Puppeee 4.3X

[cimh]

Cimh, what happens if you move the sfs file to the root and get rid of psubdir?

Exactly the same:

first I get .. loading files needed to access the drives....

then in red something like pup-431.sfs not found. strange because as far as I can see the file is there. Just in case I have also changed the permissions on the sfs file so everyone can read or write but that doesnt make any diference either.

should I reinstall?

cimh

[jemimah]

It's possible the initrd is ignoring ext4 filesystems. Let me do some experimenting.

[trapster]

@ cimh
Does eeebuntu use the newer grub2?
If so, I believe a different format is used for menu.lst.
ie. See Here

[cimh]

@ cimh
Does eeebuntu use the newer grub2?

Hi Trapster. Eeebuntu3 is based on ubuntu 9.04 and still uses the older grub. Grub2 became default on ubuntu9.10. the Eeebuntu team became fed up trying to keep up with the 6 monthly cycle of ubuntu and are building eb4 from debian. but yes worth checking. Thank you.

cimh

[jemimah]

Here's the list of supported filesystems from the init script:

'iso9660|ext2|ext3|reiserfs|msdos|vfat|minix|ntfs'

I'll add ext4 and post a new version in a bit.

[Nevermore]

discharging

cat /proc/acpi/battery/BAT0/state
present: yes
capacity state: ok
charging state: discharging
present rate: unknown
remaining capacity: 90 mAh
present voltage: 7880 mV


charging

cat /proc/acpi/battery/BAT0/state
present: yes
capacity state: ok
charging state: charging
present rate: unknown
remaining capacity: 90 mAh
present voltage: 8171 mV

[neurino]

Yesterday I used my 901 with battery and the Huawei e1550 for the first time.

There were some problems, when I tried to connect to internet the screen flickered then all blocked on a "blue dump" (sorry for the windoze term!).
I had to shut down keeping the power button pressed.

After reboot a continuous error "on loop 1" were reported and, even if I could get X to start, the error continued being reported (I could see it exiting to prompt) and puppeee became unstable.

I rebooted with pfix=ram and had to start over with a new pupsave file to get rid of that error.

I thought it could be a problem with powesave mode so I swithced to Performance and, after reconfiguring the dongle and various reboots I got the dongle found by pupdial.

Could be a powersave problem somehow? I also tried with xubuntu and had the same "blue dump" but, when I rebooted and switched from powersave to normal I got online with the dongle.

These problems neve occoured at home when connected to mains adaptor.
__________________________

EDIT:

I'm writing form puppeee, on battery in Performance mode and I'm connected through the dongle.

I often have to call usb_modeswitch from console to get the modem found by pupdial (or Gnome-ppp) shouldn't this occour automatically? No problem for me tho, even if it makes getting connected a bit tricky: connect > modem not found > usb_modeswitch > connect > online (hopefully).

It's about 5 minutes I'm online and everithing seems to work, after submitting the post I'll try to switch to Powersave and see if the blue dump comes up again...
__________________________

UPDATE:

From another PC now... switched to Powersave and no crash occoured, I disabled wi-fi and bluetooth to save battery and also dongle connection dropped, maybe some shutdown script affects connection? (dhcp or whatever)???

I'm starting to think blue dump problem came out because I plugged the dongle after booting, either in puppeee and xubuntu.
I do this since the dongle appear as a 2 to 4 usb devices (!) in booting list (when I press esc on startup) and sometimes it takes more than 15/20 seconds only to reach that point so I plug it in after.
Maybe this causes the problem?

[neurino]

I disabled wi-fi and bluetooth to save battery and also dongle connection dropped, maybe some shutdown script affects connection? (dhcp or whatever)???

Confirm: also turning up wi-fi causes Seamonkey to not load pages anymore, I can ping succesfully (I tried OpenDNS servers) on console but can't open web pages with browser.

[jemimah]

Neurino, open Pwireless2 when the dongle is connected. Go to the DHCP tab and make sure the dialup interface is set as "ignored". Also tell me the name of you dialup interface. Is it ppp0?

I try not to use wifi and the dialup at the same time. They both change the routing table and it usually causes things not to work.

I don't know very much about how udev works; it is supposed to run it automatically. It it was me, I'd just make a script to run the modeswitch first when I click on gnome-ppp. Something like,

Code: Select all

usb_modeswitch
sleep 1
gnome-ppp

Then I'd make a desktop shortcut or menu entry for the script.

I can't be sure of the cause of your kernel panic without having the hardware. Even then it's hard, because you can't get the error message after the crash. Sometimes you can see it if you can cause the crash to happen while you are looking at the console.

[neurino]

Go to the DHCP tab and make sure the dialup interface is set as "ignored". Also tell me the name of you dialup interface. Is it ppp0?/

It's "lo"

If it was me, I'd just make a script to run the modeswitch first when I click on gnome-ppp ... Then I'd make a desktop shortcut or menu entry for the script.

sometimes usb_modeswitch hangs in console saying something like "driver already detached" and I hav to close it with CTRL-C, don't know why, (like I neither know why sometimes the dongle shows on desktop as a cd but's already switched and working as a modem and sometimes it does not appear but the modem is not found... mysteries )

I can't be sure of the cause of your kernel panic without having the hardware.

