Fatdog64-620 Final (17 April 2013) and 621 (9 May 2013)

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gnomic
Posts: 78
Joined: Sat 21 Aug 2010, 00:14

wifi wandering

#226 Post by gnomic »

Oh dear, me again, I'll stop now.

However feel obliged to report that wifi seems to have resumed its wandering ways. Was just submitting last message when I discovered that wpa_gui had seemingly decided it wasn't happy with the network I wanted to be connected to and had commenced negotiations with another of the 20 or so locally available. At least it did so after a download of Precise 5.6 had concluded. It took quite a bit of persuasion to get back on the desired network, wanted to hook up with a couple of others en route.

Hmmm, don't seem to be able to copy the event history. Don't think it was providing an obvious reason however.

gcmartin

xarchiever issues

#227 Post by gcmartin »

Anyone else see problems trying to create an archieve?
Here's a command line example.

Code: Select all

# xarchiver -d 1.bz
Xarchiver 0.5.2 (©)2005-2008 Giuseppe Torelli
Segmentation fault
# 
Also, cannot create a zip in menu>Utility>xarhive
Attachments
Bad-xarchiver.png
Menu>Utility>xarchiver
(42.01 KiB) Downloaded 1221 times

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Ted Dog
Posts: 3965
Joined: Wed 14 Sep 2005, 02:35
Location: Heart of Texas

Day 4 with new 64bit notebook

#228 Post by Ted Dog »

After installing the ATI/ADM video drivers found out default X org settings selected by FD64 where just slightly off 1280x768 verse 1366x768 that lead to a banding barely there, enough for me to complain about pixelization but its gone now and my optical O.C.D. is no more,
With a AMD 1Ghz two core, xz compression and decompression is VERY slow bound to one core. I removed the -comp xz from all squashfs calls so It defaults back to gzip style, sure it grew a bit larger, but now both cores can be active and the decompression has lead to a massive improvement in program load times. Which leads to another issue, files not being placed in multisession saves, deletes not deleting and changes not being recorded. It might have to do with the error msgs for archiving in past poster. That was occurring prior to the change of compression format used, Its just more noticeable now since I'm up to a dozen+ saves
Spot is causing all sorts of issues and the weird way permissions and ownership keeps changing is disturbing. We need a easy way to return to ROOT g-d mode!
Last edited by Ted Dog on Thu 23 May 2013, 17:30, edited 1 time in total.

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Ted Dog
Posts: 3965
Joined: Wed 14 Sep 2005, 02:35
Location: Heart of Texas

#229 Post by Ted Dog »

Code: Select all

#!/bin/sh
cd /root
DISPLAY=:0.1 jwm  &
DISPLAY=:0.1 rox -p=$HOME/.config/rox.sourceforge.net/ROX-Filer/PuppyPin > /dev/null &
#DISPLAY=:0.1 lxpanel.bin //CANT RUN THIS TWICE SO USE jwm 
How I use the HDMI and laptop screen with two different desktops, so the resolution can match equipment. This works on both AMD/ATI and Nvidia after installing proprietary drivers.

Next I'm going to try to hang another VGA monitor off this laptop and see how that goes.

User avatar
Ray MK
Posts: 774
Joined: Tue 05 Feb 2008, 09:10
Location: UK

#230 Post by Ray MK »

Have been running FD64-621 from DVD-rw until today, when I decided to do a manual frugal install to the ntfs partition on my E732 laptop.

Booting with grub4dos from an ext2 SDcard.

Just amazing the difference in boot speed - literally just seconds - have never seen a puppy boot so fast ever.

Brilliant - just goes to show what a proper OS can do.

