I was wandering aimlessly in the forum this evening when I came across a link to http://www.kmfms.com/whatsbad.html. I went there, read the article (it's quite good) and then I visited a couple of the links from there. One of them, I can't recall which, froze my Firefox. I had to kill it to get out. I decided to reboot and get a fresh start (old Windows habit?) but when Puppy came back up my screen was kind of wonky. It was (is) mostly OK except that the text under my desktop icons has gone blurry to the point of being illegible. Also my inactive tabs now have a grey patterned shading which also makes them almost illegible. There are also other litte display irregularities now which are quite annoying. For instance, when I highlight text now, it goes white on a very light grey background.
I, unfortunately, had not backed up my pup001 file (I'm using 1.09CE, by the way) since I started playing with Puppy a few days ago. I re-ran xorgwizard and I tried restoring xorg.conf from xorg.conf.bak, all to no avail. I'd really like not to have to start my pup001 file over again because I have done a fair bit of tweaking, emailing, setting up CUPS, Gaim, etc., etc. and I'd really like not to lose all that.
As I am not very familiar (yet) with Linux, I don't quite know where everything is. How can I either clear up my display problem without discardinig my current pup001 file or else extract my settings, emails, etc. from my pup001 file before I start a new one?
I'm also curious to know what happened??? Has anyone else experienced this sort of thing? Did I get a virus? running Linux??? Did some ActiveX or some nefarious script on that page wreak the havoc?
I was so thrilled that everything was going so swimingly up until this......... I even got Puppy to connect wirelessly on an ancient "RAM-challenged" laptop. Next is NFS or ssh (I'm not sure yet which way I should go?) so that those two can share with each other.
I must also say that this forum is absolutely amazing!!! This is the first forum of this type I have participated in but it is still amazing! Almost everything I have looked for, I have found.
Anyway, after all this rambling, what I basically seek is restore my display to the way it was with out losing all the stuff in my pup file. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
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My screen went wonky
No, does not look like a virus.
I think unionfs got irritated by the reboot.
The text under the icons can be set with a rightclick on an icon.
Rox-filer - options - pinboard.
The look of Firefox depends:
If it uses a firefox-theme, you could change the look in firefox itself in the options, or in "view - themes" (or so, I use seamonkey in Puppy2).
If firefox uses the standard Gtk-theme used by many Puppy-applications, you can change the look in the puppymenu.
Control panel - Gtk-theme.
Mark
I think unionfs got irritated by the reboot.
The text under the icons can be set with a rightclick on an icon.
Rox-filer - options - pinboard.
The look of Firefox depends:
If it uses a firefox-theme, you could change the look in firefox itself in the options, or in "view - themes" (or so, I use seamonkey in Puppy2).
If firefox uses the standard Gtk-theme used by many Puppy-applications, you can change the look in the puppymenu.
Control panel - Gtk-theme.
Mark
Hi Mark,
My name is actually Mark as well, Sparky is my nickname, you know "Sparky Marky" ..... I'm sure you've been called that before ........ Anyway ......
The pinboard hint worked fine - my desktop-icon text is back to normal.
I don't have a theme set in Firefox and, besides, the strangeness in the background of highlighted text extends into Abiword, Gnumeric, etc. I suspect maybe your Gtk-theme suggestion is right but I can't find that menu item. I'm using 1.09, perhaps you're thinking 2?
I'm also still scratching my head wondering what happened when I visited that website?
Thanks.
My name is actually Mark as well, Sparky is my nickname, you know "Sparky Marky" ..... I'm sure you've been called that before ........ Anyway ......
The pinboard hint worked fine - my desktop-icon text is back to normal.
I don't have a theme set in Firefox and, besides, the strangeness in the background of highlighted text extends into Abiword, Gnumeric, etc. I suspect maybe your Gtk-theme suggestion is right but I can't find that menu item. I'm using 1.09, perhaps you're thinking 2?
I'm also still scratching my head wondering what happened when I visited that website?
Thanks.
