Lucid Puppy Revitalized as 5.2.8.7 - Nov., 2017 - Final

[sindi]

The ipw2200 mini-PCMCIA (internal) card in my Acer Travelmate 4000 series works in XP after hitting the wifi switch a few times (until it lights).
It was not working in linux. I replaced it with an ipw2100 which did not work in either one. Put back the iwp2200 and it worked in XP. Now
it also works in linux (but does not light up). Frisbee.

The switch may be flaky. I got a diagnostic message about RF not working at one point. Is there a software cure? acerhk.ko is supposed to help
but I have not found the Ubuntu 10 precompiled module.

My notes on orinoco_cs mini-PCMCIA cards indicate that they work in Tahr but not Lucid puppy. How to make orinoco_cs work in Lucid puppy?

[rerwin]

sindi,
Thanks for all of that information. I will try to address some of the issues, but will need some diagnostic information.

Lucid 5.2.8.7 (2016) Doug's Wizard does not load.
So I think after 528-005 Doug's Network wizard is broken (needs line 13 fixed), as are suspend-to-ram and Xorg.

Line 13 is in the dialog, which starts at line 250 of /usr/sbin/net-setup.sh. I need to see what the syntax error is caused by. Please edit that file to change line 249 from a blank line to:
set -x; exec >&2 #DEBUG
Then run network wizard with whatever device is associated with the problem (the B43 card?). Assuming it fails to run for you, immediately enter in a console:
pdiag

and let it create a pdiag file. Then attach the file to a PM to me. That way, I should be able to see why the dialog failed and maybe something about the b43.

EDIT: Note that I am assuming that no window pops up when you select the Network Wizard. The "set -x..." is only for the main/initial window. If you get past that, please tell me which is the last window you see and what you selected to do next, so I can move the "set -x" to the appropriate window.

Also Lucid cannot (without modification) handle 16-bit orinoco_cs cards or my p54c Netgear cardbus card (WG511).

What modification do you mean? Or do you just mean that they don't work as things are? A pdiag file obtained immediately after trying one or each of them might be useful to find clues. I assume these are like pcmcia cards for laptops.

Does any PCMCIA-type card work in 5.2.8.x? I suspect the PCMCIA interface code might be the culprit. But I need data to hopefully lead me to the cause.

sftp is, as in 5.2.5 and 5.2.8.7, missing a library.

I would like to install the needed "library". Please give us the message(s) that specifies what is missing.

Lucid 5.2.5 /sus/module/i915/parameter/modeset 1 (module not modules) Xorg intel
. . .
I have been putting the i915.modeset=1 after pfix. pfix=fsck,vga=791,i915.modeset=1
Do I add ,acpi_backlight=vendor after the vga=791? It was not needed in Lucid 5.2.5. That version appears to use a kernel with fbcon built-in.

The syntax should be:
pfix=fsck vga=791 acpi_backlight=vendor i915.modeset=1
(The parameters can be in any order.)

pfix is a single parameter that can take multiple comma-separated sub parameters; the others are individual parameters. It appears that modeset 1 should work.
Richard

[sindi]

The missing lib for sftp is libbsd.so.0

I am using ipw2200 mini-PCI card which linux sees as PCMCIA (in linuxes which have cardctl anyway)

I have four b43 mini-PCI cards that work in XP or with ndiswrapper only.

pfix=fsck,vga=791 works for some reason but so does [space] vga=791

With i915.modeset=1 I get as far as testing 1024x768x16 and it tells me 'if you can see this X is working' then I click as directed and get a totally
black screen without cursor and have to power off.

I have not tried the suggested fix for acpitool yet, or diagnosed the network wizard - more soon.

acpitool -s run from X: if I push the power button it unsuspends to X, and everything is frozen.
I usually run it from a VT and get a black screen without a cursor by pushing the power button.

power button 5 sec = off

[sindi]

32-bit pcmcia cards usually work. The Netgear WG511 prism54 did not work in Lucid but does in Wary.
A Belkin card worked (slowly) and a LInksys 802.11G worked perfectly.

The main problem is Orinoco. The mini-PCI orinoco cards work in Tahr not Lucid Puppy. I don't recall if I tried the external PCMCIA cards with Tahr.

