Portable Browser Installer

Browsers, email, chat, etc.
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jrb
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Portable Browser Installer

#1 Post by jrb »

I have built a small .pet for 32bit OS's which will place an entry on your internet menu which will download the latest Firefox, Palemoon and/or Seamonkey, install them to a drive of your choice, remember that drive even if the name changes (usb order of insertion), place an entry on the Internet menu and ask if you want to make it your default browser.

Running this way will save use of ram as the browser files are not uploaded to ram like Puppy.

Older operating systems may need an upgrade of Yad to get the gui functional. When you install this .pet it will offer to download:
http://distro.ibiblio.org/puppylinux/pe ... mmon32.pet to the root directory.

Sadly there's no guaranteeing the latest browsers will work in your older systems. I have tested in Precise-light and Bionic32-light and it works well. As soon as I finish this post I'll boot up Tahr32, try it, and report back (should have thought of that before :oops: DOH!).

Big thanks to fredx181 for the use of his Firefox install script and his testing and feedback. 8)

I just added the PortaBrowseInstall-i386-0.4.pet which will download and install an updated version of Yad if you need and want it. It also will install Thunderbird email client. The installs are now truly portable in that the profiles are contained in the portable directories and will be maintained from Puppy to Puppy.
Attachments
PortaBrowseInstall-i386-0.4.pet
Installs portable versions of the latest Firefox, Palemoon, Seamonkey and/or Thunderbird email client
(20.6 KiB) Downloaded 766 times
PortaBrowseInstall-i386-0.3.pet
Install the latest Firefox, Palemoon and/or Seamonkey
(16.08 KiB) Downloaded 425 times
Last edited by jrb on Tue 14 May 2019, 13:25, edited 1 time in total.

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jrb
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#2 Post by jrb »

I just tried all three installs in Tahr-605 and they worked quite well. :D The only thing which didn't work was the pinstall.sh script which was supposed to offer to download the updated Yad, have to look into that. Worked in Precise-light and Bionic32-light. You can download it from the link in Post #1 if need be. You can tell if you need it if nothing happens when you click "Portable Browser Installer" on the internet menu.

I'll let the rest of you test in other OS's.

Having a bit of trouble with i86_64 installs but will get back to it.

(teaser: I have also run a crude script which downloaded and installed the latest chromium to disk. We'll see what happens with that.)

BFN, J

EDIT: I now realize my Tahr was not "pristine" and contained gtk3 which I had installed some time ago. See post here for files needed.
Last edited by jrb on Tue 14 May 2019, 13:44, edited 2 times in total.

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Mike Walsh
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#3 Post by Mike Walsh »

Hallo, jrb.

A truly excellent idea! It takes the whole concept of 'portable browsers' a step further, and makes it really easy for even newbies to get a browser installed and working with the minimum of fuss, which at the same time doesn't occupy 'Puppy-space'.

Nice one. (And of course, the beauty of the Mozilla-based browsers, etc., is that they update 'in situ' - with the exception of PaleMoon 27.9.4 SSE, of course, and maybe SeaMonkey? Not sure about that; I believe it's only available as a 32-bit app, and I was never that enamoured of it...)

Now then; a suggestion, to 'round off' the 'family', as it were. How about adding Thunderbird to 'the mix'? No reason it shouldn't work, since I proved it was possible to build a 'portable' version of that, too. I use it myself, all the time; every one of my Pups has a custom MenuEntry .pet installed to point to it on a remote, auto-mounted partition, running with the 'FireTray' extension.

Just a thought, you understand.... :D


Mike. :wink:

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jrb
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#4 Post by jrb »

Mike Walsh wrote:Hallo, jrb.

A truly excellent idea! It takes the whole concept of 'portable browsers' a step further, and makes it really easy for even newbies to get a browser installed and working with the minimum of fuss, which at the same time doesn't occupy 'Puppy-space'.

Nice one. (And of course, the beauty of the Mozilla-based browsers, etc., is that they update 'in situ' - with the exception of PaleMoon 27.9.4 SSE, of course, and maybe SeaMonkey? Not sure about that; I believe it's only available as a 32-bit app, and I was never that enamoured of it...)

Now then; a suggestion, to 'round off' the 'family', as it were. How about adding Thunderbird to 'the mix'? No reason it shouldn't work, since I proved it was possible to build a 'portable' version of that, too. I use it myself, all the time; every one of my Pups has a custom MenuEntry .pet installed to point to it on a remote, auto-mounted partition, running with the 'FireTray' extension.

Just a thought, you understand.... :D


Mike. :wink:
Thanks Mike, I'll have a look at the Thunderbird website and see what I can do. The only problem I've had is getting them to run profiles within the portable directory. Using your launch script from Palemoon_portable-28.3.0-i386.tar.gz and cding into the portable directory opens up two profiles, one in root and one in the portable folder. :?

