Wary 0.9.2 uploaded

This is a beta release for our testers, not yet for public consumption (but hopefully getting very close).

Get Wary from here:

http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/quirky/wary-092/

Md5sums:
a5adbe3485274fe3a48cd5aa1262b830 wary-092-k2.6.30.5-scsi-modem.iso
4835f5cfd090d2d7485a094e07a5f8ef wary-092-k2.6.34.6.iso
879c925584667066a8e2d3d57046eec8 wary_devx_092.sfs

Two little bugs
After I had just started to upload the ISO, I discovered two buglets. Guys, the first time that you boot this pup, would you mind immediately open a terminal window and type these two lines:

# echo -n "1" > /var/local/sns/rx_bytes_session
# ln -s depmod /sbin/depmod-FULL

The reason for the first line is that the Video Upgrade Wizard checks /var/local/sns/rx_bytes_session to see if there is an Internet connection, however that file doesn't even get created until the first shutdown. It is only a buglet, it just causes a message in the Video Upgrade Wizard telling you that you don't have an Internet connection even when you do.

The second buglet is caused because I have gone back to the full 'depmod', but somehow neglected to create 'depmod-FULL' as a symlink to 'depmod'. The name 'depmod-FULL' is needed by some scripts.

I will fix those two bugs before I upload Woof.

Video Upgrade Wizard
You can run this via clicking on the desktop 'setup' icon, or in the 'Setup' menu.

This Wizard is supposed to analyse your current X situation and if appropriate offer a driver upgrade. I have tested the Intel video, but not the latest nVidia -- for the latter, if the Wizard sees that you are only running the pup with the 'vesa', 'Xvesa' or 'nv' drivers, then you will have an offer to install a commercial nVidia driver -- I have created three nVidia PETs for the 2.6.34.6 kernel and the Wizard is supposed to detect which one of those will work on your video hardware and offer that.

Anyway, let me know if anything does not go according to plan. If you do install the commercial nVidia PET that the Wizard recommends but it doesn't work, let me know also.

Note, the Intel upgrade driver has to run the kernel with KMS enabled, which requires a reboot after installing the PET. There are popup instructions that explain that, they also state that you need to reboot with "pfix=nox" and then run "xorgwizard", however the "pfix=nox" is probably not required as X will fail to start anyway and will just drop you to the console. Note that with the KMS-enabled kernel none of the other X drivers (vesa, Xvesa, i810) will work.

Analog modem drivers
For those who have dialup analog modem cards, the Wary build with 2.6.34.6 kernel has a good collection of drivers, including for the Agere chips. However, drivers for Intel, Conexant and ESS modem chips are missing, and for these you will need the Wary build with 2.6.30.5 kernel.

2.6.34.6 kernel
Wary 0.9 uses the 2.6.35.7 kernel, but I have rolled back due to show-stopper bugs in that kernel.

There is also a show-stopper bug in the 2.6.34.7 kernel, so I am using an especially patched 2.6.34.6. Test this guy, let me know if this is "the one" for Wary.

Welcome 1st boot
The first time that you boot Wary (or with pfix=ram) you get a little message at the top of the screen inviting you to mouse-over for getting-started information. This will cause an information window to popup -- this has been created by gtkdialog, but there may be an issue with the dimensions. If the information window is too high/wide or too short/narrow, let me know, also what is your screen resolution (ex: 1280x800).
This problem occurs because gtkdialog has a bug, cannot auto-size it's window properly when the window has text with html markup, so I call gtkdialog with the --geometry option (see script /usr/share/doc/welcome1stboot).

Upgrading an existing warysave.2fs
When you boot Wary for the first time or with "pfix=ram" from CD, at shutdown you are asked if you want to copy wary_092.sfs off the CD to HD (and zw092346.sfs, the "zdrv"). With earlier puppies, it used to get copied to HD anyway at bootup, but users objected to that, so it no longer happens.

