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Fix orange-ball install as root

March 01, 2025 — BarryK

EasyOS has "orange ball" menu entries, apps that are not yet installed. Alfons reported that installed Aqemu, but at the final step where the Orange Installer offered to open Rox-Filer to be able to drag the icon onto the desktop, there was an error "Directory /home/aqemu not found".

The reason is that some apps default to install as the root user, and there will not be anything under /home directory. This is set by the $UN variable; for Aqemu, look at /usr/local/orange/config/aqemu

Fixed, see github:

https://github.com/bkauler/woofq/commit/4a66c2d92a5baf0d081ae21ec971a369742659ae   

Tags: easy

Fix resize partition in NVME drive

February 24, 2025 — BarryK

I posted about buying a NVME SSD (Crucial E100 480GB), in a USB3 caddy, early February:

The purpose of this purchase was for testing TRIM support.

Yesterday, decided to test writing the EasyOS .img file to it, to test that it will boot OK. I didn't expect any problem, as I have other SSDs in USB caddies and they boot OK -- but, they are SATA drives.

The 'easy-6.6.3-amd64.img' file has two partitions, a 7MiB fat12 esp boot partition, and a 921MiB ext4 partition. The latter is the working-partition, and at first bootup, the 'init' script in the initrd resizes that to fill the drive. The resizing failed.

I don't fully understand, but the gist of the problem is that the MBR and partition-table in the .img file think in terms of 512 byte sector size, whereas the drive has 4096 bytes sector size. This is not normally a problem, but now it has become a problem. I don't know if this problem is with all NVME drives, or just this one. The SSD is plugged in now, as /dev/sdc (after fixing, and successfully resizing, the second partition):

# fdisk -u -l /dev/sdc
Disk /dev/sdc: 447.13 GiB, 480103981056 bytes, 937703088 sectors
Disk model: 0SSD8           
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 33553920 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0xd0a7c76b

Device     Boot Start       End   Sectors   Size Id Type
/dev/sdc1  *     2048     16383     14336     7M ef EFI (FAT-12/16/32)
/dev/sdc2       16384 937703087 937686704 447.1G 83 Linux

The 'init' script in the initrd tries to resize the second partition, where WKG_PARTNUM=2 and Wstart=16384:

 echo -e "d\n${WKG_PARTNUM}\nn\np\n${WKG_PARTNUM}\n${Wstart}\n\nw" | fdisk -u /dev/${WKG_DRV} > /dev/null 2>&1

However, fdisk reports an error, that "16384" is invalid; it wants a bigger number for starting sector (I think, from memory, 65536, which totally mystifies me). However, I found that forcing sector size to be 512 bytes, works:

 echo -e "d\n${WKG_PARTNUM}\nn\np\n${WKG_PARTNUM}\n${Wstart}\n\nN\nw" | fdisk -u -b 512 /dev/${WKG_DRV} > /part2resize.log 2>&1

The partition then does resize and it seems to be working OK.

I don't want to change the .img file to have a GPT, as want it to work on very old computers. This hack fix seems OK.

Here is the github commit:

https://github.com/bkauler/woofq/commit/b92f389fb6eb1e423cfd56d591afcc703d571467

Got a list of things to fix in Easy already; will work through them gradually, in between my much greater interest right now, the new trike project.   

Tags: easy

EasyOS Daedalus-series version 6.6.3 released

February 19, 2025 — BarryK

The Scarthgap-series version 6.6.3 was released earlier today:

Here are the highlights of the Daedalus-series since version 6.6.2:

Download:

http://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/amd64/releases/daedalus/2025/6.6.3/

Feedback is welcome at the forum:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?p=143194#p143194

Have fun!   

Tags: easy

Leafpad and SolveSpace compiled in Easy Daedalus

February 19, 2025 — BarryK

I posted about latest Leafpad and SolveSpace compiled in OE for Easy Scarthgap:

Have now compiled them in Easy Daedalus. They will be in the next release.    

Tags: easy

EasyOS Scarthgap-series version 6.6.3 released

February 19, 2025 — BarryK

Highlights since 6.6.2:

Download:

https://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/amd64/releases/scarthgap/2025/6.6.3/

Feedback is welcome at the forum:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?p=143176#p143176

Have fun!    

Tags: easy

latest Leafpad compiled in OE

February 19, 2025 — BarryK

EasyOS has the Leafpad text editor. This is a gtk+2 application and is a dead project. Easy has version 0.8.15, which was released in 2008. It has a bug; the "Find Next" menu item doesn't work.

I checked, there is version 0.8.19, released in 2022. So, have compiled that in OpenEmbedded, and it will be in the next release of Easy Scarthgap. Don't know if it fixes the bug; hope so.

Here is the homepage:

http://tarot.freeshell.org/leafpad/

...it says latest is 0.8.17, which is wrong.

Leafpad is included in Easy as a simpler alternative to Geany. Perhaps should think of finding a replacement.    

Tags: easy

Folder /files fixed in lockdown mode

February 18, 2025 — BarryK

Alfons reported this problem. I confirmed; in lockdown "mode 1", running totally in RAM with all partitions unmounted, /files was a broken symlink. Fixed, see commit:

https://github.com/bkauler/woofq/commit/bb30c5eca6c1538aa5fb00448e8ed6f8d0200c53

Probably getting to time for another release.    

Tags: easy

Offer delete version when rollback

February 18, 2025 — BarryK

Posted recently about improvement when rollback to the previous version:

Usually, the reason that you would rollback to the previous version, is if you had done a version update but it is broken. Then you can reboot and in the initrd menu choose "Rollback to previous version".

In that situation, it would be best to get rid of the version that you have rolled-back from. As it is broken, you would rather it be completely gone. Now, there is a question, asking if you want to do this, see commit:

https://github.com/bkauler/woofq/commit/750f277f429e5b779e189ea300a37d82841947a1

I am just about to make another improvement; also delete the "easy_<version-rolled-back-from>_amd64.sfs" under the 'sfs' folder, as that won't be needed either.   

Tags: easy