Quirky April 7.0 - 7.0.3, 7.0.4, 7.0.4.1

[Puppus Dogfellow]

greetings from illinois-land.
running Quirky April 7.0.2
am I the only one having problem with Gparted? tried two USB memory sticks to format as FAT32 appears to run process but failed with warning info {i didn't copy down, sorry..i will try it again}
however Ubuntu Trusty had no problem formatting both sticks..anyone else notice a problem?

I had no problem at all with USB sticks. They're all perfect. It's the hard drive install I'm stuck with. Things are missing and things don't work (hard drive only), and can't figure out where to get a LibreOffice that works with Quirky.

Coincidentally, I zapped the Quirky partition in favor of LxPupTahr 15.03.01, which is my second favorite OS, Quirky being #1! The LXPupTahr has the handy-dandy little "Get LibreOffice" thingy, so I could install immediately and get all my work done. I am running Quirky 6.1.4 on the other partitions still. Works like a million dollars. It is exciting reading the posts every day and watching Quirky develop. HOORAY!

since you've already got april up and running (32 or 64 bit?), you could try using TheAsterisk! 's sfs to pet converter on the result of running jamesbond's fatdog get libre utility--it's what i plan to try, but i haven't gotten around to installing april (64) yet.

this 32 bit pet may work if that's the version you are running. in the past quirky's been able to use packages i put together in precise, so it may be worth a shot.

[BarryK]

Gparted..more info.error message:

"mlabel: error while loading shared libraries: libbsd.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory"

Thanks for reporting that, I will check it out.

Note, I have upgraded to latest Gparted, 0.22.0, which will be in next release.

[BarryK]

greetings from illinois-land.
running Quirky April 7.0.2
am I the only one having problem with Gparted? tried two USB memory sticks to format as FAT32 appears to run process but failed with warning info {i didn't copy down, sorry..i will try it again}
however Ubuntu Trusty had no problem formatting both sticks..anyone else notice a problem?

I had no problem at all with USB sticks. They're all perfect. It's the hard drive install I'm stuck with. Things are missing and things don't work (hard drive only), and can't figure out where to get a LibreOffice that works with Quirky.

Coincidentally, I zapped the Quirky partition in favor of LxPupTahr 15.03.01, which is my second favorite OS, Quirky being #1! The LXPupTahr has the handy-dandy little "Get LibreOffice" thingy, so I could install immediately and get all my work done. I am running Quirky 6.1.4 on the other partitions still. Works like a million dollars. It is exciting reading the posts every day and watching Quirky develop. HOORAY!

There is a LibreOffice PET for Quirky 7.x.

In the Package Manager, look in 'pet-april' repository, or type "libreoffice" into the search box.

Oh, I just remembered, I may have only created that PET for April64. Away from home right now. But, easy enough to look at ibiblio:

http://distro.ibiblio.org/quirky/quirky ... pril64.pet

But nothing for x86:
http://distro.ibiblio.org/quirky/quirky ... ges-april/

OK, I have written it down in my to-do list (actually, a scrap of paper in my pocket), compile for i686.

[BarryK]

I finally got around to doing a frugal install of April64 7.0.2 using the live cd. The installer script worked perfectly....I installed to sdb 3.....probably the easiest Puppy install I've experienced.No problems so far.

A little customizing, just need to remember to save....

Actually, you could put the 'savesession' script into /usr/bin/wmpoweroff and wmreboot, so it will save at every shutdown.

Or rather, it will ask, and you can decline if not want to save.

The "save" window now has a checkbox, tick it, and you will be asked if want to save at every shutdown.

[BarryK]

I am hoping to bring out April 7.0.3 in a couple of days.

What is taking awhile is the new installer.

This is a GUI installer, for all the types of installation, live-cd, frugal, full install to drive, or partition. It also downloads the appropriate file.

Most importantly, it should work with "any" Linux distro, as it is a self-extracting archive, with all the needed utilities inside it.

It has a nice GUI that asks simple questions and helps make the best installation decision.

