Boot menu for Flash stick
This is something that I have been meaning to do for a long time. When the Universal Installer installs Puppy to a USB or ATA Flash memory, there is no splash graphic nor any opportunity to enter boot parameters. This is a bit of a disappointment if you have been accustomed to these features when booting off a live-CD.I have modified the Universal Installer (script /usr/sbin/puppyinstaller) to present a boot splash graphic and menu, just as with the live-CD, when installing to any media that uses Syslinux or Extlinux to boot.
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SNS: alternate dhcpcd parameters
I was reading some recent posts from tempestuous and that lead me to start reading tempestuous's howto thread on wireless commandline setup:http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=22469
Some wireless routers are not happy with just this:
dhcpcd $INTERFACE
...as dhcpcd sends the the network card macaddress as the 'Client ID'. They require an empty Client ID, like this:
dhcpcd -I '' $INTERFACE
I have added this to Simple Network Setup, by trying the first method, and if that fails after 30 seconds then try the second method. Whichever one works is remembered and used in the future.
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Woof uploaded, March 19, 2010
This is the version of Woof used to build Quirky 010.Note that Simple Network Setup is in Woof, it is not a separate PET package.
Info on Woof: http://bkhome.org/woof/
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Quirky 0.1 (010)
Brief announcement:http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/quirky/quirky-010/quirky-010-readme.htm
Download from here:
http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/quirky/quirky-010/
I have started a forum thread for feedback:
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=53658
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Official 4.3.2?
Puppy 4.3.1 was released on October 17, 2009. That's five months since an official release! Too long.The development of 4.4 has gone into hibernation, and we don't really know when that will pick up again.
Meanwhile, I keep rolling along developing Woof and adding so many goodies (like the improper shutdown handling just announced). Users of 431 are left on the sidelines watching this but not participating unless they try one of the recent builds such as Dpup, Tpup, or Quirky. There are also some specialised builds such as Jemimah's Puppeee.
Then there's the fact that newcomers will quite naturally choose to download the latest official Puppy, 4.3.1, but in reality they are getting something that we have moved way beyond.
So, I know that I am supposed to be retired from the frontline of releasing official puppies, but considering all of the above, should I come back in and bring out 4.3.2?
I did build an experimental 4.3.2 recently, which was reasonably sane. So, I could do another one then start a forum thread so we can thrash out the bugs, then it will become a gap-filler official release -- something to fill the void until 4.4 or even 5.0 comes along.
I would need to have considerable positive response to do this. I don't want to move back in stepping on toes. So if you don't want me to do it and would rather position some other build as the contender for next official release, please say so -- though note that I am talking about something that we can release soon, given that huge 5 month interval.
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Improper shutdown handling completed
I previously reported that I implemented this for the case of full hard-drive installations of Puppy:http://bkhome.org/blog/?viewDetailed=01434
I have now extended this to cover other modes of installation, that is, frugal hd, live-CD, USB-stick, etc.
This involved changes to the 'init' script in the initramfs. This was an area that I had left incomplete and a bit messy. Now tidied up and completed.
When Puppy does a search of the partitions looking for Puppy files, and found '/fsckme.err' file will trigger a f.s. check. This file is created at bootup by /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit and normally removed at shutdown by /etc/rc.d/rc.shudown.
That means, if you boot say with a live-CD, improper shutdowns of any other installations of Puppy will be detected and the partitions automatically checked.
This is only for ext2, ext3 and ext4 filesystems.
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2.6.33.1 kernel, Unionfs
I have compiled this kernel and intend to use it for Quirky 010. However, I am still treating it as temporary, as some major bugs were fixed relative to 2.6.33 -- perhaps things will have settled down by 2.6.33.2.The worm has turned, we are back onto using Unionfs rather than Aufs. I did this after Jemimah reported that Unionfs solved problems with f.s. corruption. This is version 2.5.4 of Unionfs.
Unionfs has some advantages, such as better handling of writing directly to a lower layer (branch) -- a feature that we make use of when installing PET packages -- see variable 'DIRECTSAVEPATH' in /usr/local/petget/installpkg.sh.
Unionfs also used to have an advantage, I was able to mount extra SFS files when the "pupsave" is a complete partition rather than a file -- but it has been a long time since I looked into that.
I have uploaded the patched source, etc., to here:
http://bkhome.org/sources/kernel-2.6.33.1/
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Timezone in the initrd (initramfs)
I'm just starting to look into automatic handling of improper shutdown for installation modes other than full hd install (the latter has been solved, see my recent post).If we do a f.s. check in the initramfs, I think that it would be best if the local time is known, as, I think, it is undesirable for the fixed f.s. to be "in the future" after doing the switch_root to the Puppy f.s. and setting the system time.
So, I was thinking, if I set environment variable TZ='XXX-23' prior to doing an e2fsck, that should do it. If I have got my reasoning right, the '-23' means my location is 23 hours east of Greenwich, so it would be the most "behind" time possible.
The 'XXX' is any three letters to denote a hypothetical location, and it can actually be those letters 'XXX'.
A reference on timezones:
http://www.gnu.org/s/libc/manual/html_node/TZ-Variable.html
Note, I found a syntax error in the TZ variable setting made in /etc/profile. /etc/localtime is a symlink to the timezone, and /etc/profile reads this and sets TZ. If /etc/localtime points to /usr/share/zoneinfo/Etc/GMT-8 then it seems that the correct setting for TZ is TZ=':Etc/GMT-8' -- what was missing before was the colon prefix.
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libpng
I have upgraded from 1.2.40 to 1.2.43. The latest is actually 1.4.1, however I decided to stay with the 1.2 series, which continues to be supported by the libpng developer.1 Comment - Edit - Delete
Pburn, Pschedule
I have upgraded to zigbert's latest:Pburn 3.2.0
Pschedule 0.8-1
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