Puppy 5.01 live CD freezes and flashplayer error => solved

Message

bowwow · #1 Post by **bowwow** » Fri 18 Jun 2010, 19:43

Since this is my first post, I want to express my gratitude to all those who make this great Linux version possible.

My name Is Dave Laurence and I live in the Arizona high country half way between Flagstaff and Phoenix. I am fed up with Microcrap products and hope to be Microcrash free very shortly.

My head is spinning with visions of different Linux versions and their differences. My goal is to find a single Linux version I can deploy across the five computers I use for business and playtime. I would like to start a sideline helping people keep their older hardware going and actually running better than ever. This is what I am experiencing and I think it is great, if I can solve a few problems.

I am a IBM Thinkpad freak. Puppy is running on 'old faithful', a Win 2000 T22 I am typing this on right now. I am running 5.01 from a live CD.

One problem I have is all of a sudden, Puppy freezes, just stops working and I have to hard crash the system to recover. The system tray says I have +/- 315-340 Free memory and the meter thingy spikes before the freezes. I have about 380 megs of ram and set up a 550 meg .2fs file as suggested.

One of the joys of my life was to be able to run Google Chrome on this P3 900mhz machine but I get a constant crash notice and I hope there is a fix for it. Here is the notice:

/usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/libflashplayer.so has crashed

Any ideas?

My X32 Thinkpad didn't like Puppy but SimplyMepis 8.5 flies on it. I am a plug and play kind of guy [probably why it took so long for me to try Linux seriously] and it sounds to me like I have to stand on one leg, balance a plate on my head and jump up and down to install Chrome there.

The command line stuff is like me talking to a puppy. All the puppy hears is bla,bla,bla,bla cookie. I hope to get better at it.

My desktop is a ThinkCentre S52 3Ghz P4 that got a bad bug and will not boot XP anymore. It likes LinuxMint Helena and I was able to recover my stuff with it. I have not yet decided if I will fix Windoze or wipe it with a complete Linux install. If I could figure out how to get my email data, the decision would be ezier.

I hope to have time this weekend to turn a Puppy 5.01 USB stick loose on S52 to see how it goes.

Again, thanx everyone for your innovation and hard work. I hope my rambling and noobieism isn't over the top.

BowWow!

~ Dave

cthisbear · #2 Post by **cthisbear** » Sat 19 Jun 2010, 00:48

IBM Thinkpad >> post your model or specs.
Loose does oldie gear.

looseSCREWorTWO:

"Maybe time to check out -
Puppy 431
Puppy 431 Retro
Puppy 421
Puppy 421 Retro

They've been around long enough to have most of the bugs
ironed-out.
ttuuxxx's VLC works perfectly in 421 & 421 Retro.
In fact everything works OK. "
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic ... 0&start=45

////

o.s. for an old computer

http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=56697

Chris.

disciple · #3 Post by **disciple** » Sat 19 Jun 2010, 04:08

and the meter thingy spikes before the freezes.

I haven't tried 5.01 (it may include a different graph that shows processor usage), but I imagine the graph you're talking about is xload, so when it "spikes" you should see horizontal lines appear as it changes scale. Is that right?
If the load keeps going up rapidly then the PC freezes, you must be running a program that has a nasty bug. You need to try to identify which program it is, and what it is doing before it goes crazy. For starters try running top in a terminal when it starts to spike - you might you can identify it because uses a lot of CPU. If you do identify it, use pprocess to kill it before you get the freeze.

One of the joys of my life was to be able to run Google Chrome on this P3 900mhz machine but I get a constant crash notice and I hope there is a fix for it. Here is the notice:

/usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/libflashplayer.so has crashed

Any ideas?

No ideas sorry, other than using a better browser

I get the same thing, but I'd assumed it was my combination of an old Flash version, and an old development release of Chrome. Unfortunately Flash is rubbish - I'd say it causes almost every crash on Puppy... with other browsers it crashes the whole browser, so in that sense you're lucky with Chrome.

