Legacy OS 4 Mini Released

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Sage
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#31 Post by Sage »

John usually advocated full install
Yes, of course, but how to get there?! I have my own subterfuges to achieve that, but John might need to edit his claim and advice. Invariably, I have an HD connected, which has swap space. Purely by chance, this was not the case on one test machine. Best advice for newcomers is to do a FULL on another s-o-t-a machine and transfer the disk. Saves a lot of time, as the install is preserved even if the old banger doesn't run with it.

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James C
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#32 Post by James C »

Hit the top 10 on Distrowatch..... :)
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Sage
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#33 Post by Sage »

Oh dear! Gave it some swap space, but the initial booting didn't seem to look/find/use it. KP after switch-root, not sync-ing, etc. This can be a major issue on old kit that it is designed to use, and almost (but not quite!) the death knell for old laptops, for which additional memory may not be available and/or insertable. In all these instances, it will be necessary to install remotely on modern HW, hardly meeting the prime directive? Some folks have difficulty mounting 2.5" IDE drives into new machines on account of needing an adapter, either 40w to 44w IDE or IDE-to-SATA. No idea what options are for jiggling with the boot up coding? if any...

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James C
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#34 Post by James C »

I've already successfully booted Legacy OS4 Mini on several machines, so I grabbed an old Windows 98 box off the shelf. 384 Mb of ram.... no swap.

Default boot, just hitting "enter" .... kernel panic.
Booting pfix=no ram ....... kernel panic.
Booting pfix=nocopy ..... kernel panic.

Running the latest Slacko live so no hardware issues.

-Computer-
Processor : Celeron (Mendocino)
Memory : 384MB (137MB used)

-Version-
Kernel : Linux 3.1.10-slacko_4gA (i686)
Compiled : #1 SMP Tue Mar 13 14:58:11 EST 2012

-Processor-
Name : Celeron (Mendocino)
Family, model, stepping : 6, 6, 5 (Pentium II/Pentium II Xeon/Celeron)
Vendor : Intel
-Configuration-
Cache Size : 128kb
Frequency : 434.24MHz
BogoMIPS : 868.66
Byte Order : Little Endian

Might need to reconsider those minimum specs.

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#35 Post by Sage »

Thanks for that confirmation, James. Just wondering: Celeron & Duron are low on cache. Needs further investigating!

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russoodle
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#36 Post by russoodle »

Sage wrote:Polished, as usual. Well done again, John!
For the record, now that Skype belongs to Beelzebub, perhaps it's time to decamp to PSIP, especially as smokey has given us such a detailed exposition of its use (http://www.smokey01.com/help/psip/psip-help.html?
Some of us have been using Psip now for several months with great success on various 5 series Puppys, but unless John has updated certain libs, the version we're using (v1.*-2.*) won't work with this release - the default known to work with Puppy 4.* series is Psip version 0.26.
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john biles
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#37 Post by john biles »

Hello Everyone,
Sorry about the kernel panic problem for some of you with Ram less then 512Mb's. On some test PC's Legacy OS 4 Mini refuses to load from the CD and tries to load itself in to Ram which it can't causing the Kernel Panic error. One fix is to temporary increase the Ram to 512Mb's do the install to Hard Drive before removing the added Ram.

I'm as unhappy about this as you are. I need help / advice on finding a fix to this. I know it comes down to a bug in one of the scripts during boot up. If someone finds the bug please let me know so I can fix this problem.
Legacy OS 2017 has been released.

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russoodle
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#38 Post by russoodle »

john biles wrote:Hello Everyone,
Sorry about the kernel panic problem for some of you with Ram less then 512Mb's. On some test PC's Legacy OS 4 Mini refuses to load from the CD and tries to load itself in to Ram which it can't causing the Kernel Panic error. One fix is to temporary increase the Ram to 512Mb's do the install to Hard Drive before removing the added Ram.