[sindi]

After booting with i915.modeset=1 and typing from urxvt acpitool -s, the screen went black then when I hit the power button X came back but nothing
worked. I powered off and then booted back to Lucid (2016) and again see X and nothing works. I did this twice.

pfix=fsck vga=791 i915.modeset=1 nothing else changed or added

Ctrl-Alt-Backspace. Ctrl-Alt-F2. Alt-F1. three lights. no response. no mouse cursor.

I will help diagnose Network Wizard after Lucid is usable again. What do I edit to undo whatever I did? I can boot without save files.

[sindi]

I had also added acpi_backlight=vendor, which caused the aforementioned problem. It is clearly not the fix for suspend-to-ram not unsuspending.

I discovered while trying to diagnose net-setup.sh that I had deleted /usr/share/locale/en (while deleting all the non-English directories) and left
en_US.

Network Wizard GUI now appears as expected. It asks if a wifi switch is off, I hit the wifi switch a few times, it scans and finds a few networks.
I choose my local network and it
'Failed to raise interface eth3'. ifconfig; SIOCSIFFLAGS: Unknown error 132.

I was the problem with Network Wizard not appearing. But Network Wizard did not work with this setup.

Frisbee (Restart Networks) found four networks and eventually connected to mine.

I then ran Network Wizard again and no longer have a connection. DHCP server timed out.

Frisbee worked properly again.

I ran Network Wizard again and it told me everything was successful but again I have no connection. ping 8.8.8.8 - nothing
Frisbee, Restart Networks, Refresh. Connected.

I ran pdiag after the Wizard failed most recently.

[sindi]

In both Lucid and Precise puppy, Dougal's Network Wizard finds my card, I fill in the WEP password (10 numbers) and DHCP times out.
Frisbee works in both. The same happens on all our laptops.

I wonder if WEP is the problem.

HTML5 Youtube works quite badly in Precise. 127% of memory used and way out of sync and jerky.

Precise and Slacko use jwm by default. I would like it as a choice in Setup. My netbook mouse went dead this week. i\

Precise Puppy never manages to shut down (from the Shutdown menu). It needs work. Hurray for Lucid 2016!

[sindi]

A Lucid 2016 bootable USB flash drive that boots in my 2008 ACER netbook and in the 2004 ACER laptop gives me a 'no operating system' in a circa 2005 DELL
B130 laptop. Tahr boots from flashdrive in all of these. Why not Lucid and can I fix it? I had to boot to Tahr from flash drive to install Lucid from a
second flash drive, because the optical drive gives strange error messages (tells me to push it in further etc.) with a known good CD.
The DELL was working with another hard drive (clunky) but also no longer sees this one so it may be a goner but why can't it boot Lucid?

[sindi]

Tahr only starts to boot from USB flash drive in the ACER netbook and gets stuck at syslinux. Lucid boots.
Obviously they are using different methods of booting.

[sindi]

Circa 2005 DELL B130 1.5GHz with 915GM video - I want to test xorg and suspend on here with lupu (from hard drive since usb flash boot fails).
Lucid (sda1) will not boot. Opposite problem on Acer netbook.

Came to us with no hard drive caddy and the one I improvised may have been hitting something it should not. Laptop now recognizes CD and IDE drives.

I booted with Tahr (sda) and ignored all the setup/welcome menus.

Copied lucid files to ext2 partition, made sda1 (FAT32, lba) bootable. I shrank it to 1GB and made a 3GB ext2 sda2.

grub4dos got stuck on "Installing Grub4DOS Please wait". Menu.lst was there. It will not boot lucid - no operating system.

I booted again to Tahr and this time hit Close or Quit to exit the Welcome and Setup menus in Tahr and grub4dos worked this time.

Lucid booted from hard drive without save file, and went directly to X without stopping to ask questions.

Ctrl-Alt-Backspace. xorgwizard. Probe, choose the only offered resolution, 1280x800, which works.

Rebooted with save files from ACER. Asks to Probe video, and again X works.


The Xorg problem is specific to the ACER laptop not the i915 video.

acpitool -s works. Hitting power button restores X.

