THINSlacko

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rufwoof
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#91 Post by rufwoof »

Just uploaded PDF Shuffler (SFS) to the googledrive repository

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id= ... sp=sharing

its in a sub-folder called PDFshuffler as it also requires the poppler PET to be loaded (PDF renderer).

PDF Shuffler enables you to import several PDF's, rearrange the pages and then export to a single PDF. If you want to edit individual PDF pages then the full blown inkscape caters for importing single PDF pages, editing, and then exporting the edited page (after which PDF shuffler might be used to reconstruct a multi-page PDF).

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rufwoof
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#92 Post by rufwoof »

Just uploaded Latex/LyX (in a sub-folder as it requires python which is also included in the same sub-directory).

LyX is a document program that can create PDF's and allows you to concentrate on the content, without worrying about its format. i.e. forces you focus on the words rather than the layout. Select a template for your document/letter/article/thesis and fill in the words.

Also uploaded google-earth and stellarium for good measure.
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rufwoof
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Portable apps

#93 Post by rufwoof »

Uploading as I write portable versions of

Libre Office
Xara Extreme
FIrefox 31
Cinelarra
XBMC Media Centre

sourced from http://sourceforge.net/projects/portable/files/

Download, chmod +x and execute. Stores changes etc and can be on NTFS or EXT4 partitions.

XBMC runs for me, but complains about my low resolution, so not sure of its functionality.

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rufwoof
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#94 Post by rufwoof »

I've recently switched to fatten Thin-Slacko up again and have now remastered with zdrv incorporated into puppy sfs - using no compression, and then dropped that puppy sfs inside initrd, again with initrd uncompressed.

That weighs in at around 280MB, if compressed that drops to around 75MB.

Booting doesn't take that much longer when using the larger size and whilst it uses more memory space things run quicker because it doesn't have to do any decompressing. 280MB sounds a lot in older hardware terms, but in modern day terms that's relatively small, i.e. memory costs have declined and memory space increased at a relatively faster rate than have drivers/firmware (puppy file size).

I've just finished changing remasterpup2 so that now it remasters directly into a initrd file that's dropped into my frugal home folder (ready for the next reboot). With no compression that remastering takes less than a minute. Handy as I ram boot and use no savefile, so any changes I do want to make persistent involves remastering.

For other stuff, Office, Browsing etc I'm using Portable Apps (Rox Apps wrapped around sfs's) so that changes are persistent (stored on HDD along with data/docs etc.).

I've also tweaked init and other bootup code to strip (comment) out a lot that is irrelevant when using ram boot/no savefile (Pupmode 5). So now there's no searching of disks etc - puppy sfs (and drivers) are right alongside initrd and immediately to hand with no searching being required. Boots in less than 10 seconds (from when vmlinuz/initrd have been copied to ram to when the puppy desktop is first seen).

Keeping the core puppy lean and mean has resulted in the 'other' apps (HDD based) folder expanding quite a lot, that's now over 1GB when tidy, close to 2GB in its current untidy form. i.e. where firefox, libre, audacity, openshot etc. apps are stored (as rox-apps with sfs's). I've recently also taken the low/no compression choice with those files as well - my libre office for instance is now all totally uncompressed, which makes loading/running that much faster, but obviously eats more disk space.

Wishing one and all the best for the New Year.

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rufwoof
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Abiword 3

#95 Post by rufwoof »

Abiword 3.0 for Slacko 5.3.3t with UK (GB) dictionary 9MB SFS filesize

Doesn't populate the Puppy menu so you have to Menu, Utility, Gexec and type in abiword.

Created from a combination of gtk2 abiword sfs, abispell GB pet, libffi and jpeg 6b pets. jpeg image import however still doesn't work, but png etc seem fine
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Pelo

Post to Abiword via Facebook

#96 Post by Pelo »

Inform them whatever you need as improvements
3.0.0 seems going on garbling save docs ! (tarhpup Puppy)
Last edited by Pelo on Sat 17 Jan 2015, 02:15, edited 1 time in total.

