NOP (Nearly Office Pup) 3.01 final available for download

[gray]

Scoticus: Resisting the temptation to tell you where to put it ...Any sfs file should be in the same folder as the puppy save file (pup_save.2fs).

Henry: Yes I have noticed odd things with the Opera Icon in the tray. It always seems a pixel or so lacking in height. Must be an Opera thing as nothing else behaves like that.

Regarding your pup_save file filling up, I dont seem to have the problem, but there are similar reports elsewhere in the forum I think. Are you changing file permissions, cos that has a similar effect to adding a whole new file, as I found out to my horror when I did a recursive permissions change on a directory one time and filled up and corrupted my pup_save file Since then I made sure all my user data was stored outside the puppy file system and backed up the pup_save file when I was happy with the setup.

You can check the pup_save file using e2fsck by booting puppy using the pfix=ram option so that the pup_save file is not in use, then in the terminal change directory to where the pup_save.2fs is stored and type e2fsck -fy pup_save.2fs.

Give it a try but I dont think this will 'free' your lost space, I have a feeling that there are some bugs with this version of unionfs that may be the cause.

[Henry]

Gray,

Well, I ran e2fsck as you suggested. _Lots_ of errors scrolled through the terminal and were corrected automatically. When I then booted up normally the free space shown in the tray changed from 247Mb to 403Mb !!

Henry

[Scoticus]

Gray

Thanks for your reply. Looking at it I should have said that I am currently working with a multisession DVD. With the new file manager I have been unable to find the pup_save.2fs location. Could you please advise the path to sucess

Many thanks

[Henry]

Gray,

I am still euphoric about the results of e2fsck. I have several different historical config files that I can select from at boot. I fixed another of these with similar results. It seems I can fix a different config than the one I am using without booting pfix=ram. Does this sound right?

I still get some small drops in free space, apparently when using Opera. For example, the 403Mb decreased to 395 after a few hours of browsing, reading email,etc. This was brought up to 403 again by rerunning e2fsck. Note that I had been careful to purge cache and completely delete email.

Such Opera data is about the only "user data" that is in pup_save.2fs. Is there a way to move this outside? It was always easy with Seamonkey to use Local Folders that way. Doing this would mean that email did not occupy config space and would be accessible from whichever config was being used.

Thanks, Henry

[gray]

Henry, it is easy to set up a mail folder outside the pup_save. You need to edit the opera6.ini file in the ./opera folder in the root directory. Near the bottom of the file, under the [Mail] heading add the line Mail Root Directory=path_to_your_mail_folder.

eg
[Mail]
Mail Root Directory=/mnt/home/mystuff/mail

Then set up the mail account(s) in Opera. If you already have the accounts setup you can cut the mail folder from ./opera and place this in the new location.

Regarding e2fsck, it should work on whichever save file you are not currently using. This check was done automatically at boot up in standard puppy 301, but I commented it out to speed up the boot - looks like I should have left it alone .

[Henry]

Thanks, Gray,

For my use it's much better (essential, actually) to get the email out of pup_save. And there seems to be less "hysteresis" now in the free space, although I don't know why that would be.

You made excellent choices with Xfce and Opera, I think. Xfce is very flexible. I had a look at the latest Zenwalk and Vector live CDs today, and they both use Xfce to good advantage. Of course they're sluggish as live CDs.

I trust you will not be resting on your laurels, and we will will see a r4. Barry seems to be working along these lines as well, to have a slim system that lets one easily add or remove apps'

EDIT- Followup Comments Added:

It does seem that moving the (emptied) mail folder out of pup_save has improved the diminishing free space problem. Anyway, e2fsck is good medicine - there's always something for it to fix. I also moved cache4 out of pup_save, which can improve performance too.

Re the Opera tray icon problem noted above: It only and always occurs if the lower (taskbar) panel is autohidden, as I do.

Re your prior removal of the Menu Editor: This item is offered in both Desktop Preferences and Menu Properties and if clicked gives this message: "Unable to launch xfce4-menueditor: Failed to execute child process "xfce4-menueditor" (No such file or directory)." This might confuse the user new to Xfce trying to edit the menu and not knowing the roundabout?

