Why is Puppy so unstable?

[big_bass]

silverojo
I thought perhaps it's because I use Opera,
and Opera/Linux's support for Flash isn't good.
So I used Firefox instead--exact same problem,
except that flash
videos play better.

dont update to 3.00 or later
I packaged this firefox and flash its rock solid my kids havent crashed it yet : D
http://www.puppylinux.asia/tpp/big_bass ... .124.0.pet

---------------------------------------------------------------
this will locate a file for you that you need to send us

rox -s /tmp/xerrs.log

then drag and drop that on the zip box on your desktop
call it xerrors.tar.gz

it will get dumped in /root
now attach that to your post so we can see what barfed on ya

then we can work on the save file problem

big_bass

[DMcCunney]

NTFS partition. That's NOT Puppy's fault; it's not yours either, but Micro$oft could do a whole lot more to stop its filesystem from being a source of corruption. It won't of course.

Is that really a valid point of view? I may be no expert on Puppy or Linux like you guys but isn't NTFS one of the best file systems rather than the worst like your comment makes out?.

If you run Windoze NT, 2K, XP, or Vista, NTFS is the file system of choice. It's extremely robust, more resistant to fragmentation, and much easier to repair than FAT32 if you have a problem.

NTFS also supports hard links, and if you run Vista, symbolic links, making various interesting things possible.

If you run something else in the mix, like Linux, NTFS is problematic, because MS never properly documented it. Linux devs had to do a lot of reverse engineering and make best guesses about some stuff to provide NTFS support.

FAT is well documented and understood, and used in an awful lot of places that have nothing to do with PCs (like every SD card and thumbdrive I've ever seen.)

No crashes I have ever had could be blamed on my using NTFS.

Is that where you store your pup_save file?

That said, I do get situations when browsing where Puppy freezes without warning. This has never happened with any other program and my gut feeling is that it is related to Flash(which I believe is evil - not Microsoft)

<shrug> Like it or not, half the websites in creation use it. Like any other technology used on the web, some do it well and most do it poorly, and there are reasons who one popular extension for Firefox blocks flash from playing unless the user specifically allows the site to do so.

Anyway, can I make a suggestion. I apologise if it is obvious. I have found better success with flash and browsing if I point the Firefox cache to /tmp.

I'm not sure why helps you, save that /tmp is transient. You can tell FF to clear cache, too, which ought to give you the same effect, and experiment with the amount it allocates.

Even so, Firefox has huge memory leaks when certain types of webpages or flash are used.

Which version os Firefox? FF2 had known leak problems. FF3 seems to have done a good job of plugging the leaks.
______
Dennis

[big_bass]

amigo

NTFS driver and resizing a file was/is prone to causing the 'dirty' flag to be set on the NTFS partition so that it would need to be 'fixed' by Windows

Hey amigo
what's up ?
sent you an email hint, hint


Yeah NTFS has some problems that arent easy to detect
one example is if you ever decide to shrink your NTFS
partition to allow formatting different lets say fat or ext2,or ext3
so you can do multiple boots


on the resized NTFS partition if you wrote to NTFS from linux
you will have to run check disk on the NTFS first
because there wiil be many errors you'll need to fix first

looks like amigo found a work around for that cool

big_bass

[DMcCunney]

I've used various versions of Puppy from 2.0 to 4.1, but I don't dare do a traditional installation of them because they're unbelievably unstable. So I limit myself to the frugal installation, because I can reboot in Windows, delete the pup_save file, and replace it with a working version that I keep on CD for this very frequent problem.

Have you tried to do a full install?

Whether it's a browser or a game like xshisen, I've never seen how an operating system can completely collapse when one program crashes.

What? You've never run Windows?

Sometimes I can get by when it prompts me to run the xorgwizard and then run xwin. Usually, though, that's the first sign that Puppy is going to give up the ghost, and at some point soon I'll get the "no space left on device" message that madly repeats ad infinitum, until I press the restart button on my PC, boot into Windows, and replace that pup_save file with the good one from CD.

How big is your pup_save file?

The pup_save file is a file system. It got full. Any OS will have major problems if it runs out of space. If you insist on a Frugal install, you need to create a bigger pup_save file, or expand the one you have. (There is a Puppy menu choice to do that.)

I've had to do this at least 50 times in the last 6 months. As much as I like Puppy, I simply can't risk relying on it full-time when it's this stunningly unstable and unreliable.