Haven't had much time in the last couple of days, my sewage line is clogged and the women in the household are not impressed with no showers and no laundry. A friend has lent me his backhoe and given me 10 minutes of instruction. Promises to be a real adventure. Oh well, that's life in the Great White North.

Cheers, J

kuman11
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#5 Post by kuman11 »

jrb,

if I install this on a portable HD, could the browser be used when I run my Puppy in a Ram mode?

kuman11
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#6 Post by kuman11 »

It's not all is quiet on the Western (Puppy) front ...

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Mike Walsh
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#7 Post by Mike Walsh »

Morning, jrb.

You may find having a read of the 'Portable-Thunderbird' thread helps. I know backi was having 'issues' with the extra profile in /root/.thunderbird...

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=115447

(Mind you, it turned out he was jumping the gun a bit, and was trying to copy his profile across while it was still inside the extracted tarball folder... :roll:)

Personally, I simply created the 'profile' directory and copied everything across before I ran the 'tb' script for the first time. Worked like a charm.

Another thing I've found is that even if you're running a mixture of 32- and 64-bit Puppies, you can still 'share' the same profile between T-Birds/Quantums/Palemoons/whatever. There's nothing arch-specific in the profile at all; it's all text files, databases and CSS stuff.

Thus, you can 'install' your 'portable-whatever' to its intended location, then sym-link a common profile directory into it before firing up for the first time....

Easy-peasy.


Mike. :wink:

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Mike Walsh
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#8 Post by Mike Walsh »

kuman11 wrote:jrb,

if I install this on a portable HD, could the browser be used when I run my Puppy in a Ram mode?
Hi, kuman11.

Yes, of course it can. That's kinda the point of it being 'portable', y'know? You can 'install' this to any external device (HDD, flash-drive, SD card, etc). So long as Puppy can read it, it'll work.....because the 'profile' is self-contained along with it.


Mike. :wink:

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jrb
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#9 Post by jrb »

Mike Walsh wrote:Morning, jrb.

You may find having a read of the 'Portable-Thunderbird' thread helps. I know backi was having 'issues' with the extra profile in /root/.thunderbird...

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=115447

(Mind you, it turned out he was jumping the gun a bit, and was trying to copy his profile across while it was still inside the extracted tarball folder... :roll:)

Personally, I simply created the 'profile' directory and copied everything across before I ran the 'tb' script for the first time. Worked like a charm.

Another thing I've found is that even if you're running a mixture of 32- and 64-bit Puppies, you can still 'share' the same profile between T-Birds/Quantums/Palemoons/whatever. There's nothing arch-specific in the profile at all; it's all text files, databases and CSS stuff.

Thus, you can 'install' your 'portable-whatever' to its intended location, then sym-link a common profile directory into it before firing up for the first time....

Easy-peasy.


Mike. :wink:
Good morning Mike, Thanks for answering kuman11's question.

I got Thunderbird working in Portabrowseinstaller, pretty much the same as setting up seamonkey. I'll see if I can puzzle out the profile situation and then post the new version.

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RetroTechGuy
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#10 Post by RetroTechGuy »

jrb wrote: I got Thunderbird working in Portabrowseinstaller, pretty much the same as setting up seamonkey. I'll see if I can puzzle out the profile situation and then post the new version.
Cool jrb, I'll have to look at this also... :-)
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Mike Walsh
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#11 Post by Mike Walsh »

Morning, jrb.

Just so's you're aware of this, I thought I'd check something last night. I looked to see whether or not I had in fact deleted the /root/.thunderbird directory in each Puppy after switching the kennels across to the portable version. I booted into all 8 Pups last night in turn, made sure the directory no longer existed, then fired up TB.

No problems at all, same as for the last year.....

So; the advice in the TB thread still stands, as it does with Fred's portable-Quantum thread. If you want to use an existing profile with the portables:-

Before you fire it up for the first time:-

1) Create a new 'profile' directory within the portable app's directory.
2) Copy the contents of the profile across to it.
3) Delete the old profile directory in /root/.xxxxx (whatever)

OR (if you've already run it and a profile directory has been created), simply delete the contents of 'profile', then follow steps 2 & 3 above.


Mike. :wink:

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rufwoof
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#12 Post by rufwoof »

Nice!

