Racy NOP 5.2.2

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Henry
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Racy History of problems

#61 Post by Henry »

I'm trying to read through some of this long thread of the release and followup of Racy 5.22 final (not RacyNop)
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 671#564671

gray built RacyNop on/out of Racy. Same or similar problems (as logout to locked blank screen) were reported and fixed more or less in that thread, so it wouldn't be surprising to find them cropping up in RacyNop and we cannot blame gray for them!

Thanks to gray we have a series of excellent Nops, all of which I have used exclusively as my OS. I am not looking forward to "raspberryPiNOP"

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Ray MK
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#62 Post by Ray MK »

Hi Henry -

SOME GENERAL NOTES - HOPEFULLY USEFUL TO ALL.

Recent Puppy developments provide a massive choice of newer Puppy's all suitable for Netbooks.
Here are some of my favorites,
waryNOP-511, racyNOP-522, quirkyNOP-120, Saluki-021/022, Lucid-528, Dpup-Exprimo.
If you have a 64bit proc. then Fatdog64 and Lighthouse64 are superb.

IMHO,
The simplest and most reliable way to boot, dual-boot or multi-boot Puppy is to use grub4dos,
installed to a USB stick or an SDcard. (although the exact same proceedure can be used on a HDD partition)

After downloading your chosen ISO's and burning one of them to a CD, boot it and use it to do the following.

Install grub4dos to a vfat formatted usb stick or SDcard after,

1) first making sure it is marked as bootable (using Gparted),
2) creating at least one Puppy folder containing the puppy files (copied from ISO) required to boot,
(you can put as many different Puppy's in thier individually named folders, as space or desire allows)
3) tell grub4dos to install itself to that disk only (making sure you tick the appropriate box),
4) grub4dos will automagically search the disk and prepare a suitable menu.lst file and install itself to the selected disk (it will read multiple disk's if so instructed).

Finally - reboot - and go.
The above proceedure can be repeated ad-infinitum.

(Saluki, Lucid-528, Exprimo and all the later NOP's have a good version of grub4dos).

If you prefer to boot from HDD or usbHDD (instead of USB or SDcard) Prepare the HDD first by:
1) using Gparted to make 3 ext partitions of roughly equal size and then make a 4th swap partition of approximately 500/800mb in size.
2) flag any partition as bootable (1st is ok in this instance)
3) make a folder(s) on 1st partition named Saluki (luki, luci, rNOP, wNOP, Pup1, P2, P3, or whatever)
4) copy the essential puppy files (or all of them if unsure) from the ISO/CD to your folder(s)

Now start grub4dos and follow the instructions.

A note of CAUTION -
the above use of Gparted assumes that you have no desire to keep any other OS's or files that may be on the disk.
Anything that needs to be saved should be backed-up first.

HTH - regards - Ray
[b]Asus[/b] 701SD. 2gig ram. 8gb SSD. [b]IBM A21m[/b] laptop. 192mb ram. PIII Coppermine proc. [b]X60[/b] T2400 1.8Ghz proc. 2gig ram. 80gb hdd. [b]T41[/b] Pentium M 1400Mhz. 512mb ram.

Henry
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#63 Post by Henry »

Good morning, Ray,

Thanks for that orderly and useful tutorial that clarifies a number of situations. I will file it for future reference, as I'm sure others will.

Henry

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Blank screen - wrong observation "SOLVED"

#64 Post by Henry »

I apologize for not being more thorough. The blank screen was not locked, only blanked. Unfortunately it didn't occur to me to start typing into a dark screen. I never see a prompt or the exiting and saving messages, which occur in the dark.(Other than that everything is fine.)

I hit control-alt-backspace and the screen goes permanently dark unless I type reboot , which it does.

If instead I type xwin, (or was it xorgwizard?) X eventually reappears with a different resolution, apparently a default? video driver, the one I originally replaced to see circles, not ellipses.

But wait- there's more - I do ctl+alt+bksp and I get a command prompt, something I haven't seen for a long time. I type xorrgwizard and get the familiar probe, etc. and somehow emerge with a working X but with ellipses instead of circles and a pop up saying since it was working I could hit OK to decline the video upgrade. What a choice.

Anyway, I restored from a backup racysave, guessing I know a little more about the problem now. Sorry for misleading - I hate looking dumb.

Just to confuse things more, if I try Restart WM I get a screen split into two halves, right and left reversed. I'm not making this up. See the photo - it has to be a photo because it's correct in a screen shot. Only a reboot will fix this.

EDIT: Sometime later. I have concluded that it's some kind of a video driver problem/incompatibility that I will have to learn to live with, rather than continuing to plague all you nice people here.

