EasyOS version 2.3.2, June 22, 2020

[Cu Chulinux]

@rufwoof

I just checked and I have the same issue with mc.

In a terminal in X the keys all work fine. In a console the first five Fn keys do nothing. Well F1 in terminal calls up an error about missing help file but that is common.

I think it's a keymapping error. When I type F1 F2 F3 F4 F5 at the console commandline I get ABCDE. That doesn't match the terminal.

No time or energy to dig deeper at the moment.

[rufwoof]

Hi Cu Chulinux

Unable to re-dd the MMC card I've been using for EasyOS, looks like its reach end of life.

Suspect the F1 .. F5 mc issue may be due to TERM=xterm. Wild guess but perhaps if you set it to something else such as export TERM=linux that might fix it.

In OpenBSD I set TERM to pccon0 and set

Code: Select all

PS1="\[\e[34;1m\]Pwd: \[\e[36m\]\w\n\[\e[31;1m\]\u@\h> \[\e[32m\]"

for nice console colours.

Looks very much like the attached, but that's a X based snapshot as you can't take a snapshot of a console

[foxpup]

@ Antipodal
@DanielSong39

I believe LibreOffice is in Easy/Quirky. That has calc and writer.

[rufwoof]

Suspect the F1 .. F5 mc issue may be due to TERM=xterm. Wild guess but perhaps if you set it to something else such as export TERM=gnome that might fix it.

export TERM=linux
seems to do the trick
(edited my earlier post to show that)

[rufwoof]

Tweaked the default console container in a similar manner to this post
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 278#991278
added rover to the audio group (addgroup rover audio) inside that container, and adjusted the capsh line near the bottom to not set (drop) any capsh values. I also set it to run seamonkey instead of /bin/sh and its running well.

If I press r in a couple of seconds of clicking the container console it drops me into root within the container, otherwise it starts seamonkey in a highly restricted manner (running as rover, highly restricted in what rover can do, but still runs seamonkey and plays youtubes (along with sound) OK. Posting this using that seamonkey. Next stop is to see how well it works or not if I change it from xorg to xephyr ...

EDIT: yay! xephyr works. Does go black screen with just the terminal window showing (X as a cursor)... and then up pops seamonkey. No tray etc. shown, however alt-tab (or alt-F6) takes me to the 'normal' desktop (I'm OK as alt/tab pinky/thumb is pretty much my everyday navigation method around different windows anyway i.e. OpenBSD cwm where I have all windows maximised and just flip between them). Like it (xephyr), additional X isolation on top of heavy restrictions raises the bar that little bit higher.

Under xephyr closing the window is the same as with closing the desk container, close the window, but then you have to alt-F6 and then right click the tray entry for sh0 and select the close option.

Next stop ... another day ... is to set it so the container automatically rolls back after its closed so ready with a clean version again the next time seamonkey (rover/container) is started.

[rufwoof]

BTW my SD/MMC just decided to work again. Removed the micro card from the caddy and sharply blew things - so may have just been dust or perhaps the lock/unlock slider as that wasn't fully slid up (but may have just been me knocking it out of position).

Was going to download the devX and have a go at compiling tmux for EasyOS, however there's insufficient space on the 2GB SD/MMC that I'm using to do that.

[Cu Chulinux]

rufwoof that worked, thanks. Saved me having to figure it out myself.

[Antipodal]

@ Antipodal
@DanielSong39

I believe LibreOffice is in Easy/Quirky. That has calc and writer.

Thanks foxpup, I'm sorry but I think I wasn't clear enough in my post and you didn't get me.

When I wrote it, I knew that with EasyOS I could count on using LibreOffice Calc spreadsheet editor. But I could'nt manage to use it to read and edit a great amount of gnumeric spreadsheets I must process.

I then tried to see if I could find gnumeric listed in the packages that can be downloaded by EasyOS. But I didn't find it there either.

So, without some help I won't be able to use EasyOS to read or write a great number of .gnumeric files that are currently being built by operating systems who still do use gnumeric as a spreadsheet.

Is it possible to install abiword or gnumeric?
I noticed that Quirky dropped support for these two programs past version 8.0, and I was wondering whether it was the same story for EasyOS.

Thank you for the tip.

Thank you both for your time.

[lp-dolittle]

Hi Antipodal,

why do you not transform your Gnumeric-spreadsheets into *.ods files via the option 'save as'. This way you easily could use your spreadsheets in EasyOs. To transform the files, almost any Puppy does.

I'm aware that I do not propose a very elegant method, but it's a simple workaround.

kind regards

[foxpup]

Hello Antipodal

Yes, I did not quite understand the problem you have.

Have you tried to install Gnumeric on your Easy, as DanielSong39 suggested?
What version of Easy are you using? I may try it myself and report.

OTOH, why do you not use a regular Puppy (tahr, xenial, stretch, slacko ... )?

[Antipodal]

Hi Antipodal,

why do you not transform your Gnumeric-spreadsheets into *.ods files via the option 'save as'.

Thank you for your time and idea but...

