Precise Puppy 5.4.3

Please post any bugs you have found
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artsown
Posts: 403
Joined: Wed 12 Sep 2012, 18:35

#109 Post by artsown »

I ran Precise 5.4.2 for a couple of days and it seems to be solid with the
exception that it black screens on about 20% of startups and it still fails
to start up at all on one of my PCs. I post this because I've become
curious about the reason(s) all four of my various PCs having Pentium 4
cpus have problems with Pups built on 3. something kernels but have no
such problems running Pups built on earlier kernels. Why???

Art

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James C
Posts: 6618
Joined: Thu 26 Mar 2009, 05:12
Location: Kentucky

#110 Post by James C »

vicmz wrote:
James C wrote:
vicmz wrote:Sorry for the off-topic

@James C

How can I install the system details panel you have on the top-right corner of your screenshots? Is it conky? Are there any .pet packages for that?
Yes, it's just Conky with a tweaked config. There are conky packages in the Precise repo in the PPM.
Thanks :D
Just a bonus Conky screenshot....... :)
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davids45
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Location: Chatswood, NSW

what graphics systems?

#111 Post by davids45 »

G'day Art,

I have slightly similar problems with virtually all PAE-enabled Puppies giving black-screens soon after running - they all start up. Retros are all fine so far.

I put this down to my particular Radeon graphics card and the drivers offered by the various Linux distributions.

Are your four computers using the same graphics cards/system?

If not, if you listed the various graphics for each computer perhaps someone could give some help for you (and for me too, come to think of it).

David S.

eps
Posts: 34
Joined: Sun 04 Jul 2010, 02:40

precise 542 and upup precise

#112 Post by eps »

not see dvdrom in fullinstall
idem samsung camera
livecd and frugal works good
best whishes
thanks
eps
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WB7ODYFred
Posts: 169
Joined: Sun 14 Dec 2008, 02:15
Location: Oregon & Washington

Retro Precise 5.4.2.iso Torrent Download file attached.

#113 Post by WB7ODYFred »

Retro Precise 5.4.2 Readme file
http://distro.ibiblio.org/quirky/precis ... README.htm

Here is the command to create this torrent
mktorrent -a udp://tracker.publicbt.com:80/announce,udp://tracker.istole.it:80/announce,http://tracker.coppersurfer.tk:6969/ann ... 9/announce -c "Puppy Linux Retro Precise based on Ubuntu Precise Pangolin 12.04.1+ " -w http://distro.ibiblio.org/quirky/precis ... -5.4.2.iso -o retroprecise-5.4.2.iso.torrent retroprecise-5.4.2.iso

http://www.datafilehost.com/download-1816ebd4.html Download Link for retroprecise-5.4.2.iso.torrent

AARF Example on creating Torrents TO SHARE
http://puppylinux.info/topic/pet-for-mk ... r-and-wide

http://ftp.nluug.nl/ibiblio/distributio ... 4.2-retro/ NLUUG download site
http://distro.ibiblio.org/quirky/precise-5.4.2-retro/ Ibiblio Download Site


How To use ZIP command to create a ZIP file
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 05c175ca3d

Command to create a ZIP file from a torrent file.
zip retroprecise-5.4.2.iso.torrent.zip retroprecise-5.4.2.iso.torrent
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zipped retroprecise-5.4.2.iso.torrent file Also located for download at http://www.datafilehost.com/download-1816ebd4.html
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artsown
Posts: 403
Joined: Wed 12 Sep 2012, 18:35

#114 Post by artsown »

Hello davids45.

You may be right that video driver versions are the "black screen"
culprit. I began to associate the black screen problem with Pups
on 3.X kernels since slacko, racy and precise all have the problem,
at least with PAE versions. I noticed that Barry remarked that the
only other difference (precise) between PAE and Retro is video
drivers. My tests on Precise Retro also indicated no black screen
problem. But 5.4.2 Retro still freezes during startup at the line
"Recognising media devices ... optical input" on one machine.

None of my PCs have the Radeon video. Two of my PCs have some
old Nvidia and the other two have some versions of (on board)
Intel hardware. I seem to recall that forcing Vesa on one of my
tests cleared up the black screen problem. So that's one
indication that it may be a driver issue.

To be clear, "black screen" here means "mostly black" since the
toolbar at the bottom of the screen is visible and useable so
that you can select Menu-Shutdown-Restart x server to get the
full gui screen. That's another reason why I'm not so sure it's
as simple as video driver versions. Why should video work ok
once you restart x if it's a driver problem? I would expect far
worse behaviour with video driver problems.

