Quirky Xerus 8.1.4 for Raspberry Pi2 and 3

For talk and support relating specifically to Puppy derivatives
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Sylvander
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Joined: Mon 15 Dec 2008, 11:06
Location: West Lothian, Scotland, UK

#631 Post by Sylvander »

@Sage

1. "Insufficient power?"
Perhaps.
Remember, the RPi2 works just fine, except there is no power LED displaying.
I'm using a power unit [5-volt-DC, 1.3-amp] identical to the one for my wife's mobile phone [Nokia Lumia 610 methinks].
I see no obvious signs of inadequate power to the RPi2.
I have an 10-port multi-USB power hub somewhere [Trust 5-volt-DC, 2.0-amp].
RPi needed power supply
Is my Nokia 1.3A power unit ok?

2. "Incorrect USB connection/hub design?"
I very much doubt it.

3. "SD card not pushed home?"
I always make sure it's properly pushed home.
Got it wrong once [the mmc was in at the correct orifice, but angled toward the outer casing; might this have done irreversible damage?], and removed and re-inserted to make sure it was properly located and all the way home [the little ridge on the end of the mmc is located between the internal cover/hood and the outer edge].

4. "Try powering it from pins 4 & 6 on the GPIO with an independent old AT or ATX PSU..."
Eh, what? :?
I wonder if I even know what that means.
I don't have any spare PSU's about.
Aren't they HUGE?
I fitted a replacement one once to an old PC.

5. "Disconnect your USB hub - only USB2/3 ones work and if you try to power them (not necessary with RPi2) you can get conflicts."
The hub [not yet used for RPi2] is USB-2.0 and 1.1.
Not sure what the Lumia power unit is [USB 2.0?]
See: Genuine Nokia AC_50X (1.3AMP) USB Mains Charger Wall Adapter


6. "There are plenty more possible issues including you've blown it, blown a fuse, bad cable, you-name-it."
I very much doubt all of these, except as in 3 above.
Everything is NEW, and appears to work OK [except no power LED display].
Looks like my son fitted it in an old case [doesn't look new]...
Might the case be obscuring the LED?

7. "please be sure to report back when you sort it so that it will help legions of others struggling ..."
Will do.

Sage
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Location: GB

#632 Post by Sage »

4. "Try powering it from pins 4 & 6 on the GPIO with an independent old AT or ATX PSU..."
Eh, what? :?
I wonder if I even know what that means.
I don't have any spare PSU's about.
Aren't they HUGE?
I fitted a replacement one once to an old PC.
Along the back (front?!) of your board there is a row of 40 pins - for connecting a range of inputs and outputs, both (digital)signals and voltages. This is the General Purpose Input/Output bus (short for busbar). They run in pairs, odds down one lane, evens the other (outside) lane. Pins 2 & 4 are +5V, pin 6 is ground/earth/0V.
On old PSUs (and some new ones), the smallest power plug is to drive the Floppy Drive and has four sockets - red/black/black/yellow for +5V 0V 0V & +12V. If you remove (use a pin) the yellow and adjacent black (tape them up separately in insulating tape) you have a socket with two live connections. This will fit exactly over pin4 and pin6 to power the unit.
HUGE is pejorative. I have a couple of modern ones in 10cm cubes and another 6x6x100cm. Enough power to run a dozen Pi s, perhaps?!
When working with RPi s remember that, like the BBC Bit, they were intended to teach about coding, robotics and engineering control, never for surfing or distro hopping.
There are a plethora of (over-priced) add-ons sold for A-D and D-A conversion, GPIO extensions and a host of projects stuff, but also including music converters, etc.
And finally, don't believe what you read elsewhere. Don't put your Pi in one of those cute little plastic boxes. Do fit a heatsink on the cpu, esp. for RPi 3.
Hope this helps.

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don570
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#633 Post by don570 »

Green led always blinks when booting.
If it doesn't then the usual reason is a card that doesn't have bootable
fat32 partition. In other words you screwed up the installation.
The board itself could be fine. Let's hope so.

