more to look at, probably reload and start again.
As for sound on other Pups, X-Slacko-Slim 4.4r10 sound works on a lot of these old boards now, didn't in previous versions, but that is primarily a 32bit offering which has been tested on 32bit machines, so need to run it on some 64bit machines as well. Also need to check BIOS settings as the old stuff often needs new battery and BIOS reset.
Later:
The default sound settings allows mute/unmute and settings levels to be set - no sound. Run ALSA utility - no supported cards?
Run on P4 system with same onboard SI7012 - sound working.
Hmmm. Looks like an HW fault then. That's not entirely unknown on elderly kit. Will try to install discrete PCI sound card tomorrow....

don570 · #462 Post by **don570** » Thu 01 Mar 2018, 16:14

Arp scan is bigger in size but it picks up a computer that mpscan can't
(because of a crossover ethernet cable I built)
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 450#984450
I also use getlocalip

Rodney Byne · #463 Post by **Rodney Byne** » Thu 01 Mar 2018, 18:11

To Barry,

Thanks for good version 0.8 on usb.

Yes this is in its correct folder: /mnt/q_ro/q.sfs

So on here without any instability,
it means that q.sfs was copied into RAM at bootup
(by the init script in initrd).

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here is a nice pupRadio little portable radio icon to save to a private folder
and then drag to pupRadio properties:

https://www.google.co.uk/search?dcr=0&s ... Vod0PTlJF4

Just copy/paste in SM the above URL.

Regards.

Cu Chulinux · #464 Post by **Cu Chulinux** » Fri 02 Mar 2018, 17:56

Hi Barry,

My laptop that I've been playing around with Easy and Quirky on is one with the instabilities. Toshiba P55W-C5200 model.

Tried latest versions, the instabilities appear after initial setup and rebooting. Basically the computer becomes unresponsive and I have to hard reset. Usually first the keyboard dies then the pointer shortly after that. Up until first reboot it all seemed to run fine.

Easy 0.8 and 0.6.8 Xerus I checked /mnt/q_ro and there is both a q.sfs and a q_sfs.

Because var points to tmp/var there are no logs to check after rebooting. I am going to try rebooting and dmesg >> file over and over until it acts up to see what messages I get. I'll report back what turns up.

Eventually I'll try booting my desktop with an Easy usb to test it there. It currently runs FreeBSD.

Add: btw the laptop works flawlessly with both Fatdog64 and Xenialpup 7.5

BarryK · #465 Post by **BarryK** » Sat 03 Mar 2018, 09:54

don570 wrote:Arp scan is bigger in size but it picks up a computer that mpscan can't
(because of a crossover ethernet cable I built)
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 450#984450
I also use getlocalip

Easy/Quirky and the pups have a lot of these scanner utilities. I did make a list of them, that are builtin to Easy/Quirky. Um, where did I put that?...

Not sure if this is complete, but these are all the scanner/probing type utilities that I can think of, all in Easy/Quirky, and probably in other pups:

nslookup
pscan
nbtscan
nmap
arp-scan
pnscan
mpscan

nmap might not be in other pups, and I only recently included it in Easy/Quirky builds. Coz it is a bit big.

BarryK · #466 Post by **BarryK** » Sat 03 Mar 2018, 10:07

Cu Chulinux wrote:Hi Barry,

My laptop that I've been playing around with Easy and Quirky on is one with the instabilities. Toshiba P55W-C5200 model.

Tried latest versions, the instabilities appear after initial setup and rebooting. Basically the computer becomes unresponsive and I have to hard reset. Usually first the keyboard dies then the pointer shortly after that. Up until first reboot it all seemed to run fine.

Easy 0.8 and 0.6.8 Xerus I checked /mnt/q_ro and there is both a q.sfs and a q_sfs.

Because var points to tmp/var there are no logs to check after rebooting. I am going to try rebooting and dmesg >> file over and over until it acts up to see what messages I get. I'll report back what turns up.

Eventually I'll try booting my desktop with an Easy usb to test it there. It currently runs FreeBSD.

Add: btw the laptop works flawlessly with both Fatdog64 and Xenialpup 7.5

Thanks for the feedback, greatly appreciated.

Would you mind testing Quirky Xerus64 8.5?
This has various modes of running, from live-CD, usb-stick, or a full install.

It would be good if you can test stability when running from both live-CD and usb-stick.

If both are unstable, that will tend to indicate a kernel problem.

The usb-stick is a "full install", so completely traditional, the most likely to be stable.

The live-CD runs in RAM, using aufs layered filesystem.

Finding out the stability of these on your Toshiba will be very helpful.