I couldn't care less for myself about these issues. My concern
is that new users may get turned off of Puppy at the first
black screen and never return :)

Since I'm obviously confused by all I've seen, I've been hoping
that Barry or some other expert would shed some light. I'd be
perfectly happy to do some guided testing.

Art

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bigpup
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#115 Post by bigpup »

artsown,

Yes it is related to the graphics driver being used.
The driver that is trying to be used, at initial boot, is not completely compatible with your graphics hardware.

In Slacko 5.4 this is the suggested options to correct the problem.
If you have video blackscreen at boot try one of these boot options:

pfix=ram i915.modeset=0
pfix=ram radeon.modeset=0
pfix=ram nouveau.modeset=0

depending on your card of course.

NB:
i915 is for intel
radeon is for radeon
nouveau is for nvidia
Vesa driver should work for any graphics hardware. It provides the basic video graphics that all graphics hardware support.
The things they do not tell you, are usually the clue to solving the problem.
When I was a kid I wanted to be older.... This is not what I expected :shock:
YaPI(any iso installer)

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oldyeller
Posts: 889
Joined: Tue 15 Nov 2011, 14:26
Location: Alaska

#116 Post by oldyeller »

Hello,

Precise retro 5.4.2 frugal install Dell D430


It would seem that Pmusic never made it in Precise. Any one no way?


Cheers

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Terryphi
Posts: 761
Joined: Wed 02 Jul 2008, 09:32
Location: West Wales, Britain.

#117 Post by Terryphi »

oldyeller wrote:Hello,

Precise retro 5.4.2 frugal install Dell D430


It would seem that Pmusic never made it in Precise. Any one no way?


Cheers
See Barry's blog :http://bkhome.org/blog2/?viewDetailed=00004
[b]Classic Opera 12.16 browser SFS package[/b] for Precise, Slacko, Racy, Wary, Lucid, etc available[url=http://terryphillips.org.uk/operasfs.htm]here[/url] :)

artsown
Posts: 403
Joined: Wed 12 Sep 2012, 18:35

#118 Post by artsown »

Thanks for the input, bigpup.

Art

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FeodorF
Posts: 293
Joined: Wed 07 Jul 2010, 09:44
Location: Heidelberg, Germany

#119 Post by FeodorF »

Ref. /usr/local/lib/X11/pixmaps

24x24 boxes aren`t RGB`s

48x48 boxes are RGB`s
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BarryK
Puppy Master
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Location: Perth, Western Australia
Contact:

#120 Post by BarryK »

artsown wrote:Hello davids45.

You may be right that video driver versions are the "black screen"
culprit. I began to associate the black screen problem with Pups
on 3.X kernels since slacko, racy and precise all have the problem,
at least with PAE versions. I noticed that Barry remarked that the
only other difference (precise) between PAE and Retro is video
drivers. My tests on Precise Retro also indicated no black screen
problem. But 5.4.2 Retro still freezes during startup at the line
"Recognising media devices ... optical input" on one machine.

None of my PCs have the Radeon video. Two of my PCs have some
old Nvidia and the other two have some versions of (on board)
Intel hardware. I seem to recall that forcing Vesa on one of my
tests cleared up the black screen problem. So that's one
indication that it may be a driver issue.

To be clear, "black screen" here means "mostly black" since the
toolbar at the bottom of the screen is visible and useable so
that you can select Menu-Shutdown-Restart x server to get the
full gui screen. That's another reason why I'm not so sure it's
as simple as video driver versions. Why should video work ok
once you restart x if it's a driver problem? I would expect far
worse behaviour with video driver problems.

I couldn't care less for myself about these issues. My concern
is that new users may get turned off of Puppy at the first
black screen and never return :)

Since I'm obviously confused by all I've seen, I've been hoping
that Barry or some other expert would shed some light. I'd be
perfectly happy to do some guided testing.

Art
Your problem is that ROX-Filer is failing to start.

