Fatdog64-611 Final (Updated 12-14-2012)

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kirk
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#46 Post by kirk »

Even when the frame buffer does not get messed up, the text console fonts, which were previously readable, suddenly become microscopic during the boot sequence, making it hard to tell what is going on when there is a problem in getting to X and a desktop, or in the reboot/shutdown sequence, when there is a failure to save.
Again, this happens after KMS modules load which also load console frame buffer modules, though I haven't had any problems reading the font. If you don't want to use KMS for some reason you have to boot with nomodeset and probably use vesa.

Puppy has always impressed me with the ability to fall back to some lower level of operation where it is possible to isolate a problem well enough that knowledgeable people can fix it quickly.
This applies to Fatdog64 as well, but different knowledge is required. Fatdog64 has almost nothing to do with Puppy, nearly everything is different.

We would like to have Fatdog64 work on everything automatically. But of course that's not going to happen. We've made design choices which will work well on most hardware and not on others. Puppy has done the same. However the well supported hardware will vary between the two.

gcmartin

#47 Post by gcmartin »

Sage wrote:What ho, pre! ... but there is NO actual speed gain between ATA100 (ATA133 is like hen's teeth) and SATAI&II. If one reads very very carefully. it's the ...
Yeah, this has always been true for all known buses: the equipment is slower in most all cases, than the bus speed. In the case of parallel buses, the controllers will match bus speed when lock-on for transfer. It the case of serial buses, it protocol and unit dependent centered around the bus clock.

@Kirk and others, thanks for information on video setup. I'm sure all of the info presented will end up in FATDOGs documented files and FAQ soon.

Thanks

LateAdopter
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#48 Post by LateAdopter »

Hello kirk

I hadn't considered the microscopic fonts after modeswitch, to be a Fatdog specific problem, since all puppies did it. Nor did I think it was particularly important.

But I notice that recent Woof built puppies (Precise & Slacko14) modeswitch to a font which is the normal width but squashed a bit vertically. It is more than twice the size of the font in Fatdog.

EDIT: I should say, this is with the Radeon r600g driver and a 1600x1200 monitor.

I guess that BarryK must have found a configuration setting that can change it.

Anyway Fatdog64 610 is working well for me. The things that you did: cpuid, msr and panning are still working, - and they don't in recent Woof built puppies!

Thank you for that.

jamesbond
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#49 Post by jamesbond »

kirk wrote:
Even when the frame buffer does not get messed up, the text console fonts, which were previously readable, suddenly become microscopic during the boot sequence, making it hard to tell what is going on when there is a problem in getting to X and a desktop, or in the reboot/shutdown sequence, when there is a failure to save.
Again, this happens after KMS modules load which also load console frame buffer modules, though I haven't had any problems reading the font. If you don't want to use KMS for some reason you have to boot with nomodeset and probably use vesa.
In addition, there are two more things you could do:
2. You can set try to set the video mode / resolution of your text console. How to do it is listed here: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ke ... cing_modes and here http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/KernelModeSetting among other places.

BTW - the above should work for all puppies (or other distros too!) that uses KMS.

3. Use a large console font. The most popular one seems to be from here http://terminus-font.sourceforge.net/, the maximum size is 16x32 (double from standard 8x16).

I've attached here a new xorgwizard that myself and kirk is working on. Download the pet somewhere accessible from fatdog installation; boot with pfix=nox, then install the pet using "silent_petget /path/to/pet". Then start xorgwizard as usual (xorgwizard, not xorgwizard-old). Let me know whether it helps.

EDIT: I have also attached the big fonts. Same the new xorgwizard: after booting with pfix=nox, install the pet using silent_petget. Then run this: "setfont big" or "setfont bbig" (bbig stands for "bold and big"). That will install the Terminus 16x32 fonts. It looks very huge on my 1024x768 screen, but then I don't have 1600x1200 displays.

Let us know whether either/both the fonts and the new xorgwizard works, if they do, they will be included in the next release of Fatdog.

