Pussy: potentially a Puppy with a perfect package manager

For talk and support relating specifically to Puppy derivatives
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sickgut
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#1581 Post by sickgut »

Slimming of the default OS has finished!

The default OS takes up over 90% of the 1.7GB image, but now i have slimmed it, its only taking up 18%.

This slimmed, bare version of Pussy Pie will be uploaded to my website
so that others can use it as a base to make an OS or just to customize.

I have already uploaded the apt-get log to the website so you can see what programs where removed from the default OS.

Pussy Pie has a slightly different url than the old pussy:

http://www.thepussycatforest.info/pussy-pie/

If you just go to www.thepussycatforest.info you will see link to the pussy pie project also.

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sickgut
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#1582 Post by sickgut »

Uploading the bare bones stripped down debian and its only 114mb when zipped. I know that puppy for the rasp is closer to 60mb but but this is to be expected as the apt-get system in debian alone is 40mb.

the ony issue with this bare bones OS is that you cant login as root at the login screen, you need to use the user: pi and pass: raspberry.... once you are logged in then you su root, then type the password for root which is:pussy

note: this ony has a ssh server, the webserver, ftp server, telnet server etc arent installed.

this isnt worth downoading if you are a normal user who cannot use the command line very well. It does have Xorg but there is no apps installed much at all. This is only good for hackers and people wanting to build on it to make their own OS.

The proper server pussy will be released maybe in a coupe of days.

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sickgut
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Bare bones debian for Rasp Pi available. Law of efficiency.

#1583 Post by sickgut »

The stripped down base is available for download now from:

http://www.thepussycatforest.info/pussy ... re.img.zip

The README.txt for this is available here:

http://www.thepussycatforest.info/pussy-pie/README.txt

this is realy only for developers or hackers or those familiar with debian and are able to use the apt-get system to install everything they desire.
Xorg and JWM are installed and Dillo is the web browser, i dont know if there is a menu entry for dillo, if not then open a terminal and type: dillo.

Unzip then use dd if=rasp-image-bare-img of=/dev/sdx
to image an SD card just like the normal Raspberry Pi debian image
(where "x" is the letter of the card you want to image)

When your up and running, login as user: pi and pass: raspberry
then su to root using the password: pussy

please let me know how this works for you all, until i get more 2gb sd cards in the post, i cant really tell if my method of using dd to only copy the first 1.9gb of the 8gb sd card im using actually works unless i spend more time making copies of the 8gb card im using so i dont loose the progress ive made so far in the event of a failed imaging.

i dont know how to get the exact byte address of the end of the default 2gb rasp image, and then convert that into to the strange way that dd has of counting bytes (it doesnt use 1024 as a MB, it uses 1000). If someone has already figured out this info or has a link to something helpful online, then please post here.

when the 2gb sd cards come in the mail and i have the ability to use multiple images quickly and compare them i will have a look at Barry's Puppy Pi and how it is setup to use a compressed file system.
As far as i under stand it, there are a couple of rasp pi system partitions at the start of the normal image that boot everything up, but once its up and going, you can do whatever the hell you like with the OS partition as long as rasp pi system stuff knows where to look to boot the OS. I bet i could grab the Puppy Pi image and put it on the sd card, then simply swap out the Puppy files for the Debian ones within the squashfs filesystem.

only time will tell.....

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#1584 Post by sickgut »

Just tested the Puppy SAP from Barry, i thought it was supposed to have a .sfs squashed filesystem but it doesnt. It is roughly the same size as Pussy except that Barry's download package uses a different form of compression.

i dont know why the Puppy SAP needs minutes to boot the first time, to set stuff up? Its an image for the rasp, everyone is running the same hardware.... why do we need to waste time detecting stuff? Why not ship an image that has been booted once to begin with?

I am deciding if we should go up in card size to 4gb for the standard image, as 2gb cards are not really being sold much anymore. This will also save people from needing to mess with the configuration much when they want to make use of all the space on their 4gb card after they image it with a 2gb image.

