Dingo alpha6 feedback/bugs

[Jesse]

Hi,

I've got a fundimental boot problem that seems quite odd to me.
I've tried 3.95 and 3.96 with the same face value problem: can't find pup_396.sys at boot, and I'm dropped into the initial ram disk shell.

Ok, first thing I try is mounting the CD, it seems ok, all the files are on it.
Ok, so the next thing I try is iso checksum, which looks ok to me:

Code: Select all

sh-3.00# md5sum /dev/hda
e19a7f96ece3df4938a1fb74ee92c08f  /dev/hda
sh-3.00# md5sum /mnt/hdd7/puppy-3.96-seamonkey-k2.6.24.iso 
e19a7f96ece3df4938a1fb74ee92c08f  /mnt/hdd7/puppy-3.96-seamonkey-k2.6.24.iso

sh-3.00# wget ftp://ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/puppylinux/test/puppy-4.00-dingo-alpha6/puppy-3.96-seamonkey-k2.6.24.iso.md5.txt
--23:30:40--  ftp://ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/puppylinux/test/puppy-4.00-dingo-alpha6/puppy-3.96-seamonkey-k2.6.24.iso.md5.txt
           => `puppy-3.96-seamonkey-k2.6.24.iso.md5.txt'
Resolving ibiblio.org... 152.46.7.80
Connecting to ibiblio.org|152.46.7.80|:21... connected.
Logging in as anonymous ... Logged in!
==> SYST ... done.    ==> PWD ... done.
==> TYPE I ... done.  ==> CWD /pub/linux/distributions/puppylinux/test/puppy-4.00-dingo-alpha6 ... done.
==> PASV ... done.    ==> RETR puppy-3.96-seamonkey-k2.6.24.iso.md5.txt ... done.
Length: 67 (unauthoritative)

100%[====================================>] 67            --.--K/s             

23:30:44 (1.07 MB/s) - `puppy-3.96-seamonkey-k2.6.24.iso.md5.txt' saved [67]

sh-3.00# cat puppy-3.96-seamonkey-k2.6.24.iso.md5.txt 
e19a7f96ece3df4938a1fb74ee92c08f  puppy-3.96-seamonkey-k2.6.24.iso

Code: Select all

sh-3.00# /usr/lib/mut/bin/guess_fstype /dev/hda
iso9660

Code: Select all

h-3.00# disktype /dev/hda

--- /dev/hda
Block device, size 85.01 MiB (89135104 bytes)
CD-ROM, 1 track, CDDB disk ID 02024401
Track 1: Data track, 85.01 MiB (89135104 bytes)
  ISO9660 file system
    Volume name "CDROM"
    Application "GENISOIMAGE ISO 9660/HFS FILESYSTEM CREATOR (C) 1993 E.YOUNGDALE (C) 1997-2006 J.PEARSON/J.SCHILLING (C) 2006-2007 CDRKIT TEAM"
    Data size 85.01 MiB (89135104 bytes, 43523 blocks of 2 KiB)
    El Torito boot record, catalog at 26
      Bootable non-emulated image, starts at 27, preloads 2 KiB
        ISOLINUX boot code

So I have a little look-see inside the initial ram disk shell.
I notice that I can't access any drives via ide drive nodes (e.g. hda) even though those node names are there, but the drives are accessible via the scsi node names, and the /dev/sr0 is my cdrom drive.

But I can't mount it. The mount command just fails no matter what I try.
I notice that the insmod command crashes with a Seg-Fault. and modprobe can't install the module (.ko.gz?) files.
disktype doesn't want to let me in on what my cdrom is, its output looks something like this:

Code: Select all

# disktype /dev/sr0

--- /dev/sr0
Block device, size 85.01 MiB (89135104 bytes)
CD-ROM, 1 track, CDDB disk ID 02024401
Track 1: Data track, 85.01 MiB (89135104 bytes)
       can't read a sector x
       can't read a sector y

but guess_fstype does work.

Code: Select all

# guess_fstype /dev/sr0
iso9660

So does anyone know whats going on? I'm a bit lost.

Has anyone else had this problem happen to them?

My hardware is an ASUS CD/DVD drive, with an AMD based motherboard, AMD cpu.
My IDE hard disk is accessable no probs from the initial ramdisk via /dev/sda.

