Quirky Werewolf 64-bit 7.4 released

Message

don570 · #241 Post by **don570** » Sat 02 Apr 2016, 19:10

Note to Barry..

I don't know why we would need to do this, but Puppy Forum member 'don570' has reported that he needs to format the card first, using 'SD Card Formatter' (for

I think my problem was that I wasn't inserting my sd card fully into the
slot of my USB adaptor.

I have been able to use the 'dd' command successfully recently with
a previously formatted card.

For instance I installed 01micko raspi zap6 distro which uses dd
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 141#894141

gcmartin · #242 Post by **gcmartin** » Thu 07 Apr 2016, 18:28

On smbmount, it is of minor importance. The "mount" command is sufficient for connecting to other resources on the user LAN. For example

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mount -o sec=ntlm,password=woofwoof,username=root //10.0.0.1/NAS  /mnt/myNAS

The above command ONLY is usable if

the remote recognizes root as a user
the remote is located at the 10... IP address
the remote is sharing a resource named NAS
you have a local empty folder named myNAS

Hope this is helpful understanding supporting that smbmount may not be necessary.

smbclient is a continuation of a PUP feature present for many years.

All utilities should match the full-SAMBA which is installed by the developer. The missing SAMBA utility issue in Quirky series was identified by @Rcrsn51, here, as well as @ETP.

At present, there are 2 SSMs floating around. One present in WOOFCE maintained by @01Micko, and a second one that is a rewrite by RG66, announced here ...&... Marv's additions

#243 Post by **Flash** » Sat 02 Jul 2016, 03:33

I accidentally started about ten instances of Xine in Quirky Werefolf64-7.4 and I can't shut any of them down. Even Pprocess can't kill it. My computer has slowed way down as a result. I'd rather not reboot, but what else can I do?

linuxcbon · #244 Post by **linuxcbon** » Sat 02 Jul 2016, 03:41

Flash wrote:I accidentally started about ten instances of Xine in Quirky Werefolf64-7.4 and I can't shut any of them down. Even Pprocess can't kill it. My computer has slowed way down as a result. I'd rather not reboot, but what else can I do?

try in console terminal :

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killall xine

this will terminate all the running xine instances.

#245 Post by **Flash** » Sat 02 Jul 2016, 03:48

Nope, no luck.

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killall xine

did not give any error message but Top shows all 10 instances of xine are still running and, worse, they appear to be actively doing something like refreshing themselves every few seconds.

I'm pretty sure this problem with xine has been reported before but I can't find the thread.

rcrsn51 · #246 Post by **rcrsn51** » Sat 02 Jul 2016, 04:05

Try: killall -9 xine

#247 Post by **Flash** » Sat 02 Jul 2016, 04:12

Nope, no luck. Top still shows 10 or 11 instances of xine all doing something all the time. It's hard to count them because they keep moving and changing places.

Top gives the PID for each instance of xine that's running. Would that be of any use?

linuxcbon · #248 Post by **linuxcbon** » Sat 02 Jul 2016, 04:46

It seems this is solved with :

Go to 'Menu' -> 'Setup' -> 'Mouse/keyboard Wizard' -> 'Adjust mouse sensitivity'
Click on 'Screensaver' and deactivate it.

see : http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?p=876591

#249 Post by **Flash** » Sat 02 Jul 2016, 05:03

Thanks, but that didn't kill xine either. It may allow xine to shut down if the screensaver is disabled before xine is started, but apparently not if xine is already running....

linuxcbon · #250 Post by **linuxcbon** » Sat 02 Jul 2016, 05:14

I guess you can restart X to get rid of them. Otherwise, reboot.

#251 Post by **Flash** » Sat 02 Jul 2016, 11:40

I restarted X last night but it made no difference.

I guess I'll have to reboot. Xine is a virus if there is no way for the operating system to get rid of it once it's running.

linuxcbon · #252 Post by **linuxcbon** » Sat 02 Jul 2016, 13:06

Type

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ps aux

and see if there is Z in the STAT column. If Z, then zombie processes and can be forgotten, they just show up but don't use resources (almost).

#253 Post by **Flash** » Sat 02 Jul 2016, 13:30

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# ps aux
USER       PID %CPU %MEM    VSZ   RSS TTY      STAT START   TIME COMMAND
root     20847 17.1  0.0      0     0 tty1     ZNl  Jul01 108:29 [xine] <defunct
root     21237 16.8  0.0      0     0 tty1     ZNl  Jul01 106:48 [xine] <defunct
root     22481 17.1  0.0      0     0 tty1     ZNl  Jul01 107:38 [xine] <defunct
root     23569 17.3  0.0      0     0 tty1     ZNl  Jul01 108:08 [xine] <defunct
root     24012 17.2  0.0      0     0 tty1     ZNl  Jul01 107:23 [xine] <defunct
root     24640 17.3  0.0      0     0 tty1     ZNl  Jul01 107:38 [xine] <defunct
root     25062 17.4  0.0      0     0 tty1     ZNl  Jul01 107:39 [xine] <defunct
root     25282 17.5  0.0      0     0 tty1     ZNl  Jul01 108:32 [xine] <defunct
root     25437 17.7  0.0      0     0 tty1     Zl   Jul01 109:44 [xine] <defunct
root     25877 17.3  0.0      0     0 tty1     Zl   Jul01 106:47 [xine] <defunct
root     27926 16.9  0.0      0     0 tty1     Zl   Jul01 103:08 [xine] <defunct