Note 1: The big fonts won't load unless you are using KMS with framebuffer console.
Note 2: Load the fonts using "setfont" only when you're at the console, not when you're using a terminal emulator (xterm, rxvt, sakura) inside the desktop.
Note 3: The big fonts I've attached only covers ISO-8859-1 character sets.

cheers!
Attachments
fonts-big.pet
big console fonts (Terminus 16x32)
(6.41 KiB) Downloaded 634 times
xorgwizard-new.pet
new xorgwizard
(3.22 KiB) Downloaded 616 times
Fatdog64 forum links: [url=http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=117546]Latest version[/url] | [url=https://cutt.ly/ke8sn5H]Contributed packages[/url] | [url=https://cutt.ly/se8scrb]ISO builder[/url]

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prehistoric
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#50 Post by prehistoric »

@Jamesbond,

Thanks for the xorgwizard-new pet! It will take me a day or so to test because I have to change video cards -- in the machine I am currently using for normal work -- to reproduce the problem. I don't want to shut it down until an unrelated crisis is over.

@all,

Let me make clear to kirk and all that I am not complaining that Fatdog 610 is unusable for me as it stands. I am typing this on 610 using the machine which had the problem. For me, slipping in an off-board graphics card I had lying around was no big deal. For others it would likely be a stumbling block. (I know plenty of people who freak out when I open the case of their machine.)

Last night I installed Fatdog 610 on yet another machine for someone I know. They were thrilled to see that VLC and Gimp were standard. (We had had an adventure while trying to install VLC on 5.4.2.) What I'm trying to get around is the need for experienced hand-holding to get started.

-----

Why wasn't I content with VESA? On a large CRT monitor the flicker from 60 Hz refresh is disturbing. I acquired such a monitor when others were fleeing to LCDs not just because of the accurate colors, but because it can go up to about 140 Hz, where eyestrain is negligible.

I also hope you will forgive me for reiterating: people with reduced visual acuity are all around you. I'm doing OK, but I have daily contact with others my age who are not. For them reducing the resolution can be a quick fix. To get a feel for the frustration they experience try to set up an installation wearing glasses with the wrong prescription. The clever work-arounds people suggest are a bit of a problem if you can't see what you're doing, which ends up as a call for help I have to answer.

(I still recall an auto repairman who didn't like any of the adjustments I made to get the most out of his Windows set up. He was ecstatic when I gave up and set the resolution to 800x600. At last he could see what was on the screen without squinting. There must be better solutions, but this was what I could do in the time available while picking up my car.)

------

I understand that the thrust of your development effort concentrates on machines produced in the last 5 years. If I go through the stack of motherboards removed from working machines around me, I think I can find at least 3 64-bit machines represented. These are likely older than 5 years. Inevitably, people on tight budgets will try Fatdog on such machines. These are the people ignored by commercial developers.

----

Aside: As a particularly galling example of the effect of market forces and monopoly power on software I present a gotcha in Windows 7 I just ran into when RAM prices dropped. Since I don't use Windows myself it had never bothered me before.

I am setting up a machine as a gift for friends. (It cannot be entirely a surprise, since I have borrowed their software to install on the new machine.) The goal was to migrate them to a more powerful machine without entirely losing compatibility with all their XP programs and user interface. A big plus for running bloated software is a surplus of RAM. I calculated that I could go to 32 GB. of RAM for $100 if I shopped carefully.

When I had this working under Fatdog, I went back to Windows 7 Home Premium. In the system information tab it told me I had "32 GB (16 GB usable)". It knows the RAM is there, but refuses to use it.

How to get around this? (No, thank you, I do not like W8.) Using "Windows anytime upgrade" I can go to W7 Pro for $89. This is more than I just paid for W7 Home Premium. I can get a legal reinstallation DVD with COA for W7 Professional for $75. This will wipe out my current installation, but it will leave me with the option of using W7 Home Premium on another machine, as this installation was never activated or registered.

This is the world people flee when they come to Puppy.

mini-jaguar
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#51 Post by mini-jaguar »

kirk wrote:
Is there any commands I can add to the grub to make it load the save and .sfs files placed in a folder and not the higher level of the directory?
There is for the save file. See the Boot options page in the FAQs.

Example grub entry:

title Fatdog64-610 (on /dev/sda6)
rootnoverify (hd0,5)
kernel /610/vmlinuz savefile=direct:device:sda6:/610/fd64save.ext4
initrd /610/initrd


The savefile argument means to use a savefile named fd64save.ext4 located in /fd610 directory of /dev/sda6, save directly to it.

EDIT: Just saw rcrsn51's post. Ditto on the Menu > Control Panel > Utilities > Savefile Argument Builder.
Yeah, that works fine thanks. Same thing really, the second way just creates the line automatically but for copying and pasting.

