(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

Posted: **Tue 29 Jan 2013, 17:09**

hey npierce

not bothersome just reported as noticed flopping around for clues on the hanging, thanks though

Posted: **Tue 29 Jan 2013, 19:59**

Mick, there's a big chance that I won't be tormenting you anymore.

After 1024 conjectures, finally I tried:

mount -o remount,sync /dev/loop1

...and:
(VirtualBox) Precise-3.7.2, pmedia=atahd, slackosave.2fs on NTFS partition - [ OK! ]
(VirtualBox) Slacko-5.4-PAE, pmedia=ataflash, slackosave.2fs on NTFS partition - [ OK! ]
(Real envir.) Slacko-5.4-PAE, pmedia=ataflash, slackosave.2fs on NTFS partition - [ OK! ]
(of course I have removed 'echo 1 > ...dirty' from rc.sysinit)

I doubt if this is the real solution (saving is not so fluent as in 5.3.3), most likely just another workaround, but it's the most promising one so far!
Anyway, I'll let you know if anything change for the worse.

Also, I don't really know how much my issue is related to your's (8-bit, Ally & others), but you could try and see if this helps (at your own risk, of course

).

Greetings!

Posted: **Wed 30 Jan 2013, 04:41**

Hello SFR

Interesting.. you may want to add "noatime" argument. What this does is prevent the kernel writing timestamps back to "disk" each time a file changes. It may improve your performance. https://lesswatts.org/tips/disks.php. Barry has that reference in /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit

Do you have a reference? Are you running the command from /etc/rc.d/rc.local? (I guess).

Posted: **Wed 30 Jan 2013, 05:12**

It seems that I had a bad slackosave file.
The partition I did the frugal install to was formatted 2FS and I had made the save file 3FS.
I booted to another version of Puppy and ran e2fsck -y on the save file and it came up with some errors that were corrected.
I do not know if that was part of the cause.
But also, I had removed Firefox and had installed Seamonkey and let it do the latest update of itself.
Also, I had installed a Nvidia Pet file that corresponded with the kernel version as well as xfce4 and comp-fusion.
So trying to get your TRY_ME ISO to the same point, I ran into a problem finding a NVIDIA pet file for it, and it just was too many changes that I had made that stopped me from further testing.
As the TRY_ME ISO stood, there were no lockups.

So as a result, I can not be of much help in tracking down or reporting on the experienced pause.

Posted: **Wed 30 Jan 2013, 07:35**

Using Slacko 5.4 PAE Opera

It seems that if an sfs file is removed, the system rebooted and a save file made, the zip, trash and save icon positions are not saved. Sincew that seems to be the behavior of many Puppies, I don;t think it's Slacko related, but I'm wondering, short of removing the icons form the desk top, what I can do to have the icon positions not changed.

This is the only shortcoming I've found in Slacko....and like beautiful women, the icon problem is not enough to kick slacko out of bed for eating crackers.

Thom

Posted: **Wed 30 Jan 2013, 10:42**

Thom,

I have a work around tool for this shortcoming.

See Menu >> Desktop >> Settings >> Desksetup Templates for Desk Icons.

Make sure you save the "Custom" setting and when you get that problem choose your custom setup from that tool and X will restart with your icons in tact. A bit clunky I know, but it works!

Posted: **Wed 30 Jan 2013, 11:00**

For the upcoming release it would be nicer to have ffmpeg 1.1 or later, many bug fixes, additional codecs & filters
-> VLC
Note that Audacity might still require the obsolete ffmeg 0.6 series...

* can't install Chrome 23 or later with PPM

* With my laptop, I sometimes use an external screen.
How with Slacko 5.4 do I shut off the laptop screen, so to have only the external one?

Posted: **Wed 30 Jan 2013, 11:45**

feelsub wrote:For the upcoming release it would be nicer to have ffmpeg 1.1 or later, many bug fixes, additional codecs & filters
-> VLC
Note that Audacity might still require the obsolete ffmeg 0.6 series...