Lobster · #4 Post by **Lobster** » Sat 19 Jun 2010, 04:41

Welcome to the kennels
We are a mutley crew

Here are some training vids
http://puppylinux.org/wikka/TutorialYouTube

One problem I have is all of a sudden, Puppy freezes, just stops working and I have to hard crash the system to recover

Puppy is innocent

At the moment a massive profitable deal between google, adobe, sony
and the usual suspects is tying a flash deal into controlled hardware devices
This will become Google TV

Flash is crashing
Apple has abandoned it (control freak central)

Sorry to introduce geek politics so early
but we need all the Jedi Puppy's we can muster

I am a PC (Puppy Centered)
Windows was not my idea

disciple · #5 Post by **disciple** » Sat 19 Jun 2010, 10:46

Interesting coincidence: just now I had to close Chrome because it was about to freeze the computer... it had been just sitting there in the background logged into my brother's facebook. You don't also use Facebook do you?

looseSCREWorTWO · #6 Post by **looseSCREWorTWO** » Sat 19 Jun 2010, 14:55

@cthisbear,
thanks Bro for that USB Stick formatter. Works better than the one I was using before.

@bowwow
Welcome to the Dog-House! I salvage Pentium 2 / 3 / 4 computers from dumpsters, tips, Recycling Centres and give most of them away to charities. When I started with Puppy 6 months ago Puppy 431 was new and full of bugs so I used Puppy 421 and 421 Retro. Of 20 old PCs I have looked at, 80 percent ran OK on either 421 or 421 Retro.

Now most of the bugs have been ironed-out of 431 I have started using it or it's 2 Retro versions. I always try booting from CD first, to see which Puppy runs best on that computer. If Puppy won't boot or run properly from CD, installing to the HD usually doesn't improve things. I go for a Frugal Install to the HD as it's much easier to Backup the system with a Frugal install, plus it's easy to use SFS files. At an early stage, if RAM is less that 512mb, I create a Linux-Swap partition of sufficient size so that RAM + Swap = 512mb. After downloading a Puppy ISO I always run md5sum to check the D/L integrity.

Puppy 431
http://ftp.nluug.nl/ftp/pub/os/Linux/di ... up-431.iso
http://ftp.nluug.nl/ftp/pub/os/Linux/di ... d5sums.txt

Puppy 431 Retro (2 versions)
http://ftp.nluug.nl/ftp/pub/os/Linux/di ... modems.iso
http://ftp.nluug.nl/ftp/pub/os/Linux/di ... modems.iso
http://ftp.nluug.nl/ftp/pub/os/Linux/di ... d5sums.txt

bill · #7 Post by **bill** » Sat 19 Jun 2010, 15:38

I decided yesterday to take a walk on the wild side and try both LuPu 501 and Quirky 1.2 on this Acer AST180-UA381B 3800 AMD Athlon 64
processor and in both cases the distros went fine business and both
would connect to my in house wireless from a DWA130 Usb.The strange thing is neither could seem to remember how this wireless link was configured on reboot even though pup-saved.If I could figure out exactly
what is causing this situation I am certain it would point to the ills that many users are having with these distros.Is it BIOS,Processor,Kernel version or what ? I had to go back to my trusty 4.1.2 K 2.6.25.16 which
has proven bulletproof for almost a year.cheers

PS I did notice (on screen) that is some areas a ip address that had to many (.) aka dots . example 192.168.1.254. (notice the dot after 254
I don't recall ever seeing this before.

bowwow · #8 Post by **bowwow** » Mon 21 Jun 2010, 20:45

Thank you everyone for your replies, links and help. I will try to answer the specifics from the posts above. If I miss something, bark at me or throw me a bone.

@looseSCREWorTWO => great links! Thanks for the encouragement and Direction.

@disciple, I try to avoid facebook.

@lobster =>Thanks for the vid links. Video seems to be a problem with 5.01. I have yet to get thru one without crashing.But now it is mostly Firefox shutting down.

I hope to join your Puppy Jedi ranks but there is a lot to go thru and time is scarce right now. I'll keep plugging away.

Let me know when y'all plan a march on Redmond or Cupertino or Mountain View. I'll be ready.

@disciple => Yes, I see the horizontal lines but can't get to the tab bar fast enough to close anything.