Many millions of thanks from 1 very happy FatDog user.
[b]Asus[/b] 701SD. 2gig ram. 8gb SSD. [b]IBM A21m[/b] laptop. 192mb ram. PIII Coppermine proc. [b]X60[/b] T2400 1.8Ghz proc. 2gig ram. 80gb hdd. [b]T41[/b] Pentium M 1400Mhz. 512mb ram.

heywoodj
Posts: 85
Joined: Sun 15 Mar 2009, 04:39

#231 Post by heywoodj »

jamesbond wrote:
heywoodj wrote:Also, I was looking for something with Japanese language support for my client
<<... snip...>>
Right now, for example using FatDog and browsers to look at email with Japanese characters just shows rectangles. Is there a simple solution?
1. Use an UTF-8 locale (en_US.UTF-8 would do, or any other UTF-8 English locale).
2. For reading, get a CJK font, for example from here: http://wenq.org/en
3. For writing, install fcitx-anthy from the Package Manager - it should pull all the necessary components.
4. Note: Fatdog isn't localised/internationalised, so after you have done that, all the menus are still in English. If you don't like the English locales you can get additional locales from the Package Manager (glibc_locales package) but this will not change the fact - menus and messages will be always be in English.
jamesbond, a belated thanks for your help. I've so far managed to be able to read Japanese by installing the Sazanami font from
http://sourceforge.jp/projects/efont/releases/#10087 and copying the .ttf files into /usr/share/fonts/default/TTF.

I'm still working on figuring how to write in it. I've installed fcitx-anthy (incidentally not available from distro.ibiblio.org, but found in ftp.nluug.nl) but will have to do more reading.

Thanks again, HJ.

BTW, unrelated but the wifi on this lenovo laptop (allegedly ath9k) doesn't seem to be able to even see the current hotspot, an Apple Airport. It does it fine in Win8 and my other laptop sees it in Wary. This lenovo has seen other wireless routers.

Is it one of those "bad" combination situations? I'm now connected via ethernet cable

Edit: I can now read AND write in Japanese ... my understanding it is a totally different matter! I found that the anthy business is engaged/disengaged by using <ctrl>+<space bar> and a little popup window appears in the upper left corner of my browser(Opera 12). There are some choices in converting my phonetic spelling to appropriate characters. Basically done. WooHoo!!

Again, thanks. HJ
Last edited by heywoodj on Sat 25 May 2013, 18:03, edited 1 time in total.

chapchap70
Posts: 210
Joined: Thu 18 Nov 2010, 05:39
Location: The Island Of Long (NY, USA)

#232 Post by chapchap70 »

ECHO what gcmartin stated, one great thing running from RAM with this newest FD64 is you close the lid and it go into suspend mode, and on lid up and a keypress its instantly back live. I've gotten into the habit with my first run in RAM netbook and it would stay 'alive' disconnected from power weeks in suspend mode with lid-down.

The sleep mode works on my Gateway LT4009u netbook as well. I can also close the lid and any key wakes FD up after opening the lid. The netbook can be moved and the wpa_gui - wpa finds another wifi connection. I typed this post from two different places. This was not the case in FD 610 or Slacko 5.33 with this netbook. I had to reboot whenever the lid was closed.

I have FD on a hard drive partition along with Slacko 5.3.3 frugal. Windows 7 starter is on another partition. I don't know if it is an update that fixed it or something in the newer kernel. I read of others having problems with the sleep mode on this and similar netbooks and there were fixed that people posted but I didn't get involved.

Edit: Corrected netbook model #
Last edited by chapchap70 on Thu 30 May 2013, 22:56, edited 1 time in total.

jamesbond
Posts: 3433
Joined: Mon 26 Feb 2007, 05:02
Location: The Blue Marble

Re: wifi, 3G

#233 Post by jamesbond »

Thank you all for the kind words.
gnomic wrote:Would I be correct in thinking FD621 can't use a 3G modem out of the box? Couldn't find usb_modeswitch which I think is more or less essential to getting 3G up and running. Any easy as way of getting it going do you happen to know?
There is usb_modeswitch package in the repo. In theory you can install this package, plug your modem, and then use the dialer. But neither myself and kirk have the 3G dongles, so we can't try whether it works. We have tested that both blackberry and bluetooth modems works.

cheers!
Fatdog64 forum links: [url=http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=117546]Latest version[/url] | [url=https://cutt.ly/ke8sn5H]Contributed packages[/url] | [url=https://cutt.ly/se8scrb]ISO builder[/url]

Barbol
Posts: 18
Joined: Thu 20 Dec 2012, 02:47
Location: Argentina

Re: wifi, 3G

#234 Post by Barbol »

jamesbond wrote:Thank you all for the kind words.
There is usb_modeswitch package in the repo. In theory you can install this package, plug your modem, and then use the dialer. But neither myself and kirk have the 3G dongles, so we can't try whether it works. We have tested that both blackberry and bluetooth modems works.

cheers!
Hi! Lovin' this new release, FatDog 621 is running wonderfully and incredibly fast in my acer 1410 laptop. Thanks again for this superb distro!! :)
I can confirm that fatdog-dialer is working smoothly with my 3G dongle once usb_modeswitch is installed. I'm connected using it right now!