Before my first post I had already tried to do that.
It doesn't work because the 'save as' option in the *.gnumeric files are not accessible because I can't open the files without .gnumeric.

And a simple change of the extension in the file manager (from *.gnumeric to *.ods) doesn't work because the file with the new extension won't open directly with LibreOffice.

Instead of opening it, it calls (opens) a "Text Import Configuration" window that ends freezing the computer when i try to manage it.

Regards.

[lp-dolittle]

Hi Antipodal,

you should transform the Gnumeric-files into the *.odf-format in the OS which you used so far, and which obviously was able to run Gnumeric.

Just open the files with Gnumeric, save them via the 'save as'-option, and - as a result - you will have your files available in both formats. You can work with these files in Libre Office, and - if need be - later re-use them with Gnumeric. I'm sure, sooner or later, Gnumeric will also be available in EasyOS

In case you have no longer access to your previous OS, transform your files using a conventional Puppy.

kind regards

again

Hi Antipodal,

meanwhile. I had a look at LibreOffice.Calc in the recent EasyOS, just to discover that Gnumeric-spreadsheets can be directly opened/imported.

Start LibreOffice.Calc, go to 'File' > 'open' > 'All files', and then scroll down until you reach the Gnumeric-option. Everything seems to work fine. I had no problems when I tested this procedure after I had copied a Gnumeric-file onto a flash-stick.

I hope this information helps to resolve your 'problem'!

kind regards

[Cu Chulinux]

Hi Antipodal,

Gnumeric is still part of Xenialpup 7.5. There is a gnumeric coomandline utility ssconvert that will convert spreadsheet files to different formats. I copied the following to Easy 0.9.5 and it runs.I believe it will convert .gnumeric to .xls or .ods but I haven't tried yet.

/usr/bin/ssconvert
/usr/lib/libspreadsheet.1.10.17.so
/usr/lib/libgoffice-0.8.so.8.0.17

You need a symlink /usr/lib/libgoffice-0.8.so.8 ->
/usr/lib/libgoffice-0.8.so.8.0.17

I had a quick look but don't see an easy way to compile ssconvert separately from gnumeric.

[BarryK]

Many posts above that I have not yet read, as have been working on improving EasyShare. Will get onto them soon.

The latest EasyShare deserves a new release, 0.9.6, plus there are some bug fixes here and there.

Blog announcement:

http://bkhome.org/news/201808/easyos-ve ... eased.html

[lp-dolittle]

Hi Cu Chulinux,

as it seems, you do not need to compile 'ssconvert' in order to resolve Antipodal's problem.

The LibreOffice Calc in EasyOS Pyro 0.9.5 is able to deal with Gnumeric-files.

Yesterday, I successfully tested this option and reported about, but Antipodal, so far, did not respond to the last post.

kind regards

[Antipodal]

you should transform the Gnumeric-files into the *.odf-format in the OS which you used so far, and which obviously was able to run Gnumeric.

Yes, transforming them into .ods from Gnumeric on another operating system allowed me to (after closing a little window that said "not all attributes could be read") read them with Libre Office in my EasyOS.

Start LibreOffice.Calc, go to 'File' > 'open' > 'All files', and then scroll down until you reach the Gnumeric-option.

In my case it didn't work. Working from my EasyOS, and using Libre Office I was able to transform another .gnumeric file into a .ods but when I tried to open it, a "Text Import Configuration" opened. Without making any changes on it I clicked on its OK button and after (at least) 15 minutes a little window with an OK button announced "The data could not be loaded completely because the maximum number of character per cell was exceeded" and a chains of characters that were not what I was expecting appeared. Take a look at them in the attachment.

@ Cu Chulinux

I'm extremely bad at working on the CLI .
I will put your comments in the list of things I must study and test.
I'll let you know if I get to solve the problem following your indications.

Thank you both for sharing your experiences.

[step]

I copied the easyOS 0.9.6 gz to an 8GB USB stick per instructions and attempted a Normal boot on a netbook. It failed I think immediately after creating the repository partition. The limited netbook console shows the following text:

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Number of device nodes 0
Number of fifo nodes 0
Number of socket nodes 0
Number of directories 1
Number of ids (uniqui uids + gids) 1
Number of uids 1
      unknown (0)
Number of gids 1
      unknown (0)

sed: can't create temp file '/mnt/sdb1/syslinux.cfgXXXXXX': Read-only file system
sed: can't create temp file '/mnt/sdb1/EFI/BOOT/refind.confXXXXXX': Read-only file system
Mounting read-only layer of layered filesystem
   Mounting squashfs file q.sfs
mont: mounting /dev/loop0 on /q_ro/q_sfs failed: Invalid argument
ERROR: failed to mount q.sfs
Have now dropped into a shell in the initramfs.
Note1: Type "exit", the int script will attempt to continue, however,
       only an expert who is debugging the bootup should do this.
Note2: On some PCs the keyboard does not work at this stage of bootup.
PLEASE HOLD DOWN THE POWER BUTTON TO SHUTDOWN
/bin/sh: can't access tty; job control turned off
#

