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Posted: Thu 26 Apr 2007, 21:21
by Henry
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

Posted: Thu 26 Apr 2007, 22:24
by Pizzasgood
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 :roll: )

I am getting the save button

Posted: Fri 27 Apr 2007, 03:52
by rrolsbe
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!!!

Re: I am getting the save button

Posted: Fri 27 Apr 2007, 04:35
by John Doe
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.

Posted: Fri 27 Apr 2007, 04:39
by John Doe
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.

Posted: Fri 27 Apr 2007, 06:33
by BlackAdder
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.

Posted: Fri 27 Apr 2007, 06:37
by Lobster
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.

Gparted in Puppy216-alpha

Posted: Fri 27 Apr 2007, 12:34
by 3133
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.

Posted: Fri 27 Apr 2007, 14:53
by Dougal
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...

Posted: Fri 27 Apr 2007, 15:20
by Lobster
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 . . .

:)

Re: I am getting the save button

Posted: Fri 27 Apr 2007, 15:36
by rrolsbe
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

Posted: Fri 27 Apr 2007, 17:32
by capoverde
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...

Posted: Fri 27 Apr 2007, 20:58
by Henry
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

Can't make a 216 alpha frugal installation

Posted: Fri 27 Apr 2007, 23:51
by vanchutr
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?

Mini-Volume

Posted: Sat 28 Apr 2007, 01:15
by Kal
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

Posted: Sat 28 Apr 2007, 04:03
by vern72023
vanchutr
I run as a frugal install off of a cf card that presents as an ide drive formatted in fat and in fact thats what i am on writing this

one change in 216 is with how it loads sfs files and it is an enhancement not a bug

there is a new program called bootmanager under system i think and you have to use that the first time you boot to specify what sfs files you want to load - its a nice, simple program and allows for a lot of flexibility and granular control

George

216 frugal installation

Posted: Sat 28 Apr 2007, 13:33
by vanchutr
To Vern72023,
Thank your fast reply.
I'd installed frugal installation with grub.exe and this menu.lst

Code: Select all

timeout 0
default 0
title Puppy RAM
    rootnoverify (hd0,0)
    kernel /vmlinuz root=/dev/ram0 ramdisk_size=16384 PFILE=pup_216.sfs PHOME=hda1
    initrd /initrd.gz

But I was failed with this (with loadlin.exe)

Code: Select all

vmlinuz
root=/dev/ram0
rw
initrd=initrd.gz
vga=normal
ramdisk_size=100000
init=/etc/init
lang=en
apm=power-off
nomce
noapic
noacpi
noscsi
quiet
BOOT_IMAGE=pup_216.sfs
What difference between two installations?

Posted: Sat 28 Apr 2007, 15:20
by GuestToo
Puppy 216 is not supposed to need a ramdisk parameter ... so root=/dev/ram0 and ramdisk_size=100000 should not be necessary

i think init=/etc/init should be init=/sbin/init ... i think the kernel uses /sbin/init by default, so that parameter also may not be necessary

the BOOT_IMAGE=pup_216.sfs parameter may also not be necessary

216 frugal installation

Posted: Sun 29 Apr 2007, 01:15
by vanchutr
Thank Guesto for your fast reply (instructions)
I'd found some strange thing:
1. I must put the vmlinuz, initrd.gz and the pup_216 on the C: root (C:\)
2. And I edited the option.txt like that:

Code: Select all

vmlinuz
root=/dev/ram0
rw
initrd=initrd.gz
vga=normal
ramdisk_size=16380
init=/etc/init
lang=en
apm=power-off
nomce
noapic
noacpi
noscsi
quiet
PMEDIA=idehd
BOOT_IMAGE=pup_216.sfs
3. Now my pup216 ran successfully (I'd added the line 'PMEDIA=idehd'

Posted: Sun 29 Apr 2007, 05:00
by Fishy
Where in a full install do you place .sfs files? The boot manager shows the openoffice.sfs installed and the ignore box is not checked.

I placed openoffice.sfs in / just as the pup_save and zdrv.sfs were atomatically placed there.

The openoffice.sfs was downloafed from Barry's site and md5sum checked after download. :D