Are there any plans to make Puppy more stable, so that one program crashing won't bring the entire operating system down to its knees?

From what you mention, it isn't the program that is crashing - it's the OS, and the OS is crashing because the file system is full. That will make any OS crash.

Puppy itself is quite stable. Individual installations may be unstable, but that's a problem with the installation, and not with Puppy.

The hardware you listed is adequate to run Puppy. I have a Full install which is quite stable on a machine with half the RAM. Tell us more about your puppy version and the details of your installation.

[DMcCunney]

WARNING: I don't fully understand the ramifications of taking out "$HOME/" from that command line. All I know is this found a lot more .wh files (thousands???), especially "sqlite" ones.

The find command starts from the location you specify.

$HOME expands to /root on Puppy. Taking it out expands your search to the entire filesystem, instead of just /root and directories below it.

I may have really borked my Puppy, I don't know, but what I do know is I haven't seen the "no space left on device" error since (about 10 hours of use now) whereas before I was at the stage where I couldn't go five minutes before the dreaded message would come up and I'd have to reboot. Maybe someone can tell me whether or not I've got a ticking bomb Puppy now? I do have good backups though so I wasn't too scared to try this. Anyway, have a look at that link. It may be the answer to your instability issues.

"No space on device" is what it sounds like. Your pup_save file is a filesystem, and it's getting full. You can temporarily fix things by removing unneeded files, but the problem will recur in time.

You need to allocate a bigger pup_save file.
______
Dennis

[big_bass]

now lets work out the pup save problem

install this pet
http://www.puppylinux.asia/tpp/big_bass/di-3.11.pet

side note: that pet was a built using src2pkg it was a demo
that "amigo" used as a test package
stay tuned for much more to come from src2pkg
so all the credit for the package goes to him
I just built it on my machine and uploaded it to
Eric's *canery's server

ok here is a screen shot
off a test puppy I setup (ofiicial 4.12)
*my normal setup has a slackware kernel and shows the
drive info in a standard format*
I didnt want to confuse the point


just open the console and type

Code: Select all

di

a personal opinion I like the info that di displays


big_bass

[dejan555]

ttuuxxx,

I wish to mention that Puppy doesn't make my pup_save files, I do and I have for a long time.

dd to make the size you want
then format
Bruce

Can you give me an example for this please? Do you use /dev/null with dd or what? And how do you format the file afterwards anyway?

[Bruce B]

ttuuxxx,

I wish to mention that Puppy doesn't make my pup_save files, I do and I have for a long time.

dd to make the size you want
then format
Bruce

Can you give me an example for this please? Do you use /dev/null with dd or what? And how do you format the file afterwards anyway?

Sure: If I have a puppy directory I put the pup_save in the directory.

Example for a 128MB pup_save.2fs

cd to pupdir
dd if=/dev/zero of=pup_save.2fs bs=1M count=128
mkfs.ext2 pup_save.2fs

[WhoDo]

Puppy engineers, please comment on this. An inquiring mind wants to know.

I'm no "Puppy engineer (sic)", Bruce, but I do have some comments on the issue.

There are two different circumstances being discussed here in relation to NTFS. The first is where the pup_save.2fs is kept in the NTFS partition because Puppy is booted from that partition in a Lin'n'Win style configuration. The second is where Puppy is booted either as a frugal or full install from its own partition and then used to access data on the NTFS partition. I'll deal with them separately with the little I know and understand of the processes.

In the first case, which appears to be the case for the OP, the pup_save.2fs is stored as a file on an NTFS formatted file system. NTFS would obviously have to be mounted Read Write for that to happen. The problem arises where NTFS has applied its fault tolerance solution to the pup_save.2fs file by moving bits of data around to avoid perceived problems. The pup_save.2fs will then be corrupted for purposes of its use by Puppy which doesn't really know bits have been moved.

In the second case, Puppy uses ntfs-3g to open the NTFS file system to add, copy and move data. The NTFS partition is opened Read Write by ntfs-3g in that case and problems arise, again, when NTFS has moved bits that ntfs-3g doesn't know about or can't locate for any reason. That's because the hotfix process is fault tolerance for NTFS but not fault intolerance for other file systems trying to read or write hotfixed NTFS partitions. Running chkdsk /R on the NTFS partition before using it, and on regular occasions thereafter, would mostly overcome that by melding the hotfix redirects back into the main partition table where they become accessible to other OS and non-NTFS applications again.

