NOP (Nearly Office Pup) 3.01 final available for download

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klu9
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#81 Post by klu9 »

@gray
R3 out already... have you considered Xdelta patches, so people don't have to redownload the whole ISO to get the few updated parts: see http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=24238

@azieser
what is the benefit of zipping it? did it make it smaller?

setecio
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#82 Post by setecio »

I have a frugal install and would like to update, when updates come out, without having to burn a CD. I suppose this question is relevant for all versions of Puppy ..... is there a way of making the iso extract the 4 frugal files PUP_301.SFS ZDRV_301.SFS INITRD.GZ VMLINUZ so that I can just copy them to ny hda1 partition ? Thanks.

azieser
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RE:

#83 Post by azieser »

klu9 wrote:@gray
R3 out already... have you considered Xdelta patches, so people don't have to redownload the whole ISO to get the few updated parts: see http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=24238

@azieser
what is the benefit of zipping it? did it make it smaller?

I wanted the Checksum file to be included with the iso so people could verify that it has not been tampered with. That is the only reason otherwise I would have to post a torrent for that file as well.

For the moment I just wanted to make the ISO more available and it was not on Linux Tracker at the time. Linux tracker has a lot of people who browse its pages and it may bring more attention to this version of Puppy.

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gray
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xdelta ?

#84 Post by gray »

klu9: I will look at xdelta - I didnt even know such a thing existed! It looks very interesting.

setecio: You could use the isoeditor to extract the files that you want from the iso. The only difference between 'revisions' of NOP 301 is the pup_301.sfs file.

setecio
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#85 Post by setecio »

Is there one built into NOP, or in PSI, or is this the best one to use ?

http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=12271

EDIT : Yep I see it now in multimedia section. :)

klu9
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Re: RE:

#86 Post by klu9 »

azieser wrote:I wanted the Checksum file to be included with the iso so people could verify that it has not been tampered with. That is the only reason otherwise I would have to post a torrent for that file as well.
Zipping then torrenting the ISO makes it difficult/impossible for people to seed the file if they got the ISO by other means, e.g. they downloaded it via HTTP from puppylinux.ca. With a torrent for an unzipped ISO, they could just start the torrent and point to their existing ISO, the torrent client would check it and then they would be sharing it with others, contributing to the file's distribution.

with BitTorrent you don't need to zip multiple files into one file to share them in the same torrent; just create a folder/directory with both the ISO and the MD5 in it, then create your torrent for that folder. When people download the torrent, they will get both files in the folder and no zipping or unzipping needed.

For an example, here's the Linuxtracker page for the torrent for puplet Fire Hydrant Featherweight 3.0b. If you scroll down you will see a row "Num Files" and looking at the list you see both the ISO and the MD5; 1 torrent for 2 files. No zipping/unzipping required and people who already have the ISO can become seeds (as long as they have the ISO in a folder with the same name and point their torrent client to it).

Another possibility: post the MD5 in the torrent description. I did that with NOP 301 r2: http://linuxtracker.org/torrents-details.php?id=5017
For the moment I just wanted to make the ISO more available and it was not on Linux Tracker at the time. Linux tracker has a lot of people who browse its pages and it may bring more attention to this version of Puppy.
I definitely agree. I think every puplet should be posted there.

klu9
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#87 Post by klu9 »

Download an xdelta patch to turn your NOP-r2.iso into NOP-r3.iso
http://www.easyshareonline.com/310678

it's only 7MB in size, instead of the 90MB to download a whole new iso.

EDIT: MD5
efad71eea7a2c22e6ef7dd52a4f1c841

more info on xdelta:
http://puppylinux.org/wikka/XdeltA

Henry
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#88 Post by Henry »

A small question (maybe not small but unimportant), Gray

I guess it's probably related to Xfce rather than Opera or Nop 3.01r3.
The Opera tray icon does not display properly, sometimes not at all (except a space), correctly, or partially in varying degrees. However it seems to work correctly if I just click on the space. Have you observed this? Changing the height of the panel does not affect it.

Here's a related item in the Xfce forum -
http://forum.xfce.org/index.php?topic=3 ... 2#msg13772

Henry

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Scoticus
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NOP 3.01 is here

#89 Post by Scoticus »

I have been attempting to add the OpenOffice.sfs but can't find /mnt/home. No doubt it is something too simple for my but could someone advise (at the risk of a horrible pun) where should I put Openoffice-2.3.0.sfs.

Many thanks

Henry
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Decrease in free space

#90 Post by Henry »

Gray,

I've been using NOP 3.01(now r3) since it was announced. It's the best puppy I've used and the only one I'm using. No problems but one concern I don't understand -

I use the live CD with HDD config file. If I start with say 270Mb in the free space monitor in the tray, this decreases by several Mb from time to time, up to maybe 25Mb in a day or so. Of course it will occasionally increase (as when I clear Opera cache, email, etc., but the trend is inexorably downward, and I cannot find why. If I reboot, hoping to "flush" something, there is usually no significant change.

Of course all my normal data files are kept outside the pup_save.2fs and they are not a factor as far as I know. Naturally I expect newly installed programs to decrease the free space - I'm not talking about that.

