Wary 5.3 boots to desktop with Xvesa

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jrb
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Wary 5.3 boots to desktop with Xvesa

#1 Post by jrb »

Here's something I've been wanting to do since Puppy 2.14 but just now figured out how to do it.

While working on wary-5.3-barebones I decided to have another go at bypassing all the boot steps in the older xorg 7.3 package. Here's what I did.

1.) I booted wary-5.3 in the normal way, choosing country (locale), keyboard, timezone, and Xvesa 640x480x16 (I figured this was as close to a universally acceptable resolution as I was going to get.

2.) Then I used edit-sfs to open up puppy_wary_5.3.sfs and copied in the following files from my running system:
  • /usr/bin/
    X (symlink to Xvesa)
    /etc/
    keymap
    mousebuttons
    mousedevice
    videomode
    /etc/X11/
    xorg.conf
    xorg.conf.
    /usr/lib/locale/en_US
    LC_ADDRESS
    LC_COLLATE
    LC_CTYPE
    LC_IDENTIFICATION
    LC_MEASUREMENT
    LC_MESSAGES
    LC_MONETARY
    LC_NAME
    LC_NUMERIC
    LC_PAPER
    LC_TELEPHONE
    LC_TIME
3.)Then I built a script in /root/Starup called Xvesa-wiz:

Code: Select all

#!/bin/sh

if [ ! -f /etc/Xvesa_done ]
  then
     exec video-wizard &
     touch /etc/Xvesa_done
fi
This script starts up the Xvesa-wizard after the system has booted into 640x480 and gives the user a choice of possible screen resolutions to change to. (interestingly there have been resolutions on some of the machines I've tried that I've never seen before, like 1024x576)

It also creates a file in /etc called Xvesa_done which keeps the script from being repeated when X is restarted or when the machine is rebooted with a warysave file.

The user can also change to Xorg by going to the Setup menu and choosing Xorgwizard. Likewise they can change locale by going to the Desktop menu and choosing Chooselocale. I'm sure a Quickstart screen could be built as in the more modern Puppies.

I'll be glad to upload an ISO if anyone is interested, either barebones or full Wary. I also built one with all the possible xorg modules stripped out, it worked but only saved 4MB so didn't really seem worthwhile.

Anyway I had fun doing this and am using it as a print server. It does a complete boot headless, that is without monitor, so I don't have to have a monitor setup all the time on my print server. :D

Cheers, J

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technosaurus
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#2 Post by technosaurus »

I don't have it handy, but I know I posted it in the pupngo thread. You can use Xvesa -listmodes to get all supported resolutions and then automatically grok the highest one.
Check out my [url=https://github.com/technosaurus]github repositories[/url]. I may eventually get around to updating my [url=http://bashismal.blogspot.com]blogspot[/url].

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jrb
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#3 Post by jrb »

technosaurus wrote:I don't have it handy, but I know I posted it in the pupngo thread. You can use Xvesa -listmodes to get all supported resolutions and then automatically grok the highest one.
I didn't get it to "grok" but Xvesa -listmodes and the Xvesa wizard give "false positives" on at least two of my setups. That is they list resolutions that don't work. One in particular is using an old 40" TV which shows nothing until X starts, the boot setup has to be right because you can't see to change anything! False positives are OK if you're already in X (and read the Xvesa wizard instructions :? ). I also don't want any newbies to get stuck having to type in "xorgwizard".

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technosaurus
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#4 Post by technosaurus »

false positives are a bug, please let someone know if you find one (best place would be the pupngo thread as we are probably the only people with fingers still in the xvesa code)
here is the snippet

Code: Select all

Xvesa -br -screen `Xvesa -listmodes 2>&1 |grep 0x[123][246] |sort -r |cut -d " " -f 2|tr "\n" " "|cut -d " " -f 1` -shadow -mouse /dev/mouse -nolisten tcp -tst -I & jwm -display :0 && killall Xvesa
however it may be better to try xorg 1st, which I haven't tried, but it would be something like:

Code: Select all

Xorg -configure && Xorg & jwm -display :0 || ...xvesa code here
(note that some xorg configurations take too long and jwm fails to start, you can use a long sleep value or tinycore's waitforx or my waitfordisplay)
Check out my [url=https://github.com/technosaurus]github repositories[/url]. I may eventually get around to updating my [url=http://bashismal.blogspot.com]blogspot[/url].

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Monsie
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Wary 5.3 boots to desktop with Xvesa

#5 Post by Monsie »

This script starts up the Xvesa-wizard after the system has booted into 640x480 and gives the user a choice of possible screen resolutions to change to. (interestingly there have been resolutions on some of the machines I've tried that I've never seen before, like 1024x576)
The 1024 X 576 is the actual resolution of my Wife's first generation netbook... even though it is usually referred to as 1024 X 600 --which is what I use to search for new wallpaper to put on the screen... a marketing ploy?

Monsie
My [u]username[/u] is pronounced: "mun-see". Derived from my surname, it was my nickname throughout high school.

anikin
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Re: Wary 5.3 boots to desktop with Xvesa

#6 Post by anikin »

jrb wrote:I decided to have another go at bypassing all the boot steps in the older xorg 7.3 package. Here's what I did.
Hi jrb,

There's one more boot step, that I'm very curious to know how to bypass. Setting up the firewall. How do I make it run on the first boot in my remastered puppy? And if it's not too much to ask, how do I 'copy in' following your pattern, Rox/Geany/or any other essential settings, such as installed programs? And ultimately, how to get rid of that first-run applet, once everything is in place?

Thank you in advance.

