Woof uploaded, February 8, 2010
There have been three commits since the previous upload of Woof:Quirky: experiment use mostly busybox 1.16.0 applets not good, mostly reverted
dir2pet, petspec scripts improved
Puppy 4.3.2-experiment1 built with this release of Woof
Grab this one if you are interested in building your own Puppy in the 4.x series.
Woof home page:
http://bkhome.org/woof/
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Experimental unofficial Puppy 4.3.2
Here it is again, with the fix for ROX-Filer:http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/puppylinux/test/puppy-4.3.2-experimental1/
The ISO has all the modem drivers in it, which is why it is a bit big (112MB). SCSI drivers are missing.
There is a forum thread for feedback:
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=52280
I'm only really interested in bug reports of a certain type: if something worked in 4.3.1 but not in this 4.3.2 build. It would be nice to know about the reverse also: something that did not work in 4.3.1 and does in 4.3.2.
I must reiterate that I did not create this with the intention that it will be the next official 4.3.2 release. I'm mostly just wanting to know that Woof builds a sane Puppy 4.x.
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Improved modem scripts
Rerwin (Richard) has posted packages for improved modem detection and management:http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?p=388235#388235
He has commented:
Barry and technosaurus might wait a while before integrating them, to allow users to "shake it out"
So, everyone running Puppy 4.3.1 or later variant, is invited to test these packages!
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ROX-Filer: fix for focus bug
I described this problem here:http://bkhome.org/blog/?viewDetailed=01387
I would like to thank 'perthie' who responded, informing me of a fix posted to the Dpup forum thread.
I found it:
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=50728&start=15
...thanks to 'rcrsn51' for the fix.
I have tested in pup 432 and the fix works. I have implemented this fix in Woof, adding this code to /etc/profile:
#100208 rox-filer needs this for GTK >= 2.18, fixes focus problem...
if [ `grep '^gtk+-2' /root/.packages/woof-installed-packages | head -n 1 | cut -f 2 -d '.'` -ge 18 ];then
export GDK_NATIVE_WINDOWS=true
fi
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Gecko: Adobe Flash player crashes
With my "432" pup, which has Adobe Flashplayer 10.x, it crashes when I try to play a video at youtube.com. In /tmp/xerr.log I see "illegal instruction".So I tried Flashplayer9, same thing.
So I tried pskin's 431 pup, same thing.
Then I tried WattOS, and that works. WattOS has the Adobe player.
Just on the off-chance, I got the player out of WattOS and tried it in pup 431, still crashes.
So, it's something else. I suspect the MTRR registers. The kernel used in WattOS has MTRR disabled. I suppose that I could try that, recompile the kernel for Puppy with MTRR disabled.
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Experimental Puppy 4.3.2
I have built this using Woof, so it has the latest infrastructure, that is, all the underlying scripts. I also updated or added these packages:915resolution, bones, cpu-scaling-ondemand, flashplayer10, grub4dos (instead of grub), lamesmbxplorer (instead of pnethood), ntfs-backup, pburn, pcd, pfind, pmusic (instead of aqualung), precord, pupradio, seamonkey_addone_flashblock, seamonkey_addon_user_agent_switcher, sfs-converter, util-macros, woo-ff, floppy-format
I am using it right now, and it is working fine. There is just one thing, a bug with ROX-Filer that plagued me awhile back with Quirky. When I built Quirky with GTK 2.18.3, ROX-Filer exhibited a problem in which file icons would stay shadowed/selected. For example, if I right-click on a file then choose to open it in the text editor, the file icon remains shadowed, even after the text editor is closed. It is effectively still "selected" and this has an adverse effect if you don't click in the window to de-select it, as if you for example click on some other file, the previous one is actually chosen -- awful!
In Quirky, I rolled back to GTK 2.16.6 and that fixed it. However, to my great surprise, I now have the problem in 4.3.2. I was thinking "oh no!!!!", but then I discovered that Woof built Puppy 432 with my latest GTK 2.18.3 packages. So, bear in mind that the ISO I have uploaded has the "wrong" version of GTK, which may also adversely affect some applications.
I'll do another build tomorrow.
Am I planning to release an official Puppy 4.3.2? No, I built this because the 'rdc' Xorg driver does not work in Xorg 7.5, which is what Quirky uses. I have installed 432 into the Gecko Edubook, but it turns out that the 'rdc' driver is too buggy so I'm only using the 'vesa' driver -- so I might as well have stayed with Quirky.
