The pink and grey galahs have returned!

I posted a couple of days ago about compiling the 6.6.52 kernel:

• Kernel 6.6.52 compiled — September 25, 2024

But then built QV and discovered that btrfs support is a module. Require it builtin, and want to enable kexec, so have recompiled 6.6.52 with these:

CONFIG_BTRFS_FS=y
CONFIG_KEXEC=y

The reason for that last one is that the menu in the initrd has an item to run the Xorg Wizard if the video is broken. That requires the "nomodeset" kernel command-line option. The initrd has the 'kexec' utility, which can restart the kernel with a new set of command-line parameters.

Did a quick test, the kexec thing flashed up an error message, then booted as normal. So, that needs to be fixed.

It is nice to be running QV again. The birds are back:

Tested a few things; all working so far. Some items on the to-do list, hope to be able to upload QV soon.    

Tags: quirky

EasyOS ports to QV

EasyOS is built with woofQ, QV with woof-quantum-vis (which could be called woofQV). For the last 4 months I have been working on the Scarthgap-series of EasyOS; that is, working on woofQ.

A lot of improvements and fixes have gone into woofQ, that I have spent the last couple of days porting over to woofQV.

Had to do it the hard way, manually, as although the two build systems have a lot in common, they have major structural differences. WoofQV has been an attempt to rationalize and simplify, and get rid of a lot of historical baggage, that is in woofQ.

Anyway, here are the recent commits to woofQV:

https://github.com/bkauler/woof-quantum-vis/commits/874189fb988d251407fae1fcd6f3ab29f0f83ef7/

Need to put some thought into streamlining syncing of changes between woofQ and woofQV.

Need to check a few more things, then might have a go at doing a build.   

Tags: quirky

ibiblio.org quirky repository cleaned out

I warned about this on the forum, about 5 months ago:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?t=11326

It hosted some old pups, especially Wary and Racy, and Quirky Linux. The repository is mentioned in various posts on the forum, such as this in 2021:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?t=2678

Here is the quirky repo:

https://distro.ibiblio.org/quirky/

The site is now home for "Quirky Void", also known as "Quantum Vis", or just "QV". The ibiblio site will have releases and PET packages.

The woof build system for QV is on github:

https://github.com/bkauler/woof-quantum-vis

A technical detail about mirroring from ibiblio.org, including puppylinux, easyos, quirky and fatdog; the server name has changed. Only in the last month. It used to be:

rsync distro.ibiblio.org::quirky

Now requires:

rsync rsync.ibiblio.org::quirky

I see that NLUUG still has the old stuff:

https://ftp.nluug.nl/os/Linux/distr/quirky/

I sent an email to my contact at NLUUG informing about the change for easyos, and that got fixed, but quirky hasn't yet -- will have to send an email about that also. Will do that soon; grab anything off there if you want.   

Tags: quirky

QV version 240506 pre-alpha released

This is basically the same as the previous release, 240425:

https://bkhome.org/news/202404/qv-version-240425-pre-alpha-released.html

Except have reverted the pam/shadow change, as it caused some breakage, reported by Caramel:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?p=117978#p117978

Download from here:

http://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/amd64/releases/void/

Note, as I am typing this blog post, 'qv-240506-amd64.img' is still uploading. The Internet connection has become very slow.   

Tags: quirky

QV version 240425 pre-alpha released

See 240423 announcement:

https://bkhome.org/news/202404/qv-version-20240423-pre-alpha-released.html

I was hoping to get onto implementing an update mechanism, but we keep finding bugs.

Download:

https://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/amd64/releases/void/

One change made, and I have my fingers crossed that it is ok, is have now included the Void 'shadow' package. I had previously told XBPS to ignore 'shadow' if it is a dependency of any package, as it requires 'pam'.

'pam' causes trouble, but I think now have managed to disable it. We want the 'shadow' pkg, as any package that wants to create entries in /etc/passwd (etc.) needs it.

Forum discussion welcome here:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?p=117896#p117896

...first post in that thread explains about 'qv-installer', for direct install to internal drive.

I did some basic testing of 240425, very basic. Installed the 'devx' PET via PKGget, and it worked ok, took awhile. At the end PKGget reported a lot of missing dependencies still not installed. I don't know what to make of that, as XBPS did the installing, and it would have installed all required deps. So probably PKGget has got it wrong.     

Tags: quirky

QV readme on github

The readme file on github was previously empty. I have inserted a basic explanation about QV:

https://github.com/bkauler/woof-quantum-vis    

Tags: quirky

Fix bluetoothd endless restarting

In 2020 I posted about using the 'restarter' utility in /etc/init.d/bluetooth, to immediately restart 'bluetoothd' if it crashes:

https://bkhome.org/news/202011/xf86-input-wacom-and-restarter-compiled-in-oe.html

Yes, well, the worst has happened. Testing the latest QV, I observed /tmp/bootsysinit.log being endlessly appended, like this:

...
restarter[8300]: Executing [79]: (/usr/sbin/bluetoothd)
restarter[8604]: Starting [/usr/sbin/bluetoothd] with pid:8604
D-Bus setup failed: Name already in use
restarter[8603]: [8603]:sigchildhdl_GetExitStatus SIGCHLD handler, child_pid:8604, waitpid returned:8604, exit_reason:process exited, exit status=1, child exit status:256, signal:17, nchildren now:0
exit_valid:(), cmd_exitstatus2:1
[8603]: Exiting

restarter[8300]: Executing [80]: (/usr/sbin/bluetoothd)
restarter[8606]: Starting [/usr/sbin/bluetoothd] with pid:8606
D-Bus setup failed: Name already in use
restarter[8605]: [8605]:sigchildhdl_GetExitStatus SIGCHLD handler, child_pid:8606, waitpid returned:8606, exit_reason:process exited, exit status=1, child exit status:256, signal:17, nchildren now:0
exit_valid:(), cmd_exitstatus2:1
[8605]: Exiting
...

I do not know of a fix for this. 'bluetoothd' is still flakey and can crash. Just restarting it causes that dbus problem and it immediately crashes. I didn't have this problem with EasyOS, or perhaps I just didn't notice it.

So, have taken out 'restarter':

https://github.com/bkauler/woof-quantum-vis/commit/ac472ff697184ffaf3d48e6c6ff432b8d03f0577

However, 'restarter' does work, at least sometimes, without going into that endless loop. Now, if it crashes, that's it, you will have to manually restart it, by "/etc/init.d/bluetoothd start" -- and I hope that it doesn't hit that dbus problem.

It would be good if 'restarter' could set a limit on how many restarts. Oh, and it is not just a QV problem; do a search on "bluetoothd d-bus setup failed: name already in use" will return a lot of hits.      

Tags: quirky

QV version 20240423 pre-alpha released

Please read the 20240419 announcement:

https://bkhome.org/news/202404/qv-version-20240419-pre-alpha-released.html

Since then, there have been bug fixes, see the forum:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?t=11292

Also enhancements, see:

https://bkhome.org/news/202404/shell-wrapper-for-sudo.html

https://bkhome.org/news/202404/qv-snapshot-information-on-desktop.html

Bluetooth and samba fixed, among other fixes.

Still no update mechanism. Hope to do that for the next release. Thereafter, no more need to download the huge .img file, just install a small update PET.   

Tags: quirky