[BarryK]

Gparted..more info.error message:

"mlabel: error while loading shared libraries: libbsd.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory"

Thanks for reporting that, I will check it out.

I am home now, checking this.

There is NO app in Quirky that requires libbsd.so.0
In the T2 build, there is only libbsd.a, which is compiled statically into some utilities.

So, how come you need it? Have you installed a PET from somewhere else?

[bobtron]

Barry K.-
There is NO app in Quirky that requires libbsd.so.0
In the T2 build, there is only libbsd.a, which is compiled statically into some utilities.

So, how come you need it? Have you installed a PET from somewhere else?

Yes i have installed PET, conky from fatdog64.
What i will do is start over with a new clean install of Q7.0 64 bit
when i get a chance later today.
tnx!

[technosaurus]

Sorry for the spam Barry but I thought this gparted news would be more relevant to Quirky users than other pups due to the roots method and efi.

Gparted's recent release now supports unpartitioned disks and GPT partitioning (finally). This is a requirement for booting efi root partitions using the root=PARTUUID=... (which is the GPT/efi UUID)

This significantly reduces boot times (especially on systems with multiple drives) since device probing isn't needed. The only way I have been able to get a marginally faster desktop boot was with an uncompressed xvesa+jwm+netsurf-fb kiosk initramfs inside an lz4-HC compressed kernel, but that only brought it down from ~0.8s to ~0.6s.

[BarryK]

Sorry for the spam Barry but I thought this gparted news would be more relevant to Quirky users than other pups due to the roots method and efi.

Gparted's recent release now supports unpartitioned disks and GPT partitioning (finally). This is a requirement for booting efi root partitions using the root=PARTUUID=... (which is the GPT/efi UUID)

This significantly reduces boot times (especially on systems with multiple drives) since device probing isn't needed. The only way I have been able to get a marginally faster desktop boot was with an uncompressed xvesa+jwm+netsurf-fb kiosk initramfs inside an lz4-HC compressed kernel, but that only brought it down from ~0.8s to ~0.6s.

Yes, the next Quirky, 7.0.3, will have the latest Gparted.

I also discovered that guess_fstype is failing with gpt. I modified probepart to fall back to using blkid.
That fix will also be in the next Quirky.

Might be better to retire guess_fstype completely.

[BarryK]

greetings from illinois-land.
running Quirky April 7.0.2
am I the only one having problem with Gparted? tried two USB memory sticks to format as FAT32 appears to run process but failed with warning info {i didn't copy down, sorry..i will try it again}
however Ubuntu Trusty had no problem formatting both sticks..anyone else notice a problem?

I had no problem at all with USB sticks. They're all perfect. It's the hard drive install I'm stuck with. Things are missing and things don't work (hard drive only), and can't figure out where to get a LibreOffice that works with Quirky.

Coincidentally, I zapped the Quirky partition in favor of LxPupTahr 15.03.01, which is my second favorite OS, Quirky being #1! The LXPupTahr has the handy-dandy little "Get LibreOffice" thingy, so I could install immediately and get all my work done. I am running Quirky 6.1.4 on the other partitions still. Works like a million dollars. It is exciting reading the posts every day and watching Quirky develop. HOORAY!

There is a LibreOffice PET for Quirky 7.x.

In the Package Manager, look in 'pet-april' repository, or type "libreoffice" into the search box.

Oh, I just remembered, I may have only created that PET for April64. Away from home right now. But, easy enough to look at ibiblio:

http://distro.ibiblio.org/quirky/quirky ... pril64.pet

But nothing for x86:
http://distro.ibiblio.org/quirky/quirky ... ges-april/

OK, I have written it down in my to-do list (actually, a scrap of paper in my pocket), compile for i686.

I have just remembered, that libreoffice for april64 was compiled when april was built with VLC, so has that dependency.

Right now I am compiling libreoffice for the i686 april 7.0.2. Will do same with april64.

Note, to compile libreoffice, you need to be brave, and patient.
I never succeeded, until just recently, even now can't get a clean compile, have to do some hacks.