[rerwin]

I am planning to change the default settings for kernel mode switching (KMS) for the i915, nouveau and radeon video drivers to conform to the defaults used in other puppies -- "1". Currently, the defaults are 0 for nouveau/nVidia and whatever the i915 (Intel) and radeon (AMD/ATI) devices default to ("-1"/vga console preference, whatever that means).

If you have any concerns about your video cards of those types, please try the package at:
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 428#939428

to see whether it makes things better or worse. I am uncomfortable just adding this change to the next release without some prior feedback on its effects.

If you find that your VGA device fails to get to the desktop, please try entering "modeset0" (then "xwin") outside of the X environment or after using pfix=nox at bootup. If you find any cases that require mode 0, please post the information and file produced by modeset0.

Details of the modeset0 script are here:
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 531#940531
Richard

[rerwin]

Deleted, because it duplicated my posting on page 50, here:
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 531#940531

[sindi]

Slacko57 did not work correctly but Pulp (4.1.2), Wary 5.5, Lucid 5.2.5 and now Lucid 2016 work well on this PIII from late 2001.
Probe video - I was asked to choose resolution (1024x768x16 works).

On this PIII laptop and on a P4 (ACER 4000 and/or DELL B130) Alsa Wizard does not play the Test Sound, but aplay /usr/share/audio/*wav does.
Alsa Wizard plays the test sound on DELL Inspiron 8100.

No built-in wifi. Added the Linksys b43 pcmcia card that worked before with Lupu.
Dougal's Network Wizard connects to my WEP network!
It did NOT in the two previous laptops - ACER and DELL B130 with intel video and sound.

acpitool -s suspends, power button wakes it back up.

I would be happy to help diagnose why Alsa Wizard and Dougal's Network Wizard only work on certain hardware.
(Along with suspend and the screwy ACER video - should I try that modeset package on it?).

[sindi]

The TP23 has the same intel sound as the ACER and DELL. Alsa Wizard test sound did not play, aplay worked, but smtube/mplayer no sound after which aplay
also no sound. I ran the full wizard and rebooted, still no sound. Similar problems on the DELL B130 - sound is frequently lost.

Sound has now stopped working in Wary Puppy too. Poweroff and on did not help Alsa Wizard to play a test sound, but aplay works again in Lucid 2016.
My notes say no sound in Slacko (and odd video).

With sound working, I tried smtube and discovered wifi no longer works - with Dougal's Wizard or Frisbee. Network is detected but DHCP fails.

wireless log says I need b43 firmware for the Linksys pcmcia card. I did not need it a few minutes ago or on the last laptop.

Belkin card works with Dougal's Wizard, at 12.3MBps download. In the ACER it ran about 629Kbps, repeatedly, and the Linksys B43 worked fine.

Are these problems (sound, network wizard and wifi cards acting differently in different computers) hardware conflicts?

The T23 has dead CMOS battery - I bypass the errors with ESC and leave BIOS defaults. (Fan error, etc.)

[Walter Dnes]

Re: no sound. I'm assuming that "alsamixer" exists in Puppy. In a terminal (e.g. xterm or roxterm or whatever) execute the command "alsamixer" to check whether or not sound is muted. The default on my Gentoo desktop is to mute on the first startup.

See the screen capture below. Your setup may have different items, but will be similar looking. Note the "MM" (muting set) under the "master" item. In the "alsamixer" program, use the left and right arrow keys to get under the item you wish to adjust. The up and down arrows raise/lower levels. Try to avoid red. Tap the "m" key to toggle muting on/off. Once you have the desired setting, tap the {ESCAPE} key to exit (YES!). To retain the settings after the next bootup, in the terminal AS ROOT execute the command...

Code: Select all

alsactl store

[sindi]

Thanks for the suggestions on sound. Lucid Puppy's sound setup includes a mixer (not
alsamixer) and I had already checked that sound was not muted. On some hardware with i810 it
is muted on first boot. As an experiment I muted and then unmuted everything - no help.
Hardware IRQ conflict?

I don't know why the same sound and network software acts so differently on different
hardware. And why a wifi card will work in one laptop and not another with the same OS, or
work at a different speed. Also IRQ conflict? I have cards that work in Wary Puppy but not
Lucid Puppy and vice versa, but that is a driver problem.

