Muppy 008.4c (final release)

[Jim1911]

Mark,

Results of new megapack download.

I did have trouble with your megapack_084.sfs giving problems with many gnome applications. .... I'll download the megapack again and post the results.

The same problems showed up i.e.: The panel encountered a problem while loading "OAFIID:GNOME_WorkspaceSwitcherApplet"

The panel encountered a problem while loading "OAFIID:GNOME_WindowMenuApplet"

The panel encountered a problem while loading "OAFIID:GNOME_WindowListApplet".

The panel encountered a problem while loading "OAFIID:GNOME_ShowDesktopApplet".

The panel encountered a problem while loading "OAFIID:GNOME_ClockApplet".

evolution: error while loading shared libraries: libpisync.so.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

Unable to open root terminal.

These problems seem to be related to the megapack and are more apparant with the Gnome desktop, although there were some problems with the clock, weather, and other applications that open by default in the standard Muppy desktop. I used a fresh frugal installation for this trial. If you want to pursue this I can try another fresh download and provide more details. However, as I stated before, it runs fine with combined addons/office sfs produced by your SFS combiner.

Thank you again for this Muppy,

Jim

[MU]

thanks Jim,
ok, I will check what is wrong with the megapack on monday and rebuild it.
Just to clarify.
megapack requires addons.sfs.
Did you try to run it without addons.sfs?
This might explain the errors.

Mark

[deniros]

I have just tried muppy 008.4c and i also have that problem with a kernel pacic, and i have a question and some comments.

problem:
I tried the muppy-mini cd, and installed it to my 2GB spare usb pendrive formatted with fat32

when i boot it up everything is fine. when i create an encrypted save file, and reboot i get that kernel panic (i don't have "msy_084.sfs" file on any of my harddrives or in the cd drive, just on the usb pendrive where i installed muppy and from where i am booting)

When i create an unencrypted save file and reboot, everything is fine. So i only have this kernel panic with the encrypted personal save file

questions:
i saw that muppy created a ext3 filesystem in the personal save file. isn't the default in puppy linux save file the ext2 filesystem, and might this cause the problem kernel panic with encrypted save file?

next question is the version of freetype. i saw different references to freetype versions. (versions 2.3.4 and 2.3.5). I ask this because i wanna install my own patched version of freetype-2.3.5, cairo and libXft)

Comments:

Using this muppy was nice. having the nvidia card drivers integrated is great and very convenient. there are really a lot of usefull applications (especially after adding the addon sfs), and almost every application is there, from realplayer11 to skype, mplayer, recent version of gnumeric and so on. lots of small and usefull tools. And the applications just worked as well! (might be logical, but it's not that logical, so i thought i wanna mention it)

Now my personal view is that there is a big downside on having all those apps. The menu is really filled up, and the choice is overwhelming.

I know you differentiated the muppy system by breaking it into mini and having the addon sfs files. But i think it would be best to differentiate it even more (maybe a suggestion for the future version). Mini is indeed modular but mini it is not enough and addon is too much

having mini and and a modular addon sfs file would be great. But this is something that has to be programmed i guess. But just Mini and a interface to install all those apps seperately would already be great. But I understand at the end it's all a question about usabilty and what is technically possible atm.

finally i wanna mention again that i think this is a great muppy version, very good looking and lots of usefull WORKING applications.

If you need more info on my problem, or you want me to test something just let me know. Thanks for providing muppy, your bandwidth to download it, and in general the applications you provide here.

[Jim1911]

Mark,

I wasn't using the addons sfs. Interesting that more problems didn't surface. Will try again with fresh install and report back.

Thanks,
Jim

[MU]

deniros

When i create an unencrypted save file and reboot, everything is fine. So i only have this kernel panic with the encrypted personal save file

Ok, this is important.
maybe upgrading the libraries caused an incompatibility with Puppys mechanism to encrypt savefiles!
I will check this out next week. I must have a close look to Puppys system scripts, to look, what they depend on.

next question is the version of freetype. i saw different references to freetype versions. (versions 2.3.4 and 2.3.5). I ask this because i wanna install my own patched version of freetype-2.3.5, cairo and libXft)

The new one is from slackware, the old one from Puppy3.
I oversaw to remove the old one, I will remove it, if this causes no problems in the next release.
maybe I add a symlink to the new version, if this is required.
So you should concentrate on 2.3.5.

Mark

[MU]

concerning modularity

this is a difficult topic.
You can see in this thread, that already the amount of optional SFS files causes confusion.
So more modularity = more confusion.

I'm aware, that it would be great, though.
A first step was done, by replacing Puppys libs with slackware libs.
If you look at the buildsystem, you will see the new folder /systemupdate.

Here all new packs are available cleanly separated, that before were in /original, the old Puppy 3 sfs.
This internal modularity in future will allow to create solutions with more "granularity".
E.g. a script could be written, that creates PETs of all the internal subfolders.
As long as this does not exist, you depend on Muppybuild itself, to build a custom version.
At moment, I cannot say yet, when I will pursue the idea of PET generation, but it is on my "long-term todo-list".

