The Debian-Stretch-Live Starter Kit

[memo]

kindly explain in easy terms as I am a beginner in linux in general and puppy in particular.

You also sent me a PM. I took the time to find a solution and send you an answer.

You still have not shown the courtesy of a reply.

Hi Bill, Sorry for the late response, just check the message on the website, ofcourse many thanks to you for taking the time to find a solution and sending it to me.

My excuses

[rcrsn51]

Here is a kernel module "driver" for the MOXA Uport 11x0 series Serial-USB adapter.

The device may NOT be auto-detected, in which case you must manually load the module with

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modprobe mxu11x0

It may also require firmware. Run:

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dmesg | grep -i firmware

Remove the fake .gz extension.

[rcrsn51]

Here is the latest version of the brlaser printer driver from here. This is a generic driver for various Brother laser printers that eliminates the complexity of the vendor driver.

It was compiled in the Buster64 Starter Kit but may work in other 64bit Dogs.

[rcrsn51]

A standard MBR-structured drive has empty space between the MBR (sector 0) and the start of the first partition. Some bootloaders like Legacy GRUB's optional stage1.5 and Grub4Dos (see below) use this space for their own code.

But the partition table of a GPT-structured drive starts at sector 1 and covers some of this space. So installing one of the above bootloaders will over-write the partition table and corrupt the drive.

The only contentious issue is whether Grub4Dos actually does this. Does its stage1 bootloader get written into sector 1 and beyond or does it fit entirely into sector 0? Here is a way to find out.

1. Start with a regular MBR-structured flash drive sdb.

2. Write zeros into the ten sectors starting at sector 1.

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dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb seek=1 count=10

3. Save this block of ten sectors to the file out1

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dd if=/dev/sdb of=out1 skip=1 count=10

4. Install the Grub4Dos stage1 bootloader.

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bootlace.com --no-backup-mbr --time-out=0 /dev/sdb

5. Save the same block of ten sectors to the file out2

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dd if=/dev/sdb of=out2 skip=1 count=10

6. Compare the two files.

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cmp out1 out2
cat out1
cat out2

For GRUB2 users, this is a non-issue. But people who want to keep using their favourite G4D menu.lst syntax can boot GPT drives via Legacy GRUB without stage1.5. Its stage1 boot code fits entirely in the MBR and doesn't touch the GPT partition table.

Continued: The above procedure is based on shinobar's Grub4Dos Config tool which uses bootlace.com (or wee) to install the stage1 boot code. But there are other stage1 installers out there. If an installer was smart enough to recognize GPT, it could place its stage1.5 code in another location, like after the GPT partition table but before the first 1 MiB boundary. This would make G4D compatible with GPT.

Continued: In the discussions here, enrique claims to have this working - G4D on a GPT drive. Unfortunately, he provides no details of how he installed the stage1 G4D bootloader so it does not conflict with the GPT partition table. In the absence of this information, his procedure has no advantage over using Legacy GRUB to accomplish the same thing.

Continued: in recent versions of G4D (0.4.6a 2018-06-12), bootlace.com has a "--gpt" option. This will write the stage1.5 code to the area described above, allowing G4D to boot on a GPT drive.

Continued: I have not tested this on an SSD with 4K blocks. Hopefully, the "--gpt" option is compatible with such hardware.

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[rcrsn51]

PeasyScan v2.16 updated here.

V2.16 has a slight regression to accommodate models (like Brother) that use multi-word scanner options. For example:

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export SOURCE="Automatic Document Feeder(left aligned)"

[rcrsn51]

Legacy GRUB Config 2019 updated here. The squashfs module has been slimmed down considerably.

This continues to be the most versatile GRUB bootloader app for pre-UEFI machines. Use it with the stetch-live-frugal-install tool.

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[rcrsn51]

There are new instructions here for making a squashfs module for Master PDF Editor.

[fredx181]

There are new instructions here for making a squashfs module for Master PDF Editor.

Didn't add Master PDF Editor to the Stretch repo yet, but just now I did.

[wiak]

Go here and get a 32bit or 64bit Debian package.

You have two choices:

1. Do a regular install with Right-click > Install Deb. However, there is a missing dependency.

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apt-get update #if needed
apt-get install libsane

There are new instructions here for making a squashfs module for Master PDF Editor.

Didn't add Master PDF Editor to the Stretch repo yet, but just now I did.

I recommend you stick to older 4.3.61 masterpdfeditor, Fred, and not the new versions from code.industry.net

The newer versions have much-limited functionality. My partner originally alerted me to that fact since I had simply installed latest for her from Arch AUR and she complained that lots of functions that used to work are now only available to registered users.

wiak

[fredx181]

I recommend you stick to older 4.3.61 masterpdfeditor, Fred, and not the new versions from code.industry.net

Thanks but it is 4.3.61 that I added to repo, I know about the limitations of newest versions.

EDIT: to clarify, the update from rcrsn51 is just this:

How to install Master PDF Editor

Update: Fred has packaged v4.6.31 in DEB form with a complete dependency list and has added it to his repo. You can now build a squashfs module using a vanilla repo2sfs operation.

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Below it is the old how-to

Fred

[wiak]

EDIT: to clarify, the update from rcrsn51 is just this:

How to install Master PDF Editor

Okay. I just noted that rcrsn52 instructions said:

Go https://code-industry.net/free-pdf-editor/#get]here and get a 32bit or 64bit Debian package.

which would have been new masterpdfeditor I thought. But I guess I was wrong. No problem.

wiak

[rcrsn51]

Here is a tip for using repo2sfs (which regular users have probably already figured out).

In general, the best way to use repo2sfs is in a CleanMode environment so you get the complete set of dependencies and your squashfs module is fully portable.

But Master PDF Editor has a built-in scanning tool which requires libsane. Including libsane brings in a bunch of other stuff that doubles the size of the module.

So if you only want to use Master PDF Editor in setups that already have print/scan installed, run repo2sfs in that environment. Then libsane and its dependencies will be omitted from the module.

[rcrsn51]

PeasyPDF v4.5 updated here.