Quirky Xerus 8.1.4 for Raspberry Pi2 and 3

For talk and support relating specifically to Puppy derivatives
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TeX Dog
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Joined: Wed 06 Jul 2016, 17:57

#601 Post by TeX Dog »

hostap works with rasiPi? cool if you did not erase prior install packages are stored under file sub-folders. Should be a way to point to local copies but never had time to figure out how. If you made this work I would like to know how to as well. want to be able to vnc into RaspPi host as a standalone wifi so I can control it with my cheapo kindle fire ( can not buy a 7in display for RiPi as cheaply as a that device ) :wink:
Do need to lock down RiPi wifi since this is going on public buses / trains and the like.

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don570
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Location: Ontario

#602 Post by don570 »

If you're projecting an image on a wall,
here's an interesting video by charbax....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgftx9JRtXg
or large tv screens by Hisense...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQSUqwnoLZQ

________________________________________

TeX Dog
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Joined: Wed 06 Jul 2016, 17:57

#603 Post by TeX Dog »

found hostapd in ports.ubuntu.com only takes a long time to install ( still working scary )

https://frillip.com/using-your-raspberr ... h-hostapd/

found this howto.. looks promising

TeX Dog
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#604 Post by TeX Dog »

don570 wrote:If you're projecting an image on a wall,
here's an interesting video by charbax....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgftx9JRtXg
or large tv screens by Hisense...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQSUqwnoLZQ

________________________________________
cool got a older heavy discounted projector arriving today. Got tired of my better and expensive beast projector not having audio with RaspPi. old school video 800x600 but includes analog tuner for old school video games use. :wink: and a speaker, Couldn't pass it up.

Sylvander
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Location: West Lothian, Scotland, UK

#605 Post by Sylvander »

1
don570 wrote:change

Code: Select all

hdmi_group=1
hdmi_mode=4


to..

Code: Select all

hdmi_safe=1
Made these 2 changes, BUT although...
I think there may have been a slight increase in the size of some stuff...
e.g. The text in the right-click menu is bigger than in the bottom-left menu...
I am unable to detect any significant increase in the size of on-screen items.
So they are still not big enough. :(

2. My wife uses, in Windows...
a. To magnify the displayed items on screen: ctrl+alt+]
b. To diminish the displayed items on screen: ctrl+alt+[
You blip the ] repeatedly to increase in steps, or hold to zoom up.
You blip the [ repeatedly to decrease in steps, or hold to zoom down.
[She used this to help a woman with Multiple Sclerosis]
Anything like this in Puppy?

Dud
Posts: 59
Joined: Sat 04 Jun 2011, 18:17

#606 Post by Dud »

TeX Dog wrote:hostap works with rasiPi? cool
My effort was decidedly flaky - used a slew of how-to's for other distros and managed to get it to advertise but only after a looooong delayed startup - 15 seconds sleep worked about half the time. Connecting was hit and miss too and I was usually thrown out before I could do anything useful.

I think something in a startup script was holding on to wlan0 for a variable period and then grabbing it back intermittently.

I was picking apart the starting scripts and had so many hit and miss attempts that I eventually configured the installation to oblivion, wiped the SD and began reinstalling when I found the package gone from the ppm.
In retrospect I wish I'd taken more note of it but first time round it was just there when I needed it.
TeX Dog wrote: if you did not erase prior install packages are stored under file sub-folders. Should be a way to point to local copies but never had time to figure out how. If you made this work I would like to know how to as well. want to be able to vnc into RaspPi host as a standalone wifi so I can control it with my cheapo kindle fire ( can not buy a 7in display for RiPi as cheaply as a that device ) Wink
Do need to lock down RiPi wifi since this is going on public buses / trains and the like.
x11vnc server works well except some shifted keys are off - the onscreen keyboard works around that. Probably just a configuration miss on my part. Pure-ftpd works too but configuring it is a chore in this distro - I miss the simple frontend we have in Tahr.

I want to keep mine wide open for a round-the-pub-table gaming server and an in-presentation file resuorce.
TeX Dog wrote:found hostapd in ports.ubuntu.com only takes a long time to install ( still working scary )
That takes me to a Debian package that seems to be a different compile - can't get it working (or it's defaults are less ubuntu/puppy flavoured?)

I'm going to go back to grokking the startup scripts for a while - perhaps the package will reappear in ppm by the time I'm ready - I've had a lot of problems accessing ibiblio recently and this might be a temporary issue...

Cheerio,

Dud
Posts: 59
Joined: Sat 04 Jun 2011, 18:17

#607 Post by Dud »

TeX Dog: The Debian hostapd you found is version 2.3 - I cant get it to play.

I found a copy of the help output from the version I got working - I'd copied it to another machine to keep on screen while editing - the version that works (to a degree) is 2.4

So: Anyone know where to get a copy of hostapd 2.4 or later that's Xerus Pi compatible?