But I'm having trouble with the .sfs files in a folder (not directly in /home but in a folder in /home).

At first it seems to work, but the computer will not shut down, it'll start shutting down and then stop on the "Spin down discs ... sda sr0" line and just block. (edit: never mind, it works fine now. I was trying to load way too many .sfs files at once)
Last edited by mini-jaguar on Tue 11 Dec 2012, 20:59, edited 1 time in total.

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prehistoric
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#52 Post by prehistoric »

Latest update on one offending configuration:

An Asus M2NPV-VM with integrated nVidia graphics and no off-board video. (I'm running now with an off-board Radeon 5450 to post, because this is how this save file was created.)

I can hardly blame others for getting confused. I forgot which configuration did what. For a minute I thought I had trashed this save file. It took me three tries to get this line right in GRUB's menu.lst:

Code: Select all

 kernel /FD/vmlinuz savefile=direct:device:sda2:/FD/fd64save.ext4
My older Fatdog installation can now be accessed without any special games via this entry:

Code: Select all

 kernel /FD/FOD/vmlinuz savefile=direct:device:sda2:/FD/FOD/fd64save.ext4
This is what I needed from the beginning to compare versions. (All fatdogs go in /FD because I also have Precise 5.4.2 and Lupu 5.28.005.)

(Note for documentation: when someone types /dev/sda2 instead of plain sda2 above the error message may well complain that the savefile is of the wrong type. This was baffling. )

The microscopic text I mentioned is visible on the current configuration, with the off-board radeon 5450 graphics card. The big fonts solve this problem, but I've taken a more radical approach.

In this situation I don't need to run xorgwizard-new. (Since I don't see any binary named xorgwizard-new, I'm assuming the pet installs it as xorgwizard.)

Somewhere I got the idea nomodeset was assigned to a variable. When I tried putting it on the kernel command line naked I finally got what I had expected to begin with. :oops:

In this situation the new xorgwizard worked, I think. The uncertainty remains because the driver I selected, nouveau, was already chosen, leading to an exit with no change. Booting with 'nomodeset' was enough to get to a usable desktop. Forcing other video modes was unnecessary. Running the new xorgwizard from the configuration with the Radeon 5450 board also led to no change, since the radeon driver was already chosen. Nomodeset on the kernel line is the key.

I haven't tried all the other problem configurations, but suspect I can now work around all the problems. This is not to say a neophyte would be able. I was stumped a short time ago.

While I was doing this I noticed an error message about a deleted node in my save file. I booted into fatdog 600 and ran fsck.ext4 to fix this.

Right now I feel lucky to have accomplished these experiments without letting the magic smoke out of any integrated circuit chips.

Added: Just woke up, and went over my work. My whole problem was with the KMS module, and my understanding of how to disable it. Both my menu entries for fatdog now use the 'nomodeset' flag on the kernel line all the time. I'm not sure I understand its relation to X, or why it was ever considered important.

Next problem: the messages which now scroll past tell me the boot sequence invokes demons. Very suspicious. :wink:

Thanks for all the help.

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veronicathecow
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Booting fails at initrd

#53 Post by veronicathecow »

Hi, tried fatdog64 on my Asus M4A78LT-M LE AMD 760G Socket AM3 Integrated ATI Radeon 3000 2 Gb RAM but it just hangs on initrd.
Can boot any other puppy that I have so far tried
Thanks

jamesbond
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#54 Post by jamesbond »

prehistoric, thanks for confirming that it works. It should be easier in the next release as these pets would be integrated into the main iso, and we'll write some FAQ to address the "blank screen" issue.

veronicathecow - does the initrd load at all? (you're using the ISO or do you run frugal install by copying the files directly to harddisk)? do you see any error message at all? If yes, what are they? If not, use the "showerr" boot parameter and tell us what it is?
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veronicathecow
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#55 Post by veronicathecow »

Hi James. Frugal, MD5 checked, puppy stops at initrd /fatdog64/initrd.gz
iso is Fatdog64-610-firefox.iso
Added showerr to kernel line in menu.lst and no change in output (no error messages) it just hangs as initrd /fatdog64/initrd.gz
cheers

mini-jaguar
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#56 Post by mini-jaguar »

don't add the .gz to the initrd line in the grub unless you change the filename to that too.

works either way, but the grub has to be consequent with the file names.

