Barrys News — Posts tagged "easy-8"

ROX-Filer improve handling thumbnails

April 21, 2026 — BarryK

Forum member l0wt3ch is improving ROX-Filer, see recent blog post:

ROX-Filer back and forward buttons — April 18, 2026
ROX-Filer copy leak fixed — April 18, 2026

Now, improvements for thumbnails:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?p=168683#p168683

I have applied the 'rox-thumbnails-easy.patch' and recompiled ROX. It is now 'rox-filer-20260421-excalibur.pet'.

Tags: easy

Less cryptic choose console keyboard layout

April 20, 2026 — BarryK

At very first bootup, a list of console keyboard layouts is displayed in the initrd, and the user is asked to choose one. However, they are very cryptic, so I have replaced with more meaningful country names.

The code is in /inc/00functions in the initrd. I have left in the previous display, commented out:

 KEYMAP=us
 #now ask for KEYMAP... 20260421 less cryptic...
 #echo -e '\e[1;;45m 1 azerty 2 be-latin1  3 br-abnt2  4 br-abnt   5 br-latin1-abnt2 6 br-latin1-us
 #7 by     8 cf         9 croat      10 cz        11 de            12 de-latin1 
 #13 dk    14 dvorak    15 dvorak-l  16 dvorak-r  17 es            18 et        
 #19 fi    20 fr        21 gb        22 gr        23 hu101         24 hu        
 #25 il    26 it        27 jp106     28 la-latin1 29 lt            30 mk        
 #31 nl    32 no        33 pl        34 pt-latin1 35 ro            36 ru        
 #37 se    38 sg        39 sk-qwerty 40 sk-qwertz 41 slovene       42 srp       
 #43 sv-latin1  44 tr   45 us        46 wangbe                                  \e[0;;m'
 echo -e '\e[1;;45m 1 Azerty         2 Belgian-latin1           3 Brazilian-abnt2     
 4 Brazilian-abnt 5 Brazilian-latin1-abnt2   6 Brazilian-latin1-us 
 7 Belarus        8 Central African Republic 9 Croatian            
 10 Czechia       11 Deutsch                 12 Deutsch-latin1     
 13 Denmark       14 Dvorak                  15 Dvorak-l           
 16 Dvorak-r      17 Español                 18 Eesti-keel         
 19 Suomalainen   20 Français                21 Great Britain      
 22 Ελλάδα        23 Mađarski-101            24 Mađarski           
 25 Israel        26 Italiano                27 Japanese-106       
 28 Latin-American-latin1 29 Lietuvių        30 македонски         
 31 Nederlands            32 Norsk           33 Polski             
 34 Português-latin1      35 Română          36 Русский            
 37 Sverige               38 Singapore       39 Slovenský-qwerty   
 40 Slovenský-qwertz      41 Slovene         42 srp                
 43 Svenska-latin1  44 Türkçe   45 USA       46 Wangbe             \e[0;;m'
 
 echo -n -e '\033[1;;44m'
 while read aLINE
 do
  echo -n '                                                                       '
  echo -n -e '\033[1G' #move cursor back to col 1.
  echo " ${aLINE}"
 done << EOT
$(echo " ${S015:-Please enter the number corresponding to your keyboard layout.}")
$(echo "${S016:-Choose the closest match, there will be an opportunity to fine-tune the layout after the desktop has loaded. Press ENTER only for US.}" | fold -s -w 70)
EOT

This cryptic display was criticised in the last review of EasyOS in Distrowatch. I could make it into a bit more GUI-like with the 'dialog' utility; maybe in the future.

Tags: easy

Limine Installer bug fix

April 19, 2026 — BarryK

Forum member peasthope discovered a bug with Limine Installer:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?t=16680

Looking at the posts in that thread and in the Limine Installer code, I found a potential bug. I'm not 100% sure that it is the specific bug that peasthope has encountered, but it is a bug.