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#1585 Post by sickgut »

If there are technical problems with the rasp pi image of the pussy from the website then fire up gparted on the linux machine you are imaging your sd card with and remove whatever junk partition is left at the end of the sd card if there is one, that is after the 1.7gb linux partition. This should clear it right up. This wont be an issue when i receive my 2gb sd cards in the mail soon, as i will be able to get the image size to be exactly the right size for a 2gb card and that will sort it all out.

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#1586 Post by sickgut »

Here is a copy and paste from a ssh/ putty session on the rasp pi immediately after logging in, you will see how efficient we have the ram usage:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
login as: root
root@192.168.1.102's password:
Linux raspberrypi 3.1.9+ #168 PREEMPT Sat Jul 14 18:56:31 BST 2012 armv6l

The programs included with the Debian GNU/Linux system are free software;
the exact distribution terms for each program are described in the
individual files in /usr/share/doc/*/copyright.

Debian GNU/Linux comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY, to the extent
permitted by applicable law.

Type 'startx' to launch a graphical session

Last login: Sat Aug 4 11:00:00 2012 from 192.168.1.21
root@raspberrypi:~# free
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 188080 39532 148548 0 7632 18656
-/+ buffers/cache: 13244 174836
Swap: 0 0 0
root@raspberrypi:~#

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

This shows the RAM usage, of the 39.5mb used, 13.2mb is cached and buffered, this in effect is still free ram for all intents and purposes, meaning that 26.3mb is the true figure of what is actually being used. This also included the ssh session that is spawned by me logging in via the network. I suspect the a user using the keyboard sitting in front of the Pi would have even less RAM usage. This we well on target for the efficiency that i expected to achieve with Pussy for the Pi. The idea here is to avoid swap where possible as sd card using swap is just a recipe for very long pauses and ugliness.

This readout was pasted from a putty session using the currently available version of Pussy Pie from the website.

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Pussy Pie Server edition released

#1587 Post by sickgut »

Pussy Pie Server Edition for the Raspberry Pi is ready for download:

http://www.thepussycatforest.info/pussy ... server.zip

203MB in size. Unzip and then image to a 2gb or larger SD card the same way you would the with most other OSes for the Rasp Pi:

dd if=pussy-pie-server.img of=/dev/sdx (where the "x" is the letter of the sd card you wish to image.) Use fdisk -l (lowercase L) in a Linux system to see a readout of the drive attached to your computer if you have any doubt as to what the letter of the sd card is then this command will help you track it down.

Even tho i had found alot more stuff could remove from the previous edtion and the space increased from the server apps i added to this is probably equal to the amount of that which i had deleted, this image is larger for some reason by 100mb. Altho this is perfectly functional, i suspect the size difference is because i didnt zero out the partitions before i backed up the sd card and zipped it and uploaded it to the website. I usually use dd to create a huge file and then delete it, so that every available spare sector on the disk is turned to zero while keeping the data safe. This usually results in smaller images after they are zipped.

This version is basicly the same as the recently released bare image + the addition of the following:

lighttpd (webserver), pure-ftpd (ftp server), telnetd (telnet server), screen (utility that lets you manage virtual screens console screens).

There is a brief message that displays immediately after boot that tells gives you an idea of what apps are installed and what services are running on what ports as well as how to configure the Rasp.

There is a bare xorg/ jwm X environment that lets you run dillo (click www-browser) and open and manage terminal sessions more efficiently.
Altho there is no real use for it in a server OS, the sound is properly configured.

If you want to install anything then run: apt-get update, then apt-get install <program>.

This OS will boot without needing any kind of monitor and you can ssh/ telnet into it immediately. There is no need for a network manager as the dhcp works excellently and that is pretty much all you need for an ethernet wired network.

Keyboard and or local reconfiguring via the 'raspi-config' application may cause a long pause when any of these selections are chosen. I initially thought that the Rasp had crashed but its fine, it just takes half or minute to a minute or so.

There is no auto swapfile setup on boot. There is such little RAM used once this thing is booted that there is no real need for a swapfile. Swapping on an SD card takes forever, so the idea was to avoid swapping completely. 256mb ram is more than enough to run dillo, multiple terminal sessions and all your server services.