I tend to run two browsers (included seamonkey, installed chrome) as I have one set to route via hashbang (socks ssh tunnel for all http and dns traffic), the other with no socks proxy (so routes http/dns via my ISP). i.e. I trust my ISP more for things like online banking and entering userid/passwords for some sites. When I run chrome twice it doesn't have that routing separation just seems to pick up on whatever routing the first loaded version is set to use.
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jrb
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#13 Post by jrb »

I just added the PortaBrowseInstall-i386-0.4.pet which will download and install an updated version of Yad if you need and want it. It also will install Thunderbird email client. The installs are now truly portable in that the profiles are contained in the portable directories and will be maintained from Puppy to Puppy.

Minimally tested in Precise-light, Bionic32-light, Tahr-605 and Xenial-705.
In Tahr only Palemoon would run until I installed:
  • libgtk-3-common_3.10.8
    libxkbcommon0_0.4.1
    libgtk-3-0_3.10.8
Thanks to Mike Walsh for the advice on getting portable profiles working.

Cheers, J

tlchost
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#14 Post by tlchost »

jrb wrote:I just added the PortaBrowseInstall-i386-0.4.pet which will download and install an updated version of Yad if you need and want it. It also will install Thunderbird email client.
Do you know if the Thunderbird handles multiple profiles? Thanks

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Mike Walsh
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#15 Post by Mike Walsh »

@ tlchost:-

Probably the simplest way to handle that would be to utilise multiple launchers, the way I've done with Palemoon 27.9.4_SSE on my ancient Dell lappie.

One launcher/profile is the normal, everyday one. I've set up a second launcher/profile simply for viewing YouTube; starting Palemoon with the home page set to YouTube, and configured to start with the window in a minimised state.

The 'standard' launcher (plmn) looks like this (pretty much lifted straight from Fred's Quantum-portable launch script):-

Code: Select all

#!/bin/sh

#LAUNCHDIR="$(cd "$(dirname "$0")"; pwd)"
LAUNCHDIR="$(dirname "$(readlink -f "$0")")"
mkdir "$LAUNCHDIR/profile" 2> /dev/null
 "$LAUNCHDIR/launch" "$@" -profile "$LAUNCHDIR/profile"
The second 'launcher' (plmn2), however, is a wee bit different.....and looks like this:-

Code: Select all

#!/bin/sh

#LAUNCHDIR="$(cd "$(dirname "$0")"; pwd)"
LAUNCHDIR="$(dirname "$(readlink -f "$0")")"
mkdir "$LAUNCHDIR/profile2" 2> /dev/null
 "$LAUNCHDIR/launch" "$@" -profile "$LAUNCHDIR/profile2"
Note where 'profile' has been modified to 'profile2'. This same method will work for all the Mozilla-based applications,,,,,T-Bird included.

Perhaps not a good example, TBH. Where mine says 'launch', the script will normally call 'firefox' or 'palemoon' or'seamonkey' or 'thunderbird' (the relevant executable). Mine calls a second script, because this is a modification of watchdog's original build of Palemoon 27.9.4_SSE, which uses a glibc 'tweak' from Tahrpup. In this case, it's that script, using several 'LD_LIBRARY_PATH' calls for the 'internal' glibc that actually starts Palemoon.

My own launcher script for a 'portable' version of TB 45 (the last that didn't need GTK-3.0) looks like this:-

Code: Select all

#!/bin/sh

#LAUNCHDIR="$(cd "$(dirname "$0")"; pwd)"
LAUNCHDIR="$(dirname "$(readlink -f "$0")")"
mkdir "$LAUNCHDIR/profile" 2> /dev/null
"$LAUNCHDIR/thunderbird" "$@" -profile "$LAUNCHDIR/profile"
Yah, that's a better example. The same principle holds true, however; you'd just modify 'profile' to read 'profile2' or 'profile3', or whatever name you wanted to give it. As long as you tell it what to call the profile, and then to run with that profile, you're home & dry.

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

In theory, there's no limit to the number of profiles you could set up like this.....and every launcher/profile could have its own, individual Menu entry. Or a single Menu entry, which could then call a small GTK-dialog or YAD GUI with buttons to choose which one you want to launch. Or....well; use your imagination!

Sky's the limit, really..... :D

(Works well enough for my purposes; I'm not short of RAM/Puppy-space, etc, to put this method to good use. It may, however, not be what you're looking for...)

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

@ jrb:-

Not trying to take the thread over, honest! I just happened to know of a method for doing what tlchost asked about, 'cos I've used it for a while myself, very successfully. So, I replied (at length....) :lol:


Mike. :wink:

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#16 Post by jrb »

Mike Walsh wrote:Not trying to take the thread over, honest! I just happened to know of a method for doing what tlchost asked about, 'cos I've used it for a while myself, very successfully. So, I replied (at length....) :lol:


Mike. :wink:
8) No problem Mike, I was about to refer tlchost to you as the expert. You were too quick for me.