Barry went to ntfs-3g back in the Puppy 2.x days because it worked and it was easier for him not to reinvent the wheel by including the process as part of Puppy itself.

I don't know much about Puppy-1.x, so if I understand your explanation of the process under the Puppy-1.x series, the NTFS partition was never actually written to. All data stored was stored under FAT or FAT32 in a shared partition? Apart from the necessity for another, shared partition that seems like a reasonable and much safer compromise, but I don't know what it entailed for Puppy's code and scripts to include. All I know is that is one of the things that Barry evidently discarded in the move from Puppy-1.x series to Puppy-2.x series. Using ntfs-3g is probably easier for users to come to terms with too, since it doesn't involve shuffling data indirectly between 3 partitions; only directly between two.

I hope I haven't left my lack of knowledge on the subject too exposed by that explanation.

[ttuuxxx]

ttuuxxx,

I wish to mention that Puppy doesn't make my pup_save files, I do and I have for a long time.

dd to make the size you want
then format
Bruce

Can you give me an example for this please? Do you use /dev/null with dd or what? And how do you format the file afterwards anyway?

Sure: If I have a puppy directory I put the pup_save in the directory.

Example for a 128MB pup_save.2fs

cd to pupdir
dd if=/dev/zero of=pup_save.2fs bs=1M count=128
mkfs.ext2 pup_save.2fs

I'm not getting you Bruce
When I do a frugal install and shutdown via the menu and screen pops up and ask if I want to save to disk, I click yes, and then it says how large do you want to make the pup_save file?? up to 512kb or so.
I pick the largest.
Then with the pet I provided, after I reboot, I click the /men/Utility/Resize personal storage file, it now gives me the past options of up to 512kb plus the new options I added for the package, 1,3,5,10,15 gigs (once again only for ext3 partitions use the larger size)
and thats it. Some people like the graphic ways and some people like command line, I'm lazy and like the graphic ways.Thats why I changed the package
ttuuxxx

[dejan555]

dd if=/dev/zero of=pup_save.2fs bs=1M count=128
mkfs.ext2 pup_save.2fs

Nice, thanks.
So I can as well use /dev/null instead of /dev/zero are they the same?

[WhoDo]

I was the one who reported to the puppy forum that the ntfs-3g guys had cracked ntfs read-write support back in version 2.03. Since then theyve refined it even more. Does puppy use the latest version?

Yes, at least the latest at the time the Puppy version was released. Puppy-4.2 will have the most recent stable version available at the time of its RC1 build. After that I'm not adding updates unless they are critical bug fixes.

[PaulBx1]

There are some versions of puppy that have /tmp in ram. The first time Barry did that (can't remember the version), /tmp was rather small. It was very easy to hang puppy by downloading some large youtubes and whatnot. That is a definite case where Puppy was not stable. When this came up, Mark Ulrich suggested adding more room on top of the existing /tmp by mounting another empty disk partition. That fixed the problem.

I don't know what Barry did to fix this problem, other than make the /tmpfs for /tmp huge (in 4.1.2 mine is 1/2 GB in my 2GB of ram that is a huge hunk of memory sitting empty most of the time). I think if he wanted the extra performance, a better way would be to use maybe 5% or 10% of ram (taking care of performance most of the time), and then mount some more from someplace else, maybe just a big file on the hard drive to avoid the difficulties of creating a partition (thus taking care of big honking downloads). The way it is now is kinda hokey, and probably still unstable in small memory machines.

[silverojo]

dont update to 3.00 or later
I packaged this firefox and flash its rock solid my kids havent crashed it yet : D
http://www.puppylinux.asia/tpp/big_bass ... .124.0.pet

OK, if I'm going to use a version before Puppy 3...it's a .pet file, which I can't use in Puppy 2.0--is it possible to make a .pup of this?

this will locate a file for you that you need to send us

rox -s /tmp/xerrs.log

OK, I did that, but mine shows up as "xerrs.txt". Also: I haven't had the crash yet, so I don't know what's going to show up.

I'll attach the tarball, as requested.

[silverojo]

I've used various versions of Puppy from 2.0 to 4.1, but I don't dare do a traditional installation of them because they're unbelievably unstable. So I limit myself to the frugal installation, because I can reboot in Windows, delete the pup_save file, and replace it with a working version that I keep on CD for this very frequent problem.