Pale Moon works perfectly on the Thinkpad T23 Pentium III. Except for (sometimes) no sound in
Youtube (HTML5) after sound worked with mplayer after not working with sound setup. I did not
try flash, since sound had by then stopped working with mplayer. Could HTML5 be messing up
ALSA?

It would be nice to get the sound setup second button working (test sound after adjusting
mixer).

I have given people laptops with bad floppy or CD-drives (set up from flash drive), USB ports,
trackpads (plug in a PS/2 mouse - serial port was also bad), bad or no internal wifi slots
(use pcmcia wifi or ethernet), bad keys (xvkbd). I don't have spare USB headphones so sound
has to work consistently.

[sindi]

The sound was not muted at any time - I checked with the Sound Setup program. Today it works on Acer and Thinkpad. Maybe it takes Sundays off.

Thinkpad T23 PIII

HTML5 or Flash 11 (SSE) use 95% of cpu including Pale Moon, plug-in and X. Very jerky and out of sync even at 240p. (SSE slower than SSE2?)
Smtube uses 35% of CPU.


Acer 4000 1.5GHz P4

Lucid 2016, vesa, smtube displays solid blue. Sound works. Frisbee works (onboard iwp2200).
While experimenting I accidentally clicked twice on a video link. The first copy displays blue and the second displays properly as does the third.
?????

Lucid 528-005, Xorg (1024x768). Smtube works.
Network Wizard does not connect via DHCP. Static setup works.
I tried to test Lucid 528-005 with vesa, but xorgwizard does not offer vesa as a choice.
/usr/bin/X is symlinked to Xorg. No vesa in /usr/bin.

Pale Moon Youtube with HTML5 uses 95% of CPU (including X) but looks and sounds fine.


Precise 5.7.1 (missing desktop icons, does not shut down automatically, frisbee and sound work).
Smtube works properly in vesa mode.

So something is peculiar to Lucid 2016 (or maybe all Lucids but earlier versions do not have vesa).

There are workarounds for everything except suspend to ram.
Precise does not suspend to RAM (or Slacko, or Tahr).

[Walter Dnes]

(SSE slower than SSE2?)

That's probably it. The SSE2 instruction set normally takes over floating point math from the older "387" instructions of the cpu. Video rendering requires a lot of floating point math, so that's where you'll notice it. That's also probably why Adobe went with the SSE2 requirement for Flash. Warning: using the old, pre-SSE2, Flash is a major security risk. I do not recommend doing it.

[sindi]

SSE1 flash works but not usably on my 2001 Pentium III DELL Inspiron 8100. I use Smtube instead.
Ethernet PCMCIA - no onboard ethernet and the wifi slot is dead.

I dragged out of the closet my 2002 DELL Inspiron 8100 Mobile Pentium 4. Blowfish tests the cpu at 47 as opposed to the 8100's 31 (where lower is better -
my best laptops are as low as 10). Wifi slot works. B43 mini-PCI card is identified and works properly with Tahr Puppy.
It is not even seen by Lucid 2016. (I have four more of these cards - this one came in the laptop.).
I was going to try Palemoon but the ethernet cable does not reach that far. (Crowded desk).

Tahr: Smtube on the P4-M uses 40% of CPU with VLC. I did not try with mplayer yet. Or Flash 24.
Lucid: Smtube on the PIII uses 57% of CPU with mplayer.

SSE2 is clearly more efficient.

The 8200 is ideal for Lucid apart from b43. 1600x1200 screen, displays framebuffer text perfectly (full screen in Tahr, smaller in Lucid at 1200x1024)

Richard - any chance of fixing b43 in Lucid? I used Frisbee since Network Wizard is unreliable. Network Wizard (large) found it in Tahr.

[sindi]

Moved ethernet cable to P4-M DELL 8200 (and back, to report).
Smtube, 360p, Lucid 2016.

CPU blowfish

SSE1 PIII-M 57% 31 occasionally out of sync or jerky
SSE2 P4-M 46% 47 (50% worse)

GPU drawing test on the SSE2 P4-M 1731. Ten minutes to run. Won't try on the PIII-M.

Forgot to mention we replaced the 1.5GHz with a 2.4GHz cpu on the 8200.
CPU Speed went from 74 (terrible) to 47 (slow but usable).

GPU I think is a different component.