Abot the sleep mode thing, I was never able to enter in suspend mode in FD64. If I click the Suspend option in the main menu, I get the message "For a laptop just close the lid to suspend.", but nothing happens when I close the lid. I found that if I comment this three lines in suspend.sh:

Code: Select all

 # do not suspend at shutdown proccess
#if [ "$(cat /proc/acpi/button/lid/*/state | grep open)" != "" ] ; then
#exit
#fi
I can manually enter in suspend mode by running the script from the terminal. Is it safe to comment those lines? Is it fixable in any other way? Thanks in advance,

Barbol

heywoodj
Posts: 85
Joined: Sun 15 Mar 2009, 04:39

#235 Post by heywoodj »

heywoodj wrote:...

BTW, unrelated but the wifi on this lenovo laptop (allegedly ath9k) doesn't seem to be able to even see the current hotspot, an Apple Airport. It does it fine in Win8 and my other laptop sees it in Wary. This lenovo has seen other wireless routers.
...
Well this wifi problem is turning out to be bigger than I thought at first, as I'm unable to connect to a second wireless router.

I believe its the result of my trying out the ja_JP.UTF-8 localization which I returned to en_US.UTF-8 locale. Anthy didn't work with the ja_JP.UTF-8 .

What the locale setting did was confuse the internal wifi card as tempestuous says in http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 965#562965

I followed his instructions about making a .conf file in /etc/modprobe.d/ but still no wifi. More specifically, the wlan0 card is recognized in Network Wizard, but a scan shows no detected networks, though there are active networks as I'm writing now from another laptop on the wifi network.

Dmesg from terminal gives:

Code: Select all

ath: EEPROM indicates we should expect a direct regpair map 
ath: Country alpha2 being used: 00
Running (rather, annoying crawling) Win8 allows connection via wireless, so the hardware is working.

So, how do I fix this rather crucial element, wifi, in FatDog620?

Thx, HJ

Hans
Posts: 45
Joined: Thu 16 Mar 2006, 22:38
Location: The Netherlands

xlock minor bug

#236 Post by Hans »

I got a minor bug here I think.

I use xcompmgr for some desktop bling and when I start xlock the desktop freezes and I have to escape with ctrl alt backspace. It looks like the -grabserver option in /root/.config/Xlock/xlockscreenparams is the cause. Removing this option solves the issue for me.
Don't know why this option is needed and why it conflicts with xcompmgr though.
This is the setting for xcompmgr, in a script in ~/startup:
xcompmgr -fF -I-.002 -O-.003 -D6 -cC -t-5 -l-6 -r5
And this is my urxtv-script in /usr/share/applications:
exec /usr/bin/urxvt & sleep 0.8s && transset-df -a --dec .3
I suspect the last one might be in the game also because when I start xlock the desktop freezes in a small urxvt-window at the point that transset-df did it's work. This small urxvt-window is where you can change your password or something. This is normal behavior from what I see except that the screensaver is not started because everything freezes up. After you press crt alt backspace you can see the screensaver starting just before X is closed.
With xcompmgr disabled I see the same behaviour with this small urxvt-window just before the screensaver kicks in.

cheers

jamesbond
Posts: 3433
Joined: Mon 26 Feb 2007, 05:02
Location: The Blue Marble

Re: wifi, 3G

#237 Post by jamesbond »

Barbol wrote:Hi! Lovin' this new release, FatDog 621 is running wonderfully and incredibly fast in my acer 1410 laptop. Thanks again for this superb distro!! :)
I can confirm that fatdog-dialer is working smoothly with my 3G dongle once usb_modeswitch is installed. I'm connected using it right now!
Great !
Abot the sleep mode thing, I was never able to enter in suspend mode in FD64. If I click the Suspend option in the main menu, I get the message "For a laptop just close the lid to suspend.", but nothing happens when I close the lid. I found that if I comment this three lines in suspend.sh:

