Xenialpup CE 7.5 / 25 Nov 2017

[lemmy999]

just tick the boot flag box in gparted

And that was part of the problem. Gparted didn't give me the option of setting any flags whatsoever

[bigpup]

entered in error.

[gyro]

I can corroborate James C's irregularly numbered drive icons.

I did some testing with a usbhd with over 23 partitions. The following worked for me.
Patch "/usr/local/pup_event/frontend_change" with the following patch:

Code: Select all

--- /mnt/+mnt+sdb2+puppy+xenial+puppy_xenial_7.0.4.sfs/usr/local/pup_event/frontend_change	2016-08-25 00:48:25.000000000 +1000
+++ frontend_change	2016-09-05 23:59:02.565018733 +1000
@@ -52,8 +52,8 @@
 SCRN_X="`cat /tmp/pup_event_frontend_scrn_x`" #written by frontend_startup.
 SCRN_Y="`cat /tmp/pup_event_frontend_scrn_y`" #  "
 
-DRV_NAMES="$(echo -n "$PARAMS" | tr ' ' '\n' | cut -f 2 -d ':' | grep -E '^[hs]d[a-z]$|^mmcblk[0-9]$|^sr|^fd' | sort -u)" #dump partitions. 130614
-ALL_DEVSS="$(echo -n "$PARAMS" | tr ' ' '\n' | cut -f 2 -d ':' | sort -u)" #130614
+DRV_NAMES="$(echo -n "$PARAMS" | tr ' ' '\n' | cut -f 2 -d ':' | grep -E '^[hs]d[a-z]$|^mmcblk[0-9]$|^sr|^fd')" #dump partitions. 130614
+ALL_DEVSS="$(echo -n "$PARAMS" | tr ' ' '\n' | cut -f 2 -d ':')" #130614
 
 for DRV_NAME in $DRV_NAMES #precaution, uevents might have more than one drive mixed in.
 do

Then patch "/sbin/probepart" with this patch:

Code: Select all

--- /mnt/+mnt+sdb2+puppy+xenial+puppy_xenial_7.0.4.sfs/sbin/probepart	2016-08-25 00:48:25.000000000 +1000
+++ probepart	2016-09-05 23:57:01.503010562 +1000
@@ -53,7 +53,7 @@
 
 #all drives and partitions... 120602 sort...
 ALLDEVS=$(echo "${PARTNAMES}
-${ALLDRVS}" | sort -u)
+${ALLDRVS}")
 
 # guess_fstype really sucks for extended partitions - use fdisk but not in the main loop - too slow #140714
 EXTD=''

Basically it's removing " | sort -u" from a few lines of code in both these executables.

Probably need to reboot and refresh of icons.

gyro

[Chili Dog]

1) When installed on usb stick, it doesn't detect or load save files on hd. Not sure how serious this is.

2) Barry's Simple Network Setup doesn't work most of the time (normally always works) and, when it works, doesn't save network settings. Dougal's Network Wizard works, but I found it a bit complicated at first.

[gyro]

1) When installed on usb stick, it doesn't detect or load save files on hd. Not sure how serious this is.

Did you specify "pmedia=usbflash" or "pmedia=usbhd"?
Doing so causes the init script to assume that everything is on usb. This is more efficient, provided all puppy files are on usb.
But, if you want to have some puppy files on ata drives and some on usb drives, you need to specify either "pmedia=atahd" or "pmedia=ataflash".

gyro

[Sailor Enceladus]

@bigpup

Using the pre-installed version of Palemoon. Not updated anything.
This problem takes quite a while to appear - probably close to 2 hours.
After I closed Palemoon yesterday to reduce the CPU load, swap goes down to 186mb. Restarted Palemoon and all ok to start with, but eventually this starts to grow again.

[EDIT] I've downloaded the latest - 26.4.01.
Left it running on Tahr for a couple of hours, and there was no problem. Now trying it on Xenial.
[UPDATE]
After about an hour the swap partition filled up. The CPU then spiked at 100% - but then dropped back down to normal, so did not need to close Palemoon.
[UPDATE No.2] Well after about a further 20 minutes, it spiked again and stayed that way. Had to hit the power button.

I found a post I wrote where I witnessed the same situation:
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?p=904235#904235

I am guessing I was running Xenialpup, because it was in May, and I normally don't install Palemoon on my own.

If you end up finding any settings or solutions to switch off the "gradually filling up the swap" issue keep us posted Keef.

[torgo]

I've been seeing that type of issue in several browsers and have suspected it's an issue similar to the old "memory leak" in ancient versions of Firefox.

The OS doesn't seem to matter too much - I see it in Tahr, Precise, and Ubuntu. It seems to happen with all of the Firefox-related browsers (PaleMoon and SeaMonkey too) and more recently in the Chromium family (incl SlimJet).

I've wondered if it's a Flash or related issue. Seems like Flash is always the culprit in these things.

I'll use Firefox and Tahr (32-bit) as an example. I have a lot of tabs (30+ total) open in about six or seven Firefox windows. Everything is running smoothly, and the little resource indicator icon (next to the date) shows less than half of whatever it's tracking is actually being used.

