Puppylinux for the OLPC laptops: XOpup

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eph.zero
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#256 Post by eph.zero »

I researched the problem to death some time ago, and never found a solution that worked. I recall finding something out there that suggested it was an OFW bug, but don't quote me on that. It was a couple of years ago, so I have no idea where I might have seen that.

I've tried changing fonts in the boot script, including SUN12x22, but it seems that it has no effect.
mavrothal wrote:
eph.zero wrote:I wouldn't mind going all-CLI on it, but it's been impossible to increase that font size without the GUI. A bug in open firmware, I think.
Why would you say that is an OFW bug?

Are your fonts particularly small? SUN12x22 is one of the bigger fonts and pretty comfortable usually.
I'm not sure if any bigger font is compile into the kernel but I could check.

In this page you can find a lot of things related to console fonts.

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mavrothal
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Racy-, Precise-, Slacko-5.5 for the XO-1 and XO-1.5

#257 Post by mavrothal »

Three brand new puppies version 5.5 came out in March! Racy, Precise and Slacko.
So here they are all 3 adapted for the XO-1 and XO-1.5

Racy-5.5_XO.tar.gz (114.11MB - md5:27d4adec48b19c3c3ea891072eb6c974)
Precise-5.5_XO.tar.gz (167.67MB - md5:c5882f4bc48f4694fd99398abafc9c49)
Slacko-5.5_XO.tar.gz (171.81MB - md5:4660d8d7d2645b9c51c1917c5719333a)

Racy is indeed the faster on the XOs but does not have the compatibility with the huge ubuntu package collection that Precise has. Their functionality OOB is comparable though and will both update successfully previous Racy-5.3.x and Precise-5.4.x, XO builds.
Slacko is the most updated, feature rich and nice looking 8) of the 3 and is compatible with the extended slackware package collection. Is bigger and has some issues with audio/video recording. Also since is Slackware14-based, will NOT update Slacko-5.3.x builds.

NON of the 3 will update XOpup-2.x (which I still find the fastest :) )

To install, expand (one :lol: of) the downloaded tarball at the root of a USB stick or SDcard and boot your unlocked XO.

Known issues: 5.5 builds have the new frisbee-1.0 instead of the original Frisbee-beta2. If it fails on anything for no "apparent reason" just hit "Restart Networks" button :wink:

Note:The files are in Sendspace so they will be taken down after some time of inactivity. Let me know if you can not find them.
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5.5s.jpg
5.5 puppies on the XO
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Last edited by mavrothal on Fri 30 Aug 2013, 21:34, edited 3 times in total.
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mavrothal
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#258 Post by mavrothal »

eph.zero wrote:I researched the problem to death some time ago, and never found a solution that worked.
Try to ask at the olpc devel mailing list. Will be hard to justify since on OLPC releases you never get to console, but you can say something related to debugging or using it as a server (music server :D ) etc.
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simargl

#259 Post by simargl »

.
Last edited by simargl on Sun 01 Sep 2013, 14:41, edited 1 time in total.

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mavrothal
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#260 Post by mavrothal »

simargl wrote:Congrats for this 3-in-1 release, they look nice although it's kinda funny to see same icons on different OS versions.
Thanks.
Regarding visual similarities, all I can say is that GNOME/KDE/XFCE/LXDE etc, do look similar across distros. That is actually the idea! Consistency, familiarity and functionality.
They are of course easy to customize through one or more GUI apps, exactly as the above ROX-JWM puppies are.
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mavrothal
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batalarm_xo

#261 Post by mavrothal »

With the aging XO batteries I though a battery alarm might be handy.
So I heavily modified Xbatalarm to suit the XOs.
The alarm is set at 15% battery level (at <10% the XO will auto shutdown)
If you want to change that limit, edit line 19 of the /usr/bin/xbatalarm_xo script

Will work with any puppy build for the XO-1 and the XO-1.5
Attachments
batalarm.jpg
Xbatalarm_xo on Precise-5.5 for the XO
(34.73 KiB) Downloaded 2396 times
Xbatalarm-1.2_xo.pet
Low battery alarm for the XOs
(1.58 KiB) Downloaded 1126 times
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mavrothal
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Precise 5.6.1 for the XOs

#262 Post by mavrothal »

Not sure if anyone (in the wild) is still using Puppylinux on the XOs (or the XOs altogether :shock: ) but since I made it thought to post it.
So, if you like the latest and greatest ( :P ), here is Precise-5.6.1_XO

In addition to the latest puppy is also using the 3.3.x olpc kernels (instead of the 2.6.x of the previous versions).
Will update older Precise-5.x.x_XO installations but no the original or other "XOpups"

As usually, to install expand the tarball at the root of a USB stick or SDcard and boot your unlocked XO.

(The "mandatory" picture below shown a bunch of other goodies running on my XOs. Ask if interested)
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Last edited by mavrothal on Fri 30 Aug 2013, 21:36, edited 1 time in total.
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Shiseiji
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or the XOs altogether

#263 Post by Shiseiji »

Well, I just got my XO back out and look what I found!

