Barrys Old News — Posts tagged "quirky"

Quirky 1.5-beta1 (142)

April 15, 2011 — BarryK

I have uploaded Quirky 1.5-beta (actually numbered 142). This is not yet a release to be publicly promoted.

I announced the expected features of 1.5 recently:
http://bkhome.org/archive/blog2/201103/features-of-upcoming-quirky-15.html

Reiterating:

There are three experimental features that will be in the next Quirky.

1. Automatic Xorg startup
The desktop will start automatically, so less questions at first boot.

2. Xorg vesa only
This is an exercise to reduce size. A minimal Xorg. Any extra Xorg drivers would have to be PETs (they would also need enhanced xorg-server and openGL/mesa PETs).

3. More drivers in 'zdrv'
Extra kernel modules, printer, scanner, camera drivers, and browser plugins, now moved out to the 'zdrv' SFS file. There is a special monitor, that if you try to perform any operation that requires those drivers, a message pops up telling to install the zdrv, with a button to download it.

This build also features the new 'welcome1stboot' written in BaCon, with de, fr and ru translations.

If you only want to evaluate 1 and 2 and want a full .iso with all drivers, including kernel SCSI and analog-modem (113.4MB):
http://distro.ibiblio.org/quirky/quirky-1.4.2/qrky-142-all-drvrs.iso
Md5sum: 2cfd4279b20a008feee0dde205d6b8c1

The "baby" build has a zdrv as in point 3, to see how small we can make the .iso (still has kernel SCSI modules) (86.7MB):
http://distro.ibiblio.org/quirky/quirky-1.4.2/qrky-142-BABY.iso
Md5sum: 2b5b8a9609dd0c0b7ee5af03db2943f9

If you don't download and install the zdrv SFS file, a monitor daemon is supposed to popup a window offering to download it if you need to use any drivers not in the .iso.

But, you can download it now if you wish (this is NOT needed for the full .iso only the baby) (26.8MB):
http://distro.ibiblio.org/quirky/quirky-1.4.2/zq142228.sfs
Md5sum: 3f521011a43f1709e05a9d513cb25cdf

And of course the 'devx' (103.8MB):
http://distro.ibiblio.org/quirky/quirky-1.4.2/qrky_devx_142.sfs
Md5sum: 1d3e41fc64d147a7740914bd755d6792

T2 binary pkgs uploaded

April 14, 2011 — BarryK

I would like to thank tuuxxx, who uploaded these files for me, due to my very limited upload/download limits with Telstra 3G.

These are the binary packages compiled in T2, with cutdown vesa-only Xorg. These have been used for building Quirky 1.5. Here they are:

http://bkhome.org/binaries/t2/8.0rc/

The sources are archived at:

http://bkhome.org/sources/alphabetical/

When Woof is used to build Quirky 1.5, these binaries should get downloaded as-needed. They are also offered in the PPM.

Tags: quirky

Busybox 'depmod' broken

April 13, 2011 — BarryK

Oh %#@!, I built what I thought was going to be Quirky 1.5-beta1, but found at bootup that some kernel modules had not loaded.

I found the reason: executing "busybox depmod" only generates one file:
/lib/modules/2.6.32.28/modules.dep.bb
This breaks the full modutils utilities, also breaks some scripts.

The file modules.dep.bb is explained here:
http://git.busybox.net/busybox/tree/modutils/Config.in?h=1_15_stable&=switch

However, the configuration that I used for Busybox 1.18.4:

CONFIG_MODINFO=y

# CONFIG_MODPROBE_SMALL is not set

# CONFIG_FEATURE_MODPROBE_SMALL_OPTIONS_ON_CMDLINE is not set

# CONFIG_FEATURE_MODPROBE_SMALL_CHECK_ALREADY_LOADED is not set

CONFIG_INSMOD=y

CONFIG_RMMOD=y

CONFIG_LSMOD=y

CONFIG_FEATURE_LSMOD_PRETTY_2_6_OUTPUT=y

CONFIG_MODPROBE=y

CONFIG_FEATURE_MODPROBE_BLACKLIST=y

CONFIG_DEPMOD=y



#

# Options common to multiple modutils

#

# CONFIG_FEATURE_2_4_MODULES is not set

# CONFIG_FEATURE_INSMOD_TRY_MMAP is not set

# CONFIG_FEATURE_INSMOD_VERSION_CHECKING is not set

# CONFIG_FEATURE_INSMOD_KSYMOOPS_SYMBOLS is not set

# CONFIG_FEATURE_INSMOD_LOADINKMEM is not set

# CONFIG_FEATURE_INSMOD_LOAD_MAP is not set

# CONFIG_FEATURE_INSMOD_LOAD_MAP_FULL is not set

CONFIG_FEATURE_CHECK_TAINTED_MODULE=y

CONFIG_FEATURE_MODUTILS_ALIAS=y

CONFIG_FEATURE_MODUTILS_SYMBOLS=y

CONFIG_DEFAULT_MODULES_DIR="/lib/modules"

CONFIG_DEFAULT_DEPMOD_FILE="modules.dep"

I did NOT choose the small model for modutils!

Sigh, oh well, I have rolled back to Busybox 1.16.2, which does generate modules.dep, modules.alias and modules.symbols.

