Puppy 4.1alpha6 (406)

I had great difficulty uploading to ibiblio. gFTP crashed twice, the connection timed-out once, twice gFTP reported that the file upload was complete when in fact only part of the file was uploaded. Each time I selected to 'resume' and eventually got there. I downloaded the files afterward to confirm the md5sums. I have done this from my relative's high-speed ADSL2 connection.

Get it from here:
http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/puppylinux/test/puppy-4.1alpha6/

Although mut has been fixed, there is still a bug in Pmount. You have to modify lines 55 and 56 of /usr/sbin/pmount to this:



There are two iso files, and I think most people can use the "normal" one, 'puppy-4.1alpha6-seamonkey.iso'. For anyone with shutdown or modem problems, try 'puppy-4.1alpha6-uniproc-ide-conservative-seamonkey.iso'. However, you do need to be extremely careful of "cross pollution". This pollution problem also exists if you have tested one of the earlier version '406' iso files that I released recently for crash-testing.

The cross pollution problem is that when you save a pup_save to hard drive, pup_406.sfs is also saved to hard drive. Later testing a variant of Puppy with the same '406' version number, Puppy will find the older pup_406.sfs file and use that. This has caught me out a couple of times tonight, so beware. Best if you boot with 'pfix=ram', and if you do want to use a pup_save, first look at the hard drive partitions to make sure there is no older pup_406.sfs.

You may also run into cross pollution with the pup_save file, if testing multiple variants with the same version number. Either create a fresh pup_save for each one, or boot with 'pfix=clean'.

I would like to determine if we really do need two completely separate builds. As has been discussed recently in this blog, it may turn out that something simple like disabling "tickless" in our normal kernel build will fix some modem problems ...I don't know, just guessing.

I have been asked recently, what are the main new features of 4.1 compared with 4.00? That has prompted me to put together a preliminary release announcement for 4.1:
http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/puppylinux/test/puppy-4.1alpha6/release-4.1.htm

If you want to boot from a SCSI hard drive, see recent blog posts, also a link in the above release announcement page. You need one of these SCSI kernels:
http://puptrix.org/sources/kernel-2.6.25.15/scsi/

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Comments

Works beautifully
Username: Solid
Both frugal and full installations work on my dual core AMD Athlon X2 system w/ 4gb of ram. I also removed the 'nosmp' parameter; not sure if there is a boost in performance, I'll test that out later. I used the regular 4.1alpha6 release, NOT the conservative kernel release. Solid

petget connection failure
Username: dogone
"406 "standard" appears to be working splendidly, but I am seeing the very same Petget connection problem experienced in 405. Here's my original post. http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/posting.php?mode=quote&p=219571 Network connectivity is otherwise fast and flawless. I am now downloading 406 conservative and will try it. What can this be? Will provide any details you request. Otherwise, first impression of 406 - excellent!

Testing
Username: veronicathecow
"Hi Barry. Standard kernel It sticks on booting the kernel in frugal on my intel D201GLY2 MB SATA HDD and DVD Conservative kernel boots fine Standard kernel runs fine under virtualbox Hope this helps and thanks again. Tony

Pleasant surprise
Username: Leon
"puppy-4.1alpha6-seamonkey.iso, frugal install, upgraded pup_save.2fs from 4.0.5alpha Works fine. Previous 4.0.X-alpha failed to enable gxine to play .wav, .avi, .mp3, .flv and .wmv files with upgraded pup_save.2fs from previous version. Worked with new pup_save.2fs file only. Barry, thanks for your efforts.

petget connection failure cont'd2
Username: dogone
"part 1: Petget in Puppy 406 "conservative" fails just as 406 "standard" and 405 do. The problem manifests immediately after a virgin boot from CD or pfix=ram and configuration of connection via ethernet to DSL router (DHCP) - an connection that works flawlessly otherwise. petget's output: # petget RETVAL=10 /usr/sbin/petget: line 1257: 7923 Terminated yaf-splash -font "8x16" -outline 0 -margin 4 -bg orange -text "PETget package manager Processing, please wait..." /usr/sbin/petget: line 1395: 7963 Terminated yaf-splash -font "8x16" -outline 0 -margin 4 -bg orange -text "PETget package manager Processing, please wait..." PING ibiblio.org (152.46.7.80): 56 data bytes --- ibiblio.org ping statistics --- 1 packets transmitted, 1 packets received, 0% packet loss round-trip min/avg/max = 184.111/184.111/184.111 ms

petget connection failure cont'd3
Username: dogone
"wget's output: --13:55:14-- http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/puppylinux/pupget_packages-1/bcrypt-1.1.tar.gz => `bcrypt-1.1.tar.gz' Resolving distro.ibiblio.org... 1.0.0.0 Connecting to distro.ibiblio.org|1.0.0.0|:80... failed: Connection timed out. Retrying. just keeps trying...