The outcome of this is that if you boot Wary 0.9.2 and there is an existing warysave.2fs personal file, it will get upgraded and you will get to a desktop -- and the wary_092.sfs and zw092346.sfs will not be copied to HD.

This slows bootup, as they have to be read from the CD at bootup, rather than from HD.

I need to think about this. I will probably need to modify the 'init' script, detect that a warysave.2fs file is about to be upgraded, see if the wary_092.sfs is not on HD and offer to copy it from CD. I have added this to the to-do list.

For now, if you want you can copy the .sfs files to HD manually.

Wary 5.0 release schedule
From now until the release of Wary 5.0-final, I want to focus on bug-fixing of Wary and Woof and hold-off any significant changes. So, although we always have ideas for improving Wary and Woof, if it isn't essential then I want to leave it for now.

I can't really say how far away 5.0-final is. It depends on feedback on 0.9.2. If there are only little buglets then great, I can maybe bring out an RC in 4-5 days ...but, I had better not make premature statements, as I have just moved to a new kernel and lots of bugs may emerge...

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Comments

Wary 092 forum feedback
Username: BarryK
I have started a forum thread: http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=61164

Mirror for Wary 092
Username: BarryK
"Here is a faster mirror for downloading Wary: http://ftp.nluug.nl/ftp/pub/os/Linux/distr/quirky/wary-092/

What is Wary?
Username: BarryK
"Some of you guys who are newcomers or just read my blog sometimes, might not be familiar with what Wary Puppy is all about. To get the background, read this page: http://bkhome.org/wary/ Note though, although Wary is targeting older hardware, we have X upgrade packages (see the Video Upgrade Wizard in Wary 0.9.2) that will get very recent video hardware working -- for example with the Intel upgrade my Acer netbook with Pineview video works great (prior to installing that, the generic 'vesa' and 'Xvesa' drivers worked but they are slow).

2.6.34.6 SFS
Username: BarryK
"For anyone who needs to compile a driver that needs the kernel source, the 'kernel_src-2.6.34.6-patched.sfs' file is here: http://bkhome.org/sources/kernel-2.6.34.6/ Us#er#na#me: pu#pp#y Pa#ss#wo#rd: li#nu#x Just a reminder, in Wary 0.9.2 'depmod' is now the full version. Also, the kernel source sfs file already has 'make prepare' executed prior to its creation.

Re old computers
Username: BarryK
"sage, The Wary intro page explains, anything about 2 years old or more. Back to the earliest Pentium/686. I am not going to support 486 CPUs. Mplayer and ffmpeg require a 686. "Cannot be moved" -- actually it can. Standard technique, hold down the ALT key and use the mouse to drag. Hm, I might have to tell the window to draw from top-left of screen. The command # ln -s depmod /sbin/depmod-FULL does work. You must have typed it wrong.

Agere HDA old version
Username: peebee
"Hi Barry The Agere HDA modem in K2.6.34 is the old 2.1.60 version from 2005 rather than the 2.1.80 version that rerwin and I have been testing recently. As a result it crashes on my HP 550 laptop. I haven't tested 2.6.30 yet.... Cheers Peter

"...what Wary Puppy is all about"
Username: Sage
"How time rolls on! 754 is rather more than 2yrs old, already! [But I don't believe in multi-cores anyway; they don't run any faster and there's an additional overhead whilst tasks are farmed out to the correct core and subsequently re-correlated. Smoke & mirrors.] "...moved" - ah, yes. Done that but the lower part is still clipped on the SiS Mirage 1. Re. '486' , quite a few folks report good results with the KII/KIII-500/550, (which can be clocked, of course) and were the pre-cursors for true Athlons, which were introduced at 650(?). [What has changed in the basic x86 architecture since 286?! ARM sells more and TI-68000/Apple blew it back in the 80's when they got so greedy.] "# ln -s depmod /sbin/depmod-FULL" - sometimes difficult to discern spaces, that's my excuse; non-coders wouldn't be sure in some fonts if they aren't familiar with statement structures. Any road up, I seem to have typed the correct version with the scsi-version now loaded!

