(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

tlchost,
I have created sfs_bootloader.pet which can be used to load .sfs packages at bootup as long as the drive they are saved on is automounted at bootup.

Unfortunately I have not been able to get .sfs packages to run when saved on a LiveCD. They must be saved on another drive, either harddrive or usbdrive, and then loaded from there.

SFS BootLoader allows you to symlink from your .sfs packages to /root/sfs and then use /root/sfs/load_all.sh to load them. I have linked this to /root/Startup so it will happen automatically if the drive your .sfs files are on gets mounted at startup. If not then mount the drive and go to Menu-System-SFS BootLoader.

See /root/sfs/Readme_sfs.txt for details.

Hope this works for you. Let me know, J

Note: I thought I had the answer to BootManager. With the LiveCD it said "there are no .sfs in /" not /mnt/home. So I copied ch-games.sfs into / , went to BootManager, set it to load at boot and rebooted. Whoa, kernel panic!!! an unusable LiveCD and all that work lost. Oh well, back to the drawing board.

Puppy user ljfr has created gcompris-8.4.6-i486-1cf.sfs and gcompris-languages.sfs

This is a collection of educational games for young children set to music. Your kids should love it.

The gcompris package seems to work nicely on ChoicePup but it doesn't unload when you are finished with it. It also appears that after having unselected gcompris in bootmanager and rebooted that the desktop comes back as a black screen. Just go to Menu-Shutdown-Restart X server and it will come back. I haven't tried the language.sfs but hopefully it works equally well.

Thanks ljfr, J

jrb wrote

Sounds like you're really starting to understand this stuff.

I wish !!!
anyway , please, jrb....what is the difference between Absolute and relative links ?
and don't forget making a ORC sfs

and finally : should I symlink firefox too ? but mozilla has already the arrow in my /root file ....even if in my /mnt/home no .firefox for me
....
anyother file to choose for firefox symlink ?

rheya,
An absolute symlink points to the location of a file or folder on your computer. If it points to /mnt/sda5/somefile then you can copy the symlink to any folder on an ext2 or ext3 drive and it will always point to and give access to /mnt/sda5/somefile.

A relative symlink keeps track of the path it has to travel to get to the file or folder. If you create a relative symlink from /mnt/sda5/somefile to /root it will work fine, but if you copy that symlink anywhere else besides /root it will get lost and quit working.

So why bother with relative symlinks? When you are putting together the parts of a .pet or .sfs, say in /mnt/sda5/workplace/somepet, you don't want a symlink to point to /usr/local/bin/somefile. You want it to point to /mnt/sda5/workplace/somepet/usr/local/bin/somefile, the new one you're building. But once it is installed in Puppy you want it to point to /usr/local/bin/somefile. A relative link will do this, it just follows the relative path to the file you have pointed it at. (sda5 has to be ext2 or ext3 for this to work)

Whew! Hope that's clear. J

rheya,
I changed the firefox packages a bit. Look in /root for .mozilla-3.0.3, .mozilla-eco, or .mozilla-fp. Whichever you have move it to /mnt/home and symlink it back to /root. Sadly if you have already created a /root/.mozilla symlink you may have to create a new pup_save. Try loading firefox with BootManager and see if that works. Using load_sfs will not overwrite any existing symlinks so may not work. You might be able to rename it and get away with that. Let me know what happens.

jrb wrote: Oh well, back to the drawing board.

It gets worse.

I created a livecd and used a usb drive for the save file.
Then I noticed that if I plus in a second usb drive to load in things, even after I unmount it and remove it....the system vomits all over the place when I reoot and attempt to save things to the 2fs file(Note, before using the other drive, I could save).

Being creative....I moved all my portableapps and scripts and the sfs files to the usb drive that had the 2fs file and rebooted.

So now it saves....after rebooting I used the boot manager to secify which sfs files to load and rebooted.

So....for the first hammer hit to the head, I noticed that the menu bar at the bottom of the screen was gone....so I ran the video wizard and it came back...but the second hammer hit, because the boot manager screen cameup, and none of the settings had been saved....so I redid that and rebooted.

Now I'm bloody, and the maniacial laughing started when the system booted and I saw there was not only no menu bard, but the sfs files hadn't been loaded.

Don't know what the problem might be...but I feel better now that I have stopped hitting myslef in the head with a hammer.

Thom

Hi, if any interest, I uploaded few SFS, to be found on http://ljfr.perso.neuf.fr :
picasa_2.7.3736-15_i386.sfs 23M
skype-2.0.0.72.sfs 21M
truecrypt-6.1a.sfs 1.7M
bestofgames.sfs 36M

"bestofgames.sfs" includes: LinXtris, Lpairs, Lmarbles, Syasokoban, Enigma,
Supertux, Scavenger, Holotz'Castle, Kraptor, Lbreakout2 (and SDL for Scavenger and Supertux, don't remember the version).

Build from .pet from this forum (.deb file for picasa), so nothing really new ...

I have built ch-tesseract-2.01-OCR-en.sfs, an english version of tesseract. Tesseract_OCR is placed on the right click menu. If you right click on a .tif file it will produce a text file with the same name in a few seconds. However it is very fussy about these .tif files. You may have to open them in mtpaint or another graphics program and resave them. Even the training files required this. After that, however, it seems to work very well.

I have also placed a menu item on the Documents menu which opens a text file with these same instructions.

Packages for other major languages are available and can be easily built.

Let me know how it works for you. J

thank you jrb, needless to say, I'll try them all..
very kind of you to answer me so rapidly.....

Thanks again ljfr,
I shall try out your .sfs packages ASAP. I've been wanting to try picassa. I've heard its very good.

Cheers, J

tlchost,
Sorry to hear about your painful experience. I can sympathize. Looking at my post about sfs_bootloader.pet I may not have made myself clear. I did get it working with a liveCD, quite well in fact. I think I overemphasized the automount stuff. If you symlink your .sfs packages into /root/sfs then you can mount them all at once with one mouseclick, either on /root/sfs/load_all.sh or on menu-system-sfs_bootloader. Keep your save file on the liveCD. Its just the .sfs packages that have to be somewhere else.

Give it a try. No hammers involved.

Bye for now, J

ORC doesn't work for me...better saying it opens tiff files in txt, but it does it in a unreadable way....

A ChoicePup user has sent me a PM:

Having a problem with a couple sites that blow the PC back
to desktop when accessed. Pup420 final w/o patches works
ok. 420v2 fails. Choicepup fails, most of the others also fail.
An example site: http://suttoncenter.org/eaglecam.html
Needs to be viewed during daylight in central OK. Camera on an eagle's nest and little one. Sometimes get the crash
when trying to view a .wmv online.
I'm using liveCD, no install. Have a 1 gig save area.
Could this be an 'Adobe Flash' problem?
Also, which do you feel is better, VