My Puppy Experience and suggestion for further directions

[paulsiu]

I play with Puppy briefly back in the 1.0 days. Back then, it was too raw to be of use and I ended up using Ubuntu for a while until my laptop died.

I ended up buying a new laptop, but I didn't want to partition the hard disk. I thought again of using Puppy Linux because of its zero footprint ability.

The initial install was rather discouraging. Nothing seemed to have worked. I couldn't get Xorg to work. There was no sound. The network card nor wireless worked. Part of the problem was that the laptop was too new and won't work out of the box. The other problem is that I was too used to the other distro. The reason that the network did not work for example was because I had to manually acquire the DHCP from the Network Setup.

I start liking the distro a lot. It was pretty fast. In addition, it's probably the only distro I know that can play DVD and flash right out of the box. I can install codec and the decrypter on the other distro, but it was always a pain.

Now, I seemed to have hit a brick wall though. Now I need software that have not been made into dotpup files. What next, should I start downloading source files and compiling them? Should I try to make Dotpup files to those so other can benefit? How difficult is this to do? Is this going to work in a 2Gb key or do I need to add partition now?

[rarsa]

The initial install was rather discouraging. Nothing seemed to have worked. I couldn't get Xorg to work. There was no sound. The network card nor wireless worked. Part of the problem was that the laptop was too new and won't work out of the box. The other problem is that I was too used to the other distro.

All fair points. Puppy is geared to have the must users up and running from the Live CD. that "most users" leaves the few others out of that comfort zone but not helpless, there are ways to solve pretty much all the problems by following a few extra steps. I guess the 80/20 rule applies:

Xorg does not work, use XVesa. Or install the appropriate drivers and configure Xorg.
Sound does not work, Use the the Alsa wizard and select your card manually
Network does not work... keep reading.

The reason that the network did not work for example was because I had to manually acquire the DHCP from the Network Setup.

There is a fundamental difference between Puppy and other Live CDs. Puppy is meant to be usable as a live CD without making any assumptions.

Many people have requested to have a DHCP connection automatically if a network is detected. I actually modified the rc.network script to do this and was working wonderfully until I found a snag. (I am about to make a post explaining it).

In summary: The startup time increased unessesarily for users that had a network card but weren't connected to a network.

I've done some other modifications to the rc.network for Puppy 2.14 that may allow adding this functionality in a future version. (Maybe 2.15) I just want to make sure everyone is happy with the most recent modifications.

I really don't want to alienate people in dialup whose computer happens to have a network card by either delaying their startup or bugging them to skip the network checking.

So if you've followed what I've just said, Currently the Network users must configure their connection JUST ONCE. If we enabled automatic DHCP non Network users will suffer the desicion EVERY time.

But as I said I am thinking on ways to marry both and all ideas are welcome.

Now, I seemed to have hit a brick wall though. Now I need software that have not been made into dotpup files.

Having a list may help, there are dotpups all over the place, so if you ask maybe someone can point you to the right dotpup.

What next, should I start downloading source files and compiling them?

That's always a possibility

[/quote]Should I try to make Dotpup files to those so other can benefit?[/quote]That's always welcome.

How difficult is this to do?

People with 0 (zero) technical background have been providing dotpups using the dotpup creation tools available. Puppy 2.14 will have tools that will simplify the process even more.

Is this going to work in a 2Gb key or do I need to add partition now?

It can work on a 2GB key.

It can also work using a pup_save file on an NTFS partition. No need to repartition. I use it like that in two laptops.

The choice is yours.

[paulsiu]

All fair points. Puppy is geared to have the must users up and running from the Live CD. that "most users" leaves the few others out of that comfort zone.

I actually don't mind having to get my own DHCP and mounting my own volume. I guess I didn't expected that I had to because I had been using Ubuntu. Despite the mounting snafu, I find the interface to be quite simple and elegant. Gxine works really well.

Part is what you say is true, it becomes a balancing act. All of those auto-detection probably slows down the OS. I guess the best compromise would be to offer an option to enable or disable auto-detection.

Having a list may help, there are dotpups all over the place, so if you ask maybe someone can point you to the right dotpup.

There is a DotPup for Ruby, but it is quite old (2005) and blows up in 2.13 (at least on my machine). I am more interested in generating DotPups manually mainly because I like to see how it works. Any pointers to good articles to do that?

If I can figure it out, I can generate another Ruby Dotpup, I doubt that is a lot of people clamoring for it.

It can also work using a pup_save file on an NTFS partition. No need to repartition. I use it like that in two laptops.

Now that's pretty interesting. I was under the impression that writes to NTFS is not safe. What library is it using Captive or NTFSProg?

Paul

[rarsa]

I am more interested in generating DotPups manually mainly because I like to see how it works. Any pointers to good articles to do that?

Generating dotpups is quite simple. There may be a few tutorials in the wiki (I've never read them)

Here is the summary.

A dotpup is just a zip file renamed to .pup that contains the following:
- A shell script called dotpup.sh that does the actual installation
- Anything else that you want.

The dotpup installer, just unzips the file to a temporary folder and executes the dotpup.sh script. the dotpup.sh can be as simple or complex as required. Brilliant, eh?

In practice here is what most dotpups include:
- A "tar.gz" file containing the files to install organized in a folder structure matching the destination.
- A dotpup.sh that
- untars the tar.gz file to /
- does any cleanup it needs to do such as backing up old installations.