OpenOffice crash
Username: Terryphi
"Bad news: OpenOffice sfs crashes Wary 092 for me. It happens after the registration screen when the OO splash screen appears. I am testing on a clean frugal install. If it is of any relevance, yes I did the 2 fixes required on first boot.

Agere source
Username: BarryK
"peebee, Hmmm, I don't know how I still have the older source. I think you already did this, but would you mind again posting links to the latest source?

Re OO
Username: BarryK
"Terryphi, That was one of the things that I checked, it worked for me. That was on the Acer netbook, with OO 3.1.1. I'll test again.

Re OO
Username: BarryK
"Oh crap, it crashes on my main laptop. Terryphi, What video driver is being used on your computer? I wonder if that is a common factor. This laptop uses the 'intel' Xorg driver. I'll do some more testing.

OO and Xorg
Username: Terryphi
"Barry: I am using the intel Xorg driver too. Beyond the OO issue, Xorg is still troublesome for me. If I set xorgwizard for 1024x768 resolution it is not saved at next boot. There is definitely a problem with Intel 82G31/33. I am about to try a version of xorg.conf that worked reliably in Wary 070.

Xorg G31/G33 - 1024x768
Username: Terryphi
"No, Wary 092 will not reliably save a working xorg.conf set to 1024x768 on next boot with this chipset. Here are the last few messages on reboot: [code]Intel 800/900 Series VBIOS Hack version 0.5.3 Chipset: G33 BIOS: TYPE 1 Mode Table Offset: $C0000 + $269 Mode Table Entries: 27 Patch mode 38 to resolution 1024x600 complete Status X, ...... If X failed to start, type "xorgwizard" to setup X [/code]

Xorg Intel G31/G33 -1024x768
Username: Terryphi
"Xorgwizard seems unable to generate a suitable xorg.conf for this chipset which works on reboot. The only solution is to manually amend xorg.conf, restart Xserver and reboot. Some possible amendments work when Xserver is restarted but seem to be rejected by Xorg as invalid on reboot. These amended sections work for me :[code] Section "Monitor" Identifier "Monitor0" VendorName "Monitor Vendor" ModelName "Monitor Model" HorizSync 40-80 VertRefresh 60 #UseModes "Modes0" #monitor0usemodes Option "PreferredMode" "1024x768" EndSection[/code] HorizSync changed to 40-80 and VertRefresh changed to 60. and [code] Section "Screen" Identifier "Screen0" Device "Card0" Monitor "Monitor0" DefaultDepth 24 #Option "metamodes" "1024x768_60 +0+0" #METAMODES_0 Subsection "Display" Depth 24 Modes "1024x768"[/code] Depth changed to 24.

gtkdialog-splash exit on mouse-over
Username: 01micko
"Hi Barry Just for some things the mouse-over exit for gtkdialog-splash is inappropriate. For example.. I am just doing a frugal install using 'universal installer' of wary-092 and if I accidentally mouse-over the splash it disappears and I don't know what's going on... this could be an issue on older slower machines. Maybe the 'never' option would be better in this instance (and possibly some others) Cheers

More Agere.....
Username: peebee
"Hi Barry Some more Agere HDA feedback.... I've asked rerwin by pm to let you know where he got the 2.1.80 sources from..... I've now tested K2.6.30 and its different to 2.6.34 - the Agere modules are there but don't get loaded at all - unfortunately I can't get any diagnostics for you as dmesg, /var/log/messages and modprobe in a terminal are all silent as to why the module doesn't load.... BTW - wary060 K2.6.32 had the 2.1.80 modules.... did you have the sources then? Please say if there is anything else I can do to help. Cheers Peter

DVB-T support
Username: peebee
""In fact, I one of the goals for Wary is that media playing will be "the best", handling just about every media format." Hi Barry I think?? the version of mplayer in wary092 lacks digital TV support? At least I can't find it! The version in luci232 does provide this. Thanks Peter

Agere sources
Username: BarryK
"This is where I got the Agere sources from: http://linmodems.technion.ac.il/packages/ltmodem/11c11040/ I am using: agrsm048pci-2.1.60_20100108.tar.gz agrsm06pci-2.1.80~20100106.tar.gz agrsm-11c11040-2.1.80~20091225.tar.bz2 The first one is version 2.1.60 but that appears to be the latest available. If you know of later source for it, please let me know.