Tia,
Cheerio,

Sylvander
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Joined: Mon 15 Dec 2008, 11:06
Location: West Lothian, Scotland, UK

#608 Post by Sylvander »

don570 wrote:change

Code: Select all

hdmi_group=1
hdmi_mode=4


to..

Code: Select all

hdmi_safe=1
Checking these changes in the config.txt file, I see that [having booted and rebooted the OS]:
a. The 1st changed line of code now reads...
hdmi_safe=1
...And the line above reads...
## [An empty line :? ]

b. The 2nd changed line of code now reads...
hdmi_safe=1
...And the line above reads...
## [An empty line :? ]

Any idea what's going wrong?

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don570
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Location: Ontario

#609 Post by don570 »

There is a version of leafpad text editor that doesn't work
with recent linux operating system.

The version that comes with Barry's version should work okay I think??

Try editing and saving with geany text editor. It will always work.

_____________________________________________

Or maybe you are trying to copy windows text and line endings were
confused by clipboard.

________________________________________________

Sylvander
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Location: West Lothian, Scotland, UK

#610 Post by Sylvander »

1.
don570 wrote:There is a version of leafpad text editor that doesn't work with recent linux operating system.
I haven't ever used leafpad to do this work.

2.
don570 wrote:The version that comes with Barry's version should work okay I think??
I'm chosing [my preference] to do this work on my PC running "Slacko-5.7.0-pae->Xfe->abiword".

3.
don570 wrote:Try editing and saving with geany text editor. It will always work.
Tried opening the file using "Slacko-5.7.0-pae->Xfe->geany".
The lines of code [quoted in my post above] look the same.
Do you think it worthwhile using geany [rather than abiword] to ammend the code?

4.
don570 wrote:Or maybe you are trying to copy windows text and line endings were confused by clipboard.
I copied the code from your post whist displayed within Firefox-51.0.1, and then pasted it into the appropriate line/position within abiword.
The result appeared correct.

matty
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Joined: Mon 17 Oct 2016, 07:12
Location: Melbourne AU

#611 Post by matty »

BarryK wrote:Yes, Quirky 8.1.4 is out:

http://barryk.org/news/?viewDetailed=00473
Thanks Barry and others for your work. I've been using 814 for a couple of months as my desktop on a pi2. It's just brilliant.

SeaMonkey hasn't even crashed for me yet, nor could I get it to crash on a link which had crashed for someone else . I did change a couple of things though in SeaMonkey's settings though (about:config) - I increased the max time to "20" for these:
dom.max_child_script_run_time;20
dom.max_script_run_time;20

One banking website still gives a script time-out, but if I choose "Continue" it loads eventually.

The other thing I do, which seems to create stability for SM, is use the uMatrix add-on, which allows me to control cookies, frames, scripts etc on a site by site basis. 1st party stuff is allowed by default and 3rd party stuff blocked by default. So, with my banking site I blocked cross-links from loading to social media stuff on their site.

I don't even need to use Puppy's built in hosts updater.

Great work :D

matty
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Location: Melbourne AU

Re: SimpleVP

#612 Post by matty »

amj wrote: I made the mistake of using SimpleVP to pass an entire video playlist (i.e folder) to omxplayer in fullscreen mode. It worked OK ... until I decided I wanted to stop it. I typed "q". The video stopped. SimpleVP sent the next video through to omxplayer. I typed "q" again and again SimpleVP kicked off next video in the playlist. Because the whole screen is blanked there is no access to the SimpleVP control bar. The only way to exit the playlist was to press "q" repeatedly until the playlist was exhausted. It was a playlist of 189 pop-videos.

The keyboard commands to control omxplayer (1/2 to change speed, i/o to move between chapters, space/p to pause and the arrow keys for short and long seek, etc) all work well.
As amj says, videos play well in fullscreen mode/Omxplayer option in SimpleVP - arrow keys (seek fwd and back) work (not so in the VLC option in SimpleVP). Re amj's problem of exiting a playlist folder, I wonder if there is a way of making fullscreen but with the menu tray displayed, so wouldn't that mean we could simply right click to kill/close SimpleVP from the tray?

matty
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Location: Melbourne AU

#613 Post by matty »

amj wrote:I have no Bluetooth devices attached to my QX814 system so I de-selected the 'bluetooth-raspberrypi' service.

But the bluetooth icon in the tray did not disappear. It just sits there with a big red cross through it.
Easy to fix amj. Just remove the "bluepup_tray" item from the /root/Startup folder. I don't have any BT devices either, so I moved this file from Startup to the "puppy-reference" folder in case I need it in the future.

amj
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Joined: Fri 28 Jan 2011, 19:20

#614 Post by amj »

matty wrote: ... so I moved this file from Startup to the "puppy-reference" folder in case I need it in the future.
I edited the bluepup_tray script and put a # in front of the exec command, that worked a treat too.