Actually here are two things you can do to set you up in the right track

a) Rename any .pup to .zip and open it with the xarchiver. Check the contents.

b) Look at one the "Makefile" file and dotpup.sh I created to generate the network wizard setup.

http://svn2.cvsdude.com/puppylinux/pupp ... k/Makefile

http://svn2.cvsdude.com/puppylinux/pupp ... /dotpup.sh

As you'll see, the make file just does the following:
- Creates the directory structure
- Copies the files to that directory structure
- Compresses the directory structure to a tar.gz file
- Creates an md5sum file to verify integrity
- Zips the dotpup.sh, tar.gz and md5sum

And my dotpup.sh file allows for uninstalling.

Now that's pretty interesting. I was under the impression that writes to NTFS is not safe. What library is it using Captive or NTFSProg?

ntfs-3g
It is super stable. I've been using it for a while. Best thing, it runs in user space (fuse) so it does not need to be recompiled for every kernel. I use it in Puppy and Fedora. Also, puppy does not use it if it detects that the filesystem is not clean, e.g. you shutdown Windows inappropriatelly.

To be even safer, run a defrag from windows and shut down windows cleanly before saving your pup_save file to HDD.

[paulsiu]

OK,

I managed to do the following:

1. Download Ruby
2. Configure it to run on /root/my-applications
3. Wrote Dotpup.sh, created the archive, and the readme file.
4. Generated md5sum for each.

I run the dotpup and it works, but how do I set it up so that users can remove it? I am not sure I understand your script, it has a 10 and a 11 case. I notice that Ruby doesn't show up in the GUI's uninstall tool.

Paul

[rarsa]

I am not sure I understand your script, it has a 10 and a 11 case. I notice that Ruby doesn't show up in the GUI's uninstall tool.

There are several ways to do the same thing: Uninstal

The way I DID NOT do it
The dotpup could write some special files to /root/.packages to let the pupget installer know that a package was installed and how to uninstall it.

The way I did it:
The pupget installer does not know that my application was installed.
All the responsibility for uninstalling is in my dotpup.

Here Is the disection of that example dotpup:

Code: Select all

ACTION=10
if [ -e $BKUP_NETSETUP ] ; then
	xmessage -center -name "puppy-network wizard" -title "Puppy Network-Wizard install" -buttons "Install:10,Uninstall:11,Exit:19" "It seems that there is already a test version installed.
Do you want to uninstall it?
"
	ACTION=$?
fi

Here I set the default "action code" as 10. this is just a flag, I could have used whatever number I wanted.

Then I check if there is already a backup file. If it exists it means that this dotpup already ran before so I present an xmessage window asking the user if they want to uninstall.

Here is where the 10 and 11 come from: the xmessage window allows showing buttons, and assigning a code to each of the buttons, again, these are arbitrary numbers, I decided that 10 means Install, 11 means uninstall and 19 means Exit without doing anything.

Finally I assign the resulting selection to the "action code"

Code: Select all

case $ACTION in
...
esac

This is a "switch" statement, that means that it will do different things depending on the value of ACTION.

If the ACTION code is 10, it then copies some files to their backup name but only if the backup name does not exist

Code: Select all

[ ! -e $BKUP_NETSETUP ]  && cp /usr/sbin/net-setup.sh $BKUP_NETSETUP

It then untars the tar.gz file that as I explained before contains the files we want to install and shows a message telling the user that the installation was successful.

If the ACTION code is 11, It then copies the backup files back to their original name, removes the backup files and shows a message telling the user that the uninstall was successful.

But as I've said before, this is just a bash script so you can write it however you want.

[paulsiu]

rarsa,

I realized now that packages that appear in the GetPup installer probably registered with GetPup. I have done UNIX scripting before, but I have never use xmessage. Thanks for clearing it up.

The ideal thing would be to register the dotpup with GetPup so that I can install and uninistall from the GUI, but I notice that 2.14 has a new package interface call DotPet. May be I should hold it off until 2.14 is out.

Paul

[muggins]

paul,

i was looking at Erik Veenstra's site yesterday, and i see he's got a more recent ruby pup (version 1.8.5-p2):

http://www.erikveen.dds.nl/qemupuppy/dotpups/ruby.pup

[paulsiu]

Hmm... In that case, there's no need to post the pup file. I'll generate another one when I install something else.

On another note, is there some reason why my upload limit is zero to this site (so I can't upload)?

[Flash]

None that I know of. I believe other people have complained of the same thing in the forum, but they never reported back if it was resolved.

[craftybytes]

I also noticed that the upload limit was set at zero as well when I tried to post several files to the board the other day ..

I still went ahead and uploaded them - they uploaded fine - BUT for a couple an error window popped up stating that the 'max' file size limit was 1.0MB - so i had to "split" a few of my larger files into less than 1.0MB sizes for them to be accepted for upload ..

So just go ahead and try the upload and see what happens ..

[muggins]

i think there's a file size limit of the order of 500kbytes.

[paulsiu]

The ruby file is about 8 Mb, so I am doubtful that I will be able to upload that. Looks like my DotPup contribution will be limited on this board. Is there an alternate site to upload dotpups?

[MU]

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 8052#88052
Mark