Both the new netbook and RacyNop have proven extremely sturdy after all my beating on them. I'm not letting go of my super QuirkyNop desktop, but I think Racy is the one that should have been called quirky.
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Henry
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ONE MORE SHORT, SIGNIFICANT REPORT

#65 Post by Henry »

I'm testing on a brand new Acer Aspire One 722 using fresh "bare" bootflash drives as follows:

RacyNop-r1, Racy-522, and Racy-53 all have the above described blind logout problem.

QuirkyNop-12, Slacko Final , Wary-53, (and likely most) do not have this problem.

Does this suggest something about Racy? The other thing that may be common to the Racys is the optional Xorg-1.11.0 upgrade, which may be also involved. As you can probably tell, I'm a user, not a developer.

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Wireless problem SOLVED

#66 Post by Henry »

Hello, again,

We've run out of ideas here but I still have both real problems so have moved them to hopefully more appropriate places:

EDIt: Wireless problem solved per following URL. Was my problem, not RacyNop's.

Wireless: http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 219#635219

EDIT: Still have blind logout, apparently because of kernel and new netbook incompatibility. Living with it for the present. Ugh.

Logout: http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 908#634908

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greengeek
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#67 Post by greengeek »

Nice work Gray. Quick and clean version of Puppy.
I am trying to improve the readability of webpages viewed in Opera and I seem to be unable to change the main "default font" for webpages. On my netbook the font seems very condensed and hard to read (even with my glasses on). If I increase the "minimum font size" from 1 to 14 it does help - except that the font still seems to be "too tall and too skinny". As far as I can tell the default seems to be a skinny version of Nimbus (at approx 8 point maybe?). I would like to change away from the skinny Nimbus font and use the same font as the browser titles (Deja Vu sans).

I have tried changing each of the changeable settings for font type / size, but none of them seems to change the default for ordinary webpages. I must be missing something here, but no idea what.

oligin10
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Improve font pet for Wary

#68 Post by oligin10 »

Hi, sorry I can't remember where, but there is a font improvement pet for Wary and Opera browser somewhere here on the forum. I am without power right now, posting from my cellphone. It should fix the font problem. I have used it on all the NOP puppets with great success. Thanks, Rob

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greengeek
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Re: Improve font pet for Wary

#69 Post by greengeek »

oligin10 wrote:Hi, sorry I can't remember where, but there is a font improvement pet for Wary and Opera browser somewhere here on the forum. I am without power right now, posting from my cellphone. It should fix the font problem. I have used it on all the NOP puppets with great success. Thanks, Rob
Thanks Rob, I think this must be the post you meant:
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 469#638469
Very useful thanks. It worked wonders for me (although I still have some minor font problems but they may be residues of the other tinkering I did in an effort to solve the problem).
If anyone else has the yukky skinny condensed font in Opera, I recommend using the .pet from that post FIRST, before fiddling with anything else.
I don't know exactly what the pet does, but I guess you can always unload it and try other things if you don't like the change.

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greengeek
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#70 Post by greengeek »

1) Couple of problems with mtPaint:
- a) It won't let me save a new file as a jpg (no option for jpg in file format selection box). Maybe I am using some feature that is not supported by jpg?? I'm just using the default settings when creating a new file - It has "indexed palette" ticked but I don't know if that might be significant or not. EDIT:Sure enough, if I change from indexed palette to 24bit RGB I can save with the jpg option. Not sure what that is about. Have to do more research.
- b) It "pretended" to save my file to sda2, but I had forgotten to mount sda2, so my file did not actually get saved at all. I would have preferred it if mtPaint had said something like "Error - Save destination not mounted"


2) A problem with creating a .pdf from the browser: If I "print" a webpage by selecting "print to file" and select .pdf format it creates the file but won't let me open it without using a password (which I don't have..). I can print the same webpage to .ps format successfully.


3) The screenshot function seems to be in the "utility" menu, whereas I am more used to finding it in the "graphic" menu. Is this intended, or a temporary thing?

ikaros262
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#71 Post by ikaros262 »

How about a NOP based on Wary 5.3?

wjaguar
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#72 Post by wjaguar »

greengeek wrote: Couple of problems with mtPaint:
- a) It won't let me save a new file as a jpg (no option for jpg in file format selection box). Maybe I am using some feature that is not supported by jpg??
Naturally so - JPEG format does not support indexed images. In such a case, do "Image->Convert to RGB" prior to saving.
It "pretended" to save my file to sda2, but I had forgotten to mount sda2, so my file did not actually get saved at all. I would have preferred it if mtPaint had said something like "Error - Save destination not mounted"
Should not have happened. On my system, attempt to save anything onto an unmounted (flash) drive displays the "Unable to save file: filename" window. If that does not happen on yours, please describe the problem in more detail, so that I could reproduce it (and tell me which specific version of Puppy it was and where to download it).

