Introducing April64 (and April i686 on page 12)

[Sage]

Thanks for that confirmation, TD.

[gcmartin]

BarryK, although I am not having the problem, @Ted Dog and others may be raising something akin to a security concern when accessing the site.

[Moat]

Re; Dialup - I must be one of the few remaining 3% dinosaurs needing dialup support of some kind.

But, in my case anyway, dropping onboard/built-in dialup modem (driver) support is a non-issue, as I always found the crippled speeds of the included (for my hardware) Linuxant drivers to be pretty well non-useable, anyway. I use an external USB dialup dongle (which appears to only require a Conexant audio driver??) - works perfectly. So as long as THAT driver support remains - along with wvdial and Pupdial (or gnome-ppp in the case of Carolina) - I'll be able to continue using Puppy. Without those - I'm dead in the water!

BarryK - considering your recent issues with wvdial, I do hope it's not wvdial that you're considering dropping!

And yes - it seems there are very few, if any, modern-ish computers that still include onboard dialup modems, so I can see the reasoning behind the questioning of it's continued support.

p.s. - 3% of the registered 30,000+ Puppy forum members, alone = 900+ potential forum members still on dialup...

Bob - tiny minnow in a great big pond...

[gcmartin]

ON subsequent testing, today, I found 4 issues in latest April version in addition to the earlier ones you've commented on..

Issue 1 - probably the hardest to fulfill
April64 is FirstRUN and initially tested on an Intel Celeron desktop. IF I try to use that same April64 USB on a X2 desktop PC, it abends at boot. This is not the first distro that this occurs. I believe I reported this when you first produced this kind of USB boot mechanism last year. (on @ETP's distros, as well).

I ask: Is there a way to detect the PC processor family at boot-time such that a message can be toasted to screen indicating a possibility of system abend because of the change in processor family?

Otherwise, a mention somewhere in distro literature may avoid frustrations for users who might try moving USB to random platforms.

Issues 2, 3, and 4 - the easiest ones

• taskbar's icon, still, does not show the IP address when doing a "mouse-over". The importance here is that one can see that both the cable is plugged into the system from the switch and with the IP address showing, Any User knows, at a glance, that the LAN adapter has gotten its IP address and is capable of communications with LAN-WAN. @01Micko provided this fix over 2 years ago for PUP distro developers.
• This 64bit distro does not have full SAMBA. The other mainline PUPs have this built in. It would be nice if all 64bit PUPs were consistent on this important feature. Again, needed so we can share created/stored/downloaded content out to LAN devices without any LAN devices needing to install any software. Its a secure facility and built in to other OSes and distros and 64bit PUPs. This is a PET from @01Micko
• command-line commands missing. You know what these do for searches via console/terminal.

  Code: Select all

  # updatedb
  bash: updatedb: command not found
  # locatedb
  bash: locatedb: command not found

  Hope these 2 items make it into April64

Hope this is helpful.

Edited: clarified Issue 1

[pakt]

Please do not just think I am random idiot.

My post about using wget wasn't aimed at you, just wanted to point out to other readers that there is (usually) an alternatve to using the web browser for downloading files. Can sometimes be useful for troubleshooting when downloads don't work the way they should. Apologies if I offended you.

[gcmartin]

Anyone else have this problem. On the desktop, click the mount icon. This utility never started to the desktop as expected. Been running for hours with same status message on th screen and NO mount window emerging. Message "Please wait, probing hardware ..."

My feeling is that this is TOO DANGEROUS for me to continue testing. Any preexisting NTFS information on the HDD will get corrupted.

I Will wait for a later ISO/image indicating correction.

Edited System will NOT shutdown with this message on console "Quirky April64 is now shutting down..." But, this system just sits at the locked console message requiring Power Button power-off.

[Ted Dog]

Sorry my frustration was the HOST behavior spitting out possible viruses for windows, any no one seemed conserned , left the method to see if others would also be horrified. Your idea is spot on and WHEN I can wget is the way to go, but I do not even have a right click save as option on a touch screen nor a command line in the version of linux ( Android ) I commonly use to download in the remote ranchland. Otherwise I have to drive to the outscrirts of the big city for free wifi ( gas and something to eat at the free wifi place = costs. ) on my laptop.
I do try to do other things like shopping, visit drs, visit friends etc if I am going to take the 50 minute one way trip into the city. Like Wednesday spent all day/night waiting for this cool suprise BK promised, and drove back Thursday sad
did get to see the Sony movie The Interview from my friends netflix at her house, hope it was free

[gcmartin]

Hello @BarryK. I think you may have noticed @Ted Dog sharing that touch screen is used in testing your April. I am sure you have seen the earlier post on this thread about assisting Touch users with a small change of rearranging the mouse's behavior order. Thus, in that post, a solution from @TaZoC is offered to observe and understand what was done for useful touch screen users.

