Firefox Quantum portable with apulse All-in

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Mike Walsh
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#181 Post by Mike Walsh »

@ Fred:-

Nice one. The more alternate, easy methods we have for getting browsers out there to folks (and keeping them up-to-date), the better..!

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

@ retry3:-

Let me know when you're about, and we'll get this portable FF-ESR onto that little SanDisk stick for you....OK?


Mike. :wink:

retry3
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#182 Post by retry3 »

@ Mike

OK - Now ready at this end.

retry3

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Mike Walsh
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#183 Post by Mike Walsh »

Hi, retry.

Sorry to keep you waiting so long; been having 'issues' at this end, I'm afraid.

Now; rather than try to describe all this to you, step by step, here on the Forum - and risk you possibly making a wrong step, and perhaps mucking things up - I thought it would make far more sense to throw together a wee video, so you can see exactly what's involved.

(It took two attempts to put the video together; the screencaster I was using for the first attempt lost the audio halfway through, so I had another go with a different one.....and folks wonder why I like having several different versions of every kind of app! It allows for cock-ups like this one.......and then I ended up having to upload the same video three times to YouTube, before realising that I didn't appear to be getting audio from any YouTube video... :roll: So I switched browsers, and everything was behaving itself again.....)

Summat else to 'sort out', is what it looks like. It's just been 'one of those days', y'know? Image

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

We've got plenty of 'remote-control desktop' apps now available for Puppy, that allow you to take control of somebody else's desktop, and show them how to do things. In fact, Smokey01 recently put together a very lightweight, 'Puppy' version of TeamViewer, called "BackSeatDriver".....but where TeamViewer is nearly 50 MB in size, this is around 2½-3MB, total.....and it even includes Puppy's 'softphone', PSIP, so you can talk to the other person and explain what you're doing as you do it..!

But that's more 'hands-on' than I really want to get for this, as yet.

I'm a believer in helping people to help themselves, and, with a visual demonstration, it's usually sufficient for folks to get some idea of what needs to be done so that they can then experiment for themselves, and in the process perhaps learn something new. So; have a watch of this video, then try it out for yourself.

You shouldn't find it too hard to follow, as I've tried to replicate the same conditions as on your machine. Have a go, see what happens. Take your time; this isn't a race, and nobody's out to try & win prizes here. It's more important that you can take this at your own pace, and to understand what you're doing as you go along.....

You can find the video here, at YouTube:-

FF-ESR_flash_drive_install_video

Let us know how you get on, please, Any problems, give me a shout.


Mike. :wink:

retry3
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#184 Post by retry3 »

Hey Mike -

I completely understand "one of those days" situations and oddly enough, that is exactly what I am having also!

I won't burden you with the details, but a medical event without the usual warning signs took me out of action for most of the day. I just now made it back to the computer to get your eagerly awaited advice.

The video is a terrific idea for all the reasons you cite, although not without problems specific to me.

I am starting to study the video now, and I can tell, as you guessed, that it is going to take me quite awhile to absorb it all. The things I learn in the process are what is going to make this a worthwhile and fun thing to do, no matter what the final result is, as far as I'm concerned.

Thanks again for your concern and very considerable efforts in casting advice in a form that is understandable to one of my skill level, I will keep you advised of progress and call for help only after I have tried everything I know.

Kind Regards
retry3

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Mike Walsh
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#185 Post by Mike Walsh »

@ retry3:-

Well, I'm starting to get so's I actually enjoy putting tutorials together. Like many before me, I suspect, I've got past the 'newbie' stage of learning my way around Puppy, and I'm more than happy to return the favour to the community (where possible) by helping others in my turn. TBH, it's the community around each distro that really makes it, to my way of thinking.

The difference between my videos and those of most other regular YouTube 'vloggers who cover Puppy, is that I take it to the next level, and cover issues specific to Puppy, rather than simply covering Pup along with a whole raft of other Linux distros. (At least, that's what I try to do....)

If we have to, I'll try guiding you through it remotely.....though I'd far rather you tried to do this by yourself, since it's only by putting theory into practice that we truly 'learn'. And, as with everything, 'practice makes perfect'.....the more you do something, the more comfortable you become with doing it. Remember; this is not a race. There's nothing hanging on the outcome of how quickly you can do this; the important thing is that you take it at your own pace, and most importantly, that you're able to retain what you learn. (I'm already starting to realise that the ability to learn things - and retain knowledge - seems to evaporate, the older you get..!)

I digress. Keep us posted, please!

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

@ fredx181:-

Sorry for 'hijacking' the thread, mate!


Mike. :wink:
Last edited by Mike Walsh on Sun 18 Aug 2019, 12:34, edited 1 time in total.

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fredx181
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#186 Post by fredx181 »

Mike Walsh wrote:@ fredx181:-

Sorry for 'hijacking' the thread, mate!
No no, it's great, the additions you make and the help you give (already since the beginning of this thread), btw, I think you really have talent for making tutorials, I saw your video tutorial, great stuff !! :D

Fred

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fredx181
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#187 Post by fredx181 »

@retry3, are you still alive ?

