X-Slacko-4.4 with Xfce

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starhawk
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#106 Post by starhawk »

Hey, rg66, when you get the time, I've got a question. Why is it that the "my computer locks up when I install a non-PPM package" goes away in Slacko 1.0 (still haven't upgraded :oops: ) after installing a PPM package? I'm genuinely curious about that... seems very odd.

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rg66
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#107 Post by rg66 »

starhawk wrote:Hey, rg66, when you get the time, I've got a question. Why is it that the "my computer locks up when I install a non-PPM package" goes away in Slacko 1.0 (still haven't upgraded :oops: ) after installing a PPM package? I'm genuinely curious about that... seems very odd.
I have no idea why it does that, it has been fixed since the file overwrite check has been removed.
X-slacko-5b1 - X-tahr-2.0 - X-precise-2.4
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#108 Post by starhawk »

starhawk wrote:Bit of a nasty bug in X-Slacko 1.0 -- dunno if it's some weird interaction with my hardware (it's happened before) or not.

Any time I install a PET from the forum, or ANY package (happens with compatible Slackware TXZ's and with DEB's as well), a minute or two after I tell PetGet to install, the system 'soft freezes' -- mouse can move, but clicks don't register. If I do CTRL+ALT+BKSP it doesn't get to a # prompt, but freezes hard at the desktop instead -- and sometimes it doesn't even get that far!
NOT FIXED in X-Slacko 1.1 PAE. Running that on my Acer Asppire 5532 (despite my typical anti-PAE stance, it is useful in some narrow circumstances...) -- tried to install Chrome 32 from the forum and it did the same thing.

I've noticed that after installing a PET from PPM, which somehow fixes this bug, on shutdown I see something like "slackosave.3fs mounted top layer, session already saved" instead of the prior "Saving session to slackosave.3fs..." but I don't know if that has anything to do with it or not.

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rg66
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#109 Post by rg66 »

@ starhawk

The bug was fixed in 1.1, are you using a 1.0 save file? Try it in RAM and see what happens.

The shutdown message should depend on what pupsave mode you're in. Frugal to HD should give the "slackosave.3fs mounted top layer, session already saved" message. The other one is maybe for USB flash, not sure. Check pupsave config in Control panel > System.
X-slacko-5b1 - X-tahr-2.0 - X-precise-2.4
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#110 Post by starhawk »

Was using a fresh install with ext3 savefile on another system -- I can try it running from RAM but I really don't expect anything different and I'd rather not ding up the FS on that drive any more than I have to ;) I know from experience that hard reboots are not Puppy-friendly, even on ext3...

Both installs (netbook and second system) are frugal to SSD -- pmedia=ataflash. Also, I was wrong; it's the netbook is the one giving me "session already saved" -- the other system still has to save on shutdown. Probably that's because I'm using a browser SFS on that system in addition to the savefile...

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#111 Post by rg66 »

starhawk wrote:Was using a fresh install with ext3 savefile on another system -- I can try it running from RAM but I really don't expect anything different and I'd rather not ding up the FS on that drive any more than I have to ;) I know from experience that hard reboots are not Puppy-friendly, even on ext3...

Both installs (netbook and second system) are frugal to SSD -- pmedia=ataflash. Also, I was wrong; it's the netbook is the one giving me "session already saved" -- the other system still has to save on shutdown. Probably that's because I'm using a browser SFS on that system in addition to the savefile...
With pmedia=ataflash it will act like a USB flash drive and give options when to save in pupsave config. "slackosave.3fs mounted top layer, session already saved" is like a typical frugal install, saving in real time. "Saving session to slackosave.3fs..." is like a flash save, default is every 30 min I think. Sounds like one of your comps doesn't have pmedia=ataflash in menu.lst.
X-slacko-5b1 - X-tahr-2.0 - X-precise-2.4
[url=http://smokey01.com/rg66/]X-series repo[/url]

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#112 Post by starhawk »

I can fix that. But it won't fix the package installer :(

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#113 Post by starhawk »

BUG REPORT
...of a bug already reported. This is further coverage...

So I've been re-setting-up my Acer laptop today, for various reasons. I installed X-Slacko 1.1 PAE on there. Before installing *anything else* I installed a PET using PPM for some boring game thing that I'll never play. This is the fix for the PetGet bug in X-Slacko 1.0 PAE per the ISO in this thread.

Every two or three "foreign" (not from PPM) packages I install, now, the bug reoccurs and I have to hard-reboot. I've done that FOUR TIMES.

rg66, this is most definitely NOT FIXED. I sincerely hope you will take some time to look at the code (it's well beyond me, or I'd do it myself) and figure out what the @*#$!! is going on here -- because it's a showstopper, at least for X-Slacko 1.1. I will be burning a CD of 1.0 PAE to see how it runs... if it has similar symptoms I may indeed go back to Win7. This is getting ridiculous.