[BarryK]

Are you saying there will still be a battery-backed BIOS ROM (or even non-battery ditto)? If there is a BIOS somewhere, it should be possible to intercept it, replace it and/or modify it? If there's no hidden function or any legacy function, it'll just be a matter of time before third party files will start appearing. However, if there's no BIOS, recognisable or not, then other strategies may be needed. Which?

Yes, there will always be. UEFI is *BIOS*, regardless of how others may explain that it is not. This UEFI BIOS stores its setting in an "NVRAM" (non-volatile RAM) - but the spec does not specify how this is to be implemented (or better wording: I don't read the spec so I wouldn't know, and even if I do read it, most manufacturers only implement the spec as far as it is convenient for them, cost-wise). This NVRAM could be battery-backed CMOS RAM like from the legacy BIOS days, or it could be a flash-memory. Either way, the UEFI BIOS itself is most likely stored in a flash memory too like modern-day BIOS and it is upgradeable (=read: replaceable) by flashing it with a special flash tool.

Whether it will be physically replaceable like the legacy BIOS chips however depends on the motherboard manufacturer - the flash memory that keeps the UEFI BIOS may be a separate socketed chip, or it could be an embedded flash in soldered motherboard support chip (probably the latter nowadays). But if you really want to push it, there must always be a JTAG connection somewhere to program these chips, if need be. You just need to figure out where is the (usually hidden) connector

Yes, as they say, "a rose by any other name, is still a rose".

Some tutorials use the name "BIOS" exclusively for the pre-UEFI firmware, and "UEFI" for the firmware of win8 PCs.

I am currently working on a do-everything simple downloader and installer, with GUI, for Quirky, and decided that to keep things simple will use this naming. That is, I am not using the word "BIOS" to describe the UEFI firmware.

[BarryK]

OK, have compiled LibreOffice 4.4.1.2, for April i686 7.0.2:

Here is the PET (109.8MB):

http://distro.ibiblio.org/quirky/quirky ... l-i686.pet

Next, I will compile for April64.

[jamesbond]

Yes, the next Quirky, 7.0.3, will have the latest Gparted.

As a comparison, in Fatdog64 we use gparted 0.17.0, libparted 3.1 and ntfs-3g-2014.02.15 (the latest when we bulit it, perhaps now is not the latest anymore); and I actually used this to resize existing Windows 8 partition as well as creating new GPT partition entries to where I installed Fatdog (in the Sony machine I referred to in my wiki). Obviously I have turned off fastboot/hybridsleep/hybridboot/hibernate before I did that.

I would not recommend this to everyone, but I just want to say that the process went very smooth and Windows 8 booted fine after that. I did what everyone else recommended first - use Windows to shrink its partition, but it could only shrink itself to about 400GB. I tried to defrag the drive (took one hour plus) and re-run Windows disk management tool to shrink it - no change. I didn't want to give Windows that *much space*, so I booted to Fatdog, and with gparted I shrunk it to under 100GB in no time at all and it happily booted happily afterwards. Again, just because it worked with me, no guarantee it would not destroy your windows installation.

I also discovered that guess_fstype is failing with gpt.

Huh, that's odd? guess_fstype read blocks from partitions, it does not decide where the partition is (that's kernel's job), so it should not matter whether the partition is gpt or mbr. Anyway, if you wish, here is my patch for busybox that you can apply to create guess_fstype applet from busybox - this is the guess_fstype used in Fatdog.

I modified probepart to fall back to using blkid.
That fix will also be in the next Quirky.

Here is my code for probepart (this script is used in so many puppy tools that people tried to install to Fatdog that I was compelled to provide a compatible replacement):

Code: Select all

#!/bin/dash
# Puppy-compatibility script: list partitions

for p in $(ls /sys/class/block/*/partition); do
	p=${p%/partition}; p=${p##*/}
	# filter device
	case $p in
		ram*|loop*) continue ;;
	esac
	
	# filter output
	ptype=$(guess_fstype /dev/$p)
	case "$ptype" in
		""|unknown) ptype=none
	esac
	psize=0; read psize < /sys/class/block/$p/size
	printf "/dev/%s|%s|%s\n" $p $ptype $psize
done

[BarryK]

I also discovered that guess_fstype is failing with gpt.