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Billtoo
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THINSlacko

#97 Post by Billtoo »

I installed THINSlacko to a 16gb flash drive.

video-info-glx 1.5.3 Tue 13 Jan 2015 on Slacko Puppy 5.3.3t Linux 3.1.10-slacko_4gA i686
0.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation GF108 [GeForce GT 430] (rev a1)
oem: NVIDIA
product: GF108 Board - 1071v1p1 Chip Rev

X Server: Xorg Driver: nvidia
X.Org version: 1.9.5
dimensions: 1920x1080 pixels (602x343 millimeters)
depth of root window: 24 planes

Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU E8400 @ 3.00GHz
Core 0: @2003 1: @2003 MHz

I added some applications,also using radky's FbBox.
==============================================
EDIT: Discovered that I should have installed Mesa-GLX before
compiling the proprietary Nvidia driver.

video-info-glx 1.5.3 Tue 13 Jan 2015 on Slacko Puppy 5.3.3t Linux 3.1.10-slacko_4gA i686
0.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation GF108 [GeForce GT 430] (rev a1)
oem: NVIDIA
product: GF108 Board - 1071v1p1 Chip Rev

X Server: Xorg Driver: nvidia
X.Org version: 1.9.5
dimensions: 1920x1080 pixels (602x343 millimeters)
depth of root window: 24 planes

direct rendering: Yes
server glx vendor string: NVIDIA Corporation
server glx version string: 1.4
OpenGL vendor string: NVIDIA Corporation
OpenGL renderer string: GeForce GT 430/PCIe/SSE2
OpenGL version string: 4.4.0 NVIDIA 340.65

Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU E8400 @ 3.00GHz
Core 0: @2003 1: @2003 MHz
==============================================
EDIT: Added an older version of VLC
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musher0
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#98 Post by musher0 »