But even without opening any new tabs or windows (maybe typing a message like this one or answering an email), the system will slow to a crawl, the resource indicator icon will spike up, and tabs will start crashing.

If I go to the Exit menu and choose Restart Graphical Server, that seems to provide enough of a reset to get things back to normal. I re-open the browser and restore the previous session and can get back to work on whatever I was doing. But it will happen all over again a few hours later.

It's seriously annoying. But whatever it is, it probably isn't a Xenial-related issue.

[bigpup]

I'll use Firefox and Tahr (32-bit) as an example. I have a lot of tabs (30+ total) open in about six or seven Firefox windows. Everything is running smoothly.

But even without opening any new tabs or windows (maybe typing a message like this one or answering an email), the system will slow to a crawl, the resource indicator icon will spike up, and tabs will start crashing.

I have noticed that some web sites have pop up advertising and things that just auto load and play as you look at the web site.
If you are leaving tabs open. I wonder if this activity, by the web sites, is using up memory and not releasing it.

[torgo]

If you are leaving tabs open. I wonder if this activity, by the web sites, is using up memory and not releasing it.

Yeah, I'm sure my habit of leaving 30 or 40 tabs open at a time doesn't help things, but two of the machines where I see it happening are running 3 gHz 3-core Phenom II and 3.8 gHz FX processors with 8 gig and 16 gig of RAM. I would not expect to have system resource issues on either machine until 100+ web pages.

Another odd effect in the recent versions of Firefox is that if I leave the computer for a while and come back later, the currently selected page in every Firefox window will have crashed, with the new "Bad news first: this tab has crashed" error message on display.

This will only be the case with the selected tabs - every other tab in the same window will be fine. But absolutely all of the selected pages will be down, even if they didn't have multimedia content.

This exact page, for example, was one of the most recent crashed ones.


I'm not concerned about it for my own usage (the occasional Exit > restart graphical server does pretty well as a quick fix) , but I did want to add my voice to the idea that sudden spikes in resource usage within browsers aren't necessarily being caused by some kind of bug within Xenial Pup.

[Sailor Enceladus]

I'll use Firefox and Tahr (32-bit) as an example. I have a lot of tabs (30+ total) open in about six or seven Firefox windows. Everything is running smoothly, and the little resource indicator icon (next to the date) shows less than half of whatever it's tracking is actually being used.

I usually only have one window open, with maybe 3 or 4 light tabs, and I have "remember history" off, hardly ever have Flash on, and usually run in PUPMODE=5 so after restart everything gets reset. I probably use Firefox 28 96% of the time, latest Firefox 2% of the time, and Palemoon 2% of the time, and I do think Palemoon and latest Firefox are both worse, especially at 800MHz. The swap thing was just bizarre though, and does sound like a "ancient Firefox memory leak" thing. Wonder if Palemoon's lousy start page that takes 50% CPU had something to do with it, maybe it keeps running and growing even after you close the tab?

[artsown]

In response to browser instability .... I (we) have not experienced any using
palemoon on both Tahr 6.05 and Xenial 7.0.1/7.0.4. My wife uses Tahr daily,
primarily on Facebook, with heavy video useage. I test Xenial partially by how it behaves
on Facebook, news sites and Youtube.

Both machines are Dell Optiplex GX620 having either P4 dual core or HT
cpus. Installs are frugal with the Save file on the hard drive. Palemoon
Privacy is set to delete history and clear cache on exit. Cookies are
allowed to remain (since some sites complain if cookies aren't persistent).
Pup-Advert-Blocker (modified hosts file) and Flash player are always used.

Performance never ceases to amaze me The ten-year-old machines are
both amazingly fast and reliable when viewed primarily from the perspective
of heavy browser useage.

Art

[LazY Puppy]

Hi.

Don't know, if this is a bug.

I'd just noticed different sizes of the gtkdialog binary in xenial 32bit (704) and xenial 64bit (707):

32bit = 924 kb
64bit = 272 kb

As far as I know, 64bit programs should be some bigger in size, no?

What's the reason for this?

Does it have any effect on scripts using gtkdialog?

What is missing in the 64bit version that is included in 32bit version?

[Sailor Enceladus]

@LazY Puppy: I just noticed a similar large difference between two compiles of libSDL_mixer-1.2.so.0.12.0 in slackware 14.2 today (164K vs. 366K), so I grabbed the devx for each and noticed this was different:

Code: Select all

diff -ru DEV1/usr/lib/libSDL_mixer.la DEV2/usr/lib/libSDL_mixer.la
--- DEV1/usr/lib/libSDL_mixer.la	2016-06-08 14:45:58.000000000 -0400
+++ DEV2/usr/lib/libSDL_mixer.la	2016-09-12 14:14:58.000000000 -0400
@@ -14,10 +14,10 @@
 old_library=''
 