Have you tried to do a full install?

Um...no. There's no way I'd install something this unstable in such a way that I'd have to spend hours fixing it, rather than just wiping out the pup_save file and replacing it with a backup.

Whether it's a browser or a game like xshisen, I've never seen how an operating system can completely collapse when one program crashes.

What? You've never run Windows?

I've had Windows lock up on me, but I could always reboot it. Once Puppy crashes, it falsely claims that I'm out of disk space (despite the blue box reporting about 325 MB of free space), and won't reboot at all. There is no "safe mode" in Puppy, either.

Sometimes I can get by when it prompts me to run the xorgwizard and then run xwin. Usually, though, that's the first sign that Puppy is going to give up the ghost, and at some point soon I'll get the "no space left on device" message that madly repeats ad infinitum, until I press the restart button on my PC, boot into Windows, and replace that pup_save file with the good one from CD.

How big is your pup_save file?

512MB, with 325 free in my Opera pup_save file, and 512 with 255 MB free in my Firefox pup_save file. The file is more than big enough, and it was not full, so expanding the file isn't the answer. I monitor the little blue box like a hawk, trust me....

I've had to do this at least 50 times in the last 6 months. As much as I like Puppy, I simply can't risk relying on it full-time when it's this stunningly unstable and unreliable.

Are there any plans to make Puppy more stable, so that one program crashing won't bring the entire operating system down to its knees?

From what you mention, it isn't the program that is crashing - it's the OS, and the OS is crashing because the file system is full. That will make any OS crash.

As mentioned above, my file system isn't full, so that's not the issue here, unfortunately.

The hardware you listed is adequate to run Puppy. I have a Full install which is quite stable on a machine with half the RAM. Tell us more about your puppy version and the details of your installation.

My hardware is inadequate?? Puppy is a light version Linux made to run on computers with even weaker specs than mine. I run Knoppix and other live Linux distros on it with no problems whatsoever. They're heavy on the eye candy (= using a lot of RAM), yet I manage to do everything from running The GIMP to editing audio .wav files on them. The only reason I chose Puppy, actually, is because it offers the frugal installation; I don't know enough about computers to partition a hard drive.

To answer your question: My current Puppy version and details: Puppy v. 2.0, personal storage file size 512 MB with most of it free at any given time. I've used Puppy 4, as well, but it's a pain to use because I use 640x480 resolution (it's a small monitor!), and that version of Puppy just doesn't work right with this monitor.

[silverojo]

Wow, a lot of questions for me!

1) Actually, I'm not running out of personal storage. When this happens, I have about 325MB remaining in the little "blue box" (255MB in my Puppy version in which I run Firefox...it's a hog, LOL!). That's why it's so bizarre when I get messages that I'm out of space on the device, when there are hundreds of megs available.

2) I have an old Win98SE computer, therefore the file system is FAT32, not NTFS. The pup_save file is saved to a FAT32 file system.

3) I've never tried putting the pup_save file on a flash drive. Pretty expensive way to go, but I can try it....

4) I turn off Puppy the proper way (via Menu > Shut Down > Power off computer.

5) I mainly use Puppy v. 2.0, so I don't have Firepup. Is it available in a .pup file, or only in a .pet? (I haven't bothered making a pup_save file of Puppy 4, since it was causing me just as many problems...and it doesn't work well with my 640x480 monitor.)

Indy, thanks for the tip, and I'll give it a try in a "spare" pup_save file. But when I get that "no space left on device", I'm at the prompt--I can't boot X at all, so I can't start RXVT. Sometimes, Puppy will just go in circles, having me run xorgwizard and xwin over and over. AARGH!

Yes, this problem I have often happens when viewing Flash content online (but that's a big part of what I go online for--plus, you can't avoid shockwave/flash ads). But it happens when I'm not using a browser, too...for instance, I've played xshisen, and sometimes when I close OR open it, it will kick me right out of GUI mode to the command line.

Except flipping a coin is as good a method as any, to determine whether the # will be there to allow you to actually use a command like "xorgwizard".

Oddly, with Firefox, when the memory usage gets out of hand, I usually can do the Tools > Clear Private Data thing, and I'll be back up to my full amount of memory in the blue box. Opera...well, let's just say that over time--even if I avoid sites with flash--it uses memory and won't give it back, day in and day out, until my file is gradually eaten away, a few megabytes at a time.