Would be nice but isn't going to happen. I haven't the time to recompile all the various other packages which depend on ffmpeg, including openshot.. that took me an age.

feelsub wrote:* can't install Chrome 23 or later with PPM

What is the issue there? I installed it from PPM, posting from chrome-23 now.

feelsub wrote:* With my laptop, I sometimes use an external screen.
How with Slacko 5.4 do I shut off the laptop screen, so to have only the external one?

I don't know.. anyone field this one?

Posted: **Wed 30 Jan 2013, 12:05**

Hey Mick

Day 2, no hangs at all, even when I was saving the session while copying four large 5GB files simultaneously!

Interesting.. you may want to add "noatime" argument.[...]It may improve your performance

The performance differences between 5.3.3 and my workaround in 5.4 are not so significant really - probably I became a bit oversensitive after hours of analyzing HDD led's behaviour.

Anyway, 'noatime' was/is there already:

/dev/loop1 on /initrd/pup_ro1 type ext2 (rw,sync,noatime,errors=continue,user_xattr,acl)

Do you have a reference? Are you running the command from /etc/rc.d/rc.local? (I guess).

I was reading http://linux.die.net/man/8/mount, toying with "artificially" created 512M savefile (placed on NTFS partition):

Code: Select all

dd if=/dev/zero of=tempimage.2fs bs=1M count=512
mkfs.ext2 tempimage.2fs

remounting it with various options + 'cat /dev/zero > (its mountpoint)/bigfile'
and suddenly 'sync' made that deadlock problem just vanished, instantly.

In real envir. initially I was running it from terminal right after booting into desktop, but now I've added it at the end of rc.sysinit...but I guess it's not the best place for it..?

The issue was quite a PITA, but (paraphrasing Tlchost's) "...and like beautiful women, the deadlock problem was not enough to kick Slacko out of bed for eating crackers".

feelsub wrote:* With my laptop, I sometimes use an external screen.
How with Slacko 5.4 do I shut off the laptop screen, so to have only the external one?
I don't know.. anyone field this one?

Maybe Zarfy could help..?

Greetings!

Posted: **Wed 30 Jan 2013, 12:39**

SFR

This is magnificent work you are doing and my thanks goes out to you.. you get a virtual pat on the back!

I still want to investigate this further though, it is obviously something at the kernel level, be it the kernel it's self or the AUFS patches, I get them from GIT every time I compile a kernel.

I have just compiled 3.0.60 LTS with AUFS from GIT dated January 14. The 3.1.10 kernel in experimental slacko-5.4.00 was compiled in March 2012. A lot has happened with AUFS in that time. It may be a "feature", I can't find any reference on the mailing lists or logs though.

So.. in the next day I will release another testing build with 3.0.60-4g. This will endeavour to prove if it's vanilla kernel or AUFS as the source of this bug. This way, we have inductive proof to present to Barry for a fix in woof. I know he is on the build path with the next Precise, and I wish he'd have a look at this first. I will post on his blog tomorrow, I'm a bit tired now, plus I want to see what happens with 3.0.60.

Cheers and thanks again!

Posted: **Wed 30 Jan 2013, 18:47**

[quote="01micko"]Thom,

I have a work around tool for this shortcoming.
</quote>
Does not seem to work here

Thom

Posted: **Wed 30 Jan 2013, 21:44**

01micko wrote:Thom,

I have a work around tool for this shortcoming.

See Menu >> Desktop >> Settings >> Desksetup Templates for Desk Icons.

Doesn't seem to work here...exactly what file does it write to and what is the name of the script it installs??

Thom

Posted: **Wed 30 Jan 2013, 22:44**

tlchost wrote: Doesn't seem to work here...exactly what file does it write to and what is the name of the script it installs??

Thom

Hmmm.. just tested working here. Did you click the "Custom" button to save your current layout? Files are in /usr/local/desksetup. Saves config in /root/.desksetup. It alters the rox-pinboard at /root/Choices/ROX-Filer.

Posted: **Wed 30 Jan 2013, 23:07**

01micko wrote:
Hmmm.. just tested working here. Did you click the "Custom" button to save your current layout? Files are in /usr/local/desksetup. Saves config in /root/.desksetup. It alters the rox-pinboard at /root/Choices/ROX-Filer.