406
Username: Flapdoodle
"I had no trouble downloading the standard version from Ibiblio. Speed ran around 20MBS. Floppy icon changes to HD icon, but mounts/unmounts fine. Screen lock works fine now. (It was a little cranky before, but worked) Puppy package manager (PETget) will uninstall again. Works flawlessly. Pupdial modem dialup found Best Data serial port V.92 external modem. No Puppy Linux competitor I have tried has ever found it. In what I am sure is a totally unrelated coincidence, the VIA RAID BIOS menu ran upon booting for the very first time since I have had the card. Puppy of course is oblivious to the RAIDs existence.

petget problem resolved - odd
Username: dogone
"Barry, this one will intrigue you. My computer connects to Qwest DSL via an Actiontech DSL modem @ 192.168.0.5 configured for DHCP. I access the Actiontech via a gateway - a Linksys router @ 192.168.1.1. The details are immaterial to Puppy. The connection wizard see the NIC, which sees the Linksys, which finds and Actiontech. So getting on-line is a cinch. Now some time back, probably just after I began booting Puppy 405, I switched from fixed IP addresses to DHCP. I simply re-configured the DSL modem, rebooted it and rebooted Puppy. *I did not reboot the gateway (Linksys)*. Sometime later I noticed that Petget could no longer establish a connection and execute a download. What I just did was to reboot the Linksys gateway. Petget immediately started working again. So, for the log book, something about the Linksys getting out of sync with the Actiontech caused Petget problems, when every other network dependent aspect of Puppy worked perfectly. It's little wonder no one else experienced this problem. However, it is perfectly possible that the same or a similar problem could again arise with Petget. Be ye forewarned, all Puppies. I will be sure to copy this series of posts to the forum when a 406 thread is created. Thanks for your patience through all this. I think it was a worthwhile exercise.

FULL POWEROFF !!!
Username: GeoW
" For the first time ever Puppy has done a full poweroff on this computer. Intel D850MV, P4/1.5GHz, 256MB RDRAM, 16G HD/ 1 NTFS partition Following BK advice in blog, I downloaded the 406 conservative iso to test the poweroff function. It did it - Puppy has the scent of this fox now! BTW - the standard version still doesn't poweroff fully. GeoW

Multiple Kernels
Username: Dougal
"I really don't think it makes sense to have two different kernels. People who have a problem with the "normal" kernel should try booting with "loglevel=7" and see what kind of errors they get. It might be they just need to pass on some boot parameter (note that things like ide=nodma have been changed with the PATA layer, now you specify the exact device you want DMA enabled/disabled for etc.).

upload problems
Username: prehistoric1
"First, this is posted from 4.1a6 conservative kernel. Looks good on this laptop. (Dell Latitude D600 1.4 GHz, 1.25 GB RAM, Ralink rt2500 wireless) When I keep reading about your struggles with uploads, I keep thinking "this is a job for rsync." It would even benefit from having most of the two ISO images identical. The big problem is the need for significant computation on both ends. There ought to be some way to set this up. If ibiblio could accept an ftp transfer from a site which is willing to run one end, we could eliminate a good bit of frustration.

Thread to report bugs
Username: BarryK
"Lobster has started a thread to report 4.1alpha6 bugs: http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=32451

Seamonkey vs. Firefox
Username: Dougal
"Something for the never-ending argument... http://www.groklaw.net/comment.php?mode=display&sid=2008081313212422&title=Seamonkey+instead+of+Firefox%3F&type=article&order=&hideanonymous=0&pid=718699#c718704

ath5k vs. ath_pci
Username: playdayz
"This is the ath5k vs. ath_pci thing. I used Bootmanager to reverse the precedence of ath5k:ath_pci so that ath_pci loads (can see it in lsmod). And this configuration can set up Connect by just clicking ath and going from there. BUT, it doesn't seem to remember from boot to boot--I choose to save it, but that doesn't work--I have to set it up again on the next boot.

Auto WIFI activation
Username: fmlynch
"Versions 4.1a6- seamonkey and 4.1a6-uniproc-ide-conservative iso boot and run successfully on my Elite Group A535 laptop with AMD 4 Microprocessor, 256mb RAM, 40 GB IDE HD and Prism2 USB internal WIFI module. Either from the CD or a frugal HD install, the Prism2 USB module is detected automatically. I can configure and activate the WIFI using DHCP with either version. The only problem I have is that after saving the configuration profile for the WIFI, on subsequent reboots, the WIFI is not automatically configured and activated. I have to go through the setup process each time I start up. Version 3.01 does this automatically, but version 4.00 and subsequent 4.1 versions do not, at least for me. I wonder if others have encountered this problem? F M Lynch

Wallpaper manager
Username: John
"Am a super noob to linux, so it's likely my fault... But, I cannont get the wallpaper manager to work like it did in version 4.00. Thanks for your time and all the work..

works great
Username: technosaurus
" I finally have a working puppy web desktop optimized and tested with 4.1a6 to include all the important Puppy and general Linux links as well as over 100 web apps. If anyone would like to use/test it for inclusion in puplets its most updated version is at: http://www.openplatformeducation.org/homeb.htm you'll have to save it to your file system to see all the pretty puppy icons though.

Tags: puppy