Very happy with Nop in general, Henry

[Henry]

Gray,
And anyone else who might be interested. I am one who likes to optimise and simplify my computer for work. Nop is the best base I have found for that.
---------------------------------
EDIT!
First - I guess this is beginning to look like a blog ;-). Sorry, I'm very interested in this but will try to restrain my enthusiasm, and not treat several topics in one place with continuous updating - once this one is settled.

Second - and maybe more important. I just noticed I had recently happened to pick up the boot disk for r2 and was using it instead of r3. Perhaps that contributed to the problem? Possibly, but definitely not the whole problem. More updated findings below.
---------------------------------
The ongoing problem-
It's helpful to monitor both the free space and the CPU indicator. As "grass" gradually grows in the CPU indicator and the free space decreases it seems errors accumulate, which are easily fixed with e2fsck, whereupon the free space returns to it's usual healthy state of 407Mb (out of 512), and no grass. The errors, I think, occur mostly with the use of Opera. A more serious problem may occur if Opera is asked to open a large set of bookmarks. The CPU indicator goes and stays totally black, Opera and the lower left menu cannot be revived without e2fsck.
Another case is if I start puppy, and the lower left menu does not appear and full amplitude vertical lines keep scrolling through the CPU graph. When I see that I know I have to restart (e.g. with the top panel button,) with a different pup_save.2fs and run e2fsck on the ailing one. Next time it starts and may work perfectly for some time with full free space until it gets sick again. If I don't fix it but keep on using it the free space will really go down, by 100Mb or so. When I run e2fsck I always see many errors scrolling by. If I run e2fsck immediately again no errors appear. I can send sample text files of these runs if wanted.
NOTE - I am not saying this problem is specific to Nop, only that I have never seen it before in using many other puppy versions, all with the same basic configuration, all in the same computer. But I guess things would be much better if e2fsck were run at start.

EMAIL discussion - I have about 800Mb, spanning eleven years, much of it technical discussions which I search. (Using Eudora I have hardly lost any in that period.) I have been using Opera and Eudora practically since they were invented. The prospect of using Opera for email is attractive. There were two concerns - the M2 filter (not folder) system, and the inability to decrypt inline Gnupg. I have got my head around the filter system and think it will be OK, with some pros and cons. I found I can easily do the decrypting manually with several console commands, which I could probably put into a script (maybe with a little help?) Of course Eudora, Seamonkey, Claws, and Thunderbird (not Sylpheed) do this easier, but it's nice not to need the extra email client, and Opera is compact and best, although proprietary.

I have integrated Opera into my system with separate storage folders outside pup_save for email, cache4, and bookmarks. Of course all my general data, as well as the old 98se *very* Lite are on other partitions. (I keep the windows for things I can't do in Linux.)

I use the Nop 3.01r3 live CD, with pup_save.2fs, pup_301.sfs, zdrv_301.sfs, and openoffice-2.3_mx.sfs on the hard disk. CD/DVD drive, and a 2.0Gb thumb drive to backup the pup_save. Sigmund's Pburn 0.9 is now very good.

Package management -
This is getting much better, with both Slackware and the ever increasing availability of dotpets and repositories, e.g. Eric's. I have removed Mark's PSI, which was essential for a long time, but now unnecessary. Keep this area simple and standard.

Xfce desktop environment -
Once I learned it and got it optimised for my situation it's superb. Now if I could only get WordPerfect to work . . . no, wine won't run it. And there's my Epson 4180 scanner . . .?

Henry

[Henry]

Hi, again,

Here is a shot of my current and favorite puppy, Nop 3.01,1024 wide, reduced from 1280. It has a conventional desktop that I use very little. The Thunar File Manager (not shown) is very convenient. The upper and lower panels are shown here, but I always autohide them.

A great thing about Xfce is its applets, seen at lower right. The CPU activity indicator in particular is far superior to the one used in the regular puppies, and gives a lot of insight. The clipboard stacker is certainly as convenient as Glipper was.