@cthisbear => My most successful Puppy to date is on my Thinkpad T22, 900MHz with 384megs of ram. It appears that flash components are giving me fits and causing problems. Thanks for the link!

I am going to burn a Quirky CD and see what happens.

BowWow

~ Dave

disciple · #9 Post by **disciple** » Tue 22 Jun 2010, 09:28

@disciple => Yes, I see the horizontal lines but can't get to the tab bar fast enough to close anything.

Wow, that is a fast problem.
I guess you are referring to the Chrome tab bar... so are you always running Chrome when it crashes? In that case I think you should try a different build of Chrome... or maybe you have already.

bowwow · #10 Post by **bowwow** » Thu 01 Jul 2010, 20:17

Problem solved!

When Firefox auto upgraded to 3.6.6 and warned me to upgrade flash, I did.

I just finished a video viewing orgy using chrome and 501 ran flawlessly on my Thinkcentre S51, P4 3ghz, 512megs ram with an infected XP partition using 501 on a 4gig USB.

It almost seems like Puppy learns and adapts.

~ Dave

bowwow · #11 Post by **bowwow** » Thu 01 Jul 2010, 20:19

Problem solved!

When Firefox auto upgraded to 3.6.6 and warned me to upgrade flash, I did.

I just finished a video viewing orgy using chrome and 501 ran flawlessly on my Thinkcentre S51, P4 3ghz, 512megs ram with an infected XP partition using 501 on a 4gig USB.

It almost seems like Puppy learns and adapts.

~ Dave

cthisbear · #12 Post by **cthisbear** » Thu 01 Jul 2010, 22:28

bowwow:

The latest Hirens Boot cd has a cure to restart XP..Vista..Win 7.

It might get you going again.

Have Puppy...still have XP.
Maybe choose combofix on it after booting.
Combofix works 99%
Haven't tried it off the cd itself....but it might
be worth a try first.

Always recommended on Whirlpool forums.
You should also be able to run Malwarebytes from the cd...
but only in Windows...not from the booted cd.

Here are the goodies...contents

http://www.hirensbootcd.net/cd-contents ... d-105.html

Now up to 10.6...direct link.
Copy and paste it in your browser...hit enter
and it will start downloading

http://www.hirensbootcd.net/download/Hi ... D.10.6.zip

Chris.

bowwow · #13 Post by **bowwow** » Tue 06 Jul 2010, 17:06

Chris,

Thank you for the great tool. I tried it out with little success but it did find three .dll files I will be replacing soon to see if that makes any difference.

~ Dave

abushcrafter · #14 Post by **abushcrafter** » Tue 06 Jul 2010, 21:50

Don't bother with 431 it has lots of bugs see here: Puppy Linux Discussion Forum :: View topic - Puppy 4.3.1 -- bug reports and suggestions I am using 4.3.2version3 and it is very stable Puppy Linux Discussion Forum :: View topic - Official 4.3.2.

Frank Cox · #15 Post by **Frank Cox** » Wed 04 Aug 2010, 00:45

If you are trying to help people I would not use Lucid until it is more stable. I am pretty new at Linux -9 months- so I am not familiar with the older versions but 431 is a great program and I tried installing Lucid and quickly decided the benefits did not outweigh the problems.
I had the same crashing problems and installing printers was a nightmare,
For what its worth I would learn how to refurbish old printers and find a few that are compatible . You can easily turn a good deed into a horror story trying to get some printers to work. Epsons have been no problem and the print quality using puppy 431 has been outstanding and the scanner is easy to set up . If you use the iscan program run it in terminal the first time and it will tell you the dependencies you need. I do the same thing and found it is easier to give them a printer than try and get theirs to work sometimes.

cthisbear · #16 Post by **cthisbear** » Wed 04 Aug 2010, 11:43

bowwow :

My new extended Diatribe on fixing Windows with Puppy.
Might help you on old comps.

Full links and downloads to everything.

http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 373#439373

Michael Nesmith and his version of Tumbling Tumbleweeds -
Youtube.Cos you are in Arizona...right.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XoXqJQS2RWQ

Chris.

(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

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