I'm as unhappy about this as you are. I need help / advice on finding a fix to this. I know it comes down to a bug in one of the scripts during boot up. If someone finds the bug please let me know so I can fix this problem.
John, wouldn't passing a boot parameter such as "puppy pfix=noram" be of any use?
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nooby
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#39 Post by nooby »

I guess my machine is too new? You care about the
older equipments so a Netbook from 2009 or 2010 or so
has LAN cards integrated into the motherboard that the
kernel has no driver for?

The LAN drivers for Acer D255 fail to get loaded in a way
that allow it to get internet

Is that situation something that comes with the goal and
nothing to do about? I like all the other things about it.

It looks incredibly nice and pleasant to use apart from no internet.

Thanks Russ,

It is not that important to me. I do have many other linux to play with.
Last edited by nooby on Sat 24 Mar 2012, 19:08, edited 1 time in total.
I use Google Search on Puppy Forum
not an ideal solution though

Sage
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#40 Post by Sage »

One fix is to temporary increase the Ram to 512Mb's
Yes, that's included in the canonical subterfuges I referred to. But, it may not be available to everyone, for all sorts of quite reasonable, errr reasons, and notably those cited for poor old lappies...
Let's hope some-one can assist with a solution, otherwise it kinda defeats the principle objective for deployment on ye olde machinery.

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#41 Post by Sage »

More bad news, John!
For reasons you may be aware of, when I first tested your L4, I had all new kit (<= couple of months old) on the bench.
Now I have changed back to old (but certainly not ancient) kit, I find L4 won't boot. Saluki 15 and LupuPlus boot just fine (I have these at hand, and although considerably smaller than L4, they, too, are very new). Tried everything - either get an early KP as described above, or, if the memory is increased to 512, booting stalls later in the process. The only other distro to exhibit similar problems on older kit is BK's PrecisePuppy, which is highly experimental and an unfair comparison. Assume I've rung all the changes of HW, including mem., video cards, etc. I may not know a jot about code, but HW is definitely my bag.
'Fraid it looks essential to urgently fix this issue or modify claims?

Later: to be fair, I tried Anti-X M11-486. No issues. Of course, this is not a RAM only resident distro (is it?) but Puppy always used to run regardless. In the event of insufficent memory, it retained control of the CD and access thereto when required, ie exactly like other liveCD s of similar size to L4.

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russoodle
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#42 Post by russoodle »

Hello Nooby :)
Why not post a request for drivers on this thread: http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/index.php?f=62, remembering that this release is based on Puppy 4.1...

On the subject of Psip....i downloaded, installed and successfully ran Psip 0.26 tonight, after i figured out KMix and correctly configured my sound. As previously mentioned, later versions of Psip are incompatible with 4 series Puppys but 0.26 works like a charm. I was running Legacy OS 4 Mini live on a T42P lappie with 1GB RAM.

I've attached screenies of the interface and my KMix configuration:
Attachments
Psip026-mainwindow.jpg
Psip-0.26 main interface
(41.73 KiB) Downloaded 1451 times
kmix-input.jpg
KMix input settings
(33.67 KiB) Downloaded 1429 times
kmix-output.jpg
KMix output settings
(34.25 KiB) Downloaded 1393 times
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James C
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#43 Post by James C »

I did notice that even though I attempted booting "pfix=noram" and "pfix=nocopy" Puppy overrode the boot parameters and still attempted to load into ram which led to the kernel panic.
I'm not that familiar with the startup scripts but I seem to recall that if Puppy detects a certain amount of ram while booting it will override and load into ram.With the larger size of Legacy OS4 I'd assume that parameter would need to be tweaked upwards.
That's my guess anyway...... :)

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James C
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#44 Post by James C »

Believe this is based on Puppy 4.21 with the 2.6.25.16 kernel.The thread with extra drivers is at http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 739#237739 . Same kernel as 4.1 anyway. :)

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russoodle
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#45 Post by russoodle »

Thanks James - brain's asleep while eyes are still partially open.....5.40am here :roll:
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Keef
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#46 Post by Keef »