I also have the latest experimental Dingo, which is very interesting, but of course not ready to use. Nop is eminently usable, my observations above notwithstanding, and is behaving very well now. I also decreased Opera cache, and moved Linux to a different partition, since its partition had not been defragmented for a very long time. Don't know if this had any effect. Another Nop I have still shows the ongoing free space decrease with activity.

Looking forward to the next Nop (maybe with a new name? ;-)

Henry

[gray]

That desktop looks pretty good Henry. You have obviously mastered the Xfce WM

I have produced an Xdelta patch to convert the NOP r3 iso to r4 at http://www.puppylinux.ca/NOP. This is only a very minor change.

How to use xdelta:
http://puppylinux.org/wikka/XdeltA

r4 updates pburn to v0.9 and adds the menu-editor back in.
The automatic e2fsck check of the pup_save at boot up is also back in the initrd.gz boot file. From your experiences it looks like this is needed after all.

I expect the next NOP will be based on Puppy 4.1

[klu9]

I have produced an Xdelta patch to convert the NOP r3 iso to r4 at http://www.puppylinux.ca/NOP. This is only a very minor change.

hey! "my" idea in practice. Now I only have to download 2 mb instead 90mb. Thanks!

I expect the next NOP will be based on Puppy 4.1

what about 3rd-party software? It seems with the 3.xx series' compatibility with Slackware 12 that Puppy is finally getting a snowball of additional software going.

But the 4.xx series will be incompatible with Slackware tarballs, which could mean less software and/or longer waits for someone to release 4.xx-compatible versions.

[Henry]

Thanks, Gray,
I now have Nop 3.01 r4 iso! It took me a while to get the Xdelta procedure right. Maybe this example will clarify -

Per Gray's post download and run the Xdelta.pet.

Download NOP301_r3_to_r4.delta

Place it in the same folder as the original puppy-301-NOP-r3.iso
(In my case this was /mnt/home/More/downloads)

Open the terminal (console) and proceed as follows, substituting your particular folder for mine:

sh-3.00# cd /mnt/home/More/downloads
sh-3.00#
sh-3.00# xdelta3 -d -s puppy-301-NOP-r3.iso NOP301_r3_to_r4.delta puppy-301-NOP-r4.iso
sh-3.00#

Let it run until the hard drive led stops flashing, and you will now see puppy-301-NOP-r4.iso in the same folder. Burn it to CD.

I did and ran it. I already had Pburn .9, but evidently e2fsck ran. I did not see the menu editor? It is still offered in both Desktop Preferences and Menu Properties and if clicked gives this message: "Unable to launch xfce4-menueditor: Failed to execute child process "xfce4-menueditor" (No such file or directory)."
----------------------------------
NOTE to summarize -

* The autorun at start of e2fsck fixes the problem. Of course a puppy were left running continuously, there would come a time when the accumulation of errors would require a reboot, not in line with Linux philosophy :-)

* Menu Editor not seen.

* Xdelta is good for those with slow connections and sames some server space, but not so good for non-CLI type newbies. I see that I should have been following the discussion of wNop for related items. I just was put off by the idea of Compiz - still am :-) Technically impressive, yes.

[jcoder24]

gray:

can you also upload the md5sum for the r4?

[setecio]

I added the volume icon to the Xfce top panel which works great.

I was hoping to find a similar icon for screen brightness, but couldn't see one in the list. Is there one for screen brightness which I can add somehow?

[sunray73]

Hey this seems like a great build here but QTParted is HORRIBLE! It seemed to like my Dell Latitude but when I tried running it on a Demenision it just crashes every time. grrr.... might want to revisit GParted on your next release because this program works hit or miss at best...

Edit:

Also, when trying to install onto another usb drive using te Universal Installer, it calls for Gparted to start and make the device bootable which then just skips and goes to the install screen.

[kattami]

Hello.

I just want to say that I really like NOP 3.01. And I just like it more and more the more i realise that the programs and menu is in fact very careful set up. Very nice result you got, gray. And its perfect to have Open Office as an sfs package.

Now, if one could get java as a sfs package...........

I am a newbie generally in Linux and programming so I am in no way capable of creating pet or pup or sfs packages. Will not say much more except that the blabber of mine (while learning puppylinux and NOP 3.01) you can find on this blog:

http://my.opera.com/kattami/blog/

The avatar shows the desktop I have on NOP 3.01 btw.

