Barrys News

EasySR screen record without audio

June 25, 2026 — BarryK

EasySR was introduced recently:

EasySR screen recorder — June 21, 2026

It may be that will want to record without audio, maybe record audio separately and merge later, so have introduced a checkbox:

Thinking ahead to future videos planned for YouTube.

Tags: easy

Exit Chromium unmounts all NTFS mounted partitions

June 25, 2026 — BarryK

Forum member Miminou reported this:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?p=172836#p172836

...I posted a quote from Google AI, reproduced here:

This issue is primarily caused by xdg-document-portal (a sub-service of xdg-desktop-portal), which uses FUSE to expose files to sandboxed apps. It is known to aggressively lock files or mismanage its internal FUSE mounts (/run/user/$UID/doc), which can result in recursive hangs or force-unmounting of other active FUSE filesystems.

But no, it turns out that the cause of the problem is the 'umount' script in EasyOS. The Debian 'mount' package has 'mount' and 'umount' executables; however, woofQ2 renames those as 'mount-FULL' and 'umount-FULL', replacing 'mount' and 'umount' as scripts.

I tested, mounted a ntfs partition, then ran Chromium. Running 'mount' with no parameters in a terminal reported these mounted:

/dev/nvme1n1p2 on /mnt/nvme1n1p2 type fuseblk (ro,relatime,user_id=0,group_id=0,default_permissions,blksize=4096)
portal on /home/chromium/.cache/doc type fuse.portal (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,user_id=25397,group_id=25397)

I inserted an echo into the 'umount' script to report passed parameters, and when I exited Chromium, got these two calls to 'umount':

--no-canonicalize -i --fake /home/firefox/.cache/doc
--no-canonicalize -i --fake /mnt/nvme1n1p2

The important thing to note here, 'umount' is being called with "--fake", which means dry-run only. The xdg-desktop-portal (or whatever) code does the actual unmount in a direct C call to "umount()" function and these calls to the 'umount' script are informational only.

But there is only a direct call to unmount "/home/firefox/.cache/doc", not "/mnt/nvme1n1p2", which makes that second informational call to the 'umount' script very puzzling.

Anyway, I found the problem; the 'umount' script was ignoring the "--fake" parameter and was unmounting both fuse mounted folders.

The /usr/bin/umount script is a bit long in the tooth, so as well as recognizing "--fake", took the opportunity to completely rewrite the script:

#!/bin/ash
#Copyright Barry Kauler 2026, licence GPL3 (/usr/share/doc/legal)
#20260624 rewritten

#mount-FULL, umount-FULL are the full versions.
#The Busybox versions of mount and umount are available but only by:
# # busybox mount ...
# # busybox umount ...
#mount and umount are scripts.
#if an ntfs partition, EasyOS uses fuse ntfs-3g driver.

[ ! $1 ] && exec busybox umount

. /etc/rc.d/functions4puppy4
. /etc/uimanager #has UI_DESK_MANAGER='jwm' #or rox
. /etc/rc.d/PUPSTATE

MNT0="$(cut -f 1 -d ' ' /proc/mounts | grep '^/dev/[nsmf]')" #ex: /dev/nvme1n1p2
[ -z "$MNT0" ] && exec busybox umount ${*} #precaution
MOUNTSpre="$(echo -n "$MNT0" | sed 's%^/dev/%%')"

#note, xdg-desktop-portal may mount like this:
# portal /home/chromium/.cache/doc fuse.portal rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,user_id=25397,group_id=25397 0 0
# umount passed params: --no-canonicalize -i --fake /home/chromium/.cache/doc
case "${*}" in
 *--fake*) exit 0 ;;
esac

#this will also catch ntfs-3g fuse mounts...
RETVAL=0
Pend="${*#*/}"
Pend="${Pend/ */}"
if [ -n "$Pend" ];then
 [ "${Pend##*/}" == "${WKG_DEV}" ] && exit 1 #cannot unmount
 MNTdir="$(grep -F "/${Pend} " /proc/mounts | cut -f 2 -d ' ' | tail -n 1)"
 grep -F "/${Pend} " /proc/mounts | grep -q 'fuse'
 if [ $? -eq 0 ];then
  fusermount -u $MNTdir
  RETVAL=$?
 else
  #busybox umount -d $MNTdir
  umount-FULL -d ${*}
  [ $? -ne 0 ] && busybox umount -d $MNTdir
  RETVAL=$?
 fi
else
 #maybe just ran "umount -a" to unmount everything
 umount-FULL ${*}
 RETVAL=$?
fi