In /root/.xinitrc you will see this code:

Code: Select all

#w468 on old PCs rox sometimes does not start, see further down...
#120718 raspi sometimes need extra delay otherwise rox fails to start.
CPUSPEED=`grep -m 1 -i '^cpu MHz' /proc/cpuinfo | tr -d ' ' | cut -f 2 -d ':' | cut -f 1 -d '.'` #my laptop: 933.000
[ ! $CPUSPEED ] && CPUSPEED=`grep -m 1 -i '^bogomips' /proc/cpuinfo | tr -d ' ' | cut -f 2 -d ':' | cut -f 1 -d '.'` #120718 raspi: 697.95  my laptop: 4789.47
[ ! $CPUSPEED ] && CPUSPEED=250
[ $CPUSPEED -lt 700 ] && sleep 0.5
[ $CPUSPEED -lt 400 ] && sleep 0.5
if [ -f /root/Choices/ROX-Filer/PuppyPan1 ];then
 rox -p /root/Choices/ROX-Filer/PuppyPin -r /root/Choices/ROX-Filer/PuppyPan1
else
 rox -p /root/Choices/ROX-Filer/PuppyPin
fi
For anyone else experiencing this black screen problem, but you do get the taskbar, would you mind please trying these experiments...

The above code may need tweaking. Open a terminal and try each of these:

Code: Select all

grep -m 1 -i '^cpu MHz' /proc/cpuinfo | tr -d ' ' | cut -f 2 -d ':' | cut -f 1 -d '.'

Code: Select all

grep -m 1 -i '^bogomips' /proc/cpuinfo | tr -d ' ' | cut -f 2 -d ':' | cut -f 1 -d '.'
...for the CPU speeds you are getting, we may need to bump those "sleep" lines.

Well, you could try some changes, for example, try "sleep 1", or "sleep 1.5" or "sleep 2" or "sleep 2.5" -- find out the lowest sleep that gives you consistently no black screens.
...maybe start with longest sleep, then work down.

This feedback will be much appreciated.
[url]https://bkhome.org/news/[/url]

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bigpup
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Location: S.C. USA

#121 Post by bigpup »

I get similar problem with black screen, but not the exact same conditions.
I get a partial desktop GUI where the menu is blank and desktop icons are missing or partially there.
Seems to be caused by graphics driver being used.
My Nvidia hardware does not like the nouveau driver.
If I use the Vesa driver or use the boot option nouveau.modeset=0 , all problems are fixed and I get a normal desktop and menu.
The things they do not tell you, are usually the clue to solving the problem.
When I was a kid I wanted to be older.... This is not what I expected :shock:
YaPI(any iso installer)

artsown
Posts: 403
Joined: Wed 12 Sep 2012, 18:35

#122 Post by artsown »

Hi Barry.

Barking up the wrong tree? :)

I happened to have one "mostly black screen" Pup in a frugal
install on a old IBM NetVista. The Pup is Racy 5.3.90 The video
hardware is Intel and Racy is set for 1280 X 1024 The cpu is
a p4 2.0ghz and RAM is 512 meg.

I tried modifying both sleep settings in the .initrc from 0.5 to
various values from 0.1 to 6.0 None of the settings fixed the
problem. I verified that the ,initrc file was indeed modified by
checking it after each reboot. I could tell when the sleep was
set to a high value since the startup screen remained totally
black (except for cursor) for a seemingly long time before a gui
(or toolbar at least) appeared.

I may have to d/l Precise PAE again (dunno if I still have it
anywhere) to test it in particular. Meanwhile I do have Slacko
5.4 handy on a CD so I'll try it next.

BTW, thanks for your pursuit of and work on a wonderful idea.
Puppy Linux really rocks!

Art

artsown
Posts: 403
Joined: Wed 12 Sep 2012, 18:35

#123 Post by artsown »

As expected, Precise 5.4.2 PAE black screens with sleep settings up to
6. As previously mentioned, Retro Precise (non-PAE) does not have the
black screen problem.

However, the slacko 5.4 I happen to have is non-PAE (the so-called 4g)
and it has the black screen problem to some small extent. Increasing
sleep values up to 6 didn't help here either.

I've already posted early on that all four of my test machines are similar
in that they have P4 cpus with clock speeds of 1.7 to 2.0 ghz. They do
have different video hardware.

Art

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oldyeller
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Location: Alaska

#124 Post by oldyeller »

Hello Everyone,

I have been doing some testing with the repo that I did for OV-Precise and the pets and sfs's can be used on Precise 5.4.2

I am running the retro non-pae.