[Sit Heel Speak]

So does anyone know whats going on? I'm a bit lost.

I don't know if this is relevant or not, but I notice that Sabayon Gentoo puts my (1) scsi drive at the top of the chain, e.g. sda, and my 3 ATA drives as sdb sdc sdd. Dingo, by contrast, puts the scsi drive at the bottom as sdd. Perhaps this is causing confusion?

[Jesse]

Hi SHS,

Its not the ordering of drives thats a problem. I have only 1 ide disk (sda) and 1 ide cdrom/dvd (sr0). There is a usb chip reader which gets drive nodes sdb-sde.
I am wondering if it is a bug/issue in the new linux kernel ide-as-scsi drivers?
It would be nice if someone else has this problem can let me know their motherboard ide driver filename and/or chipset.
Here is the computers pci list from elspci -l running from puppy 2.13.

Code: Select all

sh-3.00# elspci -l
01:00.0 030000 10DE:0092 <nvidia>
05:07.0 040100 1073:000D <Yamaha DS-1 PCI>
05:06.1 048000 109E:0878 <Bt87x>
05:06.0 040000 109E:036E <bttv>
00:18.3 060000 1022:1103 <>
00:18.2 060000 1022:1102 <>
00:18.1 060000 1022:1101 <>
00:18.0 060000 1022:1100 <>
00:0e.0 060400 10DE:005D <pcieport-driver>
00:0d.0 060400 10DE:005D <pcieport-driver>
00:0c.0 060400 10DE:005D <pcieport-driver>
00:0b.0 060400 10DE:005D <pcieport-driver>
00:0a.0 068000 10DE:0057 <forcedeth>
00:09.0 060401 10DE:005C <>
00:08.0 010185 10DE:0055 <sata_nv>
00:07.0 010185 10DE:0054 <sata_nv>
00:06.0 01018A 10DE:0053 <AMD_IDE>
00:04.0 040100 10DE:0059 <Intel ICH>
00:02.1 0C0320 10DE:005B <ehci_hcd>
00:02.0 0C0310 10DE:005A <ohci_hcd>
00:01.1 0C0500 10DE:0052 <nForce2_smbus>
00:01.0 060100 10DE:0050 <>
00:00.0 058000 10DE:005E <>

Jesse

[Sit Heel Speak]

Hi Jesse,

Can't help ya. Old MUT's guess_fstype works correctly where it should, and doesn't work where it shouldn't, on my Dingo.

disktype works right for me too--on /dev/sr0. No idea why it's seeing your sr0 CD/DVD as hda. Forgive it if this is an ignorant question, but, Is AMD mainboard + Intel ICH a common combination?

PMount and mount work correctly here too, even on the scsi drive.

insmod does segfault though.

[GeoW]

Hello All,

First, let me admit that this is the first time I've ever tried to chat.

I read the rel help page. I clicked on the chat icon. It finally started
continuously telling me GeoW was not registered. I couldn't find a
clue as to how to register.

After a while, I gave up and rebooted into Puppy 3.01.

Found the chat routine on the menu.

It just worked! beautiful - although I couldn't figure out how to enter
multiple chat forums.

I was hoping that the access would somehow carry over, but when I
rebooted to Dingo Alpha 6 I still couldn't chat.

I think it's a bug, but maybe I just don't know what I'm doing.

Any help would be appreciated,

GeoW

[oli]

There is still a problem with the xorgwizard. My hardware isn't recognized properly by Puppy Dingo (and the older releases, too. I hoped this could be fixed in Dingo) so I use Xvesa. But Xvesa doesn't know the German special characters (like ä ö ü ß) although I had choosen the German keyboard layout. So I had to edit Xmodmap. This is not the best way so it would be good if Xorg would work for me.

