2.16 installation problems

[chris]

Hi pups, first post. Wish I could say it wasn't about a problem but 'such is life'.

Over the last few days I tried unsuccessfully to run Puppy 2.15 and 2.16 on my not so old hardware (Athlon X2 4400+, Nvidia GF7900GT, Asus mobo, 2Gb ram, Viewsonic 20" widescreen lcd, Logitech G5 mouse, G15 keyboard ... yeh okay I bought it to play games). Hours of trying, failing, reboot into Windows to read some more etc etc etc.

Finally managed to get to a GUI display with ACPI=off and XVesa drivers. USB mouse and keyboard are found according to the boot log. Graphics come up and I see a screen asking for selection of display setting. Things seem to work for a second or so but by the time the RAM icon in the lower right corner updates the mouse and keyboard lock up. No response to Ctrl-Alt-BS, Ctrl-Alt-F1 etc, and no response from mouse.

Can't use the Xorg drivers because the graphic display is totally scrambled. Resetting the display gives me a scrambled "text" display.

Figured if I get the Nvidia drivers working then my problems are over. (I've had the same problems with Zenwalk, Vectorlinux etc but could install Nvidia drivers from a root shell). Found links to an Nvidia dotpup file so booted with NOX. However can't figure out how to do a command line install of a dotpup file.

FWIW - I'm attracted to Puppy Linux by its speed/small size (which I can add to as I choose) and the combination of ROX and a lightweight window manager. Makes my hardware feel fast again Can you tell I've reached the "time to reinstall Windows XP" phase ...

Hope some one can help this pooped pooch

[Bruce B]

Welcome Chris

I guess the incompatibility is here: Viewsonic 20" widescreen lcd

What's your take on this?

Bruce

[chris]

Hi Bruce ... I'm no expert on this so I can only say what I've observed. Using XVesa I get a graphic display @ 800x600. Any higher fails. When the display appears I move the mouse, the cursor moves a few cm/inches and then stops responding (along with the keyboard).

I had display problems with other Linuxes but got around that because I could install the latest NVidia drivers from a single user root shell. This generally required kernel sources and module compilation ... all handled by Nvidia's install script. But I haven't got my head around all the different packaging systems (dotpup, pupget) and can't seem to find CLI versions so I'm dead in the water right now.

Any directions on CLI installation of kernels sources, dev environment etc.

(I'm surprised at my own persistence with this. I've tried a dozen Linuxes in the last week or so ... from the much publicised Ubuntu to, more recently Zenwalk, VectorLinux and now Puppy. Ubuntu, Mandriva, Suse etc are just Linux bloat ... Windows wannabes in my view. Zenwalk and Puppy are something fresh. But for reasons I don't understand I'm persisting with Puppy ... must be some subliminal connection to my own cute pup. btw - I used Unix a lot in decades past and much prefer it over windows as an OS. And I don't hate Windows either. No point in slagging stuff because its different.)

Sorry for the babble.

[Bruce B]

I've got a similiar motherboard and video card as you. Not the same, but the same brands and fairly new.

I've not found any problems with not installing the nvidia drivers on an of the Linuxes I've tried, including some that you've mentioned. This is one reason why I suspect monitor incompatibility. I'd want to stick another monitor in and see if the same problems persist.

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

If you want to install a dotpup from the cli

* unzip the .pup - its just a zip file

* usually there is a tarball inside, which needs to be unpacked.

* also there are usually some scripts inside the .pup along with the tarball

* look at the scripts and see what they do, then manually do what they do, or in some cases run the install script.

[chris]

thanks ... I've got an older Viewsonic monitor I can try.

As for CLI ... uncompress .pup files with ... (gzip, bzip2 ... )?

[Flash]

You don't say how you're trying to run Puppy. Are you booting from CD, or have you installed it to the hard disk drive?

[Bruce B]

The .pup file is in zip format

use unzip to extract the contents

[chris]

Hi Flash ... I'm booting from CD, although my intention is to ultimately do a harddisk install if I can get it working.

Does that make a difference If so how?

[Bruce B]

More thinking

zenwalk failed to configure X
vector != vector

Vector 5.8 SOHO has monitor selection portion in its setup, which as I remember, resembles something like your widescreen monitor. It also can install the proprietary Nvidia drivers seamlessly and seems to do so before starting X.

[chris]

zenwalk failed to configure X

true. I had to install NVidia drivers via CLI

vector != vector

??? Do you mean "Oils ain't Oils"? (Vector SOHO != Vector Std).

What you said about VectorLinux SOHO is true. VectorLinux Std Gold (version ? ... latest) failed like Zenwalk so I installed drivers via CLI

Excuse any vagueness ... I've done so many iso downloads, burns, installs, reboots, blah blah blah I've forgotten most of anything older than a day or two.

[Bruce B]

{cut}

??? Do you mean "Oils ain't Oils"? (Vector SOHO != Vector Std).

Precisesly and the one and only I'd try is 5.8 SOHO (just released a few days ago, the others were release candidates.

But first I hope you deduce the problem with other Linuxes - maybe by starting with a monitor exchange test.

[tempestuous]

The proprietary nVIDIA v9629 driver is provided as a Puppy-compatible automated installer here -
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=14438

This package contains a pre-compiled kernel module compatible with the kernel in Puppy versions 2.12 - 2.16.

... but I wonder whether your problem is more related to the screen settings in your xorg.conf, which need to be suitable for your Viewsonic widescreen LCD monitor.
A quick Google search for "Viewsonic 20 inch widescreen xorg.conf" yeilded this -

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Monitor0"
VendorName "ViewSonic"
ModelName "VA2012wb"
HorizSync 30.0 - 94.0
VertRefresh 50.0 - 75.0
Option "dpms"
UseModes "16:9"
EndSection

Section "Modes"
Identifier "16:9"
# Modeline "1680x1050" 188.074 1680 1800 1984 2288 1050 1051 1054 1096 #-Hsync +Vsync #VR 75Hz
Modeline "1680x1050" 173.831 1680 1792 1976 2272 1050 1051 1054 1093 -HSync +Vsync #vertical refresh 70Hz
# Modeline "1680x1050" 147.136 1680 1784 1968 2256 1050 1051 1054 1087 -HSync +Vsync #vertical refresh 60Hz
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Videocard0"
Monitor "Monitor0"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 24
Modes "1680x1050"
EndSubSection
EndSection

[chris]

Hi tempestuous ... thanks. I found that link previously and already downloaded the nvidia .pup. But since I couldn't get into any X window display yesterday without keyboard or mouse lockups, I couldn't use the .pup file from the CLI.

However now I know that I can unzip .pup from the CLI so I should be good to go from here. Thanks for the xorg settings. I'll check them against the settings I get from the nvidia .pup

I've got the kernel sources.sfs and devx_216.sfs files so I'll probably also try to update to the latest or even beta nvidia drivers, which worked for me with Zenwalk and VectorLinux.