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#17 Post by Mike Walsh »

@ jrb:-

Crikey; I don't know as I'd call myself the 'expert' on this, mate. Be that as it may, I've been playing around with multiple profiles in these 'portables' for 2 or 3 months so far. I think I'm kinda getting the hang of it, ATM.

No getting away from one thing, though. Profiles (even newly created ones!) take up a fair bit of space. Running multiple profiles, you very definitely need space to store them, in addition to a method for calling whichever one you want. I'm leaning towards the idea of a single MenuEntry for each app, calling a small YAD-powered GUI with buttons to start it with whichever profile you want to utilise for the day/session.

Like this:-


Image


What d'you think? (I might even build an 'all-in-one', a single MenuEntry for all the Mozilla-based apps on my system, with a combined GUI for everything. I just haven't made up my mind quite how I'm going to approach it yet.)

I use the '--no-buttons' option (which does away with the 'OK' and 'Cancel' buttons), along with the '--close-on-unfocus' option. This latter command ensures that as soon as the browser/whatever opens, the selector dialog box auto-closes by itself. Which is neat, but it does require an up-to-date version of YAD, since this option came in, so I believe, with 0.38.0.

Smokey01's YAD guide has proven invaluable over the last 18 months or so. It's quite an eye-opener as to just what's possible with it.


Mike. :wink:

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jrb
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#18 Post by jrb »

Mike Walsh wrote:@ jrb:-

Crikey; I don't know as I'd call myself the 'expert' on this, mate. Be that as it may, I've been playing around with multiple profiles in these 'portables' for 2 or 3 months so far. I think I'm kinda getting the hang of it, ATM.

No getting away from one thing, though. Profiles (even newly created ones!) take up a fair bit of space. Running multiple profiles, you very definitely need space to store them, in addition to a method for calling whichever one you want. I'm leaning towards the idea of a single MenuEntry for each app, calling a small YAD-powered GUI with buttons to start it with whichever profile you want to utilise for the day/session.

Like this:-


Image


What d'you think? (I might even build an 'all-in-one', a single MenuEntry for all the Mozilla-based apps on my system, with a combined GUI for everything. I just haven't made up my mind quite how I'm going to approach it yet.)

I use the '--no-buttons' option (which does away with the 'OK' and 'Cancel' buttons), along with the '--close-on-unfocus' option. This latter command ensures that as soon as the browser/whatever opens, the selector dialog box auto-closes by itself. Which is neat, but it does require an up-to-date version of YAD, since this option came in, so I believe, with 0.38.0.

Smokey01's YAD guide has proven invaluable over the last 18 months or so. It's quite an eye-opener as to just what's possible with it.


Mike. :wink:
I'm afraid I haven't used multiple profiles in anything that I can think of. Everyone in my house has their own machine (mostly out of the tip).

I think if I premade a certain number of profile directories for each app, ie: profile1, profile2, profile3 and then built a yad dialog, as you suggest, into the launch script it would be doable with my skill-set (being optimistic here). Hopefully that would meet user's needs?

As for the all in one MenuEntry, it would work for you, but I think it might be confusing for anyone else using your machine. I think I'll keep mine to a menu-entry for each app. (KISS)

BTW, I copied the yad dialog I used in PortaBrowse from your Palemoon-portable. I had never used yad before. Thanks

Cheers, J

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Mike Walsh
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#19 Post by Mike Walsh »

Morning, jrb.

See, this illustrates the primary difference between thee and me. I've just been having a look through some of the scripts in the PortaBrowse installer.

I'm good at doing the visual stuff; pretty GUIs, and all that malarkey. I've never been so good with the code.....though I'm learning as time goes by.

I can put together some really neat-looking GUIs.....but I need somebody like you (and others like you) to help out with the backend. GUIs are no good unless they DO something! :lol:

(BTW, I agree with ya. Definitely K.I.S.S..! It's why I'm such a proponent of AppImages, self-extracting scripts, 'portables', and the like. The easier we can make it for newcomers to the kennels to get things up-and-running, the better as far as I'm concerned.)
jrb wrote:BTW, I copied the yad dialog I used in PortaBrowse from your Palemoon-portable. I had never used yad before. Thanks
No worries. I think we all tend to borrow bits'n'pieces from each other. If it does the job, I don't think any 'established' Puppians are going to complain!

We help each other out. That's the idea of a community.


Mike. :wink:

kuman11
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#20 Post by kuman11 »

jrb & Mike,

I installed the portable & F/f portable on my ext HD and d/l the YAD in /root. I see the entries in the Int menu though it couldn't run the portable F/f when I clicked on it. I started it when I clicked the script in the unzipped F/f folder.
I also copied the the YAD to the HD cause I run Slacko_5.7.2_CE in ram so I have it handy for the next restart of Puppy.

What can be wrong?

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