Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

artsown · Joined: 12 Sep 2012 Posts: 124

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

James C · Joined: 26 Mar 2009 Posts: 4768 Location: Kentucky

davids45 · Joined: 26 Nov 2006 Posts: 581 Location: Chatswood, NSW

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 · Joined: 03 Jul 2010 Posts: 36

not see dvdrom in fullinstall
idem samsung camera
livecd and frugal works good
best whishes
thanks
eps

WB7ODYFred · Joined: 13 Dec 2008 Posts: 93 Location: Oregon & Washington

Retro Precise 5.4.2 Readme file
http://distro.ibiblio.org/quirky/precise-5.4.2-retro/precise-5.4.2-retro-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/announce,http://tracker.torrentbay.to:6969/announce,http://puto.me:6969/announce -c "Puppy Linux Retro Precise based on Ubuntu Precise Pangolin 12.04.1+ " -w http://distro.ibiblio.org/quirky/precise-5.4.2-retro/retroprecise-5.4.2.iso,http://ftp.nluug.nl/ibiblio/distributions/quirky/precise-5.4.2-retro/retroprecise-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-mktorrent-make-torrent-files-with-webseeds-and-distribute-your-files-far-and-wide

http://ftp.nluug.nl/ibiblio/distributions/quirky/precise-5.4.2-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/viewtopic.php?t=54552&sid=10b758dc49728f40924e2005c175ca3d

Command to create a ZIP file from a torrent file.
zip retroprecise-5.4.2.iso.torrent.zip retroprecise-5.4.2.iso.torrent

artsown · Joined: 12 Sep 2012 Posts: 124

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 Smile

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

bigpup · Posted: Mon 03 Dec 2012, 13:18 Post subject:

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.

oldyeller · Joined: 15 Nov 2011 Posts: 499 Location: Mishawaka IN

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

Terryphi · Posted: Mon 03 Dec 2012, 14:56 Post subject:

artsown · Joined: 12 Sep 2012 Posts: 124

Thanks for the input, bigpup.

Art

FeodorF · Joined: 07 Jul 2010 Posts: 71 Location: Heidelberg, Germany

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

24x24 boxes aren`t RGB`s

48x48 boxes are RGB`s

BarryK · Posted: Tue 04 Dec 2012, 07:25 Post subject:

bigpup · Posted: Tue 04 Dec 2012, 11:08 Post subject:

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.

artsown · Joined: 12 Sep 2012 Posts: 124

Hi Barry.

Barking up the wrong tree? Smile

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 · Joined: 12 Sep 2012 Posts: 124

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