Mark

[Jim1911]

Mark,

Used addons sfs along with megapack and that was the problem. However, the root terminal won't start and that's true of the other installations. Although other terminals will start properly.

Sorry I bothered you, I should have read the megapack text file more closely.

Thanks,
Jim

[Fishy]

Hi Mark, thanks for all the hard work you have put into Muppy.

I still cannot get hdb icons onto the screen in full install. Muppy is on hdb6 and Dingo 4.0 is on hdb5. Cfdisk-l and muppydiskfind -all show both drives and all partions. My Samsung optical drive will not show up in either one (Dingo is full install as well). X is seeming to be particularly delicate in Muppy as well, dropping out into command line for no apparent reason.

I did as you suggested and copied /dev when running the live DVD into hdb6 /dev. It still surprises me that both Dingo and Muppy play well with the burner on live dvd but can't find it after installation.

Samsung DVD burner, sata connection set to ide in bios.

[otropogo]

@ MU

Have spent some time now with the 800MB msy_084.sfs running from hard drive.

A couple of interesting observations:

1. none of the browsers available have ANY Chinese character support in this version, whereas in the 2GB version, there is partial support in most (on xys.org homepage about half of the characters display)

2. if I choose to "Exit X" and restrart X with

Code: Select all

Xwin

, each time I do so a new "mnt" Icon is shown on the icwm desktop. This is the icon that opens /initrd/mnt. I have four of these icons on the desktop now.

3. the weather desklet stopped working sometime when I wasn't looking, and now just says "loading". Maybe the de.weather.com server is down?

BTW - all but one of my kernel panic episodes were using non-encrypted 2fs files. In contrast to the other poster's report, the one time I tried to load Muppy with an encrypted 2fs, the load actually seemed to progress further before failing.

[Lobster]

I wanted to watch a DVD but could not eject/open the DVD drawer.
Knoppix and other distros do this locking of the drawer - yuk!

What do I do? Mut? . . . not working to eject . . .
Command line 'eject hdc? I think I had to do it from the file manager eventually.

Will hotplug work on Muppy?

Also tried Descent. Got fantastic sound with the latest option
(just got a bass stomping 'Creative Inspire 5.1 surround system' from Freecycle.com). However the keyboard was not working as input method. in this mode
. . . maybe I will get out my seldom used joystick . . .

I think I might have to try your 'Hurt me plenty' games disk

It will only be available for one day but I submitted your Muppy interview to LXer with an eye catching headline . . .
http://www.linuxleak.com/
Also put it on Stumbleupon (owned by ebay apparently - did not know that . . . )

Hopefully you will get some interest.

[zgp152]

ok, bought a 8 GB CF card, huge enough for several tests.
I will test it tomorrow.

The english 2 GigaByte DVD is available for download, but as mentioned above, untested!

Let me know how it works, I cannot test it myself before weekend.

I suggest you download it like this (to hda5 for example):

cd /mnt/hda5
wget -c ftp://ks301128.kimsufi.com/Muppy0084/fi ... .4c-EN.iso

Then you can interrupt with CTRL-C, and continue with the same command again.

Mark

Downloaded with FTP from above address in Windows environment. ISO is 1,87 Gt (2 014 287 872 bytes).

Now intending to burn live DVD with BURNCDCC in windows. Before that I would like to verify it. However, haven't seen the MD5 result anywhere. My result is here, OK?

; Generated by FastSum - an extremely fast checksum utility.
; Go to www.fastsum.com to get your own copy for free.
;
DD6D6E17CE0968390BBE42619CE92564 *Muppy-DVD-008.4c-EN.iso

Viele Grüssen
Timo (Helsinki)

[Sage]

Good grief, Mark - how do you do it?!
muchas gratias
It worked, but don't understand.
It might be worth offering a Mini FULL install avec les drivers, because once connected, folks can proceed to build their own compilations. Few actually need OOoooooooo now that Abi is so good and, despite what you read on the Web, I don't actually know anyone who likes Gnome. KDE is bloatware, apart from the v4.x hiati, so if Joe isn't good enough then Xfce should cater for allcomers?
Otherwise, MiniMuppy Full install is awesome in it's own right.
Danke schön!

[recycler]

recycler

you can type:
top
in a consolewindow to check, how much resources are used by an application.
The GtkBasic applications need a bit more, than programs written in C.
This is not dramatic, but in the sum it might have an influence on your fan.

Instead of top, you also can use "gps".
Click in the taskbar on the CPU graph at bottom right to start it.

Mark

Update - changed windows manager and so far can email and surf the web with no fan noise. Great. btw Installed Muppy on my wife's machine and she is very impressed with it - it just works and is fast and stable. Thanks

[otropogo]

...
Now intending to burn live DVD with BURNCDCC in windows. Before that I would like to verify it. However, haven't seen the MD5 result anywhere. My result is here, OK?

; Generated by FastSum - an extremely fast checksum utility.
; Go to www.fastsum.com to get your own copy for free.
;
DD6D6E17CE0968390BBE42619CE92564 *Muppy-DVD-008.4c-EN.iso

Viele Grüssen
Timo (Helsinki)

Yes, that's the correct md5sum.