"ps aux" gave a lot of other stuff too, but I only wanted to show the instances of xine. You were right, Puppy knows that xine is a zombie. All those zombie xines are definitely slowing down Quirky's response time. For instance, after I clicked on an mp3 file to play it, the file played after just a few seconds but the Pmusic GUI took about a minute to pop onto the desktop. Also, pages take a lot longer to load in the browser.

I can still do what I need to do, but I'll be rebooting soon. Too bad; I've been running Quirky Werewolf64-7.4 from DVD (RAM only) without rebooting for about two months in this computer, online the whole time. Every once in a while SeaMonkey gets crudded up and I have to kill Mozilla and restart the browser, but that's quick and painless because when SeaMonkey is closed unexpectedly (killed) it remembers all the tabs it had open and reloads them when it restarts.

#

slavvo67 · #254 Post by **slavvo67** » Sat 02 Jul 2016, 13:58

Is this really specific to Werewolf or does this happen in the more recent puppies, as well? While Woof-CEpuppies are branched different, they're all still on the same basic coding, no?

Just curious what the puppies are doing that Quirky is not to avoid these processes running in the background. Xine might be a special situation, though. If my memory serves me correctly, Barry compiled it for some of the newer Quirky distros because VLC was difficult to get working properly. Wondering if he maybe tweaked some coding in there that created the problem? Just speculating....

#255 Post by **Flash** » Sat 02 Jul 2016, 15:05

I don't think it's specific to Werewolf. I think I remember Xine doing this to me in another Puppy years ago.

gcmartin · #256 Post by **gcmartin** » Sun 03 Jul 2016, 07:51

Hi @Flash

I have not had this problem, but have seen something like this similarly on other PUPs using smplayer.

If you have NOT shutdown, Here's what I did for the few times it happened:

Exit the desktop (cntrl-bksp)
top
kill -9 all of the xine process numbers you see as well as the PIDs
ps aux to determine if zombies are still present (probably you may not see any more, but if so, try killing those too)
restart your desktop (xwin/startx)

Hope this is helpful

P.S. I have not had a XINE problem like this, ever; so I wonder if something else in your running system is responsible for the multiple times it launched. System Bug, another application bug, Xine bug or virus?

#257 Post by **Flash** » Sun 03 Jul 2016, 13:34

@gcmartin, Thanks. I rebooted last night but I'll try that out if this ever happens again.

I was clicking on short video files I'd made of my old dog over the years, to watch them for old times' sake. (She's now blind from diabetes, so she can't dash around like she used to.) Each file I clicked on started a new instance of xine which covered the old instance so that I didn't realize what was happening. If I had dragged the video files to the xine window instead of clicking on them, there would only have been the one instance of xiine started.

So in my opinion xine, while it does a better job of playing most video formats than any of the other media players I've tried in Puppy, has several bad flaws, at least in my computer:

1. It creates a zombie that can't be shut down and that uses up CPU resources -- a lot of CPU resources, considering that the zombie is doing nothing useful.
2. It will cheerfully and without notice start a new instance of xine even though there is already one running but doing nothing.

musher0 · #258 Post by **musher0** » Sun 03 Jul 2016, 19:15

Hi Flash and gcmartin.

Try:

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killall -q your-program

in terminal if that happens again.

Or (this is sometimes the only solution):

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for instance in `ps | awk '/your-program/ { print $1 }'`
do
    kill -s 9 $instance
done

Those are valid not only for xine, but for any program that seems to be
stuck in memory. I had the same problem with gnome-mplayer: it has
a lot of "velcro" too!

BFN.

linuxcbon · #259 Post by **linuxcbon** » Sun 03 Jul 2016, 20:02

A zombie process CANNOT be "killed" with kill -s 9 or with killall...it need some special commands to disappear but not important to know.
A zombie process should not use any resource, so it's weird. Maybe a bug in xine. Maybe reporting a bug to xine developers. I read there was a bug with screensaver some time ago with xine.

#260 Post by **Flash** » Sun 03 Jul 2016, 20:27

Thanks to everyone for your suggestions. I couldn't try them all because I rebooted before I saw them.
Here are a few more suggestions and here is a possible zombie killing .pet. I say possible because I haven't tried it.

(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

Quirky Werewolf 64-bit 7.4 released

Missing SMB utilities in V7.4

XINE wont exit the system