In fact, the pinboard thing didn't quite solve the desktop-icon issue. As shown in shot12.png below taken on my desktop (I don't know how to get the attachments in-line in the message) it seems that the background colour is stuck on white, even if I set it to black in the pinboard settings. By default, as shown in shot2.png below taken on my laptop, the background should be black and the foreground white. My blurry text was due to white on white and, although I can get black on white, I can't get white on black. You can also notice the patterned background that now shows on inactive tabs - annoying. shot13.png taken on my desktop shows that changing the theme in the JWM Configuration (is this what you were refering to, MU?) Something has been corrupted.
shot1.png below taken on my laptop, shows how highligted text should look by default. shot11.png taken on my desktop shows how highlighted text is now almost impossible to read, and this happens everywhere that it is possible to select text - Leafpad, all the Office apps, Firefox, everywhere, even here.
Is there anywhere that these global display settings can be restored to the defaults? Is there a file I can rebuild or maybe delete and let the OS rebuild it?
If I can't find a solution to these display anomalies, which files would I need to copy from my pup001 file before creating a new one to be able to easily restore the following:
- network settings (luckily my desktop is wired, not wireless like my laptop)
- email settings and messages
- CUPS setup for printing to my tcp connected printer
I will need my Firefox bookmarks.html file and my rc.local file but beyond that I am a bit fuzzy about which files and from where I will need to save.
Maybe my screenshots will provide a clue and someone will suggest an easy fix so I can avoid this rigamarole. I'm hoping ......
By the way, sorry about the monster screenshots yesterday. I've cropped them this time.
Thanks for any help.
shot1.png below taken on my laptop, shows how highligted text should look by default. shot11.png taken on my desktop shows how highlighted text is now almost impossible to read, and this happens everywhere that it is possible to select text - Leafpad, all the Office apps, Firefox, everywhere, even here.
Is there anywhere that these global display settings can be restored to the defaults? Is there a file I can rebuild or maybe delete and let the OS rebuild it?
If I can't find a solution to these display anomalies, which files would I need to copy from my pup001 file before creating a new one to be able to easily restore the following:
- network settings (luckily my desktop is wired, not wireless like my laptop)
- email settings and messages
- CUPS setup for printing to my tcp connected printer
I will need my Firefox bookmarks.html file and my rc.local file but beyond that I am a bit fuzzy about which files and from where I will need to save.
Maybe my screenshots will provide a clue and someone will suggest an easy fix so I can avoid this rigamarole. I'm hoping ......
By the way, sorry about the monster screenshots yesterday. I've cropped them this time.
Thanks for any help.
- Attachments
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- shot1.png
- How things should look by default (on my laptop). Note the white on black desktop-icon text and the white on dark blue highlighted text.
- (95.23 KiB) Downloaded 434 times
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- shot2.png
- Also taken on my laptop, this shot shows black on white desktop-icon text and the nice clean grey background on inactive tabs, the way it should be by default.
- (50.56 KiB) Downloaded 540 times
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- shot11.png
- This shot taken on my messed up desktop shows how highlighted text is now white on light grey and hard to read. Here I have the desktop-icon text set to black on white, opposite to the default.
- (43.82 KiB) Downloaded 435 times
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- shot12.png
- Also taken on my desktop, this shot shows that even if I set the desktop-icon text background to black on the pinboard, it stays white and causes the blurriness. It also shows how the grey background on the incative tabs has an annoying pattern of horizo
- (26.93 KiB) Downloaded 532 times
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- shot13.png
- This shot shows that changing the theme in the JWM Configuaration doesn't help.
- (26.67 KiB) Downloaded 519 times
Thanks, Mark for being so patient with me but I still learning my way around in Puppy and in Linux in general.
You were absolutely right from the start. My confusion over the themes was because I only noticed the button labelled "Themes" in the JWM Configuration. Here you can only change the very basic Joe's themes. Halfway down that dialogue is the "GTK Theme" button (which opens the same dialogue as gtk-theme from a console). Somehow my theme had set itself to "Quiet, light grey pattern" (did that website do it? How could that happen?) - I set it back to "Default color theme" and everything is back to normal. This somehow also gave me back the ability to change the desktop-icon text background to black.