Finally, to ttuuxxx...I appreciate the suggestion, but I need Win98SE to run a LOT of programs that I use on a daily basis. And I've tried to learn about compiling, but it involves way too much hit-and-miss searching...and I simply don't have the time. (As it is, I'm staying up till about 5-6 am just to get things done online and off.) The game, I assume, was compiled for Puppy, because I downloaded it as a .pup file from here:
http://puppyfiles.org/dotpupsde/dotpups/

Also...Seamonkey is absolutely horrible for me, because it won't work well with a 640x480 browser, and it doesn't have half of the functionality that I need, and get, with Opera. I need to be able to switch from author mode to user mode, use the "fit to width" for my older monitor, and a lot of other features that no other browser has (at least, not yet...they all end up copying Opera eventually, LOL).

rfb...what's the difference between remastering the live CD, and just backing up the pup_save file with my favorite programs already installed on it, to a backup CD as I've been doing? Inquiring minds wanna know!

now lets work out the pup save problem

install this pet
http://www.puppylinux.asia/tpp/big_bass/di-3.11.pet
big_bass

Again, I need a .pup file to use in this older version of Puppy. Is there some other way I can get this info for you, in Puppy 2.0?

Thanks for all the input, everybody!

[T_Hobbit]

Ever tried Pup4 retro version?
Works fine with my old specs!

[ttuuxxx]

The game, I assume, was compiled for Puppy, because I downloaded it as a .pup file from here:
http://puppyfiles.org/dotpupsde/dotpups/

Pup's are usually for series 3 and less, Some were make for the 4 series but not many. This could be your game issue, Puppy 3 series and less used gtk1 puppy 4+ uses gtk2, plus they have different glibc's, All the making for a unstable game if our using puppy 4+. Puppy 4.0+ mainly use 'pet' packages.
ttuuxxx

[big_bass]

big_bass wrote:
dont update to 3.00 or later
I packaged this firefox and flash its rock solid my kids havent crashed it yet : D
http://www.puppylinux.asia/tpp/big_bass ... .124.0.pet

OK, if I'm going to use a version before Puppy 3...it's a .pet file, which I can't use in Puppy 2.0--is it possible to make a .pup of this?

I was talking about the version of firefox dont update firefox to version 3 firefox when it asks for an auto update say no

sorry if I wasn't clear
--------------------------
--------------------------
now another topic
version 3.01 of puppy linux OS was
very stable so is 4.12 puppy linux OS
now this is based on you wanting flash+games
on your machine

*I also liked version 2.16 puppy linux OS
that was rock solid for me and is good on older hardware


I just read your post
what you are trying to do is run the latest games/flash
on and older computer+a very old version of puppy
thats = Crash

*you have enough memory for a newer puppy version
Model ID 261602-021 / Compaq S 5500 - Display - CRT - 15" - 1024 x 768 / 60 Hz - 0.24 mm - VGA (HD-15)

set your monitor to this value ----->1024 x 768x16
x16 renders faster


yes, it will crash doing that
there has been numerous fixes since puppy 2
life has moved on and somethings wont work correctly
but your problem is in the browser memory management


and the firefox I posted will fix that

you can't avoid shockwave/flash ads).

yes, you can
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/10


enjoy your gaming

big_bass[/quote]

[Bruce B]

Can you give me an example for this please? Do you use /dev/null with dd or what? And how do you format the file afterwards anyway?

Sure: If I have a puppy directory I put the pup_save in the directory.

Example for a 128MB pup_save.2fs

cd to pupdir
dd if=/dev/zero of=pup_save.2fs bs=1M count=128
mkfs.ext2 pup_save.2fs

I'm not getting you Bruce

{text cut}

OK, I'll use different wording. Suppose I do a manual frugal install.

1) make a directory foo
2) copy from CD or mounted ISO the Puppy files to foo
3) make my own empty foo/pup_save.2fs
4) fix up grub to boot the Puppy in foo

First boot and all subsequent boots

Puppy locates foo/pup_save.2fs and uses it. On shutdown it doesn't present the pup_save dialogs. The programming flow would only present these options if it were not already using a pup_save.2fs file.

The make a pup_save dialogs present themselves under different circumstances such as when there was no pup_save file on normal boot up, or the user booted with puppy pfix=ram

.


.