In the meantime I tested a live CD of PCLinuxOS. This distro uses XFdrake and recognizes my hardware very well. Perhaps you could add XFdrake to the xorgwizard. Below you will find the content of the file xorg.conf of my PC created with PCLinuxOS (I cannot show the content of the file created by Puppy because xorgwizard crashes and doesn't create this file):

# File generated by XFdrake (rev 57713)

Section "Files"
# font server independent of the X server to render fonts.
FontPath "unix/:-1"

# minimal fonts to allow X to run without xfs
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/misc:unscaled"
EndSection

Section "Extensions"
Option "Composite"
EndSection

Section "ServerFlags"
#DontZap # disable <Crtl><Alt><BS> (server abort)
#DontZoom # disable <Crtl><Alt><KP_+>/<KP_-> (resolution switching)
AllowMouseOpenFail # allows the server to start up even if the mouse does not work
EndSection

Section "Module"
Load "dbe" # Double-Buffering Extension
Load "v4l" # Video for Linux
Load "extmod"
Load "type1"
Load "freetype"
Load "glx" # 3D layer
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Keyboard1"
Driver "kbd"
Option "XkbModel" "pc105"
Option "XkbLayout" "de(nodeadkeys)"
Option "XkbOptions" "compose:rwin"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Mouse1"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Protocol" "ExplorerPS/2"
Option "Device" "/dev/mouse"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "monitor1"
VendorName "Plug'n Play"
ModelName "S1931"
HorizSync 31-64
VertRefresh 59-61

# Monitor preferred modeline (60.0 Hz vsync, 64.0 kHz hsync, ratio 5/4)
ModeLine "1280x1024" 108 1280 1328 1440 1688 1024 1025 1028 1066 +hsync +vsync

# TV fullscreen mode or DVD fullscreen output.
# 768x576 @ 79 Hz, 50 kHz hsync
ModeLine "768x576" 50.00 768 832 846 1000 576 590 595 630

# 768x576 @ 100 Hz, 61.6 kHz hsync
ModeLine "768x576" 63.07 768 800 960 1024 576 578 590 616
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "device1"
VendorName ""
BoardName "NVIDIA GeForce FX and later"
Driver "nv"
Option "DPMS" "false"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "screen1"
Device "device1"
Monitor "monitor1"
DefaultColorDepth 24

Subsection "Display"
Depth 8
Modes "1280x1024" "1152x864" "1024x768" "832x624" "800x600" "640x480" "480x360" "320x240"
EndSubsection

Subsection "Display"
Depth 15
Modes "1280x1024" "1152x864" "1024x768" "832x624" "800x600" "640x480" "480x360" "320x240"
EndSubsection

Subsection "Display"
Depth 16
Modes "1280x1024" "1152x864" "1024x768" "832x624" "800x600" "640x480" "480x360" "320x240"
EndSubsection

Subsection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes "1280x1024" "1152x864" "1024x768" "832x624" "800x600" "640x480" "480x360" "320x240"
EndSubsection
EndSection

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "layout1"
InputDevice "Keyboard1" "CoreKeyboard"
InputDevice "Mouse1" "CorePointer"
Screen "screen1"
EndSection

[BarryK]

I don't know whether this is a "bug" or a "feature," but, I used

mksquashfs ./* trashedsystem.sfs

to make an archive of a trashed filesystem...while running tmxxine 'Vision' from live-CD..'Vision' uses kernel 2.6.24rc8...and...

..the resulting trashedsystem.sfs is not mountable by Puppy 2.17-1.

Nor mountable in Sabayon 1.1 PE, which uses a 2.6.23-something kernel. dmesg | tail did advise that I should update my kernel.

trashedsystem.sfs is mountable in 'Vision' --I presume it would also be mountable in Barry's "stock" 4-alpha-6 which has a 2.6.24 kernel, though haven't tried. I wonder if it is mountable in the earlier 4-alphas.

Yeah, there's a problem here. Dingo uses squashfs v3.3, whereas Puppy3 uses squashfs 3.2r2 and earlier puppies may have an even earlier version of squashfs. The 'mksquashfs' utility in Dingo creates smaller sfs files, but that means incompatibility with earlier squashfs's. The problem specifically is the squashfs kernel module in the earlier puppies.
What you have to do is boot the older puppy and use its mksquashfs utility.

[BarryK]

Jesse, I've just compiled the 2.6.24.2 kernel, with the conventional /dev/hd* restored for IDE drives. The libata PATA /dev/sd* works for most IDE drives, and on all PCs that I have tested. There are just a few, like yours and sage's, that are troublesome. So, probably alpha7 will have the /dev/hd* restored and we'll see if that fixes the problem.