System specs --
Acer Aspire 5532
Turion 64X2 CPU (I forget the speed)
4gb RAM
256gb SSD (64gb as OS partition, remainder as userdata partition)
Install of Puppy X-Slacko 1.1 PAE, frugal, to internal IDE/SATA flash media
Grub4DOS bootloader

EDIT: I gparted away 1.1 PAE and replaced it with 1.0 PAE and the fix/workaround works for me as it has in the past. rg66, whatever you did to this Pup between 1.0 and 1.1 didn't make the problem go away -- it made it WORSE.

EDIT2: something of a correction to the last edit -- the fix/workaround was not as effective as I thought, or there's something else going on. Just had the bug hit me again :( this is getting to be a real pain in the you-know-what. rg66, I really hope you'll take a look at the code here and not just insist that you "fixed it" -- which you unfortunately but certainly did not!

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#114 Post by rg66 »

Download the installpkg.sh.gz below and extract it to /usr/local/petget and see if that fixes the pet install issue.
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X-slacko-5b1 - X-tahr-2.0 - X-precise-2.4
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#115 Post by starhawk »

That shell script needs to be made executable after extracting -- figured that out the hard way :oops:

I'm going to tentatively say that this fixes the issue in 1.0 -- I've installed 3 PETs and a PUP package and so far X-Slacko 1.0 is barking rather than barfing, if you know what I mean...

I'll boot X-Slacko 1.1 from LiveCD, install the script and see how things go. There is one other (minor to me) bug I'm noticing in 1.0 which is that drive icons don't show on the desktop after installing, unless you manually go in and refresh them (and even then the boot drive doesn't show!). I /know/ that's fixed in 1.1 because I didn't see it till I rolled back to 1.0... which is one of three reasons I haven't mentioned it before -- the others being that (as mentioned) it's a fairly minor bug and that I've been pestering you enough (IMO) with the much larger PetGet problem.

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#116 Post by starhawk »

Posting from X-Slacko 1.1, as LiveCD.

I installed the shell script immediately after booting, and did not install any PETs from PPM.

I've installed five PET packages and one PUP package so far and the problem has not recurred. I'm going to call this one FIXED.

I have become quite weary of fighting with OSes to get them to do what I want, and I was about ready to give up on Puppy because of this (and other similar things in the past) and just go back to Win7. I really didn't want to do that, but it was getting to the point where continuing to deal with this stuff, one thing after another, it just felt like it was too hard to keep going.

So, thank you, rg66, for truly fixing this thing. Thank you. This feels good to me...

EDIT: 12 PETs and a PUP, and counting! No problems yet...
This is good :D

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Pete22
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X-Slacko

#117 Post by Pete22 »

I apologize for not reading all the previous posts.

I am using X-slacko pae and enjoy it very much.
However, the sound is on full blast. there is no way to lower it because
when I click on the icon it says


Gstreamer is unable to detect any sound devices. That seems strange since
it is working,

Is there a fix for this?

Pete

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rg66
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Re: X-Slacko

#118 Post by rg66 »

Pete22 wrote:I apologize for not reading all the previous posts.

I am using X-slacko pae and enjoy it very much.
However, the sound is on full blast. there is no way to lower it because
when I click on the icon it says


Gstreamer is unable to detect any sound devices. That seems strange since
it is working,

Is there a fix for this?

Pete
Is this a fresh install or a previous save file? Does it work if you boot into RAM? In the meantime, you can edit /etc/asound.state. Line 270 'Master Playback Volume', edit line 271 'value', 32 is 50%.
X-slacko-5b1 - X-tahr-2.0 - X-precise-2.4
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Geoffrey
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#119 Post by Geoffrey »

It seems the the link for xdg-open is broken, run this code in the terminal to fix it.

Code: Select all

rm -f /usr/bin/xdg-open
ln -s /usr/bin/exo-open /usr/bin/xdg-open
xdg-open is needed for a number apps to function correctly, such as Pidgin and Google-Chrome need it to open files and folders.

Also Pidgin needs perl-uri for the links to work.

If anyone wants Google-Chrome I've build a sfs of the latest which includes the libnspr4 and libnss3 library files.

google-Chrome-xslacko-33.0.1750.152.sfs Size 56.6 MB (56,561,664 Bytes)

MD5 98266be7c6847bf4cd1eba037d048544

When loading sfs files I found that X needs to be restarted to update the menu, if /usr/sbin/fixmenus is edited and this code add to the bottom of the script it will then update the icon-cache and update the menu for xfce.

Code: Select all

gtk-update-icon-cache -f -i /usr/share/icons/hicolor
touch --no-create /usr/share/applications/
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[b]Carolina:[/b] [url=http://smokey01.com/carolina/pages/recent-repo.html]Recent Repository Additions[/url]
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Geoffrey
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#120 Post by Geoffrey »

xfce4 whiskermenu plugin

Edit: recompiled whisker menu to fix screen lock activation.