Other than that, I have noticed that Xfwm4 windows manager IS faster than JWM in Puppylinux 3.01.

And I have a Fujitsu Amilo Si 1520, so its a pretty fast laptop.

It surprised me that it was quicker so that made me wonder if JWM has something that slowed it down. Or maybe this specific set of programs and Xfw4 windows manager made it quicker.

On the other side I too have the glitch that I get less and less memory. Something else I discovered was that when I uninstalled programs with pet package manager or gslapt, then the program files was still in my .2fs file.

So I have to start from scratch again with NOP 3.01 r4 and add what I absolutely know I have to have and then make a new LiveCD.

Thanks for this very nice distro!

Sincerely
kattami

[Henry]

I have been using Nop 3.01 r4 since it appeared daily and it is excellent! Please disregard my previously reported problems, most of which were because of the omission of e2fsck in earlier versions and some because of my initialisation oversights in Opera.

One exception. however, remains. Sometimes (infrequently, sorry I can't specify further) when I start Nop the lower left menu does not appear and full amplitude vertical lines keep scrolling through the CPU graph. Restarting (from the upper panel) usually clears this.

About email. This has nothing to do with Nop, but I'll put it here anyway. I extensively tested and used both Sylpheed and the built-in Opera M2 email 9.25 with my huge real world Pop3 email files.

Sylpheed is very likeable, simple and elegant. Very small and fast, conventional folders. But attachment handling is odd/confusing - it shows the paperclip icon for any html, etc. not only "real" attachments.

Opera mail is very different, using virtual folders (filters or views) with all mail in one "received" folder. Well, now that I understand it I really like it. Opera, browser and mail, really takes days, at least, to understand and choose from the hundreds of setup options, but then it's the best even if proprietary.

All my email was from Eudora windows. The best way I found was to import it to Thunderbird 2 windows mbox files and from there to M2 and Sylpheed in Linux cross platform.

Eudora integrates inline GPG. Neither Sylpheed nor Opera does. But I found it's easy to decrypt CLI, and you have no more than one plain text credit card in the computer at a time.

www.henrystrobel.com/linux.htm See new screenshot at bottom.

Henry

[klu9]

On the other side I too have the glitch that I get less and less memory. Something else I discovered was that when I uninstalled programs with pet package manager or gslapt, then the program files was still in my .2fs file.

If I've understood what you're talking about, then I think both these things are both Puppy issues, not specific to NOP. There are various threads in the forum about them.

Re really getting rid of programs, investigate pet-be-gone.

[Caneri]

here is pup-be-gone

http://puppylinux.ca/members/pupbegone/

I don't know of pet-be-gone..any help with this so I can post it?

Eric

[kattami]

here is pup-be-gone

http://puppylinux.ca/members/pupbegone/

I don't know of pet-be-gone..any help with this so I can post it?

Eric

Yeah, it is here:

http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 87&t=17035

Well, I am somewhat confused on this because from what Pizzasgood says there, it is only possible to use PetBeGone in a full installation except if remastering after removing programs one want to remove.

But I dont think I have much to remove from Grays NOP-version anyway, so wouldnt it be just as good if I started from scratch again and just added the programs and eventual addons for Xfwm4 and Opera I absolutely want to have and then remaster?

Oh...now I understand why I didnt get some of the themes removed on the list in window manager in the Settings Manager. Because of the above issue. Which means I probably have to look at this since I would like to remove some of the themes. But PetBeGone cant remove themes? It would only be something like Edit-sfs that could remove themes, or am I wrong?

[richhard]

Hi Gray,
first, I agree with anybody: Puppy NOP with Xfce is absolutly great,
thank you for the good work!!

But: today I had to rearrange my partitions, so I put my Puppy CD
(rev 4) to do it with Gparted.
Shock- Gparted is not here, but some other tool I never saw bevore.

With your rev 1 happy, I can find the proven Gparted again

What was your reason to replace the excellent Gparted, which I
think many people are used to work with, by an unknown one??
Would it be possible you come back to this point??
Puppy is an excellent and comfortable tool for system maintnance