You can get pets and sfs's here http://smokey01.com/Oldyeller/pet_packages-upup/

Enjoy

artsown
Posts: 403
Joined: Wed 12 Sep 2012, 18:35

#125 Post by artsown »

Barry. I copied and pasted into Rox Terminal each of the grep lines you
requested. For the one containg "cpumhz" the report was 1993 which
makes sense for a 2 ghz P4 cpu

For the line containing "bogomips" the report was 3987

Art

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davids45
Posts: 1326
Joined: Sun 26 Nov 2006, 23:33
Location: Chatswood, NSW

black screens with PAE - totally black

#126 Post by davids45 »

G'day,

Just to add more detail for my particular problems with black screens and recent Pups (PAE and now the very latest 4G slacko):

No problem booting with the problem Pups - but after a few minutes, I get a totally black screen (no task bars) with no possible recovery (Ctrl+Alt+Bkspace does nothing) so I have to do a re-set. Computer does not freeze, just the display - happened once while Pburning a CD but I could finish the burn by hitting <Enter> by listening to when sr0 had stopped writing.

Graphics card is a Radeon HD5450 in a desktop. I recall once trying the proprietary ATI driver which also black-screened, but it's the default radeon driver that is in use when I get these black screens.

Full and Frugals both black screen - I have lately tried fewer Fulls as now if the Frugal doesn't behave itself, I don't bother with the longer install & setting up of a matching Full.

No pattern I can see when the black screen happens with regard to the running program - but I can't recall it failing when I haven't been doing something on the computer, that is, leaving it running with no input may be OK. But maybe also I haven't tried long or hard enough that way?

The one PAE exception for my computer could be pemasu's PAEs which seem to be free of this problem - again maybe I just haven't run his Pups long enough to crash the graphics? Hopefully he could give his ideas once he gets back from cross-country skiing.

Worryingly the latest non-PAE slacko has the problem as well as the earlier PAE slackos (I haven't tried the 5.4-PAE slacko).

Retros otherwise are all good so far, so I'm happy to use these for playing with the new Pups (e.g. posting from a trouble-free RetroPrecise-5.4.2 Full).

David S.

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bigpup
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Location: S.C. USA

#127 Post by bigpup »

Seems to me all these black screen, messed up desktop GUI, graphics issues are related to the graphics driver being used.
Sure seems to cure the problems for me. If I use a graphics driver that likes my hardware and my hardware likes that driver.
All problems are cured and stuff just works.
Vesa driver seems to be good fallback option to at least get to usable GUI.
The things they do not tell you, are usually the clue to solving the problem.
When I was a kid I wanted to be older.... This is not what I expected :shock:
YaPI(any iso installer)

artsown
Posts: 403
Joined: Wed 12 Sep 2012, 18:35

#128 Post by artsown »

Bigpup, it's difficult for me to get a solid handle on whether or not the
issues I've had are driver related or not. I just tried to force Vesa on
Precise 5.4.2 PAE and it refuses to work. I tried with Racy 5.3.90 and
had success for a while. It accepted Vesa at only 640 X 480 even though
I had set 1024 X 768. After eight reboots with no black screens, I made
the mistake of trying Xorgwizard again and setting 1024 X 768. It no
longer accepted Vesa at all, and my only recourse was to let it run with
a (Intel) driver. The short run of 8 OK reboots using Vesa is very
suggestive that it's a driver problem but it's not conclusive. I had
intended to reboot 20 times or until a black screen.

The Intel hardware details reported by the Pups using System-Hardinfo
hardware intormation - PCI devices:

VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 82845 G/GL [Brookdale -G]/
GE Chipset Integrated Graphics Device (rev 03) (prog-if 00[VGA controller])

I get the same report on two of my PCs, the IBM NetVista and the Dell
2350 that I've used for the above tests. I don't yet know how to compare
the Intel driver used on the latest Pups to the drivers used on earlier
Pups that work Ok for me.

If anyone can steer me to a older driver and instruct me on how to get
it properly installed on Precise 5.4.2 and maybe also Racy 5.3.90 I'd
certainly like to try it out.

In fact, I'd like to know how to compare the Intel driver Retro Precise
uses to the PAE one since Retro isn't a problem.

I've been trying to figure out how to change the wireless rt2500pci on
the new Pups back to the version that works for me on older Pups.
Wireless has also gone to pot for me on Pups using 3,X kernels :)
This is effort is mostly just my curiosity and desire to learn at work.

I also wonder if the "buggyness" I've experienced in general with the
latest Pups isn't suggestive of kernel problems.

Art

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