Thanks.

157
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#264 Post by 157 »

Hey, sorry for what's almost certainly an incredibly stupid question, but how do I install Puppy Linux on an SD card that I already have a different version of Linux I no longer want on? Since there's already a boot folder at the root of the SD card, I booted Precise 5.6.1 from a USB stick and it worked great, but I'd like to install it straight onto the SD card instead. What would be the best way to do this? From what I understand, formatting an SD card is generally a bad idea.

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mavrothal
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#265 Post by mavrothal »

157 wrote:Hey, sorry for what's almost certainly an incredibly stupid question, but how do I install Puppy Linux on an SD card that I already have a different version of Linux I no longer want on? Since there's already a boot folder at the root of the SD card, I booted Precise 5.6.1 from a USB stick and it worked great, but I'd like to install it straight onto the SD card instead. What would be the best way to do this? From what I understand, formatting an SD card is generally a bad idea.
If you want to keep your other linux just rename the boot folder. Puppy will live happily with it if you save to a file (not "save to the entire partition").
Otherwise just "rm -rf" everything in the card and then you can do whatever you want.
No need to reformat.
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157
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#266 Post by 157 »

mavrothal wrote:
157 wrote:Hey, sorry for what's almost certainly an incredibly stupid question, but how do I install Puppy Linux on an SD card that I already have a different version of Linux I no longer want on? Since there's already a boot folder at the root of the SD card, I booted Precise 5.6.1 from a USB stick and it worked great, but I'd like to install it straight onto the SD card instead. What would be the best way to do this? From what I understand, formatting an SD card is generally a bad idea.
If you want to keep your other linux just rename the boot folder. Puppy will live happily with it if you save to a file (not "save to the entire partition").
Otherwise just "rm -rf" everything in the card and then you can do whatever you want.
No need to reformat.
Alright, thank you, I'll try that!

One other thing, though, is that when I ran it off the USB stick I got an error saying there was no free memory left constantly, even when doing basic things like opening the file manager. Will that not be an issue with the SD card, or will I need to make a swap file? I'm hesitant to do so because it's quite a large capacity card and I don't want to burn it out.

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mavrothal
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#267 Post by mavrothal »

157 wrote: One other thing, though, is that when I ran it off the USB stick I got an error saying there was no free memory left constantly, even when doing basic things like opening the file manager. Will that not be an issue with the SD card, or will I need to make a swap file? I'm hesitant to do so because it's quite a large capacity card and I don't want to burn it out.
Is really hard to run anything on the 250MB of XO-1 nowdays.
If you do not want the messaging just remove the /root/Startup/freeramdaemon.sh file and will not bother you again.
Regarding swap and SDcards I have 2 cards with swap partition and 1 with swap file. The oldest is 4-years old and the youngest 2. No problems yet.
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157
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#268 Post by 157 »

mavrothal wrote:
157 wrote: One other thing, though, is that when I ran it off the USB stick I got an error saying there was no free memory left constantly, even when doing basic things like opening the file manager. Will that not be an issue with the SD card, or will I need to make a swap file? I'm hesitant to do so because it's quite a large capacity card and I don't want to burn it out.
Is really hard to run anything on the 250MB of XO-1 nowdays.
If you do not want the messaging just remove the /root/Startup/freeramdaemon.sh file and will not bother you again.
Regarding swap and SDcards I have 2 cards with swap partition and 1 with swap file. The oldest is 4-years old and the youngest 2. No problems yet.
Sorry for the late reply, I'm afraid I didn't have internet access for a few days.

Would there be a risk of the computer being damaged via overheating or something of that nature if the warning messages were removed? I assumed that might be the case and stuck with the XO's default GNOME desktop in the past few days. Attempts to create a swap file on a smaller SD card using the instructions from a saved version of the OLPC wiki's "Swap" page were unsuccessful, unfortunately. Not quite sure why. I'd have tried a partition, but the proper tools didn't seem to be available. May have just missed them, though.

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mavrothal
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#269 Post by mavrothal »

157 wrote: Would there be a risk of the computer being damaged via overheating or something of that nature if the warning messages were removed? I assumed that might be the case and stuck with the XO's default GNOME desktop in the past few days. Attempts to create a swap file on a smaller SD card using the instructions from a saved version of the OLPC wiki's "Swap" page were unsuccessful, unfortunately. Not quite sure why. I'd have tried a partition, but the proper tools didn't seem to be available. May have just missed them, though.
All XOs have builtin thermal protection. The XO-1 in particular does not overheat even when overclocked.
Without the warning (and swap) the XO-1 will just run even slower but no harm will come to the machine.
To make a swap partition you can use gparted to re-partition your card. However you should know that SDcard partitioning can be tricky.
Alternativelly just choose "mkswap"when the warning comes up.
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157
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#270 Post by 157 »

mavrothal wrote:All XOs have builtin thermal protection. The XO-1 in particular does not overheat even when overclocked.
Without the warning (and swap) the XO-1 will just run even slower but no harm will come to the machine.
To make a swap partition you can use gparted to re-partition your card. However you should know that SDcard partitioning can be tricky.
Alternativelly just choose "mkswap"when the warning comes up.
Oh wow, really? That's great, I didn't know that.

