(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

Flash, I haven't tested multisession yet -- that was something that missed out due to my time constraint, leaving for my holiday.
But, I'll give it a high priority, will work on it while on my "holiday"

BarryK wrote: There is a checkbox in the Boot Manager, did you untick it? -- if you don't, the default is to ignore your selection.

I will boot back in and have a look. I did not select anything.

Another thing I am using a ps2 mouse and it seemed jumpy (may have been loose) will boot up and try again.

on second boot same error as Flash noted above on CD+RW vs DVD with hard lockup, had to remove power to reboot.

Barry,
Thanks for your quick response.

I used gparted to delete all partitions (except the swap partition,which was locked) on my 4G HD and then to create a new ext2 partition. After deleting the swap part. with cfdisk, I also attempted to create a new swap partition. Both attempts failed as I described above.

To create the partitions, I used cfdisk, but needed gparted to format them, which failed. So I used mke2fs and mkswap for the formatting. Then I was able to install -- and find the other problems I reported.

I have been able to do this in previous puppys. It is the most basic way to set up a HD -- an ext2 and swap partition. I ran gparted from the command line, too, but did not see any revealing messages.

The PC is an Aptiva (400MHz, 160MB) that I have used for puppy testing for nearly two years.

PS: Thanks for the link to the Tom Price site! Through you, I am learning everything I know, so far, about Western Australia. Interesting place.

Richard

Puppy 216 alpha seems to be noticeably quicker than 214, when programs first start

Yes, seems that way to me as well. I think its AUFS. When I tried Nathen's AUFS package with 2.14 it seemed faster too.

Through the network wizard, I can't configure the interface.

The network wizard is missing the folder /etc/WAG. I'll attach it to this message.

I'm sure there are some bugs that still need to be squashed, but 2.16 looks like it will be a giant step forward from 2.14. There has been a lot of changes since 2.14, AUFS, init, NTFS/Fuse, just to name a few big ones. This seems like a pretty solid alpha to me.

Thanks Barry + helpers!

Hello,

First, this is another positive comment on 2.16alpha. I continue to have no problems at all with it, at least on those things I use.

Oh, while I'm feeling humble enough to ask dumb questions, there's the mysterious subject of white out files, the accumulation of which 2.16 is expected to diminish. Pfind says I have about 50k of them. What does this mean?

Henry

I have little experience with video, but I've never liked Gxine. Mplayer has performed much better for me, and VLC looked nice (though it was glitched, but that was probably my own fault for using it in a Pizzapup pre-alpha...).

As for whiteout files, they are what makes things that come with Puppy by default disappear when you delete them, since they're actually read-only and can't truly be deleted. Like using whiteout on ink, a whiteout file hides the data from Puppy, so it thinks it's deleted even though it isn't.

There are glitches with them though, especially if a whiteout file tries to hide a directory, then you install a .sfs file that has that directory also. It get's unioned under the whiteout file with the original and never turns up. At least, that's what I think happens. I haven't been paying a large amount of attention to the situation (more concerned with angular momentum, vector fields, and MIPS at the moment, as finals are next week )

As per Barry: Should only get a Save button if boot from Flash drive (or multisession CD).

I am booting from a 2.16Alpha closed CDROM with a USB attached hard drive. With this configuration I am always getting the "Save Button". On first shutdown I created an encrypted pup_save file to the USB attached ext2 file system. After rebooting, I had a working pup_savexxxx.3fs encrypted file but still have the save button. Looks like Puppy thinks the external USB hard drive is a USB flash. Also, I get the saving RAM to the PUP_SAVE file message fairly often. This should not happen if puppy thought the PUP_SAVE file was on a hard drive, correct?

Not complaining just my observations.
Keep up the great work Barry!!!

rrolsbe wrote:Looks like Puppy thinks the external USB hard drive is a USB flash.

You can specify to puppy like this:

puppy pmedia=usbhd
or
puppy pmedia=usbflash

I don't think there is anyway to tell the difference, for certain, in code. The USB class/subclass/protocol seems to be rather unrespected by hardware makers. There is a place for them, but my drives don't seem to fall in line.

Pizzasgood wrote:I have little experience with video, but I've never liked Gxine. Mplayer has performed much better for me...