I noticed I was never asked for a name for the custom file...so, my steedl trap logic tells me if it did not ask for a name, none was created.

So, help me with the ultimate Kludge....how would I do it manually? sve pinboard to some_other_name and after rebooting then copy some_other_name to pinboard and restart x ?

Thanks

ps, in the unspeakable IRC channel now

Posted: **Thu 31 Jan 2013, 02:54**

File is ~/.desktopsetup/custompin, this setup works very well! Icons are my modified Stardust theme, GTK theme is also Stardust, and in the JWMConfiguration Manager is the JWM theme set to Black-vg, and the choice Change Window Decorations is set to 'larger' (window buttons).
This is the best puppy I have had so far, so I had to update my signature! I have done the modifications mentioned in this thread, but limited myself to a 590 version of JWM, and installed firefox-18.0.1, the original had some strange behaviour. I run live CD/DVD only. I usually save files to a USB HD, and it annoys me that turning off the machine with the Power button afterwards - as I have done before, now activates the whole Power-off/savesession procedure.

tallboy

Posted: **Thu 31 Jan 2013, 11:14**

I'm right now building a test image with k3.0.60. This is mainly to test the BUG we have been fussing over

. (Not that it's a laughing matter, but we don't get too bogged down here

)

Now, this will sort out if it's an AUFS issue or kernel.

It should be up in an hour or two so stay tuned. It DOES contain some, but not all bugfixes so far, a changelog will be supplied.

Cheers!

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

Slacko-5.4.0.1 (pre beta 5.4.1 or 5.5) is released as a test bed for the BUG!

Get it here <---http://www.smokey01.com/01micko/slacko/slacko-5.4.0.1/ (155 MB, no devx, use older 5.4 version, no kernel source, I don't want drivers, if you need them PM me)

This is a 4g Opera version (no PAE).

It has kernel 3.0.60 and many bugfixes but does contain new bugs (broadcom wireles firmware is one)

Changelog

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FINAL 20121202 SLACKO-540

bugfix xchat menu entry from Network to Internet
bugfix guvcview
bugfix Spanish locale jwm

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
BETA 20130131 FOR SLACKO-541
SLACKO-5.4.0.1

update jwm-679 (numerous changes and bugfixes see http://joewing.net/projects/jwm/snapshots/ChangeLog)
-note JWM looks a bit different now, this is by design from Joe Wing (still work to be done)
update gtkdialog-0.8.4 (actually 0.8.3-stable) -Thunor
update pmusic_PLUGIN_trayapp-0.3 -zigbert, 01micko
update pmusic-3.1.2 -zigbert
update pburn-2.9.13 ""
update pschedule-1.1.2 ""
update pfind-5.11 ""
update ghostscript-9.0.5 -rcrsn51
update opera-12.13 (security fixes)
update seamonkey_solibs-2.15.1 (security fixes)
experimental roll back of kernel to 3.0.60 -- NOTE: woof did not download correct
broadcom wireless firmwares (This is not fixed as the kernel roll-back is a
temporary situation)

bugfix and enhancements jwmconfig2 -add i18n, rodin.s,
-fix panel-buttons gui and keyboard help file, npierce
bugfix rox-filer -npierce
bugfix perms on /tmp were 777 not 1777, SFR, master_wrong
bugfix /sbin/probepart -audio CD not showing on desktop, -
Brown Mouse, tlchost, JustGreg -fix by rcrsn51 and 01micko (woof fix now)
bugfix inkscape deps (PPM) -zigbert
bugfix PPM -- remove invalid repos (semme, bcs, 01micko) (Waiting for upstream confirmation of fix)