On the subject of media player keyboard commands, I noticed that none of the volume control keys for ffplay work in QX814. m is supposed to toggle mute, 0/9 should decrease / increase volume. All the other ffplay keyboard options seem to work OK.

An oddity I noticed recently: If you use simpleVP to launch a blu-ray mt2s file into omxplayer, everything works fine. I get perfect playback on my 1920x1080 screen. But if you mount a blu-ray ISO and then select a mt2s file from the STREAM directory the omxplayer q command stops working. It seems you have to copy the mt2s files out of the mounted ISO into another directory before playing them (at least if you want to q command to work).
matty wrote:I've been using 814 for a couple of months as my desktop on a pi2. It's just brilliant.
I second that emotion. I'm using my RPi3 with QX814 as my main desktop PC. I have various other PC's that run specialist applications but for everyday general purpose stuff it's the RPi3 and Quirky Xerus all the time now.

Sage
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Location: GB

#615 Post by Sage »

matty wrote:
I've been using 814 for a couple of months as my desktop on a pi2. It's just brilliant.
I second that emotion. I'm using my RPi3 with QX814 as my main desktop PC.
You guys might find FatdogARM just as fast and SolydX also worth a visit on RPi-3.

amj
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#616 Post by amj »

In my opinion fd-arm is considerably inferior to QX814. Credit to Don570 for doing a good job on packaging it and making it easy to install.

Having a save file is a pain. Installing to a partition is much better.

fd-arm was designed for a specific purpose - to run on hand-held devices. I trust it does that job well. But the original purpose of fd-arm and RPi are not a good match. If I remember rightly you can't swap the mouse buttons over on fd-arm. For a hand-held device that's irrelevant functionality. It was designed to be a largely closed system and it's not compatable with any major repository.

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don570
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#617 Post by don570 »

Berryboot has a special version of Quirky Xerus 8.1.4 for Raspberry Pi2 and 3 available.

I downloaded and will test it this weekend.
http://berryboot.alexgoldcheidt.com/download/126/

Berryboot install instructions

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don570
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#618 Post by don570 »

Tested and it works fine.
Some notes:
There is a good assortment of wifi drivers preinstalled.
Samba is preinstalled so a connection to a windows server can be created quickly.
DropBear isn't installed by default. But it is easy to install.
http://distro.ibiblio.org/quirky/quirky ... -armv7.pet
_______________________________________

Here are instructions
https://www.howtogeek.com/141325/how-to ... berryboot/

If you are installing from a Thumb drive...

You must decompress the .tar.gz file first to create the img file.

To add the operating system to your card, you must hold down the icon
labelled 'Add OS' and then you select your img file located on the thumb drive.

config.txt is automatically created from the berryboot config.txt file.
It is easy to modify if you wish.
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TeX Dog
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#619 Post by TeX Dog »

don570 wrote:Berryboot has a special version of Quirky Xerus 8.1.4 for Raspberry Pi2 and 3 available.

I downloaded and will test it this weekend.
http://berryboot.alexgoldcheidt.com/download/126/

Berryboot install instructions
Dang Don can I best you at anything. Found out about this a few days ago and testing its limits. Very solid and fast ( as fast as full install)

Its like old school Puppylinux sfs main file < as Alex states recompressed SFS for speed of decode then xz compresses that image > with new save folder idea in a EXT4 full sized single partition not the horrible divide into many like before.

After xz decompression the QX814 image is right at 500M
BerryBoot has its own lookup timer function so best to leave the QX set time function unchecked at QX main firstrun setup.

The BBoot Kernel works great so far no issues, also holds promise that CEC, BlueTooth keyboards, and a few other not fully finished in QX814 could be made functional :wink:

I am running on a USB hardrive and BerryBoot it did reformat it completely, but I copied files to a different USB harddrive and changed the config.txt file to point to the correct EXT4 and all did fine ( no forced reformat ), so if you want to run QX814 and the many dozen more images offered with an existing USB harddrive, format a spare- usbflash first and copy install.

Good or bad BBoot doesnot hide or lock the layered drives data so becarefull snooping about.

also pro-tip the .img files are same as our .sfs renaming image files to .sfs allows QX814 to snoop into other 'donor' OSs

TeX Dog
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#620 Post by TeX Dog »

new added stuff with berryboots kernel ( added temp and lightingbolt )
did not know what device was placing a yellow bolt of lighting in upper right part of screen. was using new BBoot and media OS with that projector that has caused issues before. Turns out the newer kernels have updated firmware to change the confusing square power/temp onscreen with real useful icons. Also found out that there is a feedback on HDMI for its 5v level. The Projector and a long power line to RPi2B+ was causing low power conditions.
Also learned that you can control HDMI power feeds and sdcard speeds, :wink: looks like fun ahead.

Downloading PixelOS image to test next. Should be able to test my Pi3 tomorrow left it, expecting to return, a week of rains kept me from getting back to it.

There is a version for PCs as well, may try that.

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