Very ugly. ;)
musher0
~~~~~~~~~~
"You want it darker? We kill the flame." (L. Cohen)

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Billtoo
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THINSlacko

#99 Post by Billtoo »

How about this?
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Volhout
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@rufwoof

#100 Post by Volhout »

hi rufwoof,

why don't you share your version with us? When 01micko make thinslacko, it was originally to prove it was still possible to get under 100Mb. In fact, I think he made 2 versions, one based on slackware 13.37, and a bigger one based on slackware 14.
I am not sure thinslacko ever went through a decent debugging and validation. You however, are using it for a year (or more) and you are making improvements. shrinking it, and i must have become quite stable (otherwise you would not be using it anymore).

More people may be interested.....

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rufwoof
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#101 Post by rufwoof »

hi rufwoof,

why don't you share your version with us?
Here you go - threre's a
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4MbXu ... sp=sharing - vmlinuz and https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4MbXu ... sp=sharing initrd.lzo pair of files where initrd.lzo holds puppy sfs inside. Of those two initrd.lzo is the big one - around 400MB

Those can be used with grub4dos, I suggest a entry something like

Code: Select all

title Puppy 533t-310
root (hd0,2)
kernel /vmlinuz pmedia=atahd pfix=ram ramdisk_size=500000 nouveau.modeset=0 nouveau.noaccel=1 radeon.modeset=0 i915.modeset=0
initrd /initrd.lzo
note that the kernel command line wraps around in the above extract, but it should all be on one line in grub4dos.

You'll need to adjust the root (hd0,2) according to whichever drive/partition you use to store the two files (they count from 0 being the first)

That's Slacko 533t, adjusted and re-remastered a lot. Updated from 3.01 to 3.10 kernel so supports later hardware

The normal puppy menu has been shifted to only be accessible via right mouse click on the desktop and the taskbar menu replaced with another menu. Includes Libre and latest Firefox and is relatively easy to swap out from a older to a later firefox as/when they become available. Firefox is also set to load up with zoom, no script, you tube downloader and is also set to view youtube videos as HTML5 videos instead of flash (which isn't installed). You do have to set the noscript to allow youtube for the video to display.

Also includes PXE server so any other PC's in your local LAN can boot puppy using net boot. you'll have to change /root/tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg directory contents to point vmlinuz and initrd.lzo to wherever those files are on your system i.e. symlink. Then start up the server (main menu PXE choice) and set other PC's to net boot - i.e. typically turn of secure booting in windows, reboot and hit <esc> during the initial startup and select net boot (or maybe F12 during boot up).

In the root directory there's a file called INITRD_LOCATION, that will likely need to be edited to point to where your initrd.lzo is stored. Remastering uses that as the pointer for which initrd.lzo to replace.

Remastering is slower on that version as the puppy contains Libre Office and Firefox which doubles the puppy size, so around a minute to remaster on my single core system. Main Menu (taskbar), Config, Remaster will kick that off.

It all runs in ram, only touching the HDD as that's where initrd.lzo and vmlinuz are loaded from, if they were stored on CD then you wouldn't have to touch HDD at all. Once booted you can unmount all drives.

Needs I guess at least 1GB of ram to work ok as puppy is stored uncompressed inside initrd and hence is stored uncompressed in ram once loaded.

There's no save files, nor is it intended to be run with a save file, just store data/docs outside of puppy space and if you want to make changes then reboot a clean/fresh version, make the changes and then remaster

You'll probably have to set the network up (click on the network tray icon) and sound (right click desktop to being up the puppy menu and select setup, setup puppy, wizards wizards .... etc).

Whilst the personal main menu includes "config" options, they're mostly just links to the files that need to be manually edited. Puppy is basically vmlinuz kernel, initrd initial ramdisk and puppy sfs main linux and desktop - where the desktop is fundamentally a xml text file(s) (ROX) and jwm provides a menu using text files to provide a graphical way to access programs. After any changes you need to run fixmenus and jwm -restart to install the changes - one of the config menu options is to run those commands.

Nothing polished, just something that works for me and likely has some things that I don't use that don't work (vga upgrade and PPM etc I suspect are 'faulty').

A great thing about ram booting is that you can try things out (leave all HDD's unmounted) and perhaps trash the system - and simply reboot to get back to a clean working version again. With a full install puppy if you go to a dodgy web site that manages to crack into your system that could install something that remains resident across reboots (persistent), with a ram booted puppy that virus only remains present for that one single session.

Use at your own risk, make backup's first ...etc after all this is a weird one, a Slackware 13 series based puppy (slacko 5.3.3) with a series 14 kernel dropped in (sourced from slacko 5.7), so I've no idea what may or may not work with that. Fun trying things out and if they work great, if they don't then you may need to reboot.

The one thing that attracted me originally to Slacko is was that it was one of the very few that booted straight to desktop on my hardware - after having tried numerous others beforehand that didn't. So I've stayed with slacko since. The repositories might not be good, but I hunt and try out other choices - from any version. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't, being able to experiment and simply reboot out failures has made me more fond of having a read only core puppy. I'd be uncomfortable returning to a full install where one bad case can trash the system to a level where a full reinstall is required. The other factor is speed. When you get used to things being quick you're less inclined to move to slower alternatives. My son often mentions how his old hand-me-down rappy system is so much quicker than his winblows system.