Fred

retry3
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Alive

#188 Post by retry3 »

Hey Fred -

Since I am a nonagenarian, that is a question I ask myself every morning.

Recent medical ,legal, financial and family imperatives have kept me from

getting any further than trying to prepare the USB stick for the installation.


I practiced, and did a dry run with an old small USB stick so I wouldn't be as

likely to make a mistake with the SanDisk, but that's it so far.

Thanks to you and Mike for bearing with me.

retry3

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#189 Post by fredx181 »

All the best retry3 !!! Take it easy and thanks for showing a sign of life ! :)

Fred

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Mike Walsh
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#190 Post by Mike Walsh »

@ retry3:-
retry3 wrote:Recent medical ,legal, financial and family imperatives have kept me from
getting any further than trying to prepare the USB stick for the installation.

I practiced, and did a dry run with an old small USB stick so I wouldn't be as
likely to make a mistake with the SanDisk, but that's it so far.
Thanks to you and Mike for bearing with me.
No worries.

Like I told you, this isn't a race. It's more important, from your point of view, that you take things at your own pace, and at the least understand what's going on at the end of the day.

In your own time.... :)


Mike. :wink:

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fredx181
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#191 Post by fredx181 »

A nice, clean solution to disable frequent updates, presented by forum member Barkin, is to add folder "distribution" to the portable Firefox directory, see info here: http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 68#1030968
Download the attachment from Barkin's post: http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... &id=123672 and extract in the portable Firefox folder.

Fred

retry3
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Install on USB stick - Sucess

#192 Post by retry3 »

Hey Mike & Fred -

Success!

The portable FF is now installed and working on the SanDisk and also on another much smaller (2Gb) old USB stick.

I followed the video, and the closed captioning was vital to understanding it. That, with the clear, detailed and very well paced manner of presentation, made it all possible.

The time and effort it took to make the video is impressive.

A heartfelt 'Thank You' from me; and I am sure there are, and will be, many other viewers like me who will feel the same.

I will mention a major problem that I had in the hope that it will help anyone else who runs into it;
When I opened the disk in Gparted, it did NOT show it was empty. It showed 3 files: ' SanDiskSecure Access’, ‘RunSanDiskSecureAccess_win.exe’ and ‘BackUp Your Files to the Cloud.pdf’
Gparted also showed a lock icon on the file system that I did not know how to overcome, menus were grayed out and I figured that maybe the only way to use this was under Windows.

Finally, after several hours over two days, I clicked on the Unmount option that was shown in a dropdown menu under ‘Partition’, and also with a right click. I clicked and the lock icon was gone!

I had thought the Unmount option would unmount the device itself, but now I see that it only meant something less, maybe contents?.

Things went according to the video after that.

I feel I was helped beyond any reasonable expectation, and to me it shows the individuals’ character and the quality of the forum.

Highest Regards,

retry3




[/img]

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Mike Walsh
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#193 Post by Mike Walsh »

@ retry3:-

Hey, WELL DONE! Nice to hear you stuck with it.....and I'm glad to hear you found the video useful.

I'm a great believer in visual aids. Myself, personally, I respond more quickly & effectively to any kind of tuition when it's supported by actual demonstrations of what's being discussed. If I have to try and take things in purely from reading about it, I have to try and picture in my mind's eye what's what. And I don't always get it right.....

"Well-paced manner of presentation...." Hah! Y'know, I watch no end of tutorials & other stuff on YouTube, and with some of them, they yap on so fast I have a real problem in understanding half of what they're talking about, sometimes. I hope I come across OK; I'm one of those people who, when listening to any recording of themselves being played back, I, well......I just don't recognise myself, y'know? It simply doesn't sound like me!

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

With regard to the extra 'items' on the SanDisk drives, sorry; I never thought to mention those. I'm so used to automatically wiping them off when I first format any SanDisk drive, it just didn't occur to me that you might not have come across them before. They're no good to us anyway, since they're coded for Windoze, so you might just as well get rid of them if you don't run it.....

Anyway; glad to hear you're 'sorted'. And remember; you might have had 'help', but you did achieve the end results through your own efforts. That's important, because you've learnt something new in the process.


Mike. Image Image

retry3
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#194 Post by retry3 »

Hey Mike -

It should be obvious to any viewer that your video is vastly superior to the average that is on Utube, and even more so to anyone looking for Puppy help.

I think it surpasses most of the 'professional' ones also. Fred is right, you have produced something really good in all respects.

I also don't want to hi-jack or otherwise dilute Fred's thread here, but I have some other questions and observations that I would like to present to you, if that is okay, so what would you suggest as the best way? PMs? another thread?

