Slacko-5.4 feedback and bug reports

[01micko]

After 13 days in the wild the Firefox iso is finally up at ibiblio. I downloaded myself and checked integrity, it's ok! Will take a day or 2 to propagate to the mirrors.

I guess you could say we are "official" now...

[01micko]

I have been using Slacko 5.3.3 on my ASUS Eee PC and it works just fine. When I attempt to boot Slacko 5.4, xorgwizard failed both initially and a manual attempt. ASUS Eee PC uses the Intel Atom with Intel Poulsbo Graphic Chip (500 GMA). Normally, one uses the vesa driver with the Intel hack to the mode table. This has work for a good while. I am surprised that the failure.

I also tried Precise Puppy 5.4.1 and got the same failure. I suspect the problem may be in the Woof build, which is common to the two versions.

For now, I will be using Slacko 5.3.3 with this computer. I did check on possible solutions. Tempestuous did post drivers for Puppy 5.1 back awhile. Any thoughts on possible solutions?

12-10 update: I did check Tempestuous drivers for Puppy 5.0/5.1 The kernel module is build for kernel 2.6.33.2 and not compatible with Slacko 5.4 kernel 3.2.33 I did more searching and found the problem with Slacko 5.4. Tempestuous explains it in this post:http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 1684246909

Greg, please see the main post for link, same thread actually. Please let me know if it works.

[NerdWithNoLife]

Hi. As recommended by darkcity in this thread in the Beginners Help forum, here's a problem I have with the new Slacko 5.4:

When I first started using Puppy earlier this year, I originally decided to use Wary (5.3), thinking it might be more suitable for my oldish laptop (IBM Thinkpad X31), but eventually changed to Slacko 5.3.3, which has run fine for me since.

One of the main reasons I stopped using Wary was due to a problem with "suspension" on closing the laptop lid. It would suspend okay, but on reopening the lid it wouldn't wake up again, leaving me with a black screen and having to reboot. After spending too much time messing about with the ACPI settings, I eventually gave up and started using Slacko instead.

Now... I've just tested out Slacko 5.4 and unfortunately this same suspension problem I had with Wary has reappeared in the newer version of Slacko.

Does anyone know what has changed from Slacko 5.3.3 to Slacko 5.4 for this problem to have come back? (and if so, how I can fix it). If there's no simple solution, I think I'll just stick with 5.3.3 for now...

Thanks.

Same here, on an HP laptop. You can see the desktop for a split second, then it goes back into suspend mode. If I hit Ctrl-Alt-Backspace at precisely the right moment, I can xwin back in to it.

Also it seems necessary to THANK all who have made puppy what it is today. The hard work in keeping it small simple and yet robust is evident. I´ve got 4 frugal puppies, and a bunch of documents and downloads, and this only totals 5.5 GiBs. Hahaha, not like the alternatives.

[SFR]

Slacko-5.4-PAE installed via Noryb009's installer on sda2 (NTFS) partition, on which is slackosave.2f as well.

Please take a look at this thread:
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=83041

In short:
The OP have problems with frugal install - during saving to the savefile, system practically hangs for longer periods of time.

In my case it's less predictable - usually everything's ok, but sometimes ,especially when bigger files (>100MB) are being saved, after 70-150 MB HDD led goes off for longer period of time (>30sec), then just a few MB are being written, led goes off again and so on...
During this, no application can access savefile, even for reading, system barely responds, however DeaDBeeF plays mp3s directly from sda3 partition fluently.

I've made a few more tests:
- slackosave.2fs or slackosave.3fs
- savefile on NTFS or EXT3 formatted partition
- PUPMODE=13 or PUPMODE12
- real environment as well as VBox

In all cases (but not every combination of these above was tested):

Code: Select all

cat /dev/zero > /initrd/pup_ro1/root/bigtestfile

(PUPMODE=13), or:

Code: Select all

cat /dev/zero > /initrd/pup_rw/root/bigtestfile

(PUPMODE=12)
recreates the above problem, ie. sometimes the empty file is created smoothly, until there's no more free space, but sometimes after ~100MB HDD hangs and the only solution is CTRL-C and I must wait about 30sec to be able to delete that file.
If I won't break the operation, after few cycles of hanging/writing, CPU load becomes maxed and it's difficult to do anything, often only power button works...

I ran similar test few times on Slacko-5.3.3-4g (savefile on NTFS or EXT3) and I couldn't recreate the problem there.

I'm stuck at this point, anyway...

BTW, if someone would like to run such a test to confirm/deny the existence of this problem, then please: for security reasons (very high possibility of data loss/corruption), it's better to create a separate savefile for this task, or install 5.4 in VBox.
Then just open terminal window, type one of the above commands (depending of your PUPMODE), observe HDD led and control the size of the file, which is being created.
If HDD hangs - CTRL+C to break the operation.
There may be need to repeat the procedure few times, because, as I wrote, sometimes it just works...