______________________________________
your board there is a row of 40 pins - for connecting a range of inputs and outputs, both (digital)signals and voltages. This is the General Purpose Input/Output bus (short for busbar). They run in pairs, odds down one lane, evens the other (outside) lane. Pins 2 & 4 are +5V, pin 6 is ground/earth/0V.
Yes, Checking the voltage is easy with a voltmeter.
you should look at diagram first.
There are several pins that act as ground.
The voltage dips under 5 volts during booting because of the high current that is drawn, but it should stay above 4.7 V.
Attachments
j8header.png
pins for raspberrypi 2
(176.25 KiB) Downloaded 2057 times

Sage
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Joined: Tue 04 Oct 2005, 08:34
Location: GB

#634 Post by Sage »

The voltage dips under 5 volts during booting because of the high current that is drawn
Best reason to use a 'proper' PSU (also gives an on/off mains switch!). I found the tip on one of the many Pi Fora.
[Nice picture don, he has an RPi2 with 40 pins, also try https://www.rasberrypi.org/documentation/usage/... et seq. and ...//pinout.xyz/#]
That GPIO can, of course, be used to advantage for projects with QX8.1.4 via the CLI as well as all the soft apps installed.
A good place for hobbyists to start is with switching things ON&OFF, although might need a simple DAC chip and/or dc-dc converter (99p/eBay)+ relay (eg OmronG2VN -ubiquitous). Always fancied a more advanced project of a weather station, but the add-ons are outrageously priced and looking outa-da-window is quicker and cheaper!
In extremis, this might help:
http://pksato.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/re ... ry-pi.html

Incidentally, since don is showing the pin-outs, keenest coders will note that v2 &3 have I^2C connections on pins 3 & 5. This is the code used to reset counter chips on, inter alia, laser printers (possibly inkjets?). Apart from that fact, I know nothing more, apart from being aware that there is an expert printer buff and coder amongst us, rcrsn.

amj
Posts: 75
Joined: Fri 28 Jan 2011, 19:20

#635 Post by amj »

In January I made a post on page 37 of this thread saying that I'd experimented with installing the new vlc-plugin-qt from the Debian sid repository. I made a fresh installation of QX814 and installed the plugin, not really expecting it to work. Having made the experiment, I put the micro-SD card in a drawer and moved to something else.

Today I retrieved that micro-SD card, popped it into a RPi2 and launched vlc from the console because I wanted to play some music. After a string of warning messages, up popped the QT interface.

I'm not sure why that did not happen when I made the original experiment and equally unsure why it did work today. But I now have an installation of QX814 with a full vlc running. I've made a desktop icon for vlc and when I click it, up pops the familiar vlc QT interface. And it's working.

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don570
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#636 Post by don570 »

It is possible to make a pet package for vlc-qt by putting all the debian dependency packages
in one folder and running alien2puppy

I wrote a tutorial.

___________________________________________________

amj
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#637 Post by amj »

Thanks Don.

For the record, the 11 Debian sid packages I installed were:

libdouble-conversion1_2.0.1-4_armhf.deb
libicu57_57.1-5_armhf.deb
libpng16-16_1.6.27-1_armhf.deb
libqt5core5a_5.7.1+dfsg-2_armhf.deb
libqt5dbus5_5.7.1+dfsg-2_armhf.deb
libqt5gui5_5.7.1+dfsg-2_armhf.deb
libqt5network5_5.7.1+dfsg-2_armhf.deb
libqt5widgets5_5.7.1+dfsg-2_armhf.deb
libqt5x11extras5_5.7.1~20161021-2_armhf.deb
libxcb-xinerama0_1.12-1_armhf.deb
vlc-plugin-qt_2.2.4-12_armhf.deb

I also think a word of warning is appropriate. If you have an existing QX814 installation with QT packages installed, trying to add the vlc-plugin-qt might not be a good idea since the Debian sid packages and any standard Ubuntu QT packages may not be fully compatible.

The plugin may also work on Debian based amd64 versions of Quirky Xerus. I may experiment with the QX815 system I have.

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don570
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#638 Post by don570 »

Thank for info . If I have time I'll down load those and make the pet package.
Just put the packages in a folder and run script 'alien2puppy'
The folder can be named anything appropriate.

cd inside your folder full of debian packages.
In terminal type
Code:
alien2puppy -p audacity-july20-1.3.13

A folder named audacity-july20-1.3.13 is now created
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Mitchellray
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Joined: Mon 07 Dec 2009, 04:30

Copy to SD Card - Process not completing; Card Won't Boot

#639 Post by Mitchellray »

Hello,
I downloaded quirky xerus 8.1.4.
Then, unxz --stdout quirky-pi2-sd-8gb-xerus-8.1.4.img.xz | dd of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=4M.
Then, the process never terminates.
I type in the terminal (but there is no prompt yet) sync (return).