Huh, that's odd? guess_fstype read blocks from partitions, it does not decide where the partition is (that's kernel's job), so it should not matter whether the partition is gpt or mbr. Anyway, if you wish, here is my patch for busybox that you can apply to create guess_fstype applet from busybox - this is the guess_fstype used in Fatdog.

Specifically, when I create a bootable flash stick, with esp fat32 first partition, f2fs second partition, guess_fstype returned "unknown" for the first partition. Works for 2nd partition.

I never examined the source code, it may be that the first partition, with UEFI-bootable and legacy-bios flags both set, upsets guess_fstype.

[don570]

I think pschedule works fine in April64. The jobs are listed properly.

pschedule knows where they stored. The following commands work
properly as well.

Code: Select all

crontab -e

crontab -l

So I've concluded there is a bug in the crond utility.
'top' command shows that it is running.

_____________________________________________

[Blackfish]

OK, have compiled LibreOffice 4.4.1.2, for April i686 7.0.2:

Here is the PET (109.8MB):

http://distro.ibiblio.org/quirky/quirky ... l-i686.pet

Next, I will compile for April64.

Sweet! Worked like a million! Thank you!

[Billtoo]

I made a pet of a cli mp3 player named mpg123.

Open the terminal and enter mpg123 to see a list of all the options:

High Performance MPEG 1.0/2.0/2.5 Audio Player for Layers 1, 2 and 3
version 1.16.0; written and copyright by Michael Hipp and others
free software (LGPL) without any warranty but with best wishes

usage: mpg123 [option(s)] [file(s) | URL(s) | -]
supported options [defaults in brackets]:
-v increase verbosity level -q quiet (don't print title)
-t testmode (no output) -s write to stdout
-w <filename> write Output as WAV file
-k n skip first n frames [0] -n n decode only n frames [all]
-c check range violations -y DISABLE resync on errors
-b n output buffer: n Kbytes [0] -f n change scalefactor [32768]
-r n set/force samplerate [auto]
-os,-ol,-oh output to built-in speaker,line-out connector,headphones
-a d set audio device
-2 downsample 1:2 (22 kHz) -4 downsample 1:4 (11 kHz)
-d n play every n'th frame only -h n play every frame n times
-0 decode channel 0 (left) only -1 decode channel 1 (right) only
-m mix both channels (mono) -p p use HTTP proxy p [$HTTP_PROXY]
-@ f read filenames/URLs from f -T get realtime priority
-z shuffle play (with wildcards) -Z random play
-u a HTTP authentication string -E f Equalizer, data from file
-C enable control keys --no-gapless not skip junk/padding in mp3s
-? this help --version print name + version
See the manpage mpg123(1) or call mpg123 with --longhelp for more parameters and information.

mpg123 -Z /root/music/*.mp3 will play all the mp3 files in the music
directory in a random order.

Both pets need to be installed.

[BarryK]

OK, have compiled LibreOffice 4.4.1.2, for April i686 7.0.2:

Here is the PET (109.8MB):

http://distro.ibiblio.org/quirky/quirky ... l-i686.pet

Next, I will compile for April64.

Sweet! Worked like a million! Thank you!

Now for April64 (126MB):
http://distro.ibiblio.org/quirky/quirky ... -amd64.pet

...I don't know why it is so big, compared with i686 PET!

[BarryK]

I think pschedule works fine in April64. The jobs are listed properly.

pschedule knows where they stored. The following commands work
properly as well.

Code: Select all

crontab -e

crontab -l

So I've concluded there is a bug in the crond utility.
'top' command shows that it is running.

_____________________________________________

I fixed Pschedule, at least it seems fixed with limited testing. Settings now persist between reboots:

http://bkhome.org/news/?viewDetailed=00184

[Puppus Dogfellow]

libreoffice-4.4.1.2-april-i686.pet and libreoffice-4.4.1.2-april-amd64.pet mirrored.

wow on the size reduction, Barry.