I tried to open and use your PUPPY stuff that you appended or linked to at the bottom of your post, thinking that that might be a way, but was unable to get anywhere past seeing a list of what you apparently have. I even went thru my Google Account to see if that might be the way, but No Go.

I plan to ask Fred where to find the solution to the black dropdown boxes I get when I click on one of the top row icons in FF.

Thanks again

Regards,
retry3

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#195 Post by fredx181 »

Mike Walsh wrote:I'm one of those people who, when listening to any recording of themselves being played back, I, well......I just don't recognise myself, y'know? It simply doesn't sound like me!
Same for me, experience my voice (from recording) as strange, maybe that goes for everyone hearing his/her own voice, anyway, I must say that your voice is good !! :) (and nice quiet talking, so easy to follow).

@retry3, congratulations for the successful install of Firefox on USB :) , no problem for me "hi-jacking" this thread, anyway if the subject is somehow related to Firefox.

Fred

retry3
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Best location for FF portable folder

#196 Post by retry3 »

Hey Fred & Mike -

I was getting the impression that it is not a good idea to keep the FFportable

folder in root if I want to conserve RAM on bootup.

Then today I saw a part of a post by mikesir that seemed to apply:

"Except for portable applications, such as firefox portable, which are built to store their settings and configurations in the folders from which they are run, all applications store such settings and configurations in (usually hidden) files and folders in /root. Files in /root are among those always copied into RAM on bootup and, so, always take up RAM".

This was on a thread started yesterday by Anders3 titled " Installation on USB and harddrive, speed differences." in the Beginners Help forum.

My question is that if I now try to move the FFportable folder and the FFfiles that seem to have something to do with it, which files are also in root, will I thereby mess up something?

And, if it's okay to move them, where would be a good location to locate them?

I hope this is not off topic for your thread, Fred.

Regards,
retry3

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Mike Walsh
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#197 Post by Mike Walsh »

@ retry3:-

Ah. You're talking about the Firefox stuff still sitting in /root after putting the portable install on the USB stick, I take it?

Since you now have your main browser set-up as a 'portable', on the USB drive, that's safe. It's not going to go anywhere. All that Firefox-related stuff left behind in /root, all those various bits & pieces, you can delete them. All of them.....every last item. Because all they're now doing is sitting around, taking up 'Puppy'-space in your save-file/folder.

FF68esr will, like regular Firefox 'Quantum', periodically update itself (though these won't be anything like as frequent as 'regular' FF). You'll be safe for quite a while, until the next ESR release comes out. Which, if Mozilla follow their usual routine, will probably be around FF75/76. And that's many months away yet.

Hope that answers that one, anyway.


Mike. :wink:

retry3
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#198 Post by retry3 »

Hey Mike -

Spot on! Exactly what i needed to know. Thank you very much!

Regards,
retry3

frenchiveruti
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Didn't work

#199 Post by frenchiveruti »

Hello, I am having struggles with the demon satanic spawn called PulseAudio and firefox.
I'm using
Linux Kernel: 4.9.71 (i686)
Kernel Version: #1 SMP Thu Dec 21 17:03:45 EST 2017
PAE Enabled: Yes

Kernel Command Line:
psubdir=stretch pmedia=atahd pfix=fsck,copy

Distro: Dpup Stretch 7.5
Window Manager: JWM v2.3.7


I have been using firefox quantum for a while, and out of the blue pulseaudio demands glibc 2.25 and also can't play audio nomatter what I do.
pulseaudio -D tells me basically to go fuck myself (can't start daemon, bohoo.)

Your ESR version of apulse+ff throws me this:
GLib-GIO-Message: Using the 'memory' GSettings backend. Your settings will not be saved or shared with other applications.
[apulse] [error] do_connect_pcm: can't get initial hw parameters for playback device "default". Error code 1 (Operation not permitted)
[apulse] [error] do_connect_pcm: failed to open ALSA device. Apulse does no resampling or format conversion, leaving that task to ALSA plugins. Ensure that selected device is capable of playing a particular sample format at a particular rate. They have to be supported by either hardware directly, or by "plug" and "dmix" ALSA plugins which will perform required conversions on CPU.
[Child 6567, MediaPlayback #1] WARNING: 8b4114c0 OpenCubeb() failed to init cubeb: file /builds/worker/workspace/build/src/dom/media/AudioStream.cpp, line 382
[Child 6567, MediaPlayback #1] WARNING: Decoder=9583dec0 [OnMediaSinkAudioError]: file /builds/worker/workspace/build/src/dom/media/MediaDecoderStateMachine.cpp, line 3639

Can this be solved? The audio works as usual, only firefox keeps screwing my day.
Thanks!

wiak
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#200 Post by wiak »

I haven't used this portable version, but since it includes apulse it shouldn't need pulseaudio, however, I always use pulseaudio with my Firefox installs - and it always works for me. It does complain when you start it as root user using the following, but just ignore the warning messages, it still does actually start up okay:

Code: Select all

pulseaudio --start
wiak

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