TazPuppy 5.0 rc2

Under development: PCMCIA, wireless, etc.
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thinkpadfreak
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#691 Post by thinkpadfreak »

Auto-configuration of sound cards seems to have worked for my machine.

At first boot, sound was not activated. But at second boot (with a save file), a speaker icon appeared and now sound is active.

However, I do not insist on auto-configuration. I am accustomed to creating the file /etc/modprobe.d/sound.conf, because I have created the file for other puppies, too. I think sound configuration of beta 6 was fairly satisfactory.

mistfire
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#692 Post by mistfire »

@thinkpadfreak I implemented autoconfig because of my experiences of using puppy across different computers with save file loaded. It will only trigger when tazpuppy detects changes on hardware setup such as changing video cards or display monitors when the computer booting up. This makes TazPuppy a truly portable OS.

Terry H
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Location: The Heart of Muskoka, ON Canada

#693 Post by Terry H »

Terry H wrote:
mistfire wrote:TazPuppy Beta 7 released

Changes:
* Autoconfig now works on display monitors
* Improvements for autoconfiguration of sound
* Some fixes on tazbox
* apulse is now added
I am unable to set up sound on beta 7, even thought this has the soundcards.conf, which matches the sound.conf previously provided by thinkpadfreak. I still can not get PCH to be used for sound.

With beta 6, as soon as I included the sound.conf, sound worked straight away. That is not happening with beta 7, for some reason.

I just booted to this beta 7 installation again. As mentioned in previous post, I had no sound when using beta 7. This time, the sound was working immediately on boot without any intervention. I have rebooted to confirm. Strange!

So I beleive the setup you had implemented in beta 7 is good.


Edit: I didn't see thinkpadfreak's post above, regarding sound configuration. I have no issue with having to manually include the modprobe script myself also, if that is consiered the best solution.
Last edited by Terry H on Thu 08 Nov 2018, 21:04, edited 1 time in total.

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smokey01
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#694 Post by smokey01 »

@mistfire, I haven't had a look at TazPuppy for some time and I must say I'm very impressed. It really has that puppy feel about it.

I did notice a couple of things that possibly need attention.

All the below were tested in Qemu.

When selecting Menu > Desktop > Time.is then clicking on a city it drives the processor to the max.

Internet > TazWeb Browser produces "Error opening file: No such file or directory"

Internet > Midori produces error, see attached image tazpuppy.jpg.

There is a lot of duplication in the menus.
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Terry H
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#695 Post by Terry H »

mistfire wrote:@Terry H I think we need to get deeper to determine the soundcard problem. I was thinking, what if I bring back barry's alsa soundcard which can be found on Puppy 4.X which allows to configure soundcard manually
As per my previous post, sound is OK now.
About RTSX kernel module i recompiled now the kernel and it is now builitin (I will to release the fix pretty soon). My customized kernel has the following builtin kernel modules:
* IDE and SATA drivers
* Keyboard and Mouse drivers
* USB and Firewire drivers
* MMC, NVME, PCMCIA, and MEMSTICK drivers
* VESA and FB drivers
Wow, rcompiled kernel already. That is fantastic service. Thank you.

mistfire
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#696 Post by mistfire »

@Terry H glad to hear that sound on your computer works

@smokey01 I made a boot test on beta 7 in pristine state on virtualbox. All it works fine. I think the issue lies on your virtualization. Try to boot it on real hardware or other virtualization software.
About the menus. The menu file contains at lot of possible category names. If the desktop file in /usr/share/applications has multiple categories then it will appear on different categories on the menu.

step
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#697 Post by step »