[Jesse]

Yay! I'll give it a go soon. I want to fix a MUT2 bug that prevents it running on Dingo editions. Although the bug seems related to scsi disks, so it MUT2 might run unchanged on Dingo alpha7 no-problems.
Jesse

[GeoW]

Help,

I'm just starting to use chat, Puppy 3.01 works, Dingo A6 seems to go
into an auto log loop. freenet and nickserv generate tabs so fast
that I can't even send out a msg asking for help.

If I x it closed, it pops up again and continues. I need to kill it.

I am running a frugal install
Multi booting Puppy 301, Dingo A6, Windows XP Pro (SP2)

Anyone seen this? I've just reread this entire thread and no mention.

My defaultchat says exec pidgin

I get the same behavior from the menu sel and the icon.

Help,

GeoW

[disciple]

Scratch this - I'm confused

[kirk]

I've just compiled the 2.6.24.2 kernel, with the conventional /dev/hd* restored for IDE drives.

One down-side to doing that is newer drives won't have DMA support and you can't enable DMA with hdparm. The DVD drive in my laptop is one of those. In the past (pre-Dingo) I've booted with libata=combined to fix that, but most people who try Puppy and have one of these drives will just think Puppy is slow. I've tried Dingo on 5 computers with IDE drives and had no problems. Not to say a problem doesn't exist. Perhaps if you're going to have a retro kernel (2.6.21.7), compile that one without libata.

[linuxcbon]

Isn't /etc/profile too complicated ?
There are obsolete entries like : /opt/gnome2/lib
Should qt4 also be included in /etc/profile ?

[linuxcbon]

By the way, just installed pidgin-2.3.1, newest version, can you include it ?

Can you please include xawtv --- edit, not needed ---

[BarryK]

I've just compiled the 2.6.24.2 kernel, with the conventional /dev/hd* restored for IDE drives.

One down-side to doing that is newer drives won't have DMA support and you can't enable DMA with hdparm. The DVD drive in my laptop is one of those. In the past (pre-Dingo) I've booted with libata=combined to fix that, but most people who try Puppy and have one of these drives will just think Puppy is slow. I've tried Dingo on 5 computers with IDE drives and had no problems. Not to say a problem doesn't exist. Perhaps if you're going to have a retro kernel (2.6.21.7), compile that one without libata.

Yeah, maybe you're right. I'm getting Dingo running nicely with the 2.6.21.7 kernel, so perhaps I should have that one for people that need the /dev/hd* -- after all, only a few people have reported trouble with the libata PATA -- sage and Jesse, maybe a couple of others.

I might release alpha7 with 2.6.21.7 as that is working pretty good and just needs a bit of refining to become a release candidate, and I might even hold off from releasing a 2.6.24.x version and wait for 2.6.25 as I'm not happy with some of the wireless drivers in 2.6.24.x.

I was really pleased that I recompiled 2.6.21.7 in Dingo and the old modules from Puppy3 loaded without complaint, despite the compiler mismatch. Well, they must be close enough, 4.1.2 in Puppy3, 4.2.2 in Puppy4. I don't know if glibc version matters, but that is 2.5 and 2.6.1.

[Sit Heel Speak]

Dingo a-6-k2.6.24, on a wired network with four other (all XP Pro+SP2) machines. PNetHood will see three of them but not the fourth. We can ping the fourth, but PNetHood does not sense it. The missing machine does have shares, they can be seen from the other XP machines. Anyone have any clues?

[linuxcbon]

I dont know if it happened to you, but I got Segmentation fault very often with epdfview when scrolling a pdf file.

[disciple]

I was playing around with gview and it gives a lot of segfaults too, but maybe you aren't meant to use it

[HairyWill]

SHS
pnethoods server detection is done by nbtscan. Two possibilities spring to mind:
1) the server is on a slowish network segment and nbtscan is not waiting long enough for a reply
2) if the server has the netBIOS protocol disabled this might cause a problem

try running
nbtscan -qt 10000 192.168.0.0/16
replacing the subnet with whatever you have

if this helps, then changing the timeout at line 54 in /usr/local/apps/pnethood/pnethood should make it work

[disciple]

The solver in Gnumeric causes segfaults too.
But I think most of the problems I was having with Gnumeric must only occur when Puppy is running in RAM on the very first boot, because I don't have them now.