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veronicathecow
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#57 Post by veronicathecow »

Hi mini-jaguar, thanks that sorted that. I have 8 other puppies and I copied and pasted the the menu.lst entry of another puppy and changed then directory. Fatdog is the only one of those without the .gz and I missed that.
Looking good and boots fine, nice speed and a polished look. Many thanks to all.

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prehistoric
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#58 Post by prehistoric »

jamesbond wrote:prehistoric, thanks for confirming that it works. It should be easier in the next release as these pets would be integrated into the main iso, and we'll write some FAQ to address the "blank screen" issue...
Just a query on my part: did you understand that when I used 'nomodeset' to prevent loading of the KMS module the video configured correctly automatically? In that sense I couldn't test the xorgwizard-new, because it never changed anything.

Suggestion: unless there is some big advantage to KMS which I am missing, wouldn't it be better to do the initial boot with nomodeset to have a better chance of getting to some kind of desktop or to xorgwizard? Then users who wanted whatever benefits KMS offers could remove this option to enable KMS on later boots, after they knew that fatdog could support their graphics. (I don't think those who overlooked this possibility would be losing a great deal, while those who would end up in the situation I was in would instead be able to configure graphics either automatically or manually. )

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rcrsn51
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#59 Post by rcrsn51 »

prehistoric wrote:Suggestion: unless there is some big advantage to KMS which I am missing, wouldn't it be better to do the initial boot with nomodeset to have a better chance of getting to some kind of desktop or to xorgwizard?
This same problem is occurring in other recent Puppies that have abandoned the old text-mode setup screens for the more "modern" first-run configuration GUI.

So what will a newbie do if they get a 100% black screen? Track down the FAQs to find the right boot option? Or walk away?

gcmartin

FirstRUN in FATDOG

#60 Post by gcmartin »

Would FATDOG benefit from using Shinobar's FirstRUN on its initial boot? If the developers are opposed, could it be a boot option?

Here to help

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don570
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#61 Post by don570 »

I made a special right click pet package for the latest Fatdog64-610

http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 887#669887

Some observations

1) It is the practice in recent Puppies to make the 'OpenWith' folder
and the 'SendTo' folder the same by making a link between the two.

I found that I had to put my right click menu items in the 'SendTo' folder
rather than in the 'OpenWith' folder.

2) Playing sound worked well but I couldn't record sound

3) I added in gtkdialog-splash and linked it to yaf-splash to
be consistent with recent puppies

4) gtkdialog2 isn't being used anymore so it can be removed

5) Most other puppies are making gtkdialog a link back to gtkdialog4

6) A defaultaudioplayer needs to be set

___________________________________________

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smokey01
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#62 Post by smokey01 »

Thanks Don570 I did the same last night with some help from CatDude.

I have noticed a few applications that do not work because they don't exist in Fatdog, ePDFview is one of them. It can easily be converted to evince.
The missing apps don't seem to cause any problems.

The other strange occurrence was the permissions in the /usr/share/apps directory needed to be changed as all of the icons for each app were the same. A "chmod -R 755 *" fixed it.

Cheers
don570 wrote:I made a special right click pet package for the latest Fatdog64-610

http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 887#669887

Some observations

1) It is the practice in recent Puppies to make the 'OpenWith' folder
and the 'SendTo' folder the same by making a link between the two.

I found that I had to put my right click menu items in the 'SendTo' folder
rather than in the 'OpenWith' folder.

2) Playing sound worked well but I couldn't record sound

3) I added in gtkdialog-splash and linked it to yaf-splash to
be consistent with recent puppies

4) gtkdialog2 isn't being used anymore so it can be removed

5) Most other puppies are making gtkdialog a link back to gtkdialog4

6) A defaultaudioplayer needs to be set

___________________________________________

kirk
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Location: florida

#63 Post by kirk »

Suggestion: unless there is some big advantage to KMS which I am missing, wouldn't it be better to do the initial boot with nomodeset to have a better chance of getting to some kind of desktop or to xorgwizard?
It would break a lot more than it fixed. A lot of cards won't work without KMS, unless you use vesa. Vesa is a bad option, no 2D or 3D acceleration. Unfortunately there's no prefect solution.
So what will a newbie do if they get a 100% black screen? Track down the FAQs to find the right boot option? Or walk away?
Some will walk away. If you can't enter a boot option, you probably can't deal with the xorgwizard ether. And even if you did, there's a good chance they'll end up using the vesa driver, at that point they would probably walk away as well. I think the black screen problem will be a small minority. I've tried on many different computers, haven't saw it yet. I think the biggest chance for failure is with Nvidia and computers with dual graphic cards.
4) gtkdialog2 isn't being used anymore so it can be removed