Code: Select all

 # do not suspend at shutdown proccess
#if [ "$(cat /proc/acpi/button/lid/*/state | grep open)" != "" ] ; then
#exit
#fi
I can manually enter in suspend mode by running the script from the terminal. Is it safe to comment those lines? Is it fixable in any other way? Thanks in advance,

Barbol
It is supposed to prevent suspend unless when the lid is closed. Kirk told me that there should be no harm in commenting it, in fact, we'll probably comment it out for the next time.

Hans,
Thanks for the report - I will look into it.

cheers!
Fatdog64 forum links: [url=http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=117546]Latest version[/url] | [url=https://cutt.ly/ke8sn5H]Contributed packages[/url] | [url=https://cutt.ly/se8scrb]ISO builder[/url]

Sage
Posts: 5536
Joined: Tue 04 Oct 2005, 08:34
Location: GB

#238 Post by Sage »

Oh dear, seem to be having trouble d/l-ing and installing stuff in 620 FULL, of which more anon. Spotty keeps getting in the way. I don't do Puppy as user, only root. I don't want all that mainline false security clap-trap, Puppy is a compact distro, remarkable as it may be. If I goof with Puppy, it's my fault (it's an entirely different matter with my mainline distro). All that fancy nancy with 'spot' must be devouring oodles of unnecessary space? What to do to install Opera direct from their website? It refuses to install it. The only version to do so.

As for FD620, I thought I'd overwritten it with FD621 but the Distro-specs is still showing 620?
Otherwise, this is a fantastic project, fast, clean and effective - just as long as one stays inside the fence. Absolutely no chance of any neophytes being tempted, though.

chapchap70
Posts: 210
Joined: Thu 18 Nov 2010, 05:39
Location: The Island Of Long (NY, USA)

Email links opens Firefox as root instead of spot.

#239 Post by chapchap70 »

I've been fiddling around with Fatdog64 for a bit and I have noticed that when I get an email and click on a link within it, the link opens the browser as root. If the browser is already open, (as spot) the link opens a new tab.

Since I use Firefox and Thunderbird, I am not sure what the behavior is in Seamonkey. With Seamonkey opened and set as default, Thunderbird opens Firefox and it asks if I want to make it the default browser.

chapchap70
Posts: 210
Joined: Thu 18 Nov 2010, 05:39
Location: The Island Of Long (NY, USA)

#240 Post by chapchap70 »

Sage wrote:What to do to install Opera direct from their website? It refuses to install it. The only version to do so.
If I type "Seamonkey" in the terminal, the browser opens as root, maybe you can install it with that?


Nevermind.

heywoodj
Posts: 85
Joined: Sun 15 Mar 2009, 04:39

#241 Post by heywoodj »

heywoodj wrote:
Well this wifi problem is turning out to be bigger than I thought at first, as I'm unable to connect to a second wireless router...
After trying to connect to a couple more routers as I mentioned here, http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=86425, I concluded that in fact the wireless card was working, but in a very inadequate way. The maximum reliable connection range is about 15 ft (~5 m) and less if walls/floors are involved.

I don't think I ever had such poor wireless performance. I've always had acceptable wireless performance on all other Puppies upto now.

Is there anything to boost the performance close to that achieved by running this laptop on Win8?

For the record, the internal card is a Atheros AR9285 using the ath9k driver.

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Ted Dog
Posts: 3965
Joined: Wed 14 Sep 2005, 02:35
Location: Heart of Texas

Zombie whiteout files

#242 Post by Ted Dog »

Starting at line 739 of system-init:

Code: Select all

						fname="${pp%.wh.*}${pp#*.wh.}"	# without the .wh. part
						if [ -e "$fname" ]; then		# if the file exist, then ...
							rm -rf "$fname" > /dev/null	# delete the file
							rm -rf "$pp" > /dev/null	# also delete the whiteout
						fi
					done
Files deleted are not being written to save file, but the white-out hidden file is. However if file is not found; the white-out hidden file remains behind. If the same named file is recreated, would it not be re-deleted (with the white out now finally be removed). This is exactly the type of behavior I'm experiencing, double saves makes changes stick.