Typing "exit" leads into a kernel panic.

edit: I repeated all steps with the same USB stick. Before the first boot I confirmed that partition easy1 is writable (touch x; rm x)

While preparing the stick with dd and before dd finished, dmesg showed the following error messages

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[ 5705.042343]  sdh:
[ 5705.044440] sd 9:0:0:0: [sdh] Attached SCSI removable disk
[ 5787.007670] udevd[464]: worker [18646] /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.0/usb2/2-1/2-1.8/2-1.8:1.0/host9/target9:0:0/9:0:0:0/block/sdh timeout; kill it
[ 5787.007685] udevd[464]: seq 3850 '/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.0/usb2/2-1/2-1.8/2-1.8:1.0/host9/target9:0:0/9:0:0:0/block/sdh' killed
[ 5881.228189] udevd[464]: worker [18646] terminated by signal 9 (Killed)

edit2: Changed stick same errors, including dmesg. I wonder if it's due to the PC that I use to prepare the keys...

[Sage]

0.9.6 works well. Extract the .gz to the .img file and write it using USB Image Writer from one of the major distros. The CLI dd command seems to give lots of problems to the uninitiated so I leave that to the gurus and use the desktop utility.

[rufwoof]

I copied the easyOS 0.9.6 gz to an 8GB USB stick per instructions and attempted a Normal boot on a netbook. It failed I think immediately after creating the repository partition. The limited netbook console shows the following text:

Code: Select all

Number of device nodes 0
Number of fifo nodes 0
Number of socket nodes 0
Number of directories 1
Number of ids (uniqui uids + gids) 1
Number of uids 1
      unknown (0)
Number of gids 1
      unknown (0)

sed: can't create temp file '/mnt/sdb1/syslinux.cfgXXXXXX': Read-only file system
sed: can't create temp file '/mnt/sdb1/EFI/BOOT/refind.confXXXXXX': Read-only file system
Mounting read-only layer of layered filesystem
   Mounting squashfs file q.sfs
mont: mounting /dev/loop0 on /q_ro/q_sfs failed: Invalid argument
ERROR: failed to mount q.sfs
Have now dropped into a shell in the initramfs.
Note1: Type "exit", the int script will attempt to continue, however,
       only an expert who is debugging the bootup should do this.
Note2: On some PCs the keyboard does not work at this stage of bootup.
PLEASE HOLD DOWN THE POWER BUTTON TO SHUTDOWN
/bin/sh: can't access tty; job control turned off
#

I had a similar experience with 0.9.5 but sometimes it booted OK. I assumed it was a overused SD/MMC card, blowing and switching the caddy lock/unlock latch a few times seemed to do the trick.

I've dd'd 0.9.6 to the same 2GB MMC and it booted straight to desktop for me this time (usually have to run xorgwizard, but Barry's tweaks in 0.9.6 seem to have rectified that for my onboard Radeon/ATI.

I download and dd'd using OpenBSD

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root@acer> gzip -d eas*.gz    
root@acer> dmesg | grep MMC   
sd3 at scsibus2 targ 1 lun 2: <Generic-, SD/MMC, 1.00> SCSI0 0/direct removable                                         
root@acer> disklabel sd3      
# /dev/rsd3c:                 
type: SCSI                    
disk: SCSI disk               
label: SD/MMC                 
duid: 0000000000000000        
flags:                        
bytes/sector: 512             
sectors/track: 63             
tracks/cylinder: 255          
sectors/cylinder: 16065       
cylinders: 246                
total sectors: 3964928        
boundstart: 0                 
boundend: 3964928             
drivedata: 0                  

16 partitions:                
#                size           offset  fstype [fsize bsize   cpg]                                                      
  c:          3964928                0  unused                                                                          
  i:          1308672             2048   MSDOS                                                                          
  j:          2654208          1310720  ext2fs                                                                          
root@acer> dd if=easy-0.9.6-amd64.img of=/dev/rsd3c bs=1M                                                               
641+0 records in              
641+0 records out             
672137216 bytes transferred in 93.238 secs (7208771 bytes/sec)

All looks good so far, but limited use (ran through the first run setup, turned firewall on, run the Puppy ad-block setup, added video=800x600 to the "normal" boot parameters in syslinux.cfg on sdd1, increased dpi to 130) and rebooted a second time ... to see the desktop pop up ok).

[step]

Still unable to make 0.9.6 complete the first boot I prepared the same two sticks on a different PC, and tested them on the same netbook. I got the same error message that I reported three posts above.

I prepared the sticks again and this time I tested them with my desktop PC. No errors, easyOS completed the first run setup. Then I shutdown my PC and tried booting the now-fully-initialized stick on my netbook. This time it booted straight to desktop.

So it's possible that easyOS generates an error trying to complete the first boot on that netbook only, which is an ASUS 1001 PX with 2MB RAM and an SSD that replaced the HDD.

All sticks were prepared with dd following the instructions on the EasyOS web page.