Agere sources
Username: peebee
"Hi Barry How odd - your sources look correct to me - rerwin can maybe confirm definitely - but the modules in wary092 k2.6.34 are identifying themselves as the older 2.1.60 for the 11c11040 which is what I have - and crashing. You can confirm for yourself I think by modprobe agrmodem and then look in pupscan interface info. Cheers Peter

Agere - more diagnostics
Username: peebee
"Hi Barry wary092 k2.6.34.6 /lib/modules/2.6.34.6/agrmodem has 3 subdirectories - 06pci, 11c11040 and 048pci and a symlink called active which in my case is correctly linked to 11c11040 however pupscan shows that it is the 048pci module that has been loaded which is why version 2.1.60 is showing I guess. So the wrong Agere type is being loaded. Sorry I didn't find this earlier. Cheers Peter

OpenOffice crash -solved for me!
Username: Terryphi
"I just added java-jre-6u20.pet, restarted Xserver and OO no longer crashes! DaveS and tronkel do not confirm this as a solution but they may be using a different version of Java or complicated their systems with LibreOffice as well as OpenOffice.

OO works on kernel 2.6.35.7 too!
Username: Terryphi
"Elated with my success with OO on Wary 092 I have revisited a clean install of Wary 090 kernel 2.6.35.7. Guess what? Add java-jre-6u20.pet before trying the OO sfs and then it does not crash. Yippee! How did we all miss the importance of Java?

Re OO good news
Username: BarryK
"Terryphi, That is good news. I wonder, perhaps we should re-build the OO SFS with the java inside it.

OO sfs
Username: Terryphi
"Barry: I would prefer not to see Java included in a OO sfs. Java is not needed for most OO functions and is an ongoing security liability. When I have it on a system I switch it off in OO and all browsers. Apparently some distributions have built OO packages which have disabled parts of OpenOffice.org which rely on Java. I read somewhere that the Fedora rpms have done this. I don't know about the Ubuntu debs which are based on Go-OO. I think that the LibreOffice developers are coming under pressure from users to ditch the Java dependency. Given the politics of their split with Oracle hopefully that might happen!

Even more on OO sfs
Username: Terryphi
"I hope this is not getting boring. I've done some more testing with OO sfs and the 2.6.35.7 kernel, although I assume it has wider relevance. Once OO is installed it does not need Java to run. I had switched off Java in OO's options. I have successfully tested swriter and scalc which are the only ones I use. After the java-jre-6u20.pet had been removed these files are found in Wary which may (or may not!) be relevant: /root/.openoffice.org/3/user/config/javasettings_Linux_x86.xml /root/.openoffice.org/3/user/registry/cache/org.openoffice.Office.Java.dat Anyway, I'm thinking that possibly very little needs to be added to the OO sfs to keep OO happy the first time it is loaded.

OO crash fix
Username: Terryphi
"I have now established that only one file, and the sub-directories to locate it, are all that is necessary to solve the OO crash on kernels 2.6.34 and 2.6.35.7 . Details on the forum: http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?p=461500#461500

LibreOffice and go-OO need Java
Username: Terryphi
"I have extended my testing to the go-OO and LibreOffice sfs files. My fix for the OpenOffice crash does not work for go-OO and LO. They are much more heavily reliant on Java. That is a very good reason to stick with OpenOffice 3.1.1. http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=61164&start=75

Tags: wary