Compiled in XSlacko.

Image
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xfce4-whiskermenu-plugin-X-Slacko-i686.pet
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Last edited by Geoffrey on Tue 10 Jun 2014, 09:58, edited 1 time in total.
[b]Carolina:[/b] [url=http://smokey01.com/carolina/pages/recent-repo.html]Recent Repository Additions[/url]
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Tman
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#121 Post by Tman »

Geoffrey wrote:xfce4 whiskermenu plugin
Damn, that's what I wanted to do.. a Mint/xfce style menu :?
Looks like you beat me to it. Actually I haven't even started, but it was on my mind ever since I saw the awesome xfce menu in Linux Mint.

I have been quietly following this thread on and off, since it began. (too little time these days)

X-Slacko is very nice, keep up the great work!

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#122 Post by starhawk »

A minor annoyance that has cropped up. I didn't have this on the netbook, so I think it's one of those weird hardware-software interaction things that's hard to track down, but we'll see... if it's a real PITA to fix, I'll live with it.

My Acer 5532 laptop (main system) has the Home/End/PgUp/PgDn keys built into the numpad. Unlike the Ins/Del keys (also part of the numpad) they are not duplicated elsewhere. Note that on this keyboard, there are no indicator LEDs for NumLock and CapsLock. (ScrollLock isn't present... just as well, I've never needed to even know what it's for!)

When NumLock is OFF...
Numpad 7 = Home
Numpad 1 = End
Numpad 9 = PgUp
Numpad 3 = PgDn

...the arrow keys are also duplicated there (8,4,2,6 as up,left,down,right) but I never use them for that.

The problem is that the NumLock key seems to randomly toggle on/off every few seconds to minutes. I press the Home key and often get a 7. Even when it's "working" it's not working right -- for instance, putting the cursor at the beginning of a line of text, then doing Shift+End (hold down Shift, press Numpad 1) moves the cursor without highlighting most of the time... if it doesn't just print a "1" at the start of the line!

Normally, I'd attribute this to the fact that, on this laptop, the keyboard connector is so loose that, as you're taking it apart, the cable practically leaps out of the connector with glee -- it takes NO force to remove the cable, even with the connector in the latched position.

However, there are no other keys that act like this, and the keyboard itself doesn't just randomly completely cut out (it's a PS/2 keyboard, internally to the system, so it'd require a reboot to work again if that happened). A keyboard, electrically, uses what's called a switch matrix to sense keypresses -- each row of keys is electrically connected, and each column of keys is electrically connected. When you press a key, it joins a row and a column, and the keyboard controller does the rest. If it were a stuck key, the BIOS would pick up the issue and actually disable the key (it would not respond at all to the keypress codes for that key, as sent out by the keyboard controller) and therefore NumLock would be (depending on the on-at-boot setting in BIOS Setup) either on or off but not changeable except in the BIOS.

...so, near as I can tell, it's *got* to be something in software that's goofing up, either as an odd interaction with the hardware, or as an actual bug. Since nobody else is complaining about this (it gets very old very fast) my money is that it's to do with some quirk of this laptop's keyboard controller (or the BIOS parts that control it) that the software (Puppy) is interacting with in a crappy manner.

gcmartin

Minor issue on local drive use

#123 Post by gcmartin »

  1. Downloaded PAE V1.1 ISO and booted LIve pristine.
    Image
  2. Restarted X desktop
  3. Opened Filemanager (FM) and clicked a partition on the FM's left pane for mounting. got the following error message:
    Image
  4. Closed FM...Clicked the partition's icon on the desktop. Got the following error message:
    Image
  5. Reopened FM and found that the partition I wanted opened I can now see in FM, but,files are in read-only mode.
  6. Closed FM...Opened a terminal window. Issued mount command and found the partition is mounted read-only.
  7. I unmounted and remounted the partition to get read-write mode.
This is a cause for confusion that may need review.

Everything else working as expected from PUPs, thus far. Nice. Very nice. :D

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rg66
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#124 Post by rg66 »

@starhawk

I doubt I can be much help without a similar keyboard/issue, and even then I'm not so sure. With a loose cable it sounds like a hardware problem, once a ps/2 keyboard is detected it can be replaced by another one and will function properly.
X-slacko-5b1 - X-tahr-2.0 - X-precise-2.4
[url=http://smokey01.com/rg66/]X-series repo[/url]

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#125 Post by rg66 »

@ gcmartin

I've never seen that before but I have had one drive (also ntfs) become randomly read only. Sounds like an ntfs problem, I fixed mine by running chkdsk -f on a windows machine.
X-slacko-5b1 - X-tahr-2.0 - X-precise-2.4
[url=http://smokey01.com/rg66/]X-series repo[/url]

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