I hope it's not an hardware problem when running on battery, since I had the problem in puppeee and xubuntu the same time and now it happened again on puppeee just booting and loading desktop without pluggin' anything so don't care about it

[jemimah]

"lo" is the loopback interface, so it can't be that one. See if it shows up under iwconfig like this:

Code: Select all

lo        no wireless extensions.

wmaster0  no wireless extensions.

wlan0     IEEE 802.11bgn  ESSID:""  
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.412 GHz  Access Point: Not-Associated   
          Tx-Power=20 dBm   
          Retry min limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality:0  Signal level:0  Noise level:0
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

eth0      no wireless extensions.

ppp0      no wireless extensions.

Then let me know if it's not showing up in Pwirless2.

Cimh was also having problems with freezing at boot on his 901. If you look in /root/Startup, there's 4 scripts that could possibly cause the hang. acpiconfig, Pwireless2,bluetooth, and setpower. My guess is acpiconfig, so try moving that one out of the startup folder and see if the freezing problem goes away. If that doesn't work, you could try disabling cpu clocking as described on the Pupweb forum.

[neurino]

Code: Select all

# iwconfig
lo        no wireless extensions.

ra0       RT2860 Wireless  ESSID:""  Nickname:"RT2860STA"
          Mode:Auto  Frequency=2.437 GHz  Bit Rate=1 Mb/s   
          RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:off
          Link Quality=10/100  Signal level:-76 dBm  Noise level:-97 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

eth0      no wireless extensions.

on bootup, not showing ppp0 in Pwireless 2

After connecting with the dongle:

Code: Select all

# iwconfig
....
ppp0      no wireless extensions.

And also shows in Pwireless2 (if closing / reopening the panel) as ignored

Sorry, I thought that only the fact the dongle was plugged caused the ppp0 to show (like et0: it's not plugged but it shows anyway)

About startup scripts I'll try to see if it happens again before moving files, now it's working all fine.

[jemimah]

Sc0ttman discovered while working on Puppeee Arcade that the open GL full_dri Xorg pets for standard puppy don't work on the EeePc. I have fixed it by ugrading the drm and mesa drivers.

If you want full hardware acceleration, grab the new version from here: http://drop.io/puppeee_extras (Don't try to uninstall this pet; it will break your Xorg).

[jemimah]

Here is the updated initrd.gz which will find puppy files on ext4 filesystems.

[userperson]

Just want to thank ppl for all the information -- I got 4.31 running off a SD card on my 901 tonight. The bottleneck turned out to be creating a bootable CD for my PC -- nothing seemed to work and I made a whole pile of coasters. At last I cheated and created a bootable SD card using unetbootin on Windows. Next time I'll do it more pure, but for now maybe this will help another beginner having the same problem.

I am totally impressed with Puppeee, I got wifi running easily, and look forward to customizing. I like it so much I'm just leaving the card in the slot from now on.

Short question: for using Skype, is there a list of webcams that work OOTB, or that don't work?

Reply to question someone asked above: Abiword opens my .doc files OK, preserving all formatting. I haven't tested it going the other direction (Abiword -> Microsoft Office Suite) but that has worked for me in the past as well.

[cimh]

Here is the updated initrd.gz which will find puppy files on ext4 filesystems.

This worked perfectly - many thanks
cimh

[neurino]

Short question: for using Skype, is there a list of webcams that work OOTB, or that don't work?

Webcam works in skype OOTB on my 901.
Just Go Skype -> Options -> Video -> Test

[cimh]

Here is the updated initrd.gz which will find puppy files on ext4 filesystems.

This worked perfectly - many thanks
cimh

However . . . puppeee isnt picking up my pupsave files on boot. They are being saved to the same directory as the frugal install eg/ sdb5/puppy431

could this be related to ext4 as well?


cimh

[jemimah]

Cimh, I checked it out and the cause is not obvious. Barry says it's fixed in woof, so I'll grab the latest copy and modify for Puppeee.

[hokal]

@cimh

Maybe it helps you to see what I experienced with puppeee installation on an USB stick. I did not succeed by following jemimah's instructions.

Since there is no ISO of 4.3.1 puppeee, I installed puppy 4.3.0 first from CD, then copied all the beta_3 files into my root directory. After booting I did get as well: "pup-431.sfs not found".
Now I edited extlinus.conf: Adding usbwait=1 parameter did not help, but I deleted the "pmedia=usbflash" entry. Then I booted again and got the puppy display but WITHOUT a "save icon". Also after closing puppeee there was no possibility to create a *.2sf file. Then after a lot of other trials, I installed 4.3.0 on my internal sd drive and again copied the jemimah files. Now I got a running system on my internal sd drive. From that I installed via "puppy universal installer" the system to my USB stick (flash drive), following the instructions. But again I had to eliminate the parameter "pmedia=usbflash". Then after booting and shutting down I was asked to create the *.2fs file and the system was working from USB stick. I have no idea what I've done wrong, but it looks like there is something wrong with the "pmedia=usbflash" entry !?

Since I do have a running system on my eeepc 901 now, I can start testing (WiFi) now.- I do love this puppeee very much -

I get a new WiFi provider (for my house) next week and will come back with my experience of connecting to WLAN via pwireless2 with a strong signal. But it looks like the performance of the Wifi of my 901 is better with the "old network wizard" of 4.2.1 connecting to neighborhood networks (weak signals) flawlessly and not loosing the connection. The same 901 (with pwireless2) connects, but is loosing network connection after a minute and I have to start the connect procedure again and again. Is there a difference in controlling the internal wifi adapter of the 901 with respect to the different kernels used in this case ?? I don't think the different GUI (pwireless2) is to blame in this case!