[Scoticus]

I had a look at your Mini version only to find that it was impossible to use as it lacked Nvidia drivers. The difficulty is that on opening Muppy the desktop does not properly display.

Using Barry's 4.0 the same problem comes up but there I can having opened up an internet connection drag a web page into to position to enter an address. This lets me install the NIvida driver and everything then is all right.

I found that in Muppy I was unable move the web page to let me enter an address and as a consequence unable to install the driver.

Can you offer a solution.

[otropogo]

I had a look at your Mini version only to find that it was impossible to use as it lacked Nvidia drivers. The difficulty is that on opening Muppy the desktop does not properly display.

Interesting!

I haven't tried Muppy Mini, but I have loaded Muppy LiveCD and LiveDVD several times and both provide Nvidia drivers, immediately after setting the screen resolution in Xorg.

My screen displays NV11 Geoforce2 and there are two buttons for Auto or Manual install, and a message about proprietary drivers.

When I choose Auto, an Invidia logo appears on the screen and then the desktop loads without further ado.

Using Barry's 4.0 the same problem comes up ....

In Puppy 4.0 I don't get any messages about my video card, but I choose the same resolution and the desktop loads. Does this mean that Puppy 4.0 is not using Nvidia drivers on my system? And if so, what difference does it make to the screen output?

[MU]

the mini does not include the drivers from Nvidia, but the "Live" and "DVD" versions do.
To use the Mini with the Nvidia drivers, you need to use addons.sfs in addition.

Mark

[otropogo]

@ MU

No need to buy DVD+RW disks Mark. Because of my accidental experience with a lightly encrypted save file (where the file started to load), I was able to experiment further.

My further tests with lightly encrypted save files proved they would load but without the keyboard or video configuration.

However, the desktop did not load fully (no desklets, for instance, sometimes no apps menu) and gave various "out of space" errors.

There was a popup that indicated the addons.sfs file was trying to load but ran out of space, and another for pinboard, and the "HD" graph showed 100% usage (this graph is really quite misleading BTW, as it really indicates only the percentage of the 2fs file in use).

Forgetting it was included in the LiveCD, and thinking it was loading from my hard drive, I tried renaming the addons.sfs to "bak" and rebooting. But that only stopped the popup. When I entered "top" in the console, addons was still among the running processes.. And I couldn't even reboot or shut down the system except by hitting the power switch.

After a few reboots, I somehow got enough room (1% of "HD") to play around a bit.

I switched from icewm to jwm, and got another 1% to play with, which gave me back the start and apps menus (and, IIRC the ability to reboot).

I also got a look at usage of the msy_save file (Used 31 Free 0) and UnionFS (Used 31 Free 0), and finally figured out what was happening (but not before needlessly deleting some 2.6GB off my hard drive, including addons.sfs).

So next I increased the size of my save file from 32 MB to 64MB and rebooted.

Now everything loaded, but there was a popup warning that my save file was still too small! (Funny, you need at least 64MB to get this warning..)So I increased it again to 128MB, and now it all works.

So it appears the problem basically is that, when your 2fs file is too small (apparently 64MB is the absolute minimum), Muppy LiveCD/DVD will crash while trying to load it.

Why this doesn't happen when the 2fs file is encrypted is an interesting mystery.

On my system, with a 64MB save file, running JWM, the "HD" bar graph shows the save file as 71% full, leaving 18MB of available space.

When I enlarged it to 128MB, that went down to 33% (or 85MB free according to the freemem applet)

So my guess is that you need a 2fs file of at least 96MB to have a reasonable amount of free space to work with (especially if you're going to run Firefox, which, the system warns, can use up to 50MB of your save file in a session)

With Puppy, I'm used to starting with the smallest possible 2fs file and increasing it as needed. So I never imagined this problem when I started to use Muppy.

This reinforces my frequent complaint that minimal system requirements need to be accurately determined and prominently displayed for Linux systems.

The option at shutdown of a 32MB save file naturally suggests to the user that this is a workable choice.

And if he has limited storage space, or is running a number of Puppies, each needing its own storage file, then naturally, he will tend to try the lowest available size, assuming it will work at least well enough to tell him he needs more....

[LaneLester]

Mark, I haven't decided whether I want the full Muppy treatment, but I know I'd like to take advantage of your office.sfs and maybe the addons as well. But I've run into a strange (to me) situation. BootManager doesn't see the .sfs's, even though they're in the right location.

I had earlier tried to add an .sfs with just OpenOffice3RC1 in it, and BootManager didn't see it. Then I got an .sfs with OpenOffice2.4, and BM saw it and added it. And I now have it running in Dingo. Then today when I added the office and addons .sfs's to the same folder where the OO2.4 is, BootManager didn't see them at all.

Any idea why this is happening?

Lane

[MU]

Lane,

they must be in "/" of the same drive, where you have your savefile.
Not in subfolders.
And they must end with _084.sfs in the filename.

If they are on a DOS vfat partition, use the 8.3 naming convention, like 1_084.sfs. This name has 5.3 characters.

Mark