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rufwoof
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PXE

#102 Post by rufwoof »

The PXE server files/configuration in /root/tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg currently has pointers (sym links) to where initrd.lzo and vmlinuz are expected to be stored. That initrd.lzo could equally have been a initrd.gz file - what is expected however is that puppy sfs is contained within that initrd file

To put puppy sfs into initrd.lzo you create a directory below where initrd.gz and puppy sfs are stored, cd to that directory and run the commands

zcat ../initrd.gz | cpio -id # which extracts the initrd.gz contents
cp ../pup*.sfs .# copy in puppy sfs
find | cpio -o -H newc | lzip -c1 >/somedir/initrd.lzo

where that last line forms the new larger initrd file with puppy sfs contained in that file.

Or if you prefer gzip (.gz) the first two lines are the same but the last line is

find | cpio -o -H newc | gzip -4 >/somedir/initrd.gz

Using lzo for larger initrd is nicer in my opinion as there's a clearer distinction between a small initrd.gz (that doesn't contain puppy sfs) and the larger initrd.lzo that does contain puppy sfs. If you use gzip for both then you end up with small initrd.gz and large initrd.gz where only the filesize is a indicator of whether the file contains puppy sfs or not.

In /root/tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg you can create other files so as to serve up different boot choices to different PC's (MAC addresses)

For example for a Ethernet with address "88:99:AA:BB:CC:DD" it would search for the filename "01-88-99-aa-bb-cc-dd"

i.e. /root/tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg/01-88-99-aa-bb-cc-dd
might contain something like

label kevins
kernel kevins_vmlinuz
append initrd=kevins_initrd.lzo

What I haven't tried and that looks interesting is that it would appear possible to even specify remote choices i.e. I've seen references to using something like

LABEL linux-http
LINUX http://boot-server/boot/mykernel
APPEND initrd=http://boot-server/boot/myinitrd

Which implies that if you had some old computer running on your LAN (perhaps even something like a always on (low power) Raspberry pi) that ran a PXE server, and somewhere in the wider internet there was a vmlinuz and initrd that you trusted and wanted to boot, then any PC in your LAN could net boot to that. i.e. Windows PC with secure boot turned off, when first booted press F12 (netboot) [or repeatedly press <esc> until the menu comes up and then select the net boot option], which then accesses the Raspberry pi (or old PC's) PXE server configuration, which then loads up the vmlinuz and initrd.gz (or whatever) from http://www.somewhere.com/vmlinuz and http://www.somewhere.com/initrd.gz, which could be the latest puppy as provided by Micko or Barry or ... whoever.

If the puppy boots and runs entirely in ram/memory, and you used the cloud for document storage (google drive or whatever), then the Windows HDD's might never even need to be opened (mounted).

This may all be old hat stuff for some, but its interesting to a newbie like me.

Pelo

Thin Slacko, the Puppy spirit

#103 Post by Pelo »

all that is in english, i shall read (... and translate it !) when not hurried. I like thin Slacko as it is, around 100MB. I understand that you are improving it. is that possible ?..
Thanks again to have done such a light Puppy.
Trains in ontario countryside as background, why not ? Les canadiens n'ont pas toujours de magnifiques forêts ou des chemins enneigés.
La question n'est pas pourquoi Slacko est si léger, la question est pourquoi les autres font plus !
ThinSlacko should be the standard, and other puppies ask them why they are so fat...
one would like to get abiword bigger ! no !

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Billtoo
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THINSlacko

#104 Post by Billtoo »

I did a manual frugal install of the newer ThinSlacko to a 16gb flash
drive.

video-info-glx 1.5.3 Sun 25 Jan 2015 on ThinSlacko Puppy 5.5.04 Linux 3.9.1-0 i686
0.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation Device 1082 (rev a1)

X Server: Xorg Driver: nvidia
X.Org version: 1.12.4
dimensions: 3840x1080 pixels (1204x343 millimeters)
depth of root window: 24 planes

direct rendering: Yes
server glx vendor string: NVIDIA Corporation
server glx version string: 1.4
OpenGL vendor string: NVIDIA Corporation
OpenGL renderer string: GeForce GTX 560 Ti/PCIe/SSE2
OpenGL version string: 4.4.0 NVIDIA 340.65

# glxgears
Running synchronized to the vertical refresh. The framerate should be
approximately the same as the monitor refresh rate.
303 frames in 5.0 seconds = 60.455 FPS
301 frames in 5.0 seconds = 60.001 FPS
301 frames in 5.0 seconds = 60.000 FPS
#
It's working well.
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Fossil
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#105 Post by Fossil »

As an aside. Regarding the train in the countryside. The picture is a bit too small to see clearly, but the coach livery (colouring) looks very much like the old LMS - London-Midland-Scottish.

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rufwoof
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#106 Post by rufwoof »

For grub4dos Frugalers here's a Pup that takes around 20 seconds to remaster

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id= ... sp=sharing

puppy sfs is contained within initrd so you just need the two files vmlinuz and initrd

Quite a biggie initrd at around 264MB - as its uncompressed (compressed it drops down to around a 77MB pup).

To boot : my grub4dos menu.lst contains a entry of

title fast_remaster_pup
kernel (hd0,2)/pups/frm/vmlinuz pfix=ram,nocopy
initrd (hd0,2)/pups/frm/initrd