The fix is to check the mounted status of partitions in the /usr/local/easy-installer/easy-installer script, in two places. For example, at line 392:

  . /tmp/limine-installer/lsblk-${ESPdest}
  #20260419 check if MOUNTPOINT still valid...
  realMP="$(lsblk --pairs -o MOUNTPOINT /dev/${ESPdest} | cut -f 2 -d '"')"
  if [ "$realMP" != "$MOUNTPOINT" ];then
   sed -i -e "s%^MOUNTPOINT=.*%MOUNTPOINT=\"${realMP}\"%" /tmp/limine-installer/lsblk-${ESPdest}
   MOUNTPOINT="${realMP}"
  fi
  #mount the partition...
  if [ -n "$MOUNTPOINT" ];then

The problem potentially happens as 'limine-installer' calls 'find-installations' which records the mounted status of partitions, then a GUI window is displayed with checkboxes to choose the found OS installations. The window has a "GENERATE" button; however if the person clicks on partitions to look inside them, before clicking "GENERATE", that will change the mounted status, which will cause an error later in the script. The above code check fixes that.

Tags: easy

ROX-Filer back and forward buttons

April 18, 2026 — BarryK

Previous blog post, l0wt3ch fixed a memory leak:

ROX-Filer copy leak fixed — April 18, 2026

I applied the patch, which is great, but what I didn't realise is that the patch also includes this:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?t=16611

So we now also have back and forward buttons:

...mouse-over, there is popup text. The buttons also remember history, so wherever you go in the folder hierarchy, you can back-track, and go forward again.

This is a really nice new feature for ROX!

Tags: easy

ROX-Filer copy leak fixed

April 18, 2026 — BarryK

Forum member l0wt3ch has done some superb detective work, discovering and fixing a leak:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?p=168494#p168494

Quoting:

Dragging a couple of isos and a big folder full of files from a usb stick to an internal drive was causing ROX to eat all of my RAM, so I took a gdb dump and got the bot to examine it. Said there was at least one real memory leak in ROX-Filer, caused by a bug in filer.c/filer.h. So I asked if this bug was already present in the original woof-CE code (after uploading the files), and yes it was, the bug is in the woof-CE source. So I uploaded the files, and all of the patches, from EasyOS, and asked if the bug was there also. Answer was yes it is, but half of the problem is fixed in Easy.

I have applied the patch in woofQ2 and compiled ROX. The pet is now 'rox-filer-20260418-excalibur.pet', which will be in the next release of Easy.

Tags: easy

EasyClone support portable apps

April 17, 2026 — BarryK

Tutorial on EasyClone here:

https://easyos.org/install/how-to-clone-a-easyos-installation.html

We have been discussing EasyClone here:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?t=16721

Forum member pp4mnklinux has Mike's portable apps in /files/portable, which is a folder that I originally created thinking that portable apps can be there. Though, portable apps can really be anywhere.

If they are in /files/portable, have added a checkbox to EasyClone:

Currently not cloning anything else under /files

Tags: easy

Getting USB4 hotplug to work

April 17, 2026 — BarryK

This is being discussed here:

"How to hot plug an external USB-C hard drive in a Thunderbolt port?"
https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?t=16711

I configured the 6.12.81 kernel with CONFIG_USB4:

Kernel 6.12.81 with CONFIG_USB4 — April 12, 2026

Arch Linux has, as usual, great documentation:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Thunderbolt

Forum member rockedge reminded me, also need a udev rule. So have created /etc/udev/rules.d/99-thunderbolt.rules:

#20260417 ref: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Thunderbolt
# ref: https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?p=168112#p168112
ACTION=="add", SUBSYSTEM=="thunderbolt", ATTR{authorized}=="0", ATTR{authorized}="1"

Hopefully getting there!

EDIT:
After further reading of the Arch documentation, have renamed to /etc/udev/rules.d/97-thunderbolt.rules, with this content:

#20260417 ref: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Thunderbolt
# ref: https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?p=168112#p168112
ACTION=="add", SUBSYSTEM=="thunderbolt", ATTR{authorized}=="0", ATTR{authorized}="1"
ACTION=="change", SUBSYSTEM=="thunderbolt", RUN+="/usr/local/pup_event/thunderbolt-rescan.sh"

And /usr/local/pup_event/thunderbolt-rescan.sh has this content:

#!/bin/ash
echo 1 > /sys/bus/pci/rescan

This will be in the next release.