I kill the process after a long time, and viewing the SDcard, there are two partitions created. Oddly, even though the card is formatted for fat32, and flagged 'boot', a second linux partition shows up with files in it. I reformatted three times to fat32 after deleting all partitions, but same results.

Then, when trying to boot the Raspberry Pi3, it can't launch X.
I try xwin, and I try xorgwizard.

16GB Sandisk extreme brand new
Using Precise Puppy o/s
md5sum for download passes

Error Messages

xwin -> /usr/bin/xwin: line 12: .: /user/bin/gettext.sh: cannot execute binary file starting X, specs in /etc/X11 , startup apps /root/xinitrc....
Exited from X

xorgwizard -> /usr/sbin/xorgwizard: line 91: .: /usr/bin/gettext.sh: cannot execute binary file
mkdir: cannot create directory '/var/local/' : too many levels of symbolic links

Thanks.
Mitchellray

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don570
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Location: Ontario

#640 Post by don570 »

I type in the terminal (but there is no prompt yet) sync (return).
There MUST be a prompt symbol, then type 'sync'

Sometimes Barry's method of installation takes a long time :cry:

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Mitchellray
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Copy to SD - Process not completing; Won't boot - resolved?

#641 Post by Mitchellray »

Thanks don570,

I tried it again without the boot flag toggled by gparted.

The same thing occurred where the process of dd to sd card would not terminate, even after over one half of an hour.

I killed the process and put the sd card in the Raspberry Pi3 and this time it booted to desktop and setup dialog box.

I will have to see if any functionality is impaired or if files are missing.
So far, it will at least get online.
Mitchellray

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don570
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#642 Post by don570 »

I had the same experience once as well.

The solution was take the card to a Windows machine and use their software to
format it --- I believe I chose fat32

Everything went well after that.
I think the problem was trying to use gparted in linux OS :cry:

By the way you don't need to mark the partition 'boot'

_____________________________________

amj
Posts: 75
Joined: Fri 28 Jan 2011, 19:20

#643 Post by amj »

Mitchellray, reading your description makes me wonder if your original download of the image terminated successfully?

If your download of the image cut out just before the end, attempting to write the incomplete image onto the card might give problems of the sort you describe.

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don570
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Location: Ontario

#644 Post by don570 »

The file downloaded correctly so I'm sure that the problem is that gparted is having problems with formatting the card .

I suggest going to windows and formatting as fat32 with

https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter_4/index.html

______________________________________________________

rameshiyer

Seamonkey

#645 Post by rameshiyer »

Unable to browse certain site in Seamonkey browseer. It says it is not supported. (www.amazon.in, etc.) Also while browsing google.com, I am getting mobile site. I don't know this is because of Internet connection. I am getting internet through mobile hotspot .

Any other browser for raspberry pi3. Quirky Xerus 8.1.4)

TeX Dog
Posts: 287
Joined: Wed 06 Jul 2016, 17:57

#646 Post by TeX Dog »

You can change the browser agent id, chrome browser would be the closest to Seamonkey. I do not know why its shown as a mobile browser ( ARM flag I guess ). I do not know how but when you figure out which of the few methods work to change browser agent label let us know.

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BarryK
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Re: Seamonkey

#647 Post by BarryK »

rameshiyer wrote:Also while browsing google.com, I am getting mobile site. I don't know this is because of Internet connection. I am getting internet through mobile hotspot
Yeah, this is very annoying. The browser thinks we are running on a mobile device.

I haven't figured out how to turn it off.

On the google page, down the bottom, there is an option to switch to normal view.
[url]https://bkhome.org/news/[/url]

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rufwoof
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#648 Post by rufwoof »

Firefox has a useragent addon/extension that enables you to pick or set what useragent is presented to sites. Don't know if that's also available for seamonkey though. If not then the about:config firefox entry is a string entry of general.useragent.overridepreference that if created you can set to perhaps one of the main choices taken from here so as to pretend to be something else. Again I don't know if its the same about:config entry as in seamonkey.

Sage
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Location: GB

Obviously on the right track with RPi

#649 Post by Sage »


Sage
Posts: 5536
Joined: Tue 04 Oct 2005, 08:34
Location: GB

#650 Post by Sage »

Probably of interest to folks landing here:
http://cpc.farnell.com/element14/pi-des ... RB-SC14695

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