Rather than using savefiles, if you boot, make desired changes and then click the 'remaster' icon on the desktop that will create new copies of vmlinuz and initrd in the home directory (/root). You can change the content of INITRD_LOCATION file in /root to point to another directory where the new vmlinuz and initrd are created - such as where grub4dos looks to boot.

No ISO's or CD required for the remastering, its all integral.

Personally I don't use savefiles, I just reboot, make desired changes and remaster. I keep all data/docs outside of puppy space (on HDD) and use portable versions of Libre Office and Firefox (I also use online email), so after a few remasters and getting the core puppy how you like it there's little need for savefiles.

Best not to remaster after any sfs's have been loaded, and instead always reboot, make desired configuration changes and then remaster before loading any sfs's/pet's. That way they're kept outside of the core puppy and can be changed/replaced with later versions etc as and when desired.

Set up for a UK users (keyboard, country etc.), but just a matter of boot, run setup to configure you net connection, country, keyboard etc.... and then remaster, and copy (replace) the initrd and vmlinuz files where grub4dos looks with the new versions in /root

PS there's a firefox script in /root - that grabs a copy of the latest firefox direct from mozilla

unicorn316386

#107 Post by unicorn316386 »

@rufwoof: Interesting idea. I played with your files and it remasters really fast. Would be neat to see a version of this based off Slacko 6.

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#108 Post by greengeek »

Sexy. I'm gonna try this.

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rufwoof
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#109 Post by rufwoof »

Quite a simple concept. Keep the core puppy small with the intent to add in additional functions/apps via SFS loading. With Abi, gnumeric ...etc stripped out the core puppy is quite light, weighs in at around 77MB in size at higher levels of compression, 265MB without compression. In more modern PC's 256MB is pretty small nowadays and not using compression makes the remaster process more or less just a simple copy process (fast).

I changed the original remaster script to instead pick up on copies of initrd.gz (the small version) and vmlinuz that are contained within the puppy itself, so no need for a CD to remaster.

I've stored that all under /usr/sbin/REMASTER where there's a ISO-FILES folder that contains the small initrd.gz, vmlinuz etc (that are normally on CD), a remasterpup3 which is the reworked remaster script, and remaster excutable script that does the pre/post processing around calling remasterpup3 i.e. after remasterpup3 finishes the remaster script extracts the initrd, copies in puppy sfs, reforms the (larger) initrd ...etc.

In my own version I have a script that unloads/loads the sfs's I use before/after remastering. My remaster script calls the unload of those before running the remastering process, and reloads them again afterwards. I have a script that loads multiple sfs's in the blink of a eye such that the lag from unloading/reloading sfs's is almost unnoticeable.

load looks like

Code: Select all

#!/bin/bash

for i in audacity-1M.sfs LibreOffice-4.2.3_en-US_xz-high-comp.sfs skype43-1M.sfs blender259-1M.sfs inkscape-1M.sfs openshot1.4-1M.sfs xvidcap1M.sfs; do
  f=`losetup -f`
  if [ ! -d /initrd/pup_$i ]; then
    mkdir -p /initrd/pup_$i
    losetup $f /initrd/pup_ro2/OFFICE/$i
    mount -r -t squashfs -o noatime $f /initrd/pup_$i
    busybox mount -t aufs -o remount,append:/initrd/pup_$i=ro unionfs /
  fi
done
nice fixmenus
# fire up libre tray icon (doesn't matter if restart as libre handles multi-calls ok
/opt/libreoffice4.2/program/soffice --quickstart &
nice jwm -reload
unload looks like

Code: Select all

#!/bin/bash
# Kill libre tray icon
kill `ps | grep quickstart | grep -v grep | awk '{print $1}'`
for i in audacity-1M.sfs LibreOffice-4.2.3_en-US_xz-high-comp.sfs skype43-1M.sfs blender259-1M.sfs inkscape-1M.sfs openshot1.4-1M.sfs xvidcap1M.sfs; do
  LOOPDEV=`losetup | grep -w $i | cut -d: -f 1`
  if [ "$LOOPDEV" != "" ]; then
     busybox mount -t aufs -o remount,del:/initrd/pup_$i unionfs /
     busybox umount $LOOPDEV
     #  losetup -d $LOOPDEV
     rmdir /initrd/pup_$i
  fi
done
nice fixmenus
nice jwm -reload
I actually drop the sfs's I use the most also into the initrd file as I PXE (netboot) some PC's on the LAN and having libre ..etc sfs's included makes things easier/neater, but does bloat the size of initrd up to around 450MB.

Assuming reasonably fast internet access speeds (broadband) then another choice would be like how firefox is loaded - a wget script to pull down sfs's from the cloud (internet server where the sfs's were stored). i.e. small core puppy, everything else loaded via sfs's retrieved remotely.

I absolutely love having a fixed puppy that boots to the exact same image each and every time as once other apps that work well together and with puppy have been identified and tied in then there's no risk of corruption/unwanted configuration changes etc when you use a fixed version of puppy. And if I do want to make a change then a reboot, make change, remaster locks in those changes. Everything else I keep outside of puppy space (on HDD/USB). No need for a savefile, only need to make sure backups of other stuff are periodically made.

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rufwoof
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#110 Post by rufwoof »

Mozilla in their wisdom have two versions listed in their most recent 'latest version' folder and the Firefox (get firefox) script in the home directory was stalling due to having two filenames when expecting just one. I've added a sed '1!d' filter to the latest version detection script code so that it continues to run to completion as expected. That's a quick fix that picks up the preceding to latest version (41.0.1 instead of 41.0.2 currently) but I guess that will automatically be corrected when Mozilla again drop back to having just a single version listed in their latest version folder.

I've re-uploaded a remastered initrd (I've also added noscript and zoom addons to the home directory so that they're automatically installed whenever firefox is downloaded).

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