@smokey01 and mistfire, I tried Smokey01's test on Qemu running on Fatdog64. I can't confirm that TazBrowser and Midori can't open a local help file - for me both browsers showed the local help page. However, I can confirm the time.is issue, the site opened and showed the time, but the CPU shot up to 100%. Then I tested browsing various sites with Midori. Word lookup on the Merriam-Webster dictionary site locked the CPU at 100%. The VM is configured with 1 processor and 2GB RAM.
[url=http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=117546]Fatdog64-810[/url]|[url=http://goo.gl/hqZtiB]+Packages[/url]|[url=http://goo.gl/6dbEzT]Kodi[/url]|[url=http://goo.gl/JQC4Vz]gtkmenuplus[/url]

mistfire
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#698 Post by mistfire »

TazPuppy Beta 8 released

Changes:
* Completely modular approach (kernel modules now resides in zdrv and firmware modules in fdrv for very convenient swapping kernel and its modules without repacking the main sfs file)
* RTSX kernel module now builtin to kernel.
* Some fine adjustment to the kernel.

NOTE: To swap kernel just replace vmlinuz of other puppies and put its zdrv file but rename it as zdrv_tazpup_5.0.sfs

Download: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_miyPE ... sp=sharing
MD5 Checksum: 4b2d27a62cb415854e88675ad5cd84eb

Build kit: https://drive.google.com/file/d/180wodl ... sp=sharing

mistfire
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#699 Post by mistfire »

@step I think the webkit engine was the responsible for 100% cpu usage. I wonder if there is an update in the slitaz repo for webkit

Terry H
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#700 Post by Terry H »

New clean frugal install on Dell laptop Core i3-5005U.

The fdrv you use appears very old. I have Intel 7265 wifi card. It's not even catered for in fdrv, the iwlwifi firmware ends at iwlwifi-7260-7.ucode, this is from March 2014. There is no firmware for 7265 or later. I only load the fdrv to test. I normally don't load the fdrv, as I keep my own firmware and load it manually.

The firmware to cover the realtek nic is also not included in this fdrv, it stops at rtl8168g-3.fw which is also from 2014.

Code: Select all

sh-4.4$ dmesg|grep firm
Spectre V2 : Enabling Restricted Speculation for firmware calls
platform regulatory.0: Direct firmware load for regulatory.db failed with error -2
iwlwifi 0000:04:00.0: loaded firmware version 29.610311.0 op_mode iwlmvm
r8169 0000:03:00.0: Direct firmware load for rtl_nic/rtl8168h-2.fw failed with error -2
r8169 0000:03:00.0 eth0: unable to load firmware patch rtl_nic/rtl8168h-2.fw (-2)
sh-4.4$ 
The sound was auto config on reboot without any intervention. That's great.

The rtsx_pci is good now. SD Card reader working.


This is another good step forward. System running very well. Thanks once again.


Note: time.is running in tazweb uses about 25% CPU. Even running from midori, was using about 10% CPU.

mistfire
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#701 Post by mistfire »

@Terry H since Tazpuppy is now fully modular you can use the fdrv file of other puppies if you hardware does not support with the shipped fdrv on tazpuppy. To load it on boot automatically, rename the fdrv file as fdrv_tazpup_5.0.sfs

thinkpadfreak
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#702 Post by thinkpadfreak »

I am experiencing a strange error at boot.

It is a frugal install onto a hard drive (ntfs). I tried various types of tazpupsave (ext2/3/4), but all resulted in the same error.

I am loading an extra sfs (firefox) which I made myself. I've used the sfs with recent releases of tazpuppy without any problem.

I attach the screenshot.

Edit
I booted another Puppy and moved the sfs to another drive. Tazpuppy booted successfully. I am adding this line with Midori. :?
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Terry H
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#703 Post by Terry H »

mistfire wrote:@Terry H since Tazpuppy is now fully modular you can use the fdrv file of other puppies if you hardware does not support with the shipped fdrv on tazpuppy. To load it on boot automatically, rename the fdrv file as fdrv_tazpup_5.0.sfs
I'm not sure you followed my intent with the fdrv details I posted. I don't use an fdrv in any puppy, I am aware of how to rename and load an *drv sfs. I only loaded your fdrv to test it.