I find that my gxine success rate goes through the roof if I drag files from rox and drop them on it, rather than clicking on them.

Additionally, I find that waiting for the gxine logo to render before dropping is best practice. If one drops too fast it errors sometimes.

2.16alpha running very sweetly on the whole.
Dell laptop Latitude C400 with Intel 82830 graphics. Xorg shows only 640x480 resolution possible; shows i810 as driver; xvesa starts with 640x480. Editing xorg.conf to include mode 1024x768 allows display to operate at native resolution.
The wireless wizard has lost its ability to save and load a profile for my wireless. Wireless works fine if "use this profile" is selected.

Henry wrote:Hello,

But now a comment that may be out of place here, which has nothing to do with 2.16 per se. It's about the "default" player Gxine. Back in some of the early puppy versions it did work with a few of the "media" menu items. For the last half dozen or so versions it's been a total loss for me whether as a standalone or browser helper.

Henry

Multimedia is important and Puppy is a composite of the programs it contains.
Part of my problem (a sort of scrunched rainbow effect on the top of playing vids).
Solved by changing from the internal graphics, which uses shared ram - thus freeing ram, to an nvidia card.

I found the same difficulty as rerwin. All attempts to create and format new partitions on a laptop hard drive failed when using Gparted in Puppy216-alpha. Pulled out of 216 without saving and booted from 215. Gparted performed perfectly.

Has anyone verified that "pfix=ram" works now? I might get a chance to download it today, so I want to make sure it won't mess up my existing pup_save files...

I used it Dougal and it seemed OK - did not interfere with any save file (which is as it should be)

When you close down make sure you DO NOT save to disk of course . . .

John Doe wrote:

rrolsbe wrote:Looks like Puppy thinks the external USB hard drive is a USB flash.

You can specify to puppy like this:

puppy pmedia=usbhd
or
puppy pmedia=usbflash

I don't think there is anyway to tell the difference, for certain, in code. The USB class/subclass/protocol seems to be rather unrespected by hardware makers. There is a place for them, but my drives don't seem to fall in line.

Thanks for your suggestion but I am not booting from the USB hard drive I am just using it to store my pup_save configuration file. If I use either of the pmedia commands the boot process expects the boot files to be on the selected device. I agree it would be difficult to determine if the USB attached device was a USB flash, compact flash or hard drive; therefore, if there were a boot command to tell puppy my pup_save files were being stored on a hard drive attached via USB would solve this problem. I know most people do not use a USB attached hard drives and if they do, they boot puppy from the USB attached hard drive. Puppy is by FAR the most flexible Linux distribution I have tried and adding this capability would put Puppy further out in front. NOTE: Puppy works fine thinking the pup_save file is stored on a flash device it just could work better if puppy could be told the pup_save file was on a hard drive.

Again thanks for your reply!!
Regards
Ron

Puppy_2.16_alpha first test:

- No bugs found for now, seems quite solid, browsing among videos & audio never gave problems; new firewall version seems faster, requires only two OK's by user;

- Nice icons, grey background doesn't stress eyes - though won't raise wows from graphics enthusiasts; new background faultlessly loaded;

- Sound works well, at least on my old test-PC; Zmixer had no mute buttons, the Puppy mixer has but mutes an input device by throwing its fader to zero. It would be best then if it could keep the fader setting when muted, giving the same volume as before when un-muted, as in hardware mixers;

- Pmount seems to work well, more intuitive GUI.

More to come as testing goes further.
Anyway fine job Barry, always wondering how you manage to do all this...

Hello, Barry and all,

Above I wrote negatively about Gxine. I have just edited that out. Please disregard. I was not comparing Gxine with other players, just complaining that I couldn't get it to work. Well, I have finally got my installation fixed and it works. As usual Barry has shown good judgment in this selection.

But I like to run a tight ship, and have already dumped realplayer and the neat xfreecd I had used as bandaids. Sorry for any confusion caused.

Henry

1.
216 alpha is good when I take a full installation on ext2/swap partitions and on usb stick. But i was failed to make it run with the frugal install.
Is this a bug?
2.
216 alpha was not automount the my .sfs file with full installation?. How to?

Just a reminder that rarsa's newest mini-volume.tcl has not been updated in Puppy 2.16a.

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=8293

Kal