If there are any technical probs then please let me know.

The next Pussy Pie will be more game/ media orientated.

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#1588 Post by greengeek »

Excellent. Downloading now - just got to get my hands on my pie...

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#1589 Post by sickgut »

At present there is already a number of free OpenGL based first person shooter games available for the Rasp Pi, that are already precomiled and ready to apt-get install.

Open Arena and Assault Cube are there and today i am installing and testing them. The outcome of this bit of research will determine the content of the next release of Pussy Pie. However, games are huge and either we will need to officially move up to a 4gb image rather than a 2gb and or squashfs the games and mount them in fstab so it operates seamlessly with the existing file system but also takes very little space.

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pussy

#1590 Post by Bob_the_plumber »

yo yo yo sickgut, i've registered here just to ask you a question, i currently use puppy 5.28 as my primary OS which is great but i need something new so i searched on the internetz for a debian derivative just for fun and found your pussy.

My questionz are :

1) Can I use your pussy for my primary OS ?? I know it's in beta stage, but i want to use it as my everyday distro so..

2) i don't have any other questions i think so thanks dude for creating an apt-get compatible puppy

yo yo yo

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Re: pussy

#1591 Post by sickgut »

Bob_the_plumber wrote:yo yo yo sickgut, i've registered here just to ask you a question, i currently use puppy 5.28 as my primary OS which is great but i need something new so i searched on the internetz for a debian derivative just for fun and found your pussy.

My questionz are :

1) Can I use your pussy for my primary OS ?? I know it's in beta stage, but i want to use it as my everyday distro so..

2) i don't have any other questions i think so thanks dude for creating an apt-get compatible puppy

yo yo yo
Pussy isnt at its core an actual Puppy, just a debian that i and a few others (contributors) made to be a rough equivalent to Puppy, as much as a debian can be a Puppy.

The Beta-ness of the OS is held to a high standard. Its beta-ish compared to Ubuntu or Puppy that has been established for a long time, but not when compared to alot of other linuxes that are in full release. Pussy is about as stable and feature packed as you can make a debian OS, we did a good job :)

I was on the edge of officially getting out of beta and claiming that it was full release and paying for a spot on distro watch to advertise it. The only thing that stopped me was a bad case of burnout and coding psychosis :(

One good thing with Pussy is that you can get support at any debian support chat channel. But dont tell them its pussy, just debian live squeeze... any advice they will give you would work as we didnt do anything to break compatibility with debain. You could say that support it better than debian because you have the debian ppl you can ask for help or you can post here and ask for help.

As far as i can remember, everything is still works ok and is new enough not to have to be hassled with updating everything before you start surfing the internet and or opening office type of files

Good Luck

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#1592 Post by Bob_the_plumber »

ImageKewl bro i'll wipe my hard drive today Image the stability of debian and the speed of puppy united in one OSImage Image Hats off dude! ImageImage

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saintless
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Re: Bare bones debian for Rasp Pi available. Law of efficiency.

#1593 Post by saintless »

sickgut wrote:...i will have a look at Barry's Puppy Pi and how it is setup to use a compressed file system.
Hi, Sickgut,
maybe this link will help you better:
http://www.pendrivelinux.com/create-you ... tribution/
Based on the information there you should be able to create compressed live cd from debian this way.

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#1594 Post by Bob_the_plumber »

Hmm.. how do i install this stuff the only choice i have is "live cd, live cd copy to ram, live cd failsafe.." frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn about this live cd feature, i want it on my hd. is there a way to install it because i'm so noob that i did not find it. :oops:

NERVERMIND I've read the first pages of the post and there is no "easy" installation, I'll try to find a way or read more.