Download Quirky Xerus 8.5 from here:

http://bkhome.org/news/201802/quirky-xe ... eased.html

Forum feedback:

http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 243#984243

Thanks in anticipation

Cu Chulinux · #467 Post by **Cu Chulinux** » Sat 03 Mar 2018, 13:41

Easy OS testing update:

I managed to get some dmesg messages saved just prior to instability. I should also add that there are some strange graphic effects too. Often the lockup happens in the middle of opening the desktop menu. Either the menu appears with a blank box where the submenu should be or the top menu just appears as a blank box. Sometimes they start flashing on and off. At that point the keyboard is unresponsive but I can usually still move the pointer around for a while.

The following appears in dmesg just prior:

[ 764.082766] DMAR: DRHD: handling fault status reg 3
[ 764.082774] DMAR: [DMA Write] Request device [00:02.0] fault addr f81000 [fault reason 23] Unknown
[ 772.538080] [drm] GPU HANG: ecode 8:0:0x85dffffb, in Xorg [1936], reason: Hang on rcs0, action: reset
[ 772.538086] i915 0000:00:02.0: Resetting rcs0 after gpu hang
[ 869.524549] DMAR: DRHD: handling fault status reg 2
[ 869.524556] DMAR: [DMA Write] Request device [00:02.0] fault addr 0 [fault reason 23] Unknown
[ 879.413262] i915 0000:00:02.0: Resetting rcs0 after gpu hang
[ 955.848048] DMAR: DRHD: handling fault status reg 3
[ 955.848054] DMAR: [DMA Write] Request device [00:02.0] fault addr f36000 [fault reason 23] Unknown
[ 964.319903] i915 0000:00:02.0: Resetting rcs0 after gpu hang

Looks like something faulty in the graphics driver or interface. A VERY basic online search seems to point to the i915 driver. I'll see what I can find out after the weekend (will be busy with offline life things).

I'll play around with Quirky 8.5 after the weekend as well.

rerwin · #468 Post by **rerwin** » Sat 03 Mar 2018, 15:33

Barry,
I have had problems booting Easy all along. It persists in easy 0.8.

If I boot to my USB3 drive and use either 'normal startup' or 'Commandline only' and enter 'xwin' before the resolution changes to 1920x1080, I get to the desktop at the wrong resolution then immediately see messed up graphics and, finally, loss of the VGA signal, requiring manual power-down and power-up.

The technique that works is to select 'Commandline only' and enter 'xwin' after the resolution changes. But this works only after manual power down/up; after a 'reboot' this results in the message: "ERROR: Boot drive not found", after listing sda 8 times (instead of sda 3 times then sdb).

Separate issue: the message "date:...invalid time always appears before the 'finding' line; it has the time zone appended.

I attach my log of boot attempts in the hope it provides a clue. The PC is my early 64-bit Presario, details also attached.

BTW, when I have a stable desktop, /mnt/q_ro has both the q.sfs file and mounted (green dot) q_sfs directory.

Richard

BarryK · #469 Post by **BarryK** » Sat 03 Mar 2018, 16:21

Cu Chulinux and rerwin,
Would you mind trying this live-cd, 'quirky-pyro64-0.8.iso'.

It is not EasyOS, it is a Quirky, but built with the same Pyro64 packages (that were compiled in OpenEmbedded) as used to build EasyOS 0.8.

Boot the live-cd, save the session, reboot, see if it remains stable.

If not, that it strongly points to the graphics driver.

If stable, it points to the underlying architecture of EasyOS.

'quirky-pyro64-0.8.iso' does use aufs layered filesystem, but it's a more traditional proven design.

Here it is:

http://distro.ibiblio.org/quirky/quirky6/project/temp/

scsijon · #470 Post by **scsijon** » Sat 03 Mar 2018, 17:25

@Cu Chulinux,

It might be worth doing a full memory test cycle too. Give it time, it's not a short test.

I am not sure what type of box/laptop your using but i've had this response in the past when memory was failing. First memory module was ok and it started up and loaded ok, but when it started filling the memory up it started to use the faulty memory module and wierd problems appeared. Especially with 'soft' memory errors, where it wrote ok, gave the correct check back, but individual memory bits started blanking afterwards. Alternately, if your using socketed Memory Modules try lightly wiggling them or switching them around (if you can) if it fails, as it can be the vibration on the Module fingers also causing a fail, although this is less common nowadays and a wiggle seems to reset the fingers again.

(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

EasyOS version 2.3.2, June 22, 2020

Re: Further networking improvements

To format a SD card in linux

/mnt/q_ro/q.sfs