-= With best regards, Dmitry Groshev, maintainer of mtPaint =-

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greengeek
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#73 Post by greengeek »

wjaguar wrote:Should not have happened. On my system, attempt to save anything onto an unmounted (flash) drive displays the "Unable to save file: filename" window. If that does not happen on yours, please describe the problem in more detail, so that I could reproduce it (and tell me which specific version of Puppy it was and where to download it).
Hello Dmitry, thank you for your reply. The Puppy which I am having this problem with is Puppy Racy NOP 5.2.2 (ie: the puppy referenced in this particular forum topic) and the download link is in the first posting on page 1. The post points to this link for the download:
http://download.tuxfamily.org/nop/
and the file name is: racyNOP-5.2.2r1.iso

My system is like this:

I have an Acer "Aspire One" D250 netbook and Puppy Racy NOP 5.2.2 is frugally installed to the first partition on the inbuilt IDE hard drive (sda1), and I save my personal files to the second partition on the same hard drive (ie: sda2). When I finish drawing my image in mtPaint I save to sda2 and it appears to complete successfully, but does not actually save the file to sda2 because the partition has not been mounted yet.

At the time of "saving" I do see a dialog box pop up but it disappears so quickly that I cannot see what it says. It seems to be the same sort of dialog box that flashes on/off when the save completes correctly (when the partition has been correctly mounted). I would normally expect that any error dialog would stay on screen, but there is no error dialog when I try to save to a partition that has not been mounted.

Hope my description is clear enough. Thanks for your help.

EDIT:I have just done a bit more testing and it appears that Seamonkey composer and Leafpad text editor show the same problem so I do not think it is anything to do with mtPaint - I think it is caused by some quirk of the operating system. I have found that the filesystem lists a location of /mnt/sda2 even though the actual sda2 is not mounted - and the test files I have been saving have gone into that "false" /mnt/sda2" instead of the "real" /mnt/sda2.

The attached pic shows my "lost" files sitting in /mnt/sda2, even though you can see the desktop icon for the real sda2, sitting at the bottom of the picture, is not mounted (no green dot...).

So mtPaint will have been saving to a location that exists - it just exists in a different place than I was intending.
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false mount sda2_.jpg
"Lost" files sitting in /mnt/sda2 even though the real sda2 has not been mounted yet
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wjaguar
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#74 Post by wjaguar »

greengeek wrote:The attached pic shows my "lost" files sitting in /mnt/sda2, even though you can see the desktop icon for the real sda2, sitting at the bottom of the picture, is not mounted (no green dot...).
So mtPaint will have been saving to a location that exists - it just exists in a different place than I was intending.
OK now I understand what happened. A mountpoint is just a regular directory, unless it has something mounted; any directory is writable by root; and Puppy runs everything as root.
Problem is, it isn't easy to make a directory (mountpoint or otherwise) readonly for root; people have been struggling with that since forever - see this link.
The solution described there seems the only one possible - it is to mount something readonly onto the mountpoint, prior to mounting/unmounting the device. But then, won't it get unmounted if you accidentally try to unmount an already-unmounted device?
Here is what I would have tried: bind-mount the whole /mnt tree onto itself, readonly; at least, right now when I tested that in a Puppy VM, it seemed to work. Here is how:

Code: Select all

mount --bind /mnt /mnt
mount -o remount,ro,bind /mnt /mnt
But this should be done while nothing is mounted onto anything in /mnt

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greengeek
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#75 Post by greengeek »

wjaguar wrote:A mountpoint is just a regular directory, unless it has something mounted; any directory is writable by root; and Puppy runs everything as root.
Problem is, it isn't easy to make a directory (mountpoint or otherwise) readonly for root[/b
Ok, thank you. Silly me - I have checked my Slacko install now also, and it behaves the same way. I never noticed it before, but obviously the problem will go away if I take a little more care.

I do recall from using various other Puppies that usually an unmounted partition will not show up in Rox as an accessible location, so maybe that is a function I have come to expect from "save" dialogs. I will be a little more careful. Thanks for your help!