Hope all of this info is helpful to your distro's solutions for us.

[BarryK]

I have also found that my compile of MPlayer for April64 recognizes more formats. BK had Mplayer crashes, but I have found it to be completely stable.

Yes. Probably you compiled mplayer with internal ffmpeg, not using the system ffmpeg.

it is most unfortunate that mplayer does not play well with an external ffmpeg, whereas some of the forks of mplayer do that much better.

I don't want to compile mplayer with internal ffmpeg, due to the duplication, wasting space.

[BarryK]

Anyone else have this problem. On the desktop, click the mount icon. This utility never started to the desktop as expected. Been running for hours with same status message on th screen and NO mount window emerging. Message "Please wait, probing hardware ..."

Try running "pmount" from a terminal window.

See if you get any useful messages.

Also, ctrl-C should kill it.

[puppyluvr]

Hello,
Australia

Posted: Today, at 6:24 am    Post subject:    

Yes. Probably you compiled mplayer with internal ffmpeg

Yes, it was recommended. Plus, as a a full install, for me, size was not a concern

RE: can I use the rootfs skeleton from woof t2 as an initrd ?
I really want a live boot.
Because full installs are alien to me.
I blame you!!!
Until Puppy, I never knew how easy it could be.
Live is the way to go...

[don570]

I made another right click menu utility - version 6.9.4

- vlc should show on list of audio players available in the script create-m3u
- textual documents can now be opened with libreoffice or abiword

Available:

http://www.datafilehost.com/d/800265c0
(untick downloader box to avoid app)

_____________________________________

[James C]

For whatever it's worth, I'm booting April 64 from good old reliable Legacy Grub and I'm using...

Code: Select all

title Quirky April 64 6.89 (full install on sdb8)
uuid bbd3ff7a-ea66-4e57-93cc-3207ca6f9c72
kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=PARTUUID=8c3f2c41-08 rootwait rw

title Quirky Unicorn 6.2 (full install on sdb9)
uuid 982b53cb-613b-4095-9bb4-03fbc5707faf
kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=PARTUUID=8c3f2c41-09 rootwait rw

I need to find time to do an updated install.......

?wierd James as if I don't replace the PARTUUID=xxxxd with /dev/sdax, on mine it just errors and won't go further. I'm using the one that came with wary/racy 551 (grub-0.97-29ubuntu53.pet).

Just installed April 6.94 (finally) and now it's happening here too.

Text directly from the install script which usually works, no boot.......blinking cursor.

Code: Select all

title Quirky 6.94 (full install on sdb10)
uuid fa1ba50c-2c88-4509-8f7b-82e35e41fdd0
kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=PARTUUID=8c3f2c41-10 rootwait rw

Changed to....

Code: Select all

title Quirky 6.94 (full install on sdb10)
uuid fa1ba50c-2c88-4509-8f7b-82e35e41fdd0
kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/sdb10 rootwait rw

and it boots fine.Still good old Legacy Grub.

[James C]

Code: Select all

# report-video
VIDEO REPORT: Quirky April, version 6.94

Chip description:
VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation Device 0a65 (rev a2)

Requested by /etc/X11/xorg.conf:
  Resolution (widthxheight, in pixels): 1024x768x16
  Depth (bits, or planes):              24
  Modules requested to be loaded:       dbe 

Probing Xorg startup log file (/var/log/Xorg.0.log):
  Driver loaded (and currently in use): nouveau
  Loaded modules: dbe dri2 exa extmod fb glx kbd mouse shadowfb

Actual rendering on monitor:
  Resolution:  1440x900 pixels (380x238 millimeters)
  Depth:       24 planes

...the above also recorded in /tmp/report-video
# 

Code: Select all

-Computer-
Processor		: 2x AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 5200+
Memory		: 3633MB (138MB used)
Operating System		: Unknown distribution
User Name		: root (root)
Date/Time		: Fri 06 Feb 2015 01:04:31 AM CST
-Display-
Resolution		: 1440x900 pixels
OpenGL Renderer		: Unknown
X11 Vendor		: The X.Org Foundation
-Multimedia-
Audio Adapter		: HDA-Intel - HDA NVidia
Audio Adapter		: HDA-Intel - HDA NVidia

Code: Select all

# free
             total         used         free       shared      buffers
Mem:       3633432       299264      3334168         2144         9444
-/+ buffers:             289820      3343612
Swap:     14540792            0     14540792
# 

[gcmartin]

Anyone else have this problem. On the desktop, click the mount icon. This utility never started to the desktop as expected. Been running for hours with same status message on th screen and NO mount window emerging. Message "Please wait, probing hardware ..."