TIA & Greetings!

[consentient]

I'm been experiencing a problem that is not in the notes, which is that the savefile seems to take 10-20x longer to save than with 5.3. - mainly the one that happens periodically, not just on shutdown. Shutdown I don't care about and I think even on 5.3 it takes longer on shutdown than the periodic one cuz there is more stuff to sort out. But the periodic one on 5.4 takes a really long time and rapes the CPU usage more than it ever did on 5.3.

Other than that, I think everything else seems more or less the same. I dont get the error I had with the graphics card, due to the updated drivers?

So if I can clear up the savefile issue, it would be no complaints and all praise.

One thing I thought is: does the fact that I have the OS installed to an 8Gb USB with a 4GB savefile mean that I should be using the PAE version?

Could this be the source of my problem?

Thanks for any help.

[EDIT: I forgot to say that Thunar file manager doesn't want to boot. Installs fine (apparently) but then won't run at all. Have been using QTFM instead]

[01micko]

Some goodies to test.

I will get on to more serious things soon.

Firstly, It's Christmas again and once again Joe Wing is back in action. He is up to revision 587 as of 17 December and seems to have fixed the compositing bug which first appeared in revision 520 (or so).

Secondly, Thunor has been steadily progressing with gtkdialog and is now at revision 496, getting close to the next stable release.

Both are attached. Report any issues.

EDIT: Attachment jwm-587 removed, test jwm-590 near the bottom of this page

[Billtoo]

Firstly, It's Christmas again and once again Joe Wing is back in action. He is up to revision 587 as of 17 December and seems to have fixed the compositing bug which first appeared in revision 520 (or so).

@01micko
Hi,
I made an sfs of openbox and the latest lxpanel that is working well in Slacko-54,let me know if you'd like to check it out and I'll give you a download link.

EDIT:How about jwm+lxpanel?

[8-bit]

I had downloaded and am using Slacko 5.4 Final frugally installed.
The md5sum checks out ok.
But the list of built in files seems to lack inclusion of Firefox in the list.
I want to be able to completely remove Firefox and use Seamonkey in it's place.
I currently have Seamonkey installed and did a rename of the hidden file .mozilla in the /root directory to .oldmozilla.
I then systemlinked my .mozilla directory into /root so I can use it for all my installs of Puppy running Seamonkey.
The problem I am having is that I am getting severe pauses when entering text in a post, videos are also not playing properly etc. when running Seamonkey.
I think it might be a cache problem with Firefox caching stuff even though it is not running but Seamonkey is.

So, is there a list of the files that are installed by Firefox that I can delete and then do a reinstall of Seamonkey.
Of course, I would initially remove the link to my external .mozilla file to protect it until I had Seamonkey installed.

Suggestions gladly accepted.

[01micko]

I had downloaded and am using Slacko 5.4 Final frugally installed.
The md5sum checks out ok.
But the list of built in files seems to lack inclusion of Firefox in the list.
I want to be able to completely remove Firefox and use Seamonkey in it's place.
I currently have Seamonkey installed and did a rename of the hidden file .mozilla in the /root directory to .oldmozilla.
I then systemlinked my .mozilla directory into /root so I can use it for all my installs of Puppy running Seamonkey.
The problem I am having is that I am getting severe pauses when entering text in a post, videos are also not playing properly etc. when running Seamonkey.
I think it might be a cache problem with Firefox caching stuff even though it is not running but Seamonkey is.

So, is there a list of the files that are installed by Firefox that I can delete and then do a reinstall of Seamonkey.
Of course, I would initially remove the link to my external .mozilla file to protect it until I had Seamonkey installed.

Suggestions gladly accepted.

mozilla-firefox , look for that.

[8-bit]

Thank you 01micko.
That list of installed files for Firefox is unreal!
Going by the line count in geany when I open that file as text, it looks like 1277 files approximately.
And that is a lot of files to individually remove.
Do you suppose a utility I saw a while back on removing built-in files would work?
I just do not look forward to manually removing them although I suppose if I did a quiet delete of the associated directories, I might have a fighting chance.
But one thing that bothers me is if removal of it would break the CUPS browser interface and if there are other things in Puppy that depend on any of the files associated with it.

I will have to give it a go and see I guess as I have my slackosave file backed up for being able to easily undo the changes if need be.

[sszindian]

Slacko-5.4 FF non PAE

Been testing Slacko 5.4 quiet extensively since its introduction and I must say, 'This Is The Best Of The Best Of The Latest Distro's I've Tested To Date!'

Graphics on this old Dell 4 Dimension 3000 are crystal clear!

5-4 is fast...'Very Fast!'