Did a manual full install to a Compaq Armada M700:

-Computer-
Processor : Pentium III (Coppermine)
Frequency : 447.81MHz
Memory : 385MB (67MB used)
-Display-
Resolution : 1024x768 pixels
OpenGL Renderer : Unknown
X11 Vendor : The X.Org Foundation
-Multimedia-
Audio Adapter : ES1978 - ESS ES1978 (Maestro 2E)
-Input Devices-
TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint
AT Translated Set 2 keyboard
PC Speaker
HID 413c:3010
-SCSI Disks-
ATA TOSHIBA MK4032GA
COMPAQ CD-224E
ATA CF CARD 4GB
Just dumped the contents of the sfs and vmlinuz to a partition (ext2) and took it from there.
Runs quite well. Apps can be slow to load but are ok once running. Using wireless (via ndiswrapper and the old network wizard). Couldn't get WPA connection at first, but ran Auto DHCP and it connected anyway.
Not using included browsers, as I use Opera-Next which runs quite happily in its own directory and is shared between other Puplets.
No problems so far, looking good.

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James C
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#47 Post by James C »

Tried on my trusty old primary P3 test box. 733 Mhz/256 Mb ram/ 1 Gb swap.Boot parameters or not ....kernel panic.Tried a manual frugal install.... kernel panic as soon as the sfs tried to load into ram.
I also did a manual full install and things are working well.Runs pretty darn quick. :)

-Computer-
Processor : Pentium III (Coppermine)
Memory : 254MB (127MB used)
Operating System : Puppy Linux 0.42
User Name : root (root)
Date/Time : Sat 24 Mar 2012 06:06:51 PM GMT-8
-Display-
Resolution : 1024x768 pixels
OpenGL Renderer : Unknown
X11 Vendor : The X.Org Foundation
-Multimedia-
Audio Adapter : ICH - Intel 82801AA-ICH

-Version-
Kernel : Linux 2.6.25.16 (i686)
Compiled : #1 Tue Aug 26 10:45:53 GMT-8 2008
C Library : GNU C Library version 2.6.1 (stable)
Default C Compiler : Unknown
Distribution : Puppy Linux 0.42

-Processor-
Name : Pentium III (Coppermine)
Family, model, stepping : 6, 8, 6 (Pentium III/Pentium III Xeon/Celeron)
Vendor : Intel
-Configuration-
Cache Size : 256kb
Frequency : 730.90MHz
BogoMIPS : 1462.98
Byte Order : Little Endian

# free
total used free shared buffers
Mem: 254760 242640 12120 0 11264
Swap: 1020088 0 1020088
Total: 1274848 242640 1032208
#
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john biles
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#48 Post by john biles »

Hello Keef and James C,
If possible can you post a quick "How To" on using the sfs file from the CD to boot those computers having trouble with the "Kernel Panic Error" on systems with less than 512Mb's of Ram.

Also try removing Ram so you only have 128Mb's, I've been told this might also work.
Legacy OS 2017 has been released.

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#49 Post by smokey01 »

John,

Very nice and well polished.

I had trouble with audio and smplayer would not work for me. A video mkv, mp4 was very chopped up, so pixilated I got very little display.

I still need to do more testing but what I have seen so far looks very good.

Xorg wouldn't run and I had to use Xvesa I think it was.

Running on an Intel Q9400 with 4G ram and Nvidia 220 graphics card.

Cheers

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James C
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#50 Post by James C »

john biles wrote: Also try removing Ram so you only have 128Mb's, I've been told this might also work.
I just happened to have another old box handy ....500 Mhz w/ 128 Mb ram. I deleted the swap partition just for this test.

Legacy OS 4 Mini booted to a desktop, was able to take a screenshot (see below) but that was about it.Can't really get anything else to launch however that may be more the fault of the slow cpu.Did boot though. :)

Well,after about 5 minutes Opera is finally launching. :lol:
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