... Also, ctrl-C should kill it.

@BarryK, after initial destruction of a drive, I had thought that I should give 696 a try. But, even though I am NOT using gParted on this PC, this, a different PC with 696, when seeing this problem with the disk's "mount" command, I got scare and have abandoned until the next release. I don't have a 64bit machine that does NOT have a HDD in it. And the PC that I had tested before, was a user's PC with XP on its HDD. (needless to say, I knew better to use beta on any production machine, I have become so spoiled with PUPs over the years, I never dreamed I would incur a problem at the 2 I have.)

YES, I did try the ctrl-C route even before I posted this problem. No success.

Forgive me for being a little gun shy on this release after what happened to me on 692. I have shutdown that USB and erased it. I have abandoned 696 until the next release for the danger of potential HDD destruction on this PC.

I will wait to test your next release.

[BarryK]

Anyone else have this problem. On the desktop, click the mount icon. This utility never started to the desktop as expected. Been running for hours with same status message on th screen and NO mount window emerging. Message "Please wait, probing hardware ..."

... Also, ctrl-C should kill it.

@BarryK, after initial destruction of a drive, I had thought that I should give 696 a try. But, even though I am NOT using gParted on this PC, this, a different PC with 696, when seeing this problem with the disk's "mount" command, I got scare and have abandoned until the next release. I don't have a 64bit machine that does NOT have a HDD in it. And the PC that I had tested before, was a user's PC with XP on its HDD. (needless to say, I knew better to use beta on any production machine, I have become so spoiled with PUPs over the years, I never dreamed I would incur a problem at the 2 I have.)

YES, I did try the ctrl-C route even before I posted this problem. No success.

Forgive me for being a little gun shy on this release after what happened to me on 692. I have shutdown that USB and erased it. I have abandoned 696 until the next release for the danger of potential HDD destruction on this PC.

I will wait to test your next release.

It is EXTREMELY unlikely that pmount is dangerous.

For some reason it is waiting for something indefinitely, which is very odd.

Someone who understands bash scripts could put simple "echo" lines into /usr/sbin/pmount and find out where it is hanging and why.
-- but that can only be done on a PC that exhibits the symptom.

[Ted Dog]

@BK you are not going to release any more??? trying to understand the contextual 'indefinite' in your reply. Not going to address the odd functioning of partitions ( got an extra non existant one showing up with my setup ) plus the gpart off by sector bug(s)
I was hoping for another easy to boot iso, ( since I have multipe dozens of rewritable DVD and only 3 flashdrives ok 4 but still haven't found that one ) but I now can use one of my flashdrives to boot ISO files directly and its the only 8G I own.

[anewuser]

Anyone else have this problem. On the desktop, click the mount icon. This utility never started to the desktop as expected. Been running for hours with same status message on th screen and NO mount window emerging. Message "Please wait, probing hardware ..."

My feeling is that this is TOO DANGEROUS for me to continue testing. Any preexisting NTFS information on the HDD will get corrupted.

I Will wait for a later ISO/image indicating correction.

Edited System will NOT shutdown with this message on console "Quirky April64 is now shutting down..." But, this system just sits at the locked console message requiring Power Button power-off.

I do. But my hdd is just busted, this is the error msg that I get (for reference)
sda1 sda2 sda3 it's just one harddisc with 3 partitions managed by windows7. Sometimes I'm able to read files from it, sometimes I don't. It's the slowest unusable thing ever. Nowadays I just plug the puppy pendrive to get some work done.
ctrl-c does not make the probing message to go away.
End of post shows the actual error message.
It does indeed mess with the shutdown process.
It might shade some light in the investigation. This on racy5.5 with or without service pack.

Pretty obvious to me that pmount enters a infinite loop, and doesn't damage anything. Could be the same on quirkyapril64/32 or puppy derivatives.

@gcmartin
@BarryK

I'll gladly do the steps you consider neccesary to debug pmount, I'm not familiar with scripting so I'd need step by step instructions.

[BarryK]

I have also found that my compile of MPlayer for April64 recognizes more formats. BK had Mplayer crashes, but I have found it to be completely stable.

I have some test videos here:

http://puppylinux.com/test/media-test-video/

These used to all play with mplayer.

Now, only some do.

I recall, these now cause mplayer to crash:

chehre-pe-giri.flv
coffee_24.rm
IT_Pro.wmv
lionhugsandkisseswoman.wmv

puppyluvr,
see what success rate you get with these test videos!

...also, anyone else who has compiled smplayer etc.

[rameshiyer]

I have installed new browser in April64 (based on chromium) which is meant for ubuntu64 bit. However, the same is not working. I have attempted to open the same through comand line. No output on terminal.

I would like to test the browser in april 64 bit. Kindly help me.