BUGS PENDING (in order of importance) (THESE ARE NOT FIXED!)
"blank page bug" --symptom, slow saving, copying of files, -
-can cause severe system slowdowns, even lockups
-(SFR, ally, 8-bit, peebee, consistent and others), STATUS -- slow progress
"lack-lustre perl bug" --symptom, pplog fails,
--cause, lack of perl modules in main sfs (SFR, 666philb), STATUS -- on to it
"marcel marceau bug" --symptom, failure in a vanilla install to update mime database,
--cause /usr/bin/update-mime-database is in devx (MHHP), STATUS -- on to it
"intel pseudo video driver bug" --symptom, poulsbo (aka gma-500) "intel" graphics don't work -
-(JustGreg, tempestuous), STATUS -- getting there. THIS is ONLY for newer than k3.3.XX
bugfix rox trash -SFR -- STATUS -- to do
bugfix /usr/local/apps/ROX-Filer/Templates.ui file -SFR -- STATUS -- to do

woof2-130130

Be aware that this is mainly for testing the IO bug mentioned in the last 5 or so pages of this thread ( SFR, ally, 8-bit, peebee, tallboy and others have seen this). The idea here is that I have rolled back the kernel to PRE 3.2.x to see if it's a kernel issue or an AUFS issue such that I can present Barry with some tangible evidence that there is a BUG! (It is reportedly experienced in Precise-5.4.3 official, upup-precise-3.7.2 (pemasu) and here).

Please test.. lots of other things to check too, JWM, Rox, printing, you name it.

The final release of the next Slacko in this line WILL NOT ship with this kernel, but the userspace will be very close. All reports are welcome. When testing shifts to full Beta I will open a new thread.

I only have a month, then I will be too busy for dedication to Slacko.. so.. if you like Slacko test and report.. Thanks very much in advance..

And as always have fun!

Posted: **Thu 31 Jan 2013, 14:53**

Ok, I just tested 5.4.0.1 and wasn't able to recreate the issue - writing to 'pup_ro1' is fluent, no hangs...

So, is it kernel or aufs then, because I lost track somewhere along the way?

Thanks!
___________

BTW, I feel kinda alienated with this bug, in a sense that noone but me could recreate it under controlled conditions.

So please, if anyone would like to help in confirming that this is global issue and not local ("just-me"), the safest way to do so is to frugally install Slacko-5.4 on NTFS formatted volume in VirtualBox, create slackosave.2fs (at least 512 MB) and after reboot:
- if you have left the default pmedia=atahd in menu.lst:

Code: Select all

cat /dev/zero > /initrd/pup_rw/root/bigfile

- if you have changed to pmedia=ataflash in menu.lst:

Code: Select all

cat/dev/zero > /initrd/pup_ro1/root/bigfile

(there may be need to repeat it few times, using different filenames, but it never happened to me under VBox)

If HDD icon at the bottom of VBox window goes off for more than 5 sec. and WM stops responding - most likely this is it.
Then try CTRL+C to stop "cat'ting" (or better reset VM - it takes a while to things get back to normal) and the next step will be remounting the savefile:

Code: Select all

mount -o remount,sync /dev/loop1

and repeat the 'cat' procedure to see if there's any difference.
That's all and it takes 10-15 min. to me.

If something's not clear enough or need some help - just let me know.

TIA & Greetings!

Posted: **Thu 31 Jan 2013, 15:04**

running 5401 now on ext2 install

savefile wasn't picked up until it was moved to same folder (I ran out of room on the 'OS' partition to have both installed together)

my normal suite of apps installed to correct folder on this build, tighvnc to network instead of utilities for example

will run for a couple of days or until I notice an issue

Posted: **Thu 31 Jan 2013, 20:10**

01micko wrote: Slacko-5.4.0.1 (pre beta 5.4.1 or 5.5) is released as a test bed for the BUG!

Guess I'm lucky to have not experienced the "BUG" but I'll test for other things.

Just did an Lxpup with the latest k-3.2.37........ not discovered any problems with it yet.

Posted: **Thu 31 Jan 2013, 20:33**

I'll do some testing as well today and the weekend.

I have not seen the "BUG" here either maybe it is because of my anti-bug repellent

Will also be looking forward for the next release.

Cheers

(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

Slacko-5.4 feedback and bug reports

Hanging, HDD deadlocks, etc.

Desktop Icon Positions

Hangs, deadlocks, etc...

AMMOUNCE - pre beta test

Re: AMMOUNCE - pre beta test