Sage
Posts: 5536
Joined: Tue 04 Oct 2005, 08:34
Location: GB

#243 Post by Sage »

don't think I ever had such poor wireless performance
Sounds like a confusion between SW, FW & HW. Try opening up the router and inspecting for bad caps? Try a different filter? Other than that, re-site your router according to the (de)structions that came with it. Place the device as close as possible to the master socket and run cables from there for your wired connections. It's permissible to re-site the master socket, eg into the loft, before running some cabling downstairs. Knock down a few structural walls to improve the wireless signal?!

jamesbond
Posts: 3433
Joined: Mon 26 Feb 2007, 05:02
Location: The Blue Marble

Re: Zombie whiteout files

#244 Post by jamesbond »

Ted Dog wrote:Starting at line 739 of system-init:

Code: Select all

						fname="${pp%.wh.*}${pp#*.wh.}"	# without the .wh. part
						if [ -e "$fname" ]; then		# if the file exist, then ...
							rm -rf "$fname" > /dev/null	# delete the file
							rm -rf "$pp" > /dev/null	# also delete the whiteout
						fi
					done
Files deleted are not being written to save file, but the white-out hidden file is. However if file is not found; the white-out hidden file remains behind. If the same named file is recreated, would it not be re-deleted (with the white out now finally be removed). This is exactly the type of behavior I'm experiencing, double saves makes changes stick.
Thanks Ted Dog, I think you have a point. This would only happen in one particular scenario - when you delete an file that exist in lower SFS layers and later re-create it (e.g. replacing /bin/bash with an updated version). I guess the solution is to check whether the file is newer than the whiteout, if it is then delete the whiteout, otherwise delete both of them.

EDIT: Replace those lines with this:

Code: Select all

						if [ -e "$fname" ]; then		# if both file and whiteout exist, then ...
							if [ "$pp" -nt "$fname" ]; then # delete the older one
								rm -rf "$fname" > /dev/null	# delete the file if older
							else
								rm -rf "$pp" > /dev/null	# otherwise delete the whiteout
							fi
						fi
Also change line 1041 and 1042

Code: Select all

[ "$MULTI_MOUNT" ] && BRANCHES=$MULTI_MOUNT:$BRANCHES 
[ "$SAVEFILE_MOUNT" ] && BRANCHES=$SAVEFILE_MOUNT:$BRANCHES 
with this

Code: Select all

[ "$MULTI_MOUNT"    ] && BRANCHES=$MULTI_MOUNT=ro+wh:$BRANCHES
[ "$SAVEFILE_MOUNT" ] &&
if [ "$TMPFS_MOUNT" ]; then BRANCHES=$SAVEFILE_MOUNT=ro+wh:$BRANCHES
else BRANCHES=$SAVEFILE_MOUNT:$BRANCHES
fi
heywoodj,
"iwconfig" command can be used to adjust the radio power of your wireless, although it doesn't always work.

cheers!
Fatdog64 forum links: [url=http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=117546]Latest version[/url] | [url=https://cutt.ly/ke8sn5H]Contributed packages[/url] | [url=https://cutt.ly/se8scrb]ISO builder[/url]

User avatar
Ted Dog
Posts: 3965
Joined: Wed 14 Sep 2005, 02:35
Location: Heart of Texas

#245 Post by Ted Dog »

Thanks for looking into the zombie white-out possibility, your code once located is so easy to follow, so I'm encouraged to try my hand with labelled save session control (allowing user to select which session to skip or group )
However, the remaster process goes really slow due to my CPU's compression/decompression weakness, would there be a way to take the whole files in tmp during remaster, before the sfs compression and gzip them into initrd without sfs file? for a super huge init (actually only 20-25% larger initrd is still gzipped) so that the system would be uncompressed in RAM as an remaster option if machines have massive amounts of RAM, you check the disk usage of the full filesystem and report that before compression, I've still have 7G's free RAM on a fully decompressed FatDog64. Lets make this fat puppy sing.... :wink:

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