See my earlier blog post about upgrading to Busybox 1.18.4:
http://bkhome.org/archive/blog2/201104/dialog-11-20110302-busybox-1184.html

Dietlibc 0.32 with T2 patches

April 08, 2011 — BarryK

Dietlibc is a C library that is used to compile C applications statically. They are very small. Version 0.32 is the latest, released in 2009:
http://www.fefe.de/dietlibc/

However, the T2 developers have applied many patches, some quite recently, so I have compiled Dietlibc with the T2 patches. This is compiled in Quirky, however should work in all puppies (Quirky has 2.6.30 kernel header files, so any Puppy that has kernel 2.6.30 or later should be ok). T2 page:
http://t2-project.org/packages/dietlibc.html

Dietlibc PET (414KB):
http://distro.ibiblio.org/quirky/pet_packages-quirky/dietlibc_DEV-0.32-patched-t2-20110407.pet

Doc PET (1KB):
http://distro.ibiblio.org/quirky/pet_packages-quirky/dietlibc_DOC-0.32-patched-t2-20110407.pet

dialog 1.1-20110302, busybox 1.18.4

April 04, 2011 — BarryK

Thanks to Lluamco who advised how to compile dialog with unicode support. I did not copy curses.h, instead solved it a different way:

# export CPPFLAGS='-I/usr/include/ncursesw'

# ./configure --prefix=/usr --bindir=/bin --sbindir=/sbin --libdir=/lib --sysconfdir=/etc --localstatedir=/var --build=i486-pc-linux-gnu --enable-nls --with-ncursesw --enable-widec

# make

# new2dir make install

I have compiled the latest Busybox with more applets, also with unicode support enabled.

This is the first time that dialog and busybox have unicode support enabled. These will be in the upcoming Quirky for testing.

Although compiled in Quirky, both of these are intended to be used in all Woof-built puppies, by putting in entries into variable PKGS_SPECS_TABLE:

yes|busybox||exe
yes|dialog||exe,dev,doc,nls

...the search order will normally find the PETs in the Quirky repo (the distro-fields pet.specs are set to empty so as to match all puppies).

They are uploaded:
http://distro.ibiblio.org/quirky/pet_packages-quirky/busybox-1.18.4-unicode.pet
http://distro.ibiblio.org/quirky/pet_packages-quirky/dialog-1.1-20110302-widechar.pet

Features of upcoming Quirky 1.5

March 31, 2011 — BarryK

There are three experimental features that will be in the next Quirky.

1. Automatic Xorg startup
The desktop will start automatically, so less questions at first boot.

2. Xorg vesa only
This is an exercise to reduce size. A minimal Xorg. Any extra Xorg drivers would have to be PETs (they would also need enhanced xorg-server and openGL/mesa PETs).

3. More drivers in 'zdrv'
Extra kernel modules, printer, scanner, camera drivers, and browser plugins, now moved out to the 'zdrv' SFS file. There is a special monitor, that if you try to perform any operation that requires those drivers, a message pops up telling to install the zdrv (I will probably add a button for easy download and install of the 'zdrv').

My latest Quirky live-CD with all of the above is 85.5MB. The 'zdrv' SFS file is 28MB.

So, I could put in more printer drivers for example, without fattening the ISO file.

1. and 3. are actually in Woof. Feature-3 is provided by a new post-processing script '4babybuild'.

Note, my 85.5MB build has the SeaMonkey without Mail&News. If I built with SM Mail&News then it would become about 86.5MB ...still very good!

SeaMonkey 2.0.13 full suite

March 28, 2011 — BarryK

Yesterday I compiled SeaMonkey 2.0.13 in Quirky, without the Mail&News component. I also compiled Sylpheed to provide a substitute Mail&News application.

Today I have compiled SeaMonkey 2.0.13 with the Mail&News component. The sizes of the PET packages is very interesting:

SeaMonkey no Mail&News: 9.4MB
Sylpheed: 0.6MB
SeeMonkey full suite: 11.1MB

So, we can save 1.1MB off the live-CD by using the first two. SeaMonkey has to be configured to recognise Sylpheed as an external mail handler. I haven't put that into the SM PET package, as I think it might be different from when we did this before, with the SM 1.x series. Well, we can sort out this detail when I upload the next Quirky.

Admittedly, the full SM Mail&News is superior to Sylpheed, as it is tightly integrated with the browser, and has superior filtering. There is an extra filtering package that can be installed to bolster Sylpheed.
However, I am really not so concerned about a Mail&News application these days, as I personally use online mail and news. I suspect that these days most others do also. So, I will go for saving space, and not choose the full SM suite.

I fixed something in the SM-without-Mail&News PET and re-uploaded it. Here they are:
http://distro.ibiblio.org/quirky/pet_packages-quirky/seamonkey20_nomail-2.0.13-q1.pet
http://distro.ibiblio.org/quirky/pet_packages-quirky/seamonkey20_nomail_DEV-2.0.13-q1.pet

And the full suite:
http://distro.ibiblio.org/quirky/pet_packages-quirky/seamonkey20-2.0.13-q1.pet
http://distro.ibiblio.org/quirky/pet_packages-quirky/seamonkey20_DEV-2.0.13-q1.pet

These PETs are usable in Quirky, Wary and probably Luci.