With such an old fdrv you will get many people reporting wifi and ethenet nic connection failures. It would be advisable to use a more up to date version.

thinkpadfreak
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#704 Post by thinkpadfreak »

I noticed fdrv is listed in sfs_load. It is my understanding that fdrv is not counted as an extra sfs.

I wonder if this is related to the failure to boot when an extra sfs is to be loaded.
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mistfire
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#705 Post by mistfire »

@thinkpadfreak beta 8 was kernel related update, the main sfs and init was untouched.

The kernel modules is now on zdrv, the zdrv on beta 7 is contains only firmware driver. When I decided to make modular the former zdrv was now renamed as fdrv. By the way i will try to investigate also the fdrv in sfs_load. But based on your screenshot, it is likely the culprit because the filename contains whitespaces

Also the kernel was recompiled and it has some tweaks. I cannot no longer push beyond 4.17.6 because it cannot compiled by my host puppy X-Slacko Slim. So I will resort to the latest 4.9.x backport, If the linux kernel source code has builitin aufs that will be no problem.

Can you help me to find the download link for linux kernel source code 4.9.136 with aufs patched?

@Terry H thanks for your advise however expect the increase of file size.

thinkpadfreak
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#706 Post by thinkpadfreak »

mistfire wrote:
> By the way i will try to investigate also the fdrv in sfs_load. But based on your screenshot, it is likely the culprit because the filename contains whitespaces

As for the spaces of the filename, I think the font is responsible. I added a Japanese font set, and strangely there are cases where underscores are invisible.
There are at least several people in the Puppy Linux Japanese Forum who confirm the failure to boot: when fdrv sfs and an extra sfs exist, beta 8 is unable to boot.

As a test, I joined the contents of fdrv and zdrv, and made a new zdrv. Since there doesn't exsist fdrv, beta 8 boots successfully. It seems that fdrv and an extra sfs conflict, and the layers cannot be configured. Please do investigate this issue.


> I cannot no longer push beyond 4.17.6 because it cannot compiled by my host puppy X-Slacko Slim. So I will resort to the latest 4.9.x backport, If the linux kernel source code has builitin aufs that will be no problem.

Unfortunately, I do not know much about kernel compilation. 4.17.6 kernel seems good in itself, though it is too new for my machine.

mistfire
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#707 Post by mistfire »

@thinkpadfreak what sfs file did you load aside the fdrv that was loaded. Can you try to rename that fdrv as ydrv_tazpup_5.0.sfs then boot it to see what happens whether it will boot sucessfully or not?

thinkpadfreak
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#708 Post by thinkpadfreak »

@mistfire
The following is a summary of what I have tried so far.

main sfs + fdrv + zdrv ... OK
main sfs + fdrv + zdrv + an extra sfs (firefox) .... failure
main sfs + zdrv (the content is fdrv and zdrv merged) + an extra sfs ... OK


> Can you try to rename that fdrv as ydrv_tazpup_5.0.sfs then boot it to see what happens whether it will boot sucessfully or not?

I will try later.

thinkpadfreak
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#709 Post by thinkpadfreak »

I tried renaming fdrv to ydrv.

main sfs + ydrv + zdrv + extra sfs ... OK

ydrv is not listed in sfs_load. The mount point of ydrv is /dev/loop3, while the mount point of fdrv is /dev/loop5, which seems to conflict with that of an extra sfs.

In case of UpupBB, for example, the configuration of the layers is very different. I wonder if the init script defines the configuration. (I am just an ordinary user, and don't know in detail.)

mistfire
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#710 Post by mistfire »

@thinkpadfreak I finally found the bug on loop5. It is the big flaw in the init script code upon loading extra sfs. It is now fixed. I made some revisions on sfs_load script.

To mitigate this problem on beta 8 or below rename the fdrv_tazpup_5.0.sfs to ydrv_tazpup_5.0.sfs

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