...so that's how 432 came into being. As I have come this far, I'll fix the ROX-Filer problem, and might even recompile the kernel to add the elantech touchpad support that Jemimah wanted.
Anyway, if you feel like you want to play with it, get Puppy "unofficial" 4.3.2 with "wrong" GTK version here:
http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/puppylinux/test/experimental-432/
BUT, I must emphasise that some apps may be adversely affected by this later GTK. So please do not report that Abiword worked in 431 but has become strange in 432. If in doubt, wait and I'll upload 432 with the correct GTK in a day or two.
Note, after I have built 432 with correct version of GTK, I'll upload Woof that has been used to build this pup.
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2.6.30.5 kernel recompiled
Forum member pskin has already done this, but I have also been through the exercise as I wanted to make some other minor configuration changes.I patched the kernel source to support audio on the Gecko Edubook, and made these configuration changes (relative to the kernel used in 4.3.1):
Kernel compression mode (gzip) -- changed from lzmo
(15) Kernel log buffer size -- up from 14
apm bios support: [*] ignore user suspend
...after compiling the kernel, I remembered that Jemimah wanted support for the Elantech touchpad -- doh! -- well, maybe I'll compile it again soon.
The changes are very small, and all existing modules created for Puppy 4.3.1 should still work.
I have uploaded the patched source and the .config file:
http://bkhome.org/sources/kernel-2.6.30.5-pup432/
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'tr' mystery
One of the scripts in Woof has suddenly gone crazy. I found the cause: the 'tr' utility has suddenly developed an abnormality. The script uses 'tr' to convert all lower-case letters to upper, like this:# echo 'abc' | tr [a-z] [A-Z]
ABC
...well, the output used to be 'ABC', but now it has become 'abc'. In other words, tr is just passing the characters through unchanged:
# echo 'abc' | tr [a-z] [A-Z]
abc
I tried with the latest 1.16.0 'busybox' executable, same problem.
I rebooted with "pfix=ram" and 'tr' works. I ran my Woof script and 'tr' becomes broken. I have used this '2createpackages' script many times without this problem. I am so puzzled.
Ah, if I open a new terminal, 'tr' works again. More specifically, if I open another terminal in the same Woof directory as my script, 'tr' is broken. Open a terminal anywhere else, 'tr' works.
However, if I do it this way, tr comes good again:
# echo 'abc' | tr '[a-z]' '[A-Z]'
ABC
I put the single-quotes into my script, and it is now working. Yeah, but why?????
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Gecko: DMP X-Linux
I have installed X-Linux, which is provided by DMP, the manufacturers of the Xcore86 CPU and the Gecko Edubook.It's a simple console-only distribution (no X).
I installed it into sda2 of the SD card and made an entry in menu.lst. It booted okay.
I especially wanted to know if it would power-off the Gecko. Well, guess what, it doesn't!!!!! I typed "poweroff" at the prompt, it did the normal shutting down things, got down to "System halted" and that was it, no power-off.
But, I don't know how the software request to power-off actually works. Perhaps the fault is not on the actual circuit board but in the design of the power supply -- just guessing.
If DMP themselves can't do it, what can I say? I'm not going to rush into writing what I'm thinking. I'll keep investigating, and will post my conclusions on the Edubook in a couple of days.
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Gecko: success booting FreeDOS
Yay, I finally got there!Thanks for all the feedback guys.
What I ended up doing was using GRUB4DOS. I intended to put in either GRUB or GRUB4DOS anyway, to offer dual booting between the DOS shell and Puppy/Quirky.
Using GRUB4DOS, it was so easy. I booted Quirky 006 and used shinobar's package (which is already in Quirky) to install to the SD card, sda1, which is the little 256MB fat32 partition.
I then edited 'menu.lst':
title Boot FreeDOS 1.0 in sda1
root (hd0,0)
chainloader /kernel.sys
I then placed 'kernel.sys' and 'command.com' from the FreeDOS live-CD into sda1.
Rebooted, it works!
I then placed the 'spiflash.exe' utility and the 'edu.rom' image file into sda1 and ran:
c:\> spiflash u edu.rom
...it returned messages indicating success.
Note, what I'm working toward is to make an image of the entire SD drive, so anyone will be able to install by inserting the SD card in another computer, use 'dd' to copy the image file, then put the SD card back into the Gecko.
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