As you know, I'm no expert at this. Is this normal? Should I be running e2fsck? If so how? Thanks for any advice.

Henry

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gray
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e2fsck

#91 Post by gray »

Scoticus: Resisting the temptation to tell you where to put it :twisted: ...Any sfs file should be in the same folder as the puppy save file (pup_save.2fs).

Henry: Yes I have noticed odd things with the Opera Icon in the tray. It always seems a pixel or so lacking in height. Must be an Opera thing as nothing else behaves like that.

Regarding your pup_save file filling up, I dont seem to have the problem, but there are similar reports elsewhere in the forum I think. Are you changing file permissions, cos that has a similar effect to adding a whole new file, as I found out to my horror when I did a recursive permissions change on a directory one time and filled up and corrupted my pup_save file :x Since then I made sure all my user data was stored outside the puppy file system and backed up the pup_save file when I was happy with the setup.

You can check the pup_save file using e2fsck by booting puppy using the pfix=ram option so that the pup_save file is not in use, then in the terminal change directory to where the pup_save.2fs is stored and type e2fsck -fy pup_save.2fs.

Give it a try but I dont think this will 'free' your lost space, I have a feeling that there are some bugs with this version of unionfs that may be the cause.

Henry
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#92 Post by Henry »

Gray,

Well, I ran e2fsck as you suggested. _Lots_ of errors scrolled through the terminal and were corrected automatically. When I then booted up normally the free space shown in the tray changed from 247Mb to 403Mb !!

Henry

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Scoticus
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NOP 3.01 is here

#93 Post by Scoticus »

Gray

Thanks for your reply. Looking at it I should have said that I am currently working with a multisession DVD. With the new file manager I have been unable to find the pup_save.2fs location. Could you please advise the path to sucess

Many thanks

Henry
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#94 Post by Henry »

Gray,

I am still euphoric about the results of e2fsck. I have several different historical config files that I can select from at boot. I fixed another of these with similar results. It seems I can fix a different config than the one I am using without booting pfix=ram. Does this sound right?

I still get some small drops in free space, apparently when using Opera. For example, the 403Mb decreased to 395 after a few hours of browsing, reading email,etc. This was brought up to 403 again by rerunning e2fsck. Note that I had been careful to purge cache and completely delete email.

Such Opera data is about the only "user data" that is in pup_save.2fs. Is there a way to move this outside? It was always easy with Seamonkey to use Local Folders that way. Doing this would mean that email did not occupy config space and would be accessible from whichever config was being used.

Thanks, Henry

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gray
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Mail

#95 Post by gray »

Henry, it is easy to set up a mail folder outside the pup_save. You need to edit the opera6.ini file in the ./opera folder in the root directory. Near the bottom of the file, under the [Mail] heading add the line Mail Root Directory=path_to_your_mail_folder.

eg
[Mail]
Mail Root Directory=/mnt/home/mystuff/mail

Then set up the mail account(s) in Opera. If you already have the accounts setup you can cut the mail folder from ./opera and place this in the new location.

Regarding e2fsck, it should work on whichever save file you are not currently using. This check was done automatically at boot up in standard puppy 301, but I commented it out to speed up the boot - looks like I should have left it alone :oops: .

Henry
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#96 Post by Henry »

Thanks, Gray,

For my use it's much better (essential, actually) to get the email out of pup_save. And there seems to be less "hysteresis" now in the free space, although I don't know why that would be.

You made excellent choices with Xfce and Opera, I think. Xfce is very flexible. I had a look at the latest Zenwalk and Vector live CDs today, and they both use Xfce to good advantage. Of course they're sluggish as live CDs.

I trust you will not be resting on your laurels, and we will will see a r4. Barry seems to be working along these lines as well, to have a slim system that lets one easily add or remove apps'

EDIT- Followup Comments Added:

It does seem that moving the (emptied) mail folder out of pup_save has improved the diminishing free space problem. Anyway, e2fsck is good medicine - there's always something for it to fix. I also moved cache4 out of pup_save, which can improve performance too.

Re the Opera tray icon problem noted above: It only and always occurs if the lower (taskbar) panel is autohidden, as I do.

Re your prior removal of the Menu Editor: This item is offered in both Desktop Preferences and Menu Properties and if clicked gives this message: "Unable to launch xfce4-menueditor: Failed to execute child process "xfce4-menueditor" (No such file or directory)." This might confuse the user new to Xfce trying to edit the menu and not knowing the roundabout?

Very happy with Nop in general, Henry

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Progress report - Updated again.

#97 Post by Henry »

Gray,
And anyone else who might be interested. I am one who likes to optimise and simplify my computer for work. Nop is the best base I have found for that.
---------------------------------
EDIT!
First - I guess this is beginning to look like a blog ;-). Sorry, I'm very interested in this but will try to restrain my enthusiasm, and not treat several topics in one place with continuous updating - once this one is settled.