Thanks lots, you are brilliant!!!
Now I want to find the best way to make my two Puppy machines share files with each other (NFS, ssh or ?). I guess that question will be for a new thread, unless one already exists on that topic - I haven't found it yet.
You were absolutely right from the start. My confusion over the themes was because I only noticed the button labelled "Themes" in the JWM Configuration. Here you can only change the very basic Joe's themes. Halfway down that dialogue is the "GTK Theme" button (which opens the same dialogue as gtk-theme from a console). Somehow my theme had set itself to "Quiet, light grey pattern" (did that website do it? How could that happen?) - I set it back to "Default color theme" and everything is back to normal. This somehow also gave me back the ability to change the desktop-icon text background to black.
Thanks lots, you are brilliant!!!
Now I want to find the best way to make my two Puppy machines share files with each other (NFS, ssh or ?). I guess that question will be for a new thread, unless one already exists on that topic - I haven't found it yet.
- Attachments
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- shot14.png
- Back to normal, thanks to the patience of MU.
- (43.77 KiB) Downloaded 426 times
Puppy is a CD-based system.
So usually, you can not store files on a CD, and this is in fact the case with all of Puppys folders in theory.
To be able, to store files, Puppy uses a "trick", a Kernelmodule called unionfs.
Unionfs uses hidden files in additional folders, to store information about files.
If the computer is reset without properly shutting down, those files can not be written correctly.
When your webbrowser crashed, it left many temporary files, that were not "managed" correctly.
This can cause the filesystem to contain errors, that will be corrected at next boot.
This sometimes even effects files, that were not related to the initial problem.
In your case, /etc/gtk-2.0/gtkrc was affected. It might have been deleted, so that Puppy reverted to the original configuration stored in the write-protected usr_cram.fs.
The old ext2-filesystem is somewhat critical in this concern, especially in combination with unionfs.
Puppy2 will use the newer ext3-filesystem, that uses additional additional backups (a "journal") to avoid that files can get "lost".
Concerning your other question:
yes, a new thread is a good idea
Mark
So usually, you can not store files on a CD, and this is in fact the case with all of Puppys folders in theory.
To be able, to store files, Puppy uses a "trick", a Kernelmodule called unionfs.
Unionfs uses hidden files in additional folders, to store information about files.
If the computer is reset without properly shutting down, those files can not be written correctly.
When your webbrowser crashed, it left many temporary files, that were not "managed" correctly.
This can cause the filesystem to contain errors, that will be corrected at next boot.
This sometimes even effects files, that were not related to the initial problem.
In your case, /etc/gtk-2.0/gtkrc was affected. It might have been deleted, so that Puppy reverted to the original configuration stored in the write-protected usr_cram.fs.
The old ext2-filesystem is somewhat critical in this concern, especially in combination with unionfs.
Puppy2 will use the newer ext3-filesystem, that uses additional additional backups (a "journal") to avoid that files can get "lost".
Concerning your other question:
yes, a new thread is a good idea
Mark
I can't thank you enough, Mark. Not only did you persist with me until my problem (which must have seemed terribly trivial to you) was solved but you have now also provided an explanation as to what happened to cause it. Now I have a bit of an understanding of unionfs (I didn't quite know what you were talking about earlier) and ext2 and ext3 filesystems.
You're welcome *woofwoof* 
I think it is important to understand how computers work.
I don't like these approaches that try to hide everything (what does not mean I like complicated systems).
Puppy is not bugfree, but it is transparent - if you know the bugs, you can live with them - and Barry is working hard to track them all down, like with the change to ext3.
Wish you much fun, don't forget to make a backup of your pup001 from time to time - just in case...
Mark
I think it is important to understand how computers work.
I don't like these approaches that try to hide everything (what does not mean I like complicated systems).
Puppy is not bugfree, but it is transparent - if you know the bugs, you can live with them - and Barry is working hard to track them all down, like with the change to ext3.
Wish you much fun, don't forget to make a backup of your pup001 from time to time - just in case...
Mark