WiFi with a Linksys AE1000 using rt2800usb seems to be working very well so far. At first I experienced a few 'drops' and it did not auto restart itself, had to do a reboot to activate it again but, that hasn't happened for awhile now.

The New Google Earth installed from the PPM (Phew... very large) is without doubt the best, and fastest google earth I have ever used!!! Again, clarity is just outstanding!

So far, the only fault I can find is with xscreensaver not displaying the picture-graphics in GLslideshow and Carousel. This has been an issue with the last several versions of Slacko and I hope 'someone' can come up with an answer in the near future??? All other modules of xscreensaver work properly.

All in all... a superb distro mic! 'congratulations!!!'

>>>---Indian------>

[JustGreg]

I am trying to rip an Audio CDROM. Both CDMusic (Pmusic) and Asunder do not see the Audio CDROM in my USB CDROM/DVD device. Previously (Slacko 5.3.3 4G), an audio cdrom when in the USB device, would show on the desktop as an unmounted CD. Clicking on it would bring up Pmusic to listen to it. Now, nothing is shown and no actions. Any ideas on what could be wrong. Thanks for any help on this one.

New/resolved: After a reboot, I decide to check if the link (/dev/cdrom) was present and It was. I also check to make sure /dev/cdrom pointed to the correct device (/dev/sr0) and it was correct. I did try the CDROM player/ripper and this time, it worked properly. However, still no icon for the CD drive. It does show for a data disc.

[SFR]

Consentient has reported here, that switching to PAE version has resolved his/her "slow writing to savefile" problem.
________________________

(Continuation of this post.)

For now I'm using dirty (literally) workaround that seems to repress the problem in some extent:

Code: Select all

echo 1 > /proc/sys/vm/dirty_background_ratio
echo 1 > /proc/sys/vm/dirty_ratio

(I've added it to rc.sysinit temporarily)

I know those values are stupid, but although HDD usually still catches deadlock during writing bigger files to pup_ro1, at least after 1-2 minutes the rest of a file is being written, more or less fluently - no total hangs, no need to use power button anymore (so far).

Anyway, it's still no real solution...

Greetings!

[01micko]

SFR

Thanks for reports.

I have been a little "slack" lately.. you know, holidays and such, but this issue is on my radar.

My thoughts are is that this is possibly an AUFS issue. Pure speculation at this stage, however I will attempt some tests and see if I can reproduce and also look at the AUFS maiilng lists to see if something similar is reported.

Cheers

[feelsub]

BUG: fails to boot

tested fresh USB live install of
slacko-5.4-opera-PAE

On Core 5 : OK
on Core 7: does not boot: can't find puppy_slacko5.4.sfs

P.S. Could you upgrade as well FFmpeg to version 1.0 or latest build, as it fixes anoying synchronisation bugs.

Thanks for Slacko

[James C]

Interesting review of Slacko 5.4 in the new Distrowatch Weekly.

As we are coming up on the end of the year I want to take a look at a project which is unique and outside the mainstream of Linux projects. I don't think any project embodies distinct and useful technology quite as well as Puppy Linux does. Puppy's 5.4 "Slacko" edition was released recently and it struck me as an interesting and fun way to wrap up the year.

http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20121224#review

[bark_bark_bark]

Hello I currently am using Slacko 5.4 with the Compiz SFS, but lxpanel (which comes in that sfs) doesn't refresh it's menus when an app is installed.

Also the sfs-manager doesn't have the devx listed.

[01micko]

Firstly, It's Christmas again and once again Joe Wing is back in action. He is up to revision 587 as of 17 December and seems to have fixed the compositing bug which first appeared in revision 520 (or so).

There is a bug in 587-8-9 that causes random X crashes. I have been working with Joe on this and we believe it is solved in revision 590 (attached).

Test and enjoy!

[pemasu]

From my previous post.
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 579#673579

I tested with new jwm 588 and 589 versions. I got several times X crash and in kernel messages I noticed jwm seqfault message. So...I didnt upgrade jwm. I will see how jwm matures, but nice to see that Joe Wing is again in Christmas time working with jwm.

Thanks 01micko. Testing jwm-590 now in Upup Precise. If X has not crashed in 24 hours, it surely will look better than previous versions.

[01micko]

From my previous post.
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 579#673579

I tested with new jwm 588 and 589 versions. I got several times X crash and in kernel messages I noticed jwm seqfault message. So...I didnt upgrade jwm. I will see how jwm matures, but nice to see that Joe Wing is again in Christmas time working with jwm.

Thanks 01micko. Testing jwm-590 now in Upup Precise. If X has not crashed in 24 hours, it surely will look better than previous versions.

Yes, I have been compiling for myself with '--enable-debug' and sending the /tmp/xerrs.log to Joe. I did find a reliable way to reproduce the crash, as did Joe and it is fixed in 590. . Compositing should be ok too now.