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Henry's update

#76 Post by Henry »

NETBOOK - using Acer Aspire one, it all works, except the notorious "blind logout."
Even the somewhat fragile wireless is made usable by

Code: Select all

stay-connected-2.0-lucid.pet
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
DESKTOP - Everything I had in my previous QuiryNop-1.2 works in RacyNop making a complete custom business system, sharing the racysave.2fs files with the netbook. (The desktop is a Dell Optiplex 745. Frugal, live CD)

Only one small problem remains, which I'm writing to ask about. Reboot does not work in the desktop (it does in the netbook).
Sticks at ". . . session already saved 134.2867221 Restarting system."
and has to be forced off with the power switch. Power back on and the full sda1 fsck begins. Installing grub does not help this. QuirkyNop did not have this problem.

Shutoff does work, so that's what I use. Logout and Restart X also work in the desktop.

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More of the RacyNop saga

#77 Post by Henry »

Please allow me to use this space to record my notes. I do have a strong interest in and have used Nops for years as my serious business OS. Also I guess gray follows this spot and am always hopeful of his input.

I had put some of this in the Racy-5.2.2 Final forum at
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... &start=480 as follows

Post subject: Racy 522 hangs on reboot (shutdown is OK.) Subject description: Actually it's RacyNop522 but Racy522 acts the same with pfix=ram.

Dell Optiplex 745 desktop, frugal, live CD. Everything I had in my previous QuiryNop-1.2 works in RacyNop making a complete custom business system, sharing the racysave.2fs files with my netbook, a definite plus.

There's a problem remaining in RacyNop=522 r1: Reboot does not work in my desktop (it does in my netbook). It freezes at ". . . session already saved 134.2867221 Restarting system." and has to be forced off with the power switch. I turn the power back on and the full sda1 fsck begins.

Other puppies than Racy do not have this problem in this computer. QuirkyNop and WaryNop, for example. Shutdown does work, so that's what I use. Logout and Restart X also work. This is not a huge problem, but hard crashes are not good.)

I have searched through miles of forums but have not found the answer to this specific problem, although many sounded similar.

Another intermittent problem I've seen: after accessing a USB HD or flash drive when I unmount it, it does unmount (contents disappear from the file manager), but the drive icon remains and I have to restart X or reboot to get rid of it. Doesn't happen every time.

This sounds like what Barry was blaming on unionfs and why he suddenly went to aufs, bringing out Racy-5.3. Have I got that right and am I stuck with this since RacyNop is based on 5.2.2?

This is always a hazard - a great derivative comes out and is adopted by keen users. Then the base program is debugged or improved but the derivative may not follow, leaving ordinary users behind. One cannot expect personal derivatives to have long term support. Even the flagships may falter - Barry has gone on to RaspberryPi. In any case I am happily using RacyNop now.

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#78 Post by greengeek »

Hi Henry - a couple of questions:
1) Does this behaviour occur on NOP522 if you have no savefile?
2) Does it occur if you use Racy522 installed in exactly the same way as your NOP522 install? (I got a bit confused about your subtitle implying that Racy522 showed the same behaviour only when you gave it the pfix=ram parameter. Maybe I misunderstood)

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#79 Post by Henry »

greengeek wrote:Hi Henry - a couple of questions:
1) Does this behaviour occur on NOP522 if you have no savefile?
2) Does it occur if you use Racy522 installed in exactly the same way as your NOP522 install? (I got a bit confused about your subtitle implying that Racy522 showed the same behaviour only when you gave it the pfix=ram parameter. Maybe I misunderstood)
Thanks,
1. I think so. Will recheck.
2. Yes. I just used pfix=ram to insure and to make clear that it was not being affected by an installation. My impression is that Racy (Nop or not) is different in this respect from other programs I use.

Thanks for your interest. I'll get back to you.

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What about new and old? (kernels)

#80 Post by Henry »

Confirming. Also I just ran Racy-5.3 and WaryNop-5.1.1, neither of which are on my computer, bare new CD isos. I think the Racys have something different that Wary and others do not. Of course I could be mistaken, but the end result is the same - I have a perfectly satisfactory RacyNop installation which is all I use, 24/7; I just can't reboot it.

EDIT: I need to clarify some things lest I appear completely ignorant. Perhaps Racy is too "new" for my computer. I don't consider my Dell Optiplex 745 "old." It's came with XP - I don't know exactly when it was made. Everything I've tried before has always worked with it.

However when I try the racysave.2fs from the desktop in my new Acer Aspire netbook, reboot works! BUT logout, which works in the desktop, does not, causing the "blind logout" and "double vision" described above. Is Racy too new for my desktop, too old or too new for my netbook? I think I'm tilting against windmills here.

Both my desktop and netbook are very usable, as long as i'm careful not to reboot in the desktop or logout in the netbook. I'm not making this up!

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