Hi Repip,
Thanks for reporting the results of those commands.
Yes, although copying and pasting with Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V works with many applications in Puppy, copying and pasting to and from the urxvt window requires another method. To copy, just highlight the text with your mouse and left button, like usual, but don't press Ctrl-C. To paste, left-click on the window that you want to paste to, then click the middle mouse button -- nowadays that button is usually a scroll wheel (in this case, press it, don't spin it). If you have no such button or scroll wheel, you can click both left and right buttons simultaneously, but that usually requires a bit of practice to get it right -- at first it can be a little frustrating. Alternatively, pasting into the urxvt window can be done with Shift-Insert, but that doesn't work going the other way (pasting text from the urxvt window into another application).
Anyway, your hand copying worked fine. The results indicate that installing VLC Player didn't affect /lib/i386-linux-gnu, but did change /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu from a symbolic link (or "symlink") to a directory. (The 'l' at the start of the output for /lib/i386-linux-gnu indicates that it is still a link; the 'd' at the start of the output for /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu indicates that it is now a directory.) (If you are unsure of what a symlink is, feel free to ask.)
You are not the only one who has run into this problem. By providing that output, you have helped bring us closer to tracking down the root cause of the problem.
As you say, it seems strange that this works fine with your SD card. But Puppy does things differently internally depending upon what mode it is running in, so a bug that shows up in one mode may not appear in another.
It will help if we know what mode your Puppy is running in, and how the DISTRO_ARCHDIR variable is defined. Please report the results of these two commands:
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grep ARCHDIR /etc/DISTRO_SPECS
grep PUPMODE /etc/rc.d/PUPSTATE
Of course I know that you also want to get your icons and their captions back, and not just report results of various commands. These commands may do that:
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mkdir /root/temporary_vlc_libs
cp -a -f /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/* /root/temporary_vlc_libs/
sync
rm -r -f /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu
ln -s ./ /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu
These commands will save some of the files that were installed with VLC Player in a temporary directory, then remove the directory that was created, and recreate the correct symlink.
After running these commands, save anything you are working on and restart the X Server by going to the menu and choosing
Restart X Server from the
Shutdown submenu. I think that may restore your icons and their text. If not, try rebooting the PC.
Please, let us know if that works.
If it does work, you may then be able to get VLC Player to work after executing the following command. Since VLC Player worked for you when installed on your SD card, I don't anticipate any real danger here, but if you have saved anything that you don't want to loose, it might be a good idea to back it up before running this command, just in case.
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cp -a -f --remove-destination /root/temporary_vlc_libs/* /usr/lib/
This copies the library files that you previously saved in the temporary directory, and puts them where the applications can find them.
Repip wrote:Is it possible to get the system / applications that I want onto the SD Card and then merely "copy" all that onto the Hard Drive ie without doing a "install" onto the hard drive? or doesn't it work that way ?
Well, in theory, yes. But knowing what to copy is the hard part. When a package is installed, a list of its files is saved in /root/.packages. But if the packages caused dependency packages to be installed, and if the dependency packages cause more dependency packages to be installed, and . . . Well, you might have to chase down a lot of files. And then with some packages there are install scripts that you would need to examine. So, yes, it can be done. But with any luck we can solve this problem and you won't have to resort to doing that.
Repip wrote:Thankyou for the help, I am really keen to learn a little about Puppy and migrate from Windows, Puppy appears so far to be so much faster and simpler.
You're welcome. It seems that you have already learned quite a bit.
Good luck.