Well after reading how to do a hd image here http://www.thepussycatforest.info/linux/README.txt i think i will give up, i'm to noob for this kind of stuff and i will surely mess up my puppy / winxp dual boot.. :evil: :(

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#1595 Post by saintless »

Bob_the_plumber wrote:Well after reading how to do a hd image here http://www.thepussycatforest.info/linux/README.txt i think i will give up, i'm to noob for this kind of stuff and i will surely mess up my puppy / winxp dual boot.. :evil: :(
If you have puppy installed you already have Grub boot loader. Then the installation is very easy. Open the live CD from puppy and copy the live folder on the same partition where puppy is.
Then add this lines in grub menu list:

Code: Select all

title Pussy Linux Beta
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
kernel /live/vmlinuz boot=live config persistent swapon quickreboot noprompt autologin username=root password=pussy
initrd /live/initrd.img
boot
Just change the number of the partition (hd0,0) if it is different.

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Rasp Pi no working opengl in the debian image

#1596 Post by sickgut »

I kind of wasted an entire day trying to get OpenGL working with the Rasp Pi and i couldnt get it to work, so it looks like my plans for a gaming system are out the window at the moment. In the meantime i am waiting for a response to my post on the raspberrypi.org forum, maybe there is something im missing...

anyway, will start working on a game-less pussy tomorrow

[Edit]
After further searching, followed links on the actual raspberry.org site and it had a link to download the quake 3 demo and on the site it says simply to compile it as delivered. So that i did, and it didnt work.
Apparently this doesnt work for anyone and you have to ask people how to get it to work. A youtube vid showed how you actually do it, includes copying .pk files from a previous installation etc, then giving the program permissions etc.... So, we where all supposed to just guess this?

I simply cannot believe how these instructions are still on their site, i literally wasted an entire day doing this, and the wrong information is still on the site. Even following the instructions on a youtube video, it doesnt mention at all the method for compiling the ARM executables as following the "just type make" instructions dont actually do this, and the install instructions for setting up the game after compiling it where "just type make copyfiles, they should be copied to /usr/local/games/quake3.." and surprise surprise, that didnt work either. After watching 5 different youtube vids that where tutorials on how to instal quake 3 on the rasp and chasing up accurate documentation for the bits the tutorials left out lead me on a wild goose chase and 9 hours later, i still havent found the actual complete instructions on how to do it.

Its not the fact that i personally failed to do this that annoys me, its the fact that maybe 5000 other people have been mislead by the wrong information on the site as well. See, this is why i only deal with binaries and dont supply packages that require the end user to compile the program, there is no need for it. It wouldnt have killed the rasp people to just make the complete package available, already compiled. I know that people reading this would be thinking :The Rasp is educational, so they want you to learn to do it.... but the problem is the information supplied is simply wrong. Where is the education in that?

Enough ranting for now, looks like we will have to wait till the whole opengl thing is well supported before setting games up.

This debian the rasp people have made for the rasp pi is giving debian a bad name, even the apt-get stuff is broken... if you try to install a propper xorg to get away from their non accelerated frame buffer or vesa video, it grabs xorg but there are dependencies missing, the libgl1-mesa-dri for instance, its required to run xorg, but isnt available from their mirror, and apt-get returns a 404 message, this is after doing a apt-get update.... i dont know why the hell they would put non existent packages in their status file that lets apt-get know what packages are available from their site and what depends on what. They even have openarena there and available to apt-get, but it doesnt work. Why the f*** have a program in your repo that doesnt work? There are other strange things too, the assaultcube-data package is available (provides all the skins and maps etc for assaultcube), but the actual assaultcube game isnt there. Tell me, what use is the data pack for assaultcube if you cant install assaultcube?

The other thing here is that altho the rasp has a armhf cpu, it cant run armhf packages from the debian website, so if you have a rasp, you are stuck with their crappy broken repo unless you compile everything yourself, but that defeats the purpose of having apt-get. Without apt-get working well, there is no point to even make Pussy as Pussy is supposed to be reasonably puppylike in performance etc but with apt-get compatibility. Fair enough the server type stuff works well, but with desktop and games, the rasp simply fails big time.

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HDD vs USB and or CDROM/ DVD installs

#1597 Post by sickgut »

Hello People,

This is just a quick note and survey of users of Pussy.

How many of you view a well sorted out USB stick install as "good enough" and wouldnt bother with installing to HDD? I personally do, i believe that installing to USB is better for a small, "run in RAM" or quick booting OS as the simplicity is great. No need to mess with your internal HDD and use grub, and or risk messing up your vendor provided windows on your new laptop (they dont provide disks anymore!).....