5) Most other puppies are making gtkdialog a link back to gtkdialog4

6) A defaultaudioplayer needs to be set
Thanks for that.

jamesbond
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Location: The Blue Marble

#64 Post by jamesbond »

prehistoric wrote:Just a query on my part: did you understand that when I used 'nomodeset' to prevent loading of the KMS module the video configured correctly automatically? In that sense I couldn't test the xorgwizard-new, because it never changed anything.
Disabling KMS means two things:
a) disabling the framebuffer console (=that is, you get your old text console)
b) disabling Xorg video drivers that rely on KMS (you can still use other drivers that don't use KMS)
The new xorgwizard (you are right it is named just "xorgwizard" to replace the old one) can be used to set the Xorg display resolution, whether or not KMS is enabled, with one exception: it won't work on proprietary drivers.
gcmartin wrote:Would FATDOG benefit from using Shinobar's FirstRUN on its initial boot? If the developers are opposed, could it be a boot option?
Or you could do a remaster ...
don570 wrote:1) It is the practice in recent Puppies to make the 'OpenWith' folder
and the 'SendTo' folder the same by making a link between the two.
ROX-Filer made the switch from "OpenWith" to "SendTo" quite a while ago, and we decided to adopt it (we prefer to run unpatched versions of the applications when possible). I considered to have the OpenWith symlinked to SendTo, but decided against it because it would only create confusions. Leaving backward compatibility is always difficult decision, but sometimes it needs to be taken in order to move forward.

Please note in Fatdog the main SendTo folder is located in "/etc/xdg/rox.sourceforge.net/SendTo". If you install the right-click here, it will be accessible for all users. If you install to "/root/.config/xdg/rox.sourceforge.net/SendTo" it will only be available to - well - root ;) Same comment with MIME-types too.
2) Playing sound worked well but I couldn't record sound
You mean recording doesn't work, or there isn't any tool to record sound? If it's the latter, I can't find the tool too :) There is a terminal app called "arecord" that can do it, but yeah I should write a GUI for that.

EDIT: I see you already have baconrecorder for that. Do you the source so we can compile it for Fatdog64?
Fatdog64 forum links: [url=http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=117546]Latest version[/url] | [url=https://cutt.ly/ke8sn5H]Contributed packages[/url] | [url=https://cutt.ly/se8scrb]ISO builder[/url]

Sage
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#65 Post by Sage »

A bit behind schedule, but as promised, some tests with the 754 ECS/SiS Mirage. Good news is that it booted up into correct video without any cheat codes, not the expected result. Not such good news with on-board video OFF and a Radeon HD5450 PCI-e card substituted. It black-screen without boot codes, so I used the oldest subterfuge : pfix=ram vga=normal screen=800x600. From the black screen it was possible to return to prompt with CTRL-ALT-BKSPCE and run xorgwixard. However it wasn't possible to choose any suitable monitor and screen res. to obtain a picture. More success with the F2 suggestion using nomodeset which immediately booted into a useable combo. But there was more bad news lurking with this and an nV card both of which have (had - gave the nV card back to its owner) hdmi outputs. Even the presence of hdmi adversely interferes with sound card selection. Having been detected, it wasn't possible to run on-board sound nor an add-on sound card, neither of which appear in the <dmesg> or <lspci> o.p. This was disappointing. Not inclined to push this line of HW so respectfully decline any offers on that score. Cannot see what tone-deaf music-lover of any genre enjoys listening to their choice through the speakers of a monitor or TV, not even a 105" plasma monitor - they all contain cr*p speakers. Indeed, I cannot understand why anyone wants to listen to digital sound which has so much content missing. Obviously, our dud politicians want to sell the bandwidth of analogue radio for their perverted reasons, but we've come to anticipate their antics. Perhaps when quantum computing is available we'll be able to adopt a digital sound system with infinite bit-rate? Uh, call it pseudo-analogue?

But the scan time for wireless still needs to be doubled or adjusted in some way because the first attempt usually fails.

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