 # Linker flags that can not go in dependency_libs.
-inherited_linker_flags=''
+inherited_linker_flags=' -pthread'
 
 # Libraries that this one depends upon.
-dependency_libs=' /usr/lib/libSDL.la /usr/lib/libXrandr.la /usr/lib/libXext.la /usr/lib/libXrender.la /usr/lib/libX11.la /usr/lib/libxcb.la /usr/lib/libXau.la /usr/lib/libXdmcp.la -ldl -lvga -lpthread -lm'
+dependency_libs=' /usr/lib/libSDL.la /usr/lib/libXrandr.la /usr/lib/libXext.la /usr/lib/libXrender.la /usr/lib/libX11.la /usr/lib/libxcb.la /usr/lib/libXau.la /usr/lib/libXdmcp.la -lvga -lpthread -L/usr/local/lib -ldl -lm'
 
 # Names of additional weak libraries provided by this library
 weak_library_names=''

Now I must figure out what all this means

[ashutosh]

Hi

I am very new to Linux and Puppies. I recently installed Xenial Pup and must I say that its the best OS I have ever used . Speed and utilities are amazing

I just had a small problem in case there some one has a word of advise as to where do I look for cuz Google is not much help ..

I use gNotes for note taking . It has an option to sync with WebDAV server ( I nornally use BOX) ..

When I tried BOX webDAV url . Puppy says that sync add in is not supported on your computer , please make sure FUSE and wdfs is correctly installed .

I am not used to packages on Pupps .. Just want to understand if its even possible to install above packages ..

[Sailor Enceladus]

Pup-Advert-Blocker (modified hosts file)

Good idea, blocking increasing memory from the animated/dynamic ads and trackers before they hit the browser might help.

[rek769]

Have been running Xenial 7.01 without issues for several weeks. Yesterday I burnt 7.04 and booted up using converted save file from 7.01.

Issue 1: KeepassX (v2)
When auto-filling userID and password any special character that shares a number key is transmitted into the user/password box on the web page as the number. No issue with manual copy/paste.

Issue 2: Samba
After successfully connecting to my wife's computer with a shared directory (Tahr) using 7.01, I can not connect nor even see the share on her machine under 7.04

Happy to provide more info/details if needed.

[artsown]

I discovered that xenial 32-7.0.4 consistently crashes when playing
certain (music) videos (vlc player). Neither 7.0.1 nor 7.0.3 do this.

Sometimes (if I'm quick) I can use Ctrl-Alt-Backspace and then type xwin
to recover. Other times I must shut off power.

If there are logs available that might give a clue as to what's happening,
I'd be happy to check them. I can easily duplicate the crashes.

Edit: The last line of /var/log/messages indicates vlc segment fault.
I proceeded to do some checks:
1. The 7.0.4 iso md5 checks compare ok.
2. vlc video output is set to automatic. I was able to deduce which
output is probably selected by a process of elimination. Only the
VDPAU output results in both actual video and crashes.
3. VLC in Both 7.0.1 and 7.0.3 behave differently. Setting output to
VDPAU results in just sound and no video.
4. Finally, with 7.0.4 I found that VLC output selections of X11, Open GL,
and Open GL experimental all work OK (no crashes). VDPAU crashes
whether or not accelerated video is checked.

The crashes should be duplicated when playing this on VLC at about
30 seconds into the video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USf1zRaDyH4


Art

[melon688]

my experience

A.
7.0.4 + compaq cq45 (t3200,pm45,GeForce 9200m)+vlc(2.2.2)+USB dvb-t tuner

watch HD h.264 TV program = no problem.
watch SD mpeg-2 TV program = no problem.

B.
7.0.4 + Dell 1535 (t3200,gm965,GMA X3100)+vlc(2.2.2)+USB dvb-t tuner

watch HD h.264 TV program = no problem.
watch SD mpeg-2 TV program = crash after few seconds.

C.
6.0.5 + Dell 1535 (t3200,gm965,GMA X3100)+vlc(2.1.6)+USB dvb-t tuner

watch HD h.264 TV program = no problem.
watch SD mpeg-2 TV program = no problem.

[Puppus Dogfellow]

filing a bug report: 1000HA asus with 2 gig of ram and a 6 gb swap partition, 1.6 ghz...thing is usually pretty vlc and 32 bit pup friendly, but this time i get the swap file consumed and the machine put out of commision regardless of whether i use vlc or deadbeef for audio. vlc eats the entire swap partition in minutes. i don't normally use deadbeef, was making a large file transfer on the external (slow) drive that held the music files it was playing--i'm more certain there's a problem with vlc.

it shouldn't matter, but i noticed the crash (and the stuttering that preceeded it) occurred when the mp3s were quite large--pretty sure three out of three, the mp3 playing at the time was over 100mb.

deadbeef was playing short tracks, but as i said, there was something else going on at the time (moving an entire old installation from one drive to another).

[lemmy999]

Did a frugal install to USB from a CD. Rebooted using the USB stick and made the usual changes ( keyboard, language and time) and then left xserver to reboot. Now xserver fails with the following message

If you are reading this, then you are at the console without X running.
The usual thing now is to type xwin to start X....
Starting X, specs in /etc/X11/xorg.conf, startup apps /root/.xinitrc...

But no prompt to allow me to restart X!