Quirky Unicorn 6.2 released

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Puppus Dogfellow
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#46 Post by Puppus Dogfellow »

Quirky Unicorn mirrored.

John paul
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Joined: Tue 26 Nov 2013, 07:34

#47 Post by John paul »

My system only boots of he hard drive ans cd.
I have only 1539MB of ram
I can boot the quirky unicorn cd, but only as far as command line. (on graphics, not enough ram.)
1)))) is there a command that I can type t install unicorn on my second hard drive (sdb)
2)))) is there any point / will it run if I get it installed.

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BarryK
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#48 Post by BarryK »

John paul wrote:My system only boots of he hard drive ans cd.
I have only 1539MB of ram
I can boot the quirky unicorn cd, but only as far as command line. (on graphics, not enough ram.)
1)))) is there a command that I can type t install unicorn on my second hard drive (sdb)
2)))) is there any point / will it run if I get it installed.
Another live-CD is "on the way" that should boot up with less ram.
I will announce it soon.
[url]https://bkhome.org/news/[/url]

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rufwoof
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#49 Post by rufwoof »

BarryK wrote:Another live-CD is "on the way" that should boot up with less ram. I will announce it soon.
I read in one of your board postings about inserting puppy sfs into initrd.gz and tried that out for myself Barry. In that article you mentioned that it slowed booting down however I've noticed that in some cases after merging puppy sfs into initrd.gz the boot hangs for around 15 seconds on the vmlinuz first stage, but in other cases it flashes through in around 3 seconds. i.e. I'm now creating a initrd.gz with the puppy sfs contained within and if that boots slowly (15 seconds at the first stage) I re-create the initrd.gz a second time and try that ... etc until the first boot stage flashes through in around 3 seconds.

No idea why that might be. But once I have a quicker boot version that seems to persist thereafter, so it looks to be down to the initrd.gz (or vmlinuz) and not a hardware thing.

John paul
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Joined: Tue 26 Nov 2013, 07:34

#50 Post by John paul »

don't go out of your way for me.
i'm using quirky tahr, and it fine.

slavvo67
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Joined: Sat 13 Oct 2012, 02:07
Location: The other Mr. 305

#51 Post by slavvo67 »

Barry,

It's good that your providing different install options. I am running QU off of USB but it's nice to the CD option, as well.

Thank you,

Slavvo67

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BarryK
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#52 Post by BarryK »

rufwoof wrote:
BarryK wrote:Another live-CD is "on the way" that should boot up with less ram. I will announce it soon.
I read in one of your board postings about inserting puppy sfs into initrd.gz and tried that out for myself Barry. In that article you mentioned that it slowed booting down however I've noticed that in some cases after merging puppy sfs into initrd.gz the boot hangs for around 15 seconds on the vmlinuz first stage, but in other cases it flashes through in around 3 seconds. i.e. I'm now creating a initrd.gz with the puppy sfs contained within and if that boots slowly (15 seconds at the first stage) I re-create the initrd.gz a second time and try that ... etc until the first boot stage flashes through in around 3 seconds.

No idea why that might be. But once I have a quicker boot version that seems to persist thereafter, so it looks to be down to the initrd.gz (or vmlinuz) and not a hardware thing.
There is a difference depending on whether you choose to compile the kernel with gz, bz2 or xz compression for vmlinuz (when you run 'make menuconfig' before compiling the kernel).

The difference is noticeable when vmlinuz is so big, with the sfs inside it.

I always choose gz, for max startup speed.

EDIT:
Sorry, I might have mis-read your post. I was thinking of our "humongous" vmlinuz, with the initramfs (initrd) inside the kernel.
[url]https://bkhome.org/news/[/url]

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rufwoof
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#53 Post by rufwoof »

Hi Barry. Yes. I'm only inserting puppy sfs into initrd.gz, so the two boot files (vmlinuz and initrd.gz). Not then inserting that initrd.gz into a single large vmlinuz.

Code: Select all

#!/bin/sh
cd /mnt/sda4/puppylivecdbuild
mkdir newdir
cd newdir
zcat ../initrd.gz | cpio -i -H newc -d
cp ../pup*.sfs .
find | cpio -o -H newc | gzip -4 > ../newinitrd.gz
cd ..
rm initrd.gz
mv newinitrd.gz initrd.gz
rm puppy_slacko_5.3.3t.sfs
Sometimes that pair (vmlinuz and initrd.gz) boots more slowly at the bzimage boot stage, and when so often redoing the above and using the new copies is much quicker to boot through the bzimage stage. Odd, because everything else is the same.

I had thought it might have been due to hardware, but a slow version is repeatedly slow at each/every reboot, and a faster version is repeatedly fast.

Beyond me as to why that might happen. I just redo until a faster version is apparent and then use that.

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rufwoof
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#54 Post by rufwoof »

BarryK wrote:The difference is noticeable when vmlinuz is so big, with the sfs inside it.

