Slacko 5.4 - FINAL 2 Dec 2012

[01micko]

and don't want to destroy windows.

Then you need to be very careful about letting Grub4Dos mess with your bootloader mechanism.

On many Win7 machines, the first partition is for emergency recovery. You shouldn't be touching it.

but the boot files are on sda2

Whose boot files? Windows or Puppy?

This should be reported as a bug in the grub4dos thread. As a work-around, you could install it to a usb stick.

[mfilmore]

I installed on a Toshiba Satellite laptop L355-S7915 and most everything works well.

I was able to install slackware 14 packages and got OpenDNS (via dnscrypt-proxy) working fine.

I use sylpheed email and was able to migrate seamlessly after adding the sylpheed 3.0.3 package.

The one PROBLEM I noticed was that the Opera browser does not play video.pbs.org videos, but SeaMonkey plays them fine. Opera seems happy with YoyTube. I am not a big Opera fan, so no real problem for me. I would appreciate Iron, however.

FYI, I had updated the flash player to 11.2 r202 .

Thanks a bunch!!
-Mike

[01micko]

mfilmore,

Hello and welcome.

I'm playing some of those pbs videos now but using flashplayer10-10.3.183.23. Could be a hardware issue with Opera. It's on the chopping block anyway, I'm thinking firefox/sylpheed (16.0 and 3.2). I'm a bit sick of seamonkey, see earlier rants.

--

By the way, Slackware have just released the first "patch" to 14.0 (FF-16.0) so I will have to enable the "patches" repo too, actually want to build from that one so will require some experimentation.

[mhanifpriatama]

Just report :
Using Inkscape from ppm slacko 5.3.3, need libpopler.so.1.13 (I think). So, copy from puppy_slacko_5.3.3.sfs, can run.
Still problem with crapy vt6656 via wireless usb, and no problem with my new usb wireless TL-WN721N.
Using libre from ppm, no problem.
Using virtual box, problem. Because different kernel, so must use resource.

[BHINTZ]

I do have a working usb slacko. The only issue apart from not being able to install on the hard drive is that I am unable to reduce the brightness of the screen on an aspire one 756 64 bit machine.

The files on sda2 are windows files. I attempted to install lubuntu, but it also wanted to put the boot files on sda1 and could not access them. It offered to put them on sda2 or sdb1 as that was the location of the installation disc as this machine does not have a cd rom. I choose to abort as I didn't want to take a chance on making the hard drive unbootable.

Lubuntu is also unable to reduce the brightness on this machine. I have searched for the standard menu list that grub4dos creates as I know it exists because I see the screen it creates so that I can boot windows. It is no doubt on sda1, which I can no longer open.

bob

[01micko]

Hello BHINTZ

I would tread carefully here.

The first thing I would do at this point is backup your Windows installation. Create a full image that can recover the OS and your files and probably do a separate backup of your data only.

Second, I would attempt to make the install media from the hidden partition if you haven't already done so. There should be software included in your windows installation to do this. This usually creates a couple of DVDs so I don't know how it would work without a dvd burner, maybe it can make a usb recovery drive? If not, complain to the manufacturer!

If you still want to install linux on your hard drive you can use EasyBCD. I know WhoDo (Puppy 4.2 series developer) swore by this method. It involves altering the Windows bootloader configuration and chainloads grub, grub4dos or lilo.

Linux

EasyBCD can boot into Linux by one of two means:
Chainloading GRUB/GRUB2/LILO/etc.
NeoGrub

The traditional chainloading method creates an image of the GRUB/LILO bootsector on the local disk and loads this image during boot-time in order to chainload the second bootloader which should already be configured to boot into Linux or BSD.[12] EasyBCD has profiles for and officially supports the chainloading of GRUB (Legacy), GRUB2, LILO, eLILO, and Wubi (for Ubuntu).

EasyBCD also ships with NeoGrub, a customized build of Grub for Dos, which can be configured by editing C:\NST\menu.lst with the standard Legacy GRUB syntax for directly booting into the needed Linux or BSD partitions, or chainloading another bootloader to load the OS in question.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EasyBCD

That's the best I can offer for the moment.

[01micko]

Another repo patch, this time adding the "patches' repo from slackware.

You have to update PPM, then configure PPM to show it, avoid updating the Slacko repo.

It looks bare (as in nothing shows) but this is another shortcoming of PPM. The only thing in there at this stage is mozilla-firefox-16.0, which you can find by typing "firefox" into the searchbox of PPM, then scrolling to the bottom of the results list. The list shows it's "already installed" if you have firefox-15.01 installed. . It installs fine and runs fine.

Looks like I am going to have to make a lot of patches for PPM. The "already-installed" bug is PPM's inability to handle versions. It thinks gtk+1, gtk+2 and gtk+3 are all installed when in fact only gtk+2 is installed. All 3 can co-exist happily.

Hmmm.. justed noticed that firefox-15.01 directory still resides in /usr/lib .. . I think I better get out my hammer...

[01micko]

ETP

I think this is the fontwizard you have been talking about.. tweaked to show saved settings.

[Bill_Gates]

I upgraded from Slacko 5.3.3 to the PAE version, k3.5.5 because 5.3.3 did not support the touchpad in my Dell e6420 and PAE k3.5.5 does. However now I can not connect to WPA2 encrypted networks. Connecting to Open, WEP and WPA/TKIP networks is no problem but not WPA2.

I tried using both Puppy Network Wizard and Frisbee running from either a Live CD or a USB install.

So back to 5.3.3 until I (with the help of the community) get this worked out!

[BHINTZ]

Just a quick update

I installed grub4dos on the usb slacko and now I can boot from the hard drive win 7 and several puppies on a different partitions.