#check any desktop partition icons showing as mounted, but now unmounted...
[ -z "$DISPLAY" ] && exit $RETVAL
for aDEV in ${MOUNTSpre}
do
 [ -z "$aDEV" ] && continue
 [ "$aDEV" == "$WKG_DEV" ] && continue #cannot unmount (already screened out above)
 grep -qF "/dev/${aDEV} " /proc/mounts
 if [ $? -ne 0 ];then
  if [ -d /root/.pup_event/drive_${aDEV} ];then
   case "$aDEV" in
    fd*) DRV_CATEGORY="floppy" ;;
    *)
     aDRV="$(echo -n "${aDEV}" | sed -e 's%[0-9]$%%' -e 's%[0-9]$%%' -e 's%p$%%')"
     DRV_CATEGORY="$(probedisk | grep -F "/dev/${aDRV}|" | cut -f 2 -d '|')"
    ;;
   esac
   [ -z "$DRV_CATEGORY" ] && DRV_CATEGORY='drive'
   if [ "$UI_DESK_MANAGER" == "rox" ];then
    #remove the close-box...
    icon_unmounted_func $aDEV $DRV_CATEGORY #see functions4puppy4
   else #jwm
    /usr/local/ui/jwm/generate-drives-menu
    jwm -reload
   fi
  fi
 fi
done

#make sure the symlink stays there...
if [ ! -L /etc/mtab ];then
 rm -f /etc/mtab
 ln -s /proc/mounts /etc/mtab
fi
exit $RETVAL
###end###

Probably should revise /usr/bin/mount also; that is also very old.

Tags: easy

Missing devx icon when switch icon set

June 24, 2026 — BarryK

Forum member retiredt00 found this problem and posted a fix:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?p=172759#p172759

Tags: easy

YouTube EasyOS-series Part-5

June 23, 2026 — BarryK

This is a short video, only 3 minutes, showing the early boot menu in the 'initrd':

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

Tags: easy

Oh dear what has become of this world?

June 23, 2026 — BarryK

I miss cars from about 15 years ago. New cars now... I won't go there, something else has happened that I find alarming...

I am currently renting an apartment, previously did own one, but now renting. Anyway, the light in the lounge room failed, so got a ladder to change the light globe. Took off the cover, and was shocked. This is what I saw:

...a complete assembly. Sent an email to the rental agent, she booked an electrician, who came this morning.

Electricians are in high demand here, so I imagine the call-out fee will be high, perhaps around AU$100. Asked Google AI:

In Perth, a typical electrician call-out fee ranges from $80 to $160. This fixed charge covers travel time, fuel, vehicle costs, and usually the first 15 to 30 minutes of on-site assessment. It is billed separately from the standard hourly labor rate, which generally sits between $90 and $150

This is what they fitted, a ROBUS RLUS1824CCT3-01:

https://perthbuildingmaterials.com.au/product/slim-lustre-dual-wattage-18w-24w-cct-sel-ledrlus1824cct3-01/

...AU$163.46 OK, that is probably the retail price. It is only guaranteed for 3 years.

There was a time when I would have just gone down to the local shopping centre and bought a new LED globe for about 15 dollars. I am left muttering, oh dear...

EDIT:
I should explain the context of the above post. I was just recently thinking how cars have become more complex. About 20 years ago, I owned a little Daihatsu 1.0 litre car. It had EFI (Electronic Fuel Injection) but other than that everything was mechanical, including wind-up windows. No air-bags either. Loved that car, incredibly gutsy; due to power-to-weight ratio. That kind of car would not be legal in Australia now, not as a new car. Probably wouldn't meet emissions standards either.

Then this electric light event happened, I was once again reminded of the trend to complexity everywhere; red tape, nanny-State.

Tags: ethos

YouTube EasyOS-series Part-4

June 22, 2026 — BarryK

This is the fourth video in this series, showing how to bootup from a USB Flash drive. Here are the earlier videos:

Youtube EasyOS-series Part-3 — June 21, 2026
YouTube EasyOS-series second video created — June 21, 2026
EasyOS introduction video on YouTube — June 11, 2026

In the previous video in this series, Part3, I showed how to download EasyOS and write it to a USB Flash drive. In this video, Part4, I show how to get the computer to startup from the flash drive, then show some basic setup when the EasyOS desktop has loaded.

If your computer has Windows installed, I recommend read this webpage:

https://easyos.org/install/prepare-your-computer-for-booting-linux.html

It explains that you need to turn off Windows "Fast Startup". It also explains that you need to disable "Secure Boot" in the UEFI Setup.

This link shows all of the EasyOS-series videos, including Part-4:

https://www.youtube.com/@barrykauler/videos

I'm thinking of recording Part-5 tonight, showing the boot menu in the initrd.

Tags: easy

Disable Gnome accessibility

June 22, 2026 — BarryK

See report from Miminou:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?p=172561#p172561

I have appended to /etc/profile.d/pup_gtk:

#Qt4 apps need this variable (also see Style=GTK+ in /root/.config/Trolltech.conf)...
#Qt4 note also, /root/.gtkrc-2.0 needs this line: gtk-theme-name="name of gtk theme"
export GTK2_RC_FILES=/root/.gtkrc-2.0

#20260622
#ref: https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?p=172561#p172561
export GTK_A11Y='none'
export GDK_BACKEND='x11'

Have not yet fixed that "(nvisuals == 1)" warning.

Tags: easy

Obsolete scripts removed

June 22, 2026 — BarryK

Forum member Miminou identified these:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?p=172561#p172561

Have removed these:

/usr/local/bin/fmradioshell, meeboview
/usr/sbin/gaimshell, gaim-autosetup.sh, puppyhelp

There's probably more, we will find them.

Tags: easy

View more posts — All categories —

rss