I always choose gz, for max startup speed.
I have noticed that using highest compression (largest dictionary) xz was significantly slower at booting than using a fast gz compression choice. Equally however the initrd.gz (with puppy sfs included) is significantly bigger (80MB versus 116MB in my particular case). The high compression is also painfully slow at remastering.

I took micko's Thin Slacko 5.3.3 and stripped it down further - removing browser, abiword, gnumeric ....etc to a core desktop (i.e. mainly puppy desktop/remaster functions and core system). Having remastered that to a destkop that I'm happy with I just frugal reboot that into ram with no save file. Everything else I load via SFS's (or PET's), with those stored on HDD and with wrapper script code to sym link each programs config files to outside of puppy space (sub directory where the sfs's are stored) - so that program config changes are preserved across reboots. Everything else (docs, images etc) I also store outside of puppy space. For browsing I use shinobar's portable firefox which preserves change across reboots.

For the sfs's (apps) I created a RoxApp folder on the desktop and added another tray icon next to the main puppy menu icon (red book bottom left) that pops up a gtd dialog menu to select which sfs's/program/app to load. As part of that the associated script contains a CASE statement entry for each app, i.e. for the Lyx entry it also checks to ensure python and qt sfs's are also loaded as well as repointing /root/.config/Lyx to outside of puppy space.

Code: Select all

(LyX)
  
      P=".Latex_Lyx_v09_requires_python.sfs" export P
      T=0
      [[ `losetup | grep $P` ]] && T=1
      if [ $T -ne 1 ]; then
         $APP_DIR/AppRun python # Needs python
         $APP_DIR/AppRun Qt         # Qt is also good to have installed
         yaf-splash -bg orange -text "Loading LyX" &
         X3PID=$!
         cp $APP_DIR/.Latex_Lyx_v09_requires_python.sfs /EXTRAS/.
         $APP_DIR/.sfs_load_nocopy -c -q /EXTRAS/.Latex_Lyx_v09_requires_python.sfs
         cd ~/.config
         rm -rf LyX
         ln -s $APP_DIR/root/.config/LyX LyX
         /usr/bin/lyx &
         kill $X3PID
      else
         yaf-splash -bg orange -text "LyX already installed" &
         X3PID=$!
         /usr/bin/lyx &
         sleep 2
         kill $X3PID
      fi
      exit;;
I have edited versions of sfs_load and petget that have been edited to run quietly (so can be used in scripts to load sfs's in the background) i.e. sfs_load_nocopy in the above script.

I like the modularity. A frugally booted with no save file core fixed puppy desktop, mostly unchanging (quickly remastered if changes are desired). Apps with dependencies via a local script/storage with wrapper text for each to preserve config changes. Docs/images/workfiles all stored outside of puppy in an appropriate directory tree. No worries about save files, but you do of course still have to backup workfiles (and sfs config preservation files). Works well for me and I have a stable set of apps to go with a core puppy that collectively work well together and with my hardware. XP convert from 9 months ago (after XP support stopped) and loving Puppy - thanks. Same tool each and every time rather than enforced updates/'upgrades' that can induce admin nightmares. And the speed - phenomenal (more so now that I've got used to Libre Office having moved across from Excel).
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rufwoof
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#55 Post by rufwoof »

slavvo67 wrote:It's good that your providing different install options. I am running QU off of USB but it's nice to the CD option, as well.
As a relative newbie the other day I was toying around with inserting puppy sfs into initrd.gz which led me onto PXE booting. Got a PXE installed and apparently running and tried booting that using my son's relatively new Windows box from that - but couldn't get it to boot. Something like press F2 during the bootup and then select the boot from network option - which did scan ok, but never saw my puppy PXE server (yes I did turn puppy firewall off). Ran out of time so gave up on that (likely my knowledge of configuring the Puppy PXE server is too lacking) - but that seems to have potential as a circumvention of UEFI and booting older puppy's. i.e. I'm thinking along the lines of having something like a Raspberry Pi puppy PXE server plugged into the family network.

Do you know if that's viable? (I'm running Slacko 5.3.3).

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rufwoof
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#56 Post by rufwoof »

rufwoof wrote:but never saw my puppy PXE server (yes I did turn puppy firewall off). Ran out of time so gave up on that (likely my knowledge of configuring the Puppy PXE server is too lacking)
Update : Fine now - wasn't puppy but windows. <ESC> during boot up, turned off the Windows PC secure boot, turned on legacy boot support and now boots Slacko 5.3.3 via PXE just fine.

i.e on HP Pavilion (Windows UEFI PC), boot and press ESC, select Boot via network, select via IP4 and the

boot: ........

starts running (booting puppy).

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don570
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Location: Ontario

#57 Post by don570 »

@ Barry Kauler

Would you consider including Puppy Units app to Quirky.
It's designed for math and physics students.
I don't find the gmeasures application very useful
and it's a dead project.
I added some useful equations and constants and it's gettext'd.


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