Now the only problem is how to reduce the backlight which seems to be always at maximum. The ability to reduce screen brightness is the main advantage of the windows OS as in the evening it is almost painful to look at anything on the screen.

Thanks for responses,

bob

[ETP]

01micko

Thanks for the revised pet. It was simes who raised the issue in the 5.3.3 bugs thread but I habitually use it and have mentioned it in a recent "How To" ([How To] Tweaking Puppy for Poor Eyesight.)

I have sent simes a pm to draw his attention to your 0.0.1pet
Thanks once again.

[simes]

Thank you to ETP for his PM. I have installed the new fontwizard-0.0.1 version on my Slacko 5.3.3 system(s) and confirm that it does save the settings now, which gives the user more confidence that it's working.

I think fontwizard is excellent and I install it on all my Puppy systems (all use LCDs). It makes old screens like that on my treasured ThinkPad T42 seem plenty sharp and clear enough, whereas without fontwizard, the screen quality seems poor.

[01micko]

well @<2k I think fontwizard can go into the build..

ETP, funnily enough I have the older tempicon on the laptop I'm posting from and after a reboot the font went small! (after tweaking with fontwizard)

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

Bill_Gates

It is strange that WPA2 ebcryption is not working for you. I use it and am using the k3.5.5 version right now. However, this version is getting trashed (runs too hot) as I have compiled k3.4.13 (LTS) which still should work with your touchpad and hopefully solve your WPA2 issue.

[gcmartin]

I upgraded from Slacko 5.3.3 to the PAE version, k3.5.5 because 5.3.3 did not support the touchpad in my Dell e6420 and PAE k3.5.5 does. However now I can not connect to WPA2 encrypted networks. Connecting to Open, WEP and WPA/TKIP networks is no problem but not WPA2.

I tried using both Puppy Network Wizard and Frisbee running from either a Live CD or a USB install.

So back to 5.3.3 until I (with the help of the community) get this worked out!

I had a somewhat similar connection problem. I was able to get around ti by using "Network Wizard" (not Frisbee; not SNS) from the LAN button of Menu>Setup>Internet Connection Wizard.

This "may" get you on the air.

Here to help
Edited
P.S. I was able to use Frisbee after I did a save-session, reboot.

[01micko]

MHHP

gapan has solved the depfinder issue on the Salix forum, so in future versions we can test out installing audacious and be confident that at least the database has the correct dependencies listed.

So that's one upstream bug solved out of.. how many?

[MinHundHettePerro]

MHHP

gapan has solved the depfinder issue on the Salix forum, so in future versions we can test out installing audacious and be confident that at least the database has the correct dependencies listed.

Thanks for running that one down (and up(stream)) - will re-download the Slackware-14.0 PACKAGES.TXT from Salix ...........

So that's one upstream bug solved out of.. how many?

Cheers / MHHP

[Q5sys]

Hi Jejy69,

Somewhat of a cryptic post about cinnamon 1.6. Was it supposed to be to the LXPup thread? Looks like a rather interesting alternative desktop. Is there a pet? or can it be downloaded and installed using one of the sources listed here: http://cinnamon.linuxmint.com/?page_id=61? Which? Or will that depend on which Puppy?

mikesLr

Cinnamon is a fork of gnome. Im sure it can be installed using the slackware repos when thats worked out and is working smoothly.

[ETP]

01micko wrote:

well @<2k I think fontwizard can go into the build..

ETP, funnily enough I have the older tempicon on the laptop I'm posting from and after a reboot the font went small! (after tweaking with fontwizard)

Some brief research tells me that SVG does not support hinting. This explains my previous observations. Having said that, the current blue SVG temperature images are fine with or without fontwizard. It would make a worthy addition to the build as it benefits not only those with poor vision but anyone with a small low resolution LCD screen.

[ICPUG]

1) Grub will not detect an unformatted drive

GRUB gets its information from the BIOS. You would think that the BIOS would be aware of a drive even if it was unformatted.

But I once had a situation where GRUB ignored a drive simply because no partition on it had a boot flag set - even though GRUB doesn't use the boot flag! I concluded that the BIOS was skipping the drive because it didn't appear to be bootable.

Maybe the same thing is happening with your sda. Try putting a little dummy partition on it and flagging it bootable. Does (hd1,0) now work as expected?

Then take the boot flag off.

I am not going to try this any time soon. I am very worried now that if I create partitions/format that disk Windows will start to recognise it, get upset and not boot (or worse still says it is a pirate copy because the hardware configuration is different). I know I am being very pessimistic but I don't want to lose anything. I would like to swap the connections on the disks so that they are connected properly but lethargy and confidence prevents me at the moment!

[ICPUG]

ICPUG,

This may be a red herring, but looking at your last post did you actually use:

PMEDIA= or pmedia=

Similarly did you use:

PDEV1= or pdev1=

If the former in both cases, puppy may have simply ignored those boot codes, relied on its own search algorithms and come to the right or wrong conclusion itself. If puppy does not recognise a boot code it simply ignores it and AFAIK the case matters.

Apologies if I am barking up the wrong tree and you were just emphasizing those codes.

Just to clarify ETP, I did use those codes like that but they are not the problem.

Case matters in Linux/Puppy BUT these boot codes are acted upon in a script, called init, that Barry wrote. It is how Barry's init interprets the codes that is important. I think it was around series 2 Puppy that these codes had to be in upper case but with the advent of Puppy 3 Barry added some code to convert the codes if they were in the wrong case. They can now be input in either lower case or upper case. I'm just a stick in the mud who persists with what what I have always used from day 1! If it aint broke - don't fix it!