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jrb
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#7 Post by jrb »

technosaurus wrote:false positives are a bug, please let someone know if you find one (best place would be the pupngo thread as we are probably the only people with fingers still in the xvesa code)
here is the snippet

Code: Select all

Xvesa -br -screen `Xvesa -listmodes 2>&1 |grep 0x[123][246] |sort -r |cut -d " " -f 2|tr "\n" " "|cut -d " " -f 1` -shadow -mouse /dev/mouse -nolisten tcp -tst -I & jwm -display :0 && killall Xvesa
however it may be better to try xorg 1st, which I haven't tried, but it would be something like:

Code: Select all

Xorg -configure && Xorg & jwm -display :0 || ...xvesa code here
(note that some xorg configurations take too long and jwm fails to start, you can use a long sleep value or tinycore's waitforx or my waitfordisplay)
False positives may be a bug but I currently have one machine, my main one, that has always refused to use Xvesa giving an "Out of Range" error message. Booting to 640x480 and then choosing a higher value allows me to use Xvesa on it. I now realize it was defaulting to one of the "False Postive" values before.

Nice code but with my experiences I'd be more likely to default to the lowest value. Also, I'm a keep it simple kind of guy. :lol:

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jrb
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Re: Wary 5.3 boots to desktop with Xvesa

#8 Post by jrb »

Monsie wrote:
This script starts up the Xvesa-wizard after the system has booted into 640x480 and gives the user a choice of possible screen resolutions to change to. (interestingly there have been resolutions on some of the machines I've tried that I've never seen before, like 1024x576)
The 1024 X 576 is the actual resolution of my Wife's first generation netbook... even though it is usually referred to as 1024 X 600 --which is what I use to search for new wallpaper to put on the screen... a marketing ploy?

Monsie
Have you tried it with Xvesa?

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jrb
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Re: Wary 5.3 boots to desktop with Xvesa

#9 Post by jrb »

anikin wrote:
jrb wrote:I decided to have another go at bypassing all the boot steps in the older xorg 7.3 package. Here's what I did.
Hi jrb,

There's one more boot step, that I'm very curious to know how to bypass. Setting up the firewall. How do I make it run on the first boot in my remastered puppy? And if it's not too much to ask, how do I 'copy in' following your pattern, Rox/Geany/or any other essential settings, such as installed programs? And ultimately, how to get rid of that first-run applet, once everything is in place?

Thank you in advance.
As I remember, haven't done it in a while, you can set up the firewall permanently by setting it up once and then copying /etc/rc.d/rc.local into your remaster.

The config files for different programs are in lots of different places. Most of them are somewhere in /root. If you open /root in ROX and set it to show hidden files and List view you can click on "Last Modified" twice. This will bring newest files to the top, also folders with new files if they're not too deep. Make your changes and see which files have been rewritten. Then copy them into your remaster. For example I always change ROX display to "show hidden files, small icons, order small icons vertically". This is saved in /root/.config/rox.sourceforge.net/ROX-Filer/Options. When I replace the original in my Puppy.sfs it becomes permanent.

For the first-run stuff, You could track down where /usr/sbin/quicksetup and /usr/sbin/welcome1stboot.sh are called from in the startup scripts and change the code. Or you could just delete them from your remaster. (KISS) :lol:

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Monsie
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Re: Wary 5.3 boots to desktop with Xvesa

#10 Post by Monsie »

jrb wrote:
Monsie wrote:
This script starts up the Xvesa-wizard after the system has booted into 640x480 and gives the user a choice of possible screen resolutions to change to. (interestingly there have been resolutions on some of the machines I've tried that I've never seen before, like 1024x576)
The 1024 X 576 is the actual resolution of my Wife's first generation netbook... even though it is usually referred to as 1024 X 600 --which is what I use to search for new wallpaper to put on the screen... a marketing ploy?

Monsie
Have you tried it with Xvesa?
No, not yet... At some point in the next year, I plan on replacing Windows XP on my Wife's laptop with a Linux based distro (likely Puppy) since official support for XP will expire in April, 2014. So I am interested in how well Puppy can fit and work on the small screen, and there are some other interesting projects such as this one here that I want to test eventually. With regard to Xvesa, my understanding is that it is better suited to systems with older graphics cards... so I was surprised that you came across the 1024 X 576 resolution --but I may be wrong here. My thoughts are that I would likely use Xorg to set a ModeLine so as to give me a custom resolution for the netbook --I will have to research this further.

Monsie
My [u]username[/u] is pronounced: "mun-see". Derived from my surname, it was my nickname throughout high school.

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greengeek
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#11 Post by greengeek »

Just getting this on my watchlist so I can read and re-read it a few times to improve my understanding of such things...

der-schutzhund
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#12 Post by der-schutzhund »

how can i switch to xvesa with a command line?

greeting

Wolfgang

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technosaurus
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#13 Post by technosaurus »

der-schutzhund wrote:how can i switch to xvesa with a command line?
from Xorg or the console?
Check out my [url=https://github.com/technosaurus]github repositories[/url]. I may eventually get around to updating my [url=http://bashismal.blogspot.com]blogspot[/url].

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#14 Post by der-schutzhund »

from Xorg or the console?
i am not in console! I want make it with a script!
for example: xvesa 1024 x 768 24bit 60Hz etc.

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#15 Post by technosaurus »

do you want to run the script from X or from the console?
Check out my [url=https://github.com/technosaurus]github repositories[/url]. I may eventually get around to updating my [url=http://bashismal.blogspot.com]blogspot[/url].

der-schutzhund
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#16 Post by der-schutzhund »

do you want to run the script from X or from the console?
From X

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