However, i do realize that many people view hdd installs as the ONLY way to roll.

With new USB buses being released (usb 3.0 recently), the blur between HDD and USB is gettng even more fuzzy. I also love the fact that "reformatting my system" only entails flashing a USB disk, and now there are a number of utilities for windows that allow you to do this, so you dont need to start with an initial linux install to get the nerd ball rolling.

I have personally ran the live cd/ dvd on a daily basis when i used to go over the road and use their computers all day, it was convenient and was "fast enough" just to run the live cd even without copying to ram.

I know many people do not feel the same way. And the low priority of "if i figure it out, ill set up an easy to use hdd installer for pussy, but in the mean time i wont spend a billion dollars in search for a solution..." attitude to Pussy has put off some prospective users.

It would be good as a matter of research to find out how many of you would use Pussy if it was easy to install to the HDD... (well its easy to install to hdd with dd but its not a multiboot solution..)

A live cd/ dvd/ usb distro is fine as far as i am concerned, and i feel that many people dont really appreciate how good a USB installation actually is, especially with compressed squashfs and using this method as your save file as you can fit like 20gb on a 8gb stick, even more.

Ok please have your say... lay it on me.

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Re: HDD vs USB and or CDROM/ DVD installs

#1598 Post by greengeek »

sickgut wrote:It would be good as a matter of research to find out how many of you would use Pussy if it was easy to install to the HDD...
Over the years I have been a fan of HDD installs, and have only recently become a convert to usb stick installs. Flash drives are such a good way to transport functionality from one system to another, and as you say, it lets you bypass the OS installed on HDD, without modifying it.

The downside is that many usb sticks are SO SLOW. Depending on my choice of stick a usb OS can either run at tolerable speed, or just be too slow to be practical.

I would probaby give an HDD pussy a go, but I need to address the dhcpcd issue first. There's no chance of me changing my router to get past this problem I have been having, so it'll have to wait for me to follow the suggestions provided to me earlier in this forum topic. Dunno' if others have had such problems or not...

The two reasons for me to not use pussy as an HDD install on the main computer that the family uses is as follows:
1) My Linux knowledge is still not adequate to take that big a step yet. I would feel out on a limb.
2) Puppy has so many users that it is easier to find others that have overcome similar problems. Pussy has not reached that critical mass yet and maybe an HDD-install capable version would break the ice.

One last thing: when I tell people I am experimenting with Pussy, people look at me strangely and the conversation dries up. Any chance of calling it Kitty-Linux instead? :-)
Last edited by greengeek on Mon 13 Aug 2012, 00:57, edited 1 time in total.

jbv
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#1599 Post by jbv »

I did some extensive benchmarking on quite a few USB thumb drives last year.

The performance difference between different brands is staggering. Some of the biggest and supposedly most professional brands are often the slowest in both read and write.

The one product that shone was the Corsair Voyager. It just smoked anything and everything in all areas, read and write. If you are looking to have a USB stick based distro, you really should invest a few bucks and make sure that your "primary" drive is a Voyager. I bought a few of them and will probably grab a few more.

There are a few other things you need to consider with USB based distros, such as the way that any Flash device has a certain life in so far as the number of times you can write to a cell. I don't trust write leveling and like to know exactly when the Flash is being written to, which is most likely my Embedded Electronics Background coming to the fore, but it is something you need to consider and possibly manage. This was one of the key things that attracted me to Pussy. Provided you don't try to put the cow on a Flash partition and leave it in RAM, you are always in control of exactly when the Flash gets written to. There are both pluses and minuses with it though.

For my Linux project, running 100% from the USB stick was a must. Doing this from container files with the squash-filesystem has advantages, and while there are also some drawbacks, it has probably saved my butt more times than not.

Anyway, get a decent USB stick. Even if your system only has USB-2, you can often get a big performance boost with the right stick - I certainly did. Benchmarking and testing on numerous systems has proven it.

Cheers

aarf

#1600 Post by aarf »

Internal SDcard but it is portable opera that destroys the partitions.

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