Tags: easy

Border line-characters in text-mode dialog utility

April 16, 2026 — BarryK

Forum member szept reminded me of this problem. Running 'xorgwizard' from a terminal, X not running, the text-mode dialog boxes are supposed to have line-characters to draw the borders, but instead have weird characters. See the photos here:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?p=168389#p168389

Yes, you can see this for yourself, go to the menu "Shutdown --> Rectify --> Exit to commandline" then run this:

# dialog --msgbox "this is a message using the text-mode dialog utility" 0 0

This is what it is supposed to look like:

...and yes, you will get those correct border lines if do it in a terminal window when Xorg is running.

If you check the TERM variable:

# echo $TERM
xterm

Changing TERM to "linux" does fix the border lines. I don't recall why I chose TERM=xterm, or maybe I didn't, maybe that is Devuan's default? Don't recall, too long ago. Ah, just remembered, TERM is set in file /etc/profile:

TERM="xterm"

I will leave it at "xterm", because there is another fix. Created /etc/profile.d/ncurses, with this content:

export NCURSES_NO_UTF8_ACS=1

There is information online about "NCURSES_NO_UTF8_ACS", for example:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/12089306/strange-extended-characters-in-ncurses

https://invisible-island.net/ncurses/man/ncurses.3x.html#h3-NCURSES_NO_UTF8_ACS

I asked Google AI "what are acs characters in a linux terminal":

ACS (Alternate Character Set) characters in the Linux terminal are a specialized set of graphical symbols used to draw lines, boxes, and other interface elements (like diamonds or checkerboards) in text-based applications. They are derived from the VT100 terminal standard and allow tools like top, vim, nano, and iftop to create a graphical user interface (GUI) appearance within a terminal emulator.
Super User
Super User

Key Aspects of ACS
Purpose: To draw boxes and lines (┌, ─, ┐, └, ┘, │) that form menus, panels, and borders.
Mechanism: When an application (like ncurses) wants to draw a box, it sends an escape sequence to the terminal to switch from normal ASCII text mode to the "alternate character set" mode. In this mode, standard keyboard characters (like q, x, l, k) are rendered as graphics (like lines or corners).
Terminfo (acsc): The capability of a terminal to support these characters is defined in its terminfo entry, often denoted by the acsc string.
ACS vs. Unicode: While modern terminals often use UTF-8 box-drawing characters, ACS is a legacy technology that predates wide UTF-8 adoption, enabling line-drawing on older or restricted terminal emulators.

Whatever, setting NCURSES_NO_UTF8_ACS=1 works.

I asked Google AI "what is the term variable set to in most linux distributions":

In most Linux distributions, the $TERM environment variable is automatically set to xterm-256color in modern terminal emulators (like GNOME Terminal, Konsole, or Terminal.app).
However, the value can change based on how you are logged in:
🖥️ Inside a Terminal Emulator (GUI): xterm-256color (Default for modern GNOME, Ubuntu, Arch)
💻 Physical/Virtual Console (tty1-6): linux
📡 Remote Session (SSH): Inherits from the local machine (usually xterm-256color or xterm)
⚠️ Older Systems/Basic Emulators: xterm or vt100

As I recall, TERM=xterm supports only 16 colours. I am happy with that.

EDIT:
I recall, years ago, getting these line-characters right was complicated. Testing now, problems with 'mp' console text editor. Here is a table of what works, first in a terminal when X running:

	TERM	NCURSES_NO_UTF8_ACS
dialog	xterm or linux	set or unset
mp	xterm	unset

Now exit from X:

	TERM	NCURSES_NO_UTF8_ACS
dialog	xterm	set
dialog	linux	unset
mp	linux	unset Also need LANG=C

I'm still figuring out how to handle this.

EDIT:
'mp' is very old code, not UTF8-aware. So treating it as a special case. It is in PET package 'mped', that I have modified, changed the executable 'mp' to 'mp.real' and created a 'mp' script:

#!/bin/ash
export LANG=C
export TERM=linux
exec mp.real $@

...and doesn't matter whether NCURSES_NO_UTF8_ACS set or unset. Now, looks like dialog and mp borders will draw properly when X running or not.

Tags: easy