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SolveSpace 20250207 compiled in OE

February 17, 2025 — BarryK

I have posted about the new "skew" feature in SolveSpace, see previous two posts:

I downloaded the source from master branch on 2025-02-07 (latest commit f09bbb9):

https://github.com/solvespace/solvespace

Now compiled in OpenEmbedded and will be in the next release of Easy Scarthgap.

Easy Daedalus is built mostly with Debian .deb packages, including SolveSpace, and that is an older version. Don't plan to compile an update version for Daedalus.    

Tags: easy

Limit Chromium disk cache size

February 09, 2025 — BarryK

Wow, a file 919MB:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?t=13807

I'm running Chromium right now, and /home/chromium/.config folder is 381MB. No single huge file like TerryH has experienced; even so, a 381MB folder is too big. I have done what TerryH suggests, put in a limit of 100MB, see github:

https://github.com/bkauler/woofq/commit/36ab8ba5d75b641026a8d367ea447ccce703f93b

To fix right now, you can add this option "--disk-cache-size=100000000" in chromium.desktop, as TerryH has done, or insert it into /usr/bin/chromium, line 5.    

Tags: easy

Rollback if broken after version update

February 08, 2025 — BarryK

It happens. We have feedback of various things going wrong, for example Xorg won't start and just dumps you to the commandline.

If you have tried to fix it, but no-go, you can rollback to the previous version. The initrd has a boot menu:

img1

Number 5, "Rollback to previous version" will do it; however, there is a catch. It will rollback to the last snapshot of the previous version. If you didn't take a snapshot just before updating, then you might lose something important. If you didn't take any snapshots, there will only be one, that EasyOS takes automatically at the time of the previous update.

Forum member Federico updated from 6.5.4 to 6.6.1, but Xorg was broken. I explained about this "Rollback to previous version" trick:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?p=142163#p142163

Explained:

EasyOS automatically takes a snapshot at the update. In Federico's case, this will be /mnt/wkg/releases/easy-6.6.1/rw-6.6.1.sfs

The thing is, this snapshot is the status just before the update, so the trick I explained in that post was to copy rw-6.6.1.sfs to /mnt/wkg/releases/easy-6.5.4/rw-<today date in format YYYMMDDHHMM>.sfs

But, no need to even copy it, just a hard link (not a symlink). So why can't EasyOS do that automatically? Yes, now done:

https://github.com/bkauler/woofq/commit/4502aeb78fe5d3b2ef945b95a8c6f264474a88e9

So EasyOS has now automatically created a snapshot in version 6.5.4, then updated to 6.6.1. This makes it real easy when you choose "Rollback to previous version" in the initrd menu; you will be back to exactly just before you updated. This is good.

EDIT 2025-02-09:
Improvement, see github:

https://github.com/bkauler/woofq/commit/80a8dd4e2eab0ae2c2f9f21cdb3cfab2676c5b61     

Tags: easy

EasyOS Daedalus-series version 6.6.2 released

February 08, 2025 — BarryK

Easy Daedalus has now reached feature-parity with Easy Scarthgap version 6.6.2. They are, however, built with different packages; Scarthgap with packages compiled in OpenEmbedded/Yocto and Daedalus with Devuan Daedalus (Debian Bookworm) .deb packages. There are advantages and disadvantages of each, but newcomers to EasyOS are recommended to choose Scarthgap.

Scarthgap 6.6.2 was released yesterday:

The previous release of Easy Daedalus is version 6.5.7:

Here are the highlights of Daedalus 6.6.2 since 6.5.7:

Also, the kernel has been rolled back from 6.12.10 to 6.6.75.

Download:

http://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/amd64/releases/daedalus/2025/6.6.2/

...which also has release notes and getting-started readme.

Feedback is welcome at the forum:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?p=142184#p142184

Have fun!    

Tags: easy

EasyOS Scarthgap-series version 6.6.2 released

February 07, 2025 — BarryK

Version 6.6.1 was released on February 4:

Here are the highlights of 6.6.2 since 6.6.1:

Rolled back from 6.12.x kernel to 6.6.x! Also fixes for detection if USB SSD supports TRIM.

Download:

http://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/amd64/releases/scarthgap/2025/6.6.2/

...also has release notes and a getting-started readme file.

Kernel source with patches and build scripts:

http://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/source/kernel/6.6.x/6.6.75-20250204/

Feedback welcome at the forum:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?p=142147#p142147

Have fun!   

Tags: easy

Detect NVME SSD in USB caddy support trim

February 06, 2025 — BarryK

Code implemented in 'init' script in the initrd:

https://github.com/bkauler/woofq/commit/773c23392fb8292763742e2920a9c1622916ca0a   

Tags: easy

Statically-linked sg_vpd utility compiled in OE

February 06, 2025 — BarryK

There is an on-going effort to detect if USB SSDs support TRIM. In the initrd, the 'init' script uses 'hdparm' to probe for TRIM support; however, this works for SATA SSD in a USB caddy, but not NVME SSD. There is online information about using the 'sg_vpd' utility, for example:

https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2020/enabling-trim-on-external-ssd-on-raspberry-pi

https://ivanb.neocities.org/blogs/y2023/fstrim

I didn't have a NVME SSD in a USB caddy, so this morning spent AU$29 for the caddy and AU$59 for a Crucial E100 NVME M.2 SSD 480GB. The cheapest SSD they had in my local computer parts store; not a long-life, very basic but good enough.

As I posted yesterday, the 'sg3-utils' package is now in the Scarthgap package repository:

I experimented with the 'sg_vpd' utility, looks like 'fstrim' now works; or rather, it ran without giving any messages and returned zero, meaning success.

I have compiled 'sg_vpd' in OpenEmbedded, statically-linked with musl and placed it into the initrd. The OE recipe is here:

https://github.com/bkauler/oe-qky-scarthgap/tree/main/quirky/meta-quirky/recipes-quirky/sg3-utils-static

The 'sg_vpd' binary is here:

https://github.com/bkauler/woofq/tree/main/easyos/easy-arch/amd64/target/boot/initrd-tree/bin

Next up, plan to put code into the 'init' script in the initrd.    

Tags: easy

Dune3D parametric CAD added to Flapi

February 06, 2025 — BarryK

Easy, using the "Customize" button:

img1

This will be in the next release of Flapi.

Homepage:

https://dune3d.org/   

Tags: easy