And I'll give partitioning with gparted a shot, thanks. I'm not expecting much success at this point, but might as well keeping trying.

anthill
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Re: Precise 5.6.1 for the XOs

#271 Post by anthill »

mavrothal wrote:Not sure if anyone (in the wild) is still using Puppylinux on the XOs
I'm still breaking it out from time to time. Thanks for the update Mavrothal!

edit: I don't suppose you know how to change the backlight dimming level / time out? I'd like to see if the screen could blank to 'reflective' zero backlight mode (still this laptop's distinguishing feature).

edit2: Kernel headers? :roll: Hoping to compile some DVB tuner drivers for an ezcap RTL2832 i have lying around...

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Re: Precise 5.6.1 for the XOs

#272 Post by mavrothal »

anthill wrote: edit: I don't suppose you know how to change the backlight dimming level / time out? I'd like to see if the screen could blank to 'reflective' zero backlight mode (still this laptop's distinguishing feature).

edit2: Kernel headers? :roll: Hoping to compile some DVB tuner drivers for an ezcap RTL2832 i have lying around...
Almost missed the edit...

Code: Select all

powerd-config
to configure timeouts and level
Manually you can do it from the XO buttons. They work! Use also the ctrl and alt modifiers with them :wink:
You can even reverse the colors using this pet

The headers are here.
Since I do not know which version you are uing I have bothe the 2.6 and th 3.3 headers of the XO-1 kernels (though should be OK for XO-1.5 too).
Last edited by mavrothal on Fri 13 Sep 2013, 18:33, edited 1 time in total.
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mavrothal
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XOpup for the XO-4

#273 Post by mavrothal »

Here is the first development release of FatDog-ARM linux (a Puppy heritage "dog") for the ARM-based XO-4 and XO-1.75.
Is working fine on the XO-4 but there is no GUI for the XO-1.75 (for more on XO-1.75 problem see here)

Is intended mostly for developers ( there are not many "wild" XO_ARMs anyway).

At 300 MB has the full development tools, kerne- specific, X and all the other headers, git etc, with the usual assortment of puppy/fatdog apps.


To test/work/check it out, download fd-arm_a2_XO.tar.xz (md5sum:ae0f16950da130b7d50a484db4be662d), expand it at the root of a USB stick or SDcard and boot your XO-4 or XO-1.75.

Known Issues (besides the major XO-1.75 X problem):
- Touches are not recognized by X in XO-4 (but they are from the power management infrastructure)
Edit: To fix touchscreen open Gslapt and upgrade to the xf86-input-evdev-2.8.1git-armhf-2 package.
- Screen rotation does not work.
Edit: To fix rotation open Gslapt install xf86-video-dove-0.3.11xo4-armhf-1 and uprate to xorg-server-1.14.3
- The rocker pad keys are not recognized (the game keys are OK - Edit: now fixed. Fix will be in a3).
- The Wifi.sh connection tool crashes after wake up from suspend. Use it only for occasional/transient connections as it is much faster.
Use Classic Network Wizard for more permanent setting (is a bit laborious - see visual instructions if not familiar)

Report, better yet solve :wink: , any problems here (PM is fine too).

Oh... the customary screen shot :P

Edit Sep, 14: The tar.gz file might have been problematic and has been deleted. Please download the tar.xz file.
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newscreen.jpg
fatdog-arm alpha 2 running on the XO-4
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Last edited by mavrothal on Mon 30 Sep 2013, 12:13, edited 8 times in total.
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anthill
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Re: Precise 5.6.1 for the XOs

#274 Post by anthill »

mavrothal wrote: The headers are here.
Since I do not know which version you are uing I have bothe the 2.6 and th 3.3 headers of the XO-1 kernels (though should be OK for XO-1.5 too).
Ah, sorry, I should have specified! I'm running the latest one:

Code: Select all

-Version-
Kernel		: Linux 3.3.8_xo1-20130530.2216.olpc.f12d9e6_Aufs (i586)
Version		: #1 PREEMPT Thu May 30 22:38:40 EEST 2013
C Library		: GNU C Library version 2.15 (stable)
Distribution		: Precise Puppy - 5.6.1
Puppy package manager complains that the 3.3.8 pet is for the wrong kernel version - but that's just the date/time of build that differs, right?

Thanks for the brightness daemon configuration tip - that does the trick all right.

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mavrothal
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Re: Precise 5.6.1 for the XOs

#275 Post by mavrothal »

anthill wrote:[
Puppy package manager complains that the 3.3.8 pet is for the wrong kernel version - but that's just the date/time of build that differs, right?
Might be some very minor changes (different git version) but better be safe.
Here is the correct ones both for the XO-1 and XO-1,5
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