Second - and maybe more important. I just noticed I had recently happened to pick up the boot disk for r2 and was using it instead of r3. Perhaps that contributed to the problem? Possibly, but definitely not the whole problem. More updated findings below.
---------------------------------
The ongoing problem-
It's helpful to monitor both the free space and the CPU indicator. As "grass" gradually grows in the CPU indicator and the free space decreases it seems errors accumulate, which are easily fixed with e2fsck, whereupon the free space returns to it's usual healthy state of 407Mb (out of 512), and no grass. The errors, I think, occur mostly with the use of Opera. A more serious problem may occur if Opera is asked to open a large set of bookmarks. The CPU indicator goes and stays totally black, Opera and the lower left menu cannot be revived without e2fsck.
Another case is if I start puppy, and the lower left menu does not appear and full amplitude vertical lines keep scrolling through the CPU graph. When I see that I know I have to restart (e.g. with the top panel button,) with a different pup_save.2fs and run e2fsck on the ailing one. Next time it starts and may work perfectly for some time with full free space until it gets sick again. If I don't fix it but keep on using it the free space will really go down, by 100Mb or so. When I run e2fsck I always see many errors scrolling by. If I run e2fsck immediately again no errors appear. I can send sample text files of these runs if wanted.
NOTE - I am not saying this problem is specific to Nop, only that I have never seen it before in using many other puppy versions, all with the same basic configuration, all in the same computer. But I guess things would be much better if e2fsck were run at start.

EMAIL discussion - I have about 800Mb, spanning eleven years, much of it technical discussions which I search. (Using Eudora I have hardly lost any in that period.) I have been using Opera and Eudora practically since they were invented. The prospect of using Opera for email is attractive. There were two concerns - the M2 filter (not folder) system, and the inability to decrypt inline Gnupg. I have got my head around the filter system and think it will be OK, with some pros and cons. I found I can easily do the decrypting manually with several console commands, which I could probably put into a script (maybe with a little help?) Of course Eudora, Seamonkey, Claws, and Thunderbird (not Sylpheed) do this easier, but it's nice not to need the extra email client, and Opera is compact and best, although proprietary.

I have integrated Opera into my system with separate storage folders outside pup_save for email, cache4, and bookmarks. Of course all my general data, as well as the old 98se *very* Lite are on other partitions. (I keep the windows for things I can't do in Linux.)

I use the Nop 3.01r3 live CD, with pup_save.2fs, pup_301.sfs, zdrv_301.sfs, and openoffice-2.3_mx.sfs on the hard disk. CD/DVD drive, and a 2.0Gb thumb drive to backup the pup_save. Sigmund's Pburn 0.9 is now very good.

Package management -
This is getting much better, with both Slackware and the ever increasing availability of dotpets and repositories, e.g. Eric's. I have removed Mark's PSI, which was essential for a long time, but now unnecessary. Keep this area simple and standard.

Xfce desktop environment -
Once I learned it and got it optimised for my situation it's superb. Now if I could only get WordPerfect to work . . . no, wine won't run it. And there's my Epson 4180 scanner . . .?

Henry

Henry
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Nop screenshot

#98 Post by Henry »

Hi, again,

Here is a shot of my current and favorite puppy, Nop 3.01,1024 wide, reduced from 1280. It has a conventional desktop that I use very little. The Thunar File Manager (not shown) is very convenient. The upper and lower panels are shown here, but I always autohide them.

A great thing about Xfce is its applets, seen at lower right. The CPU activity indicator in particular is far superior to the one used in the regular puppies, and gives a lot of insight. The clipboard stacker is certainly as convenient as Glipper was.

I also have the latest experimental Dingo, which is very interesting, but of course not ready to use. Nop is eminently usable, my observations above notwithstanding, and is behaving very well now. I also decreased Opera cache, and moved Linux to a different partition, since its partition had not been defragmented for a very long time. Don't know if this had any effect. Another Nop I have still shows the ongoing free space decrease with activity.

Looking forward to the next Nop (maybe with a new name? ;-)

Henry

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gray
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R4 Xdelta

#99 Post by gray »

That desktop looks pretty good Henry. You have obviously mastered the Xfce WM :D

I have produced an Xdelta patch to convert the NOP r3 iso to r4 at http://www.puppylinux.ca/NOP. This is only a very minor change.

How to use xdelta:
http://puppylinux.org/wikka/XdeltA

r4 updates pburn to v0.9 and adds the menu-editor back in.
The automatic e2fsck check of the pup_save at boot up is also back in the initrd.gz boot file. From your experiences it looks like this is needed after all. :(

I expect the next NOP will be based on Puppy 4.1 :wink:

klu9
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Re: R4 Xdelta

#100 Post by klu9 »

gray wrote:I have produced an Xdelta patch to convert the NOP r3 iso to r4 at http://www.puppylinux.ca/NOP. This is only a very minor change.
hey! "my" idea in practice. :D Now I only have to download 2 mb instead 90mb. Thanks!
I expect the next NOP will be based on Puppy 4.1 :wink:
:? what about 3rd-party software? It seems with the 3.xx series' compatibility with Slackware 12 that Puppy is finally getting a snowball of additional software going.

But the 4.xx series will be incompatible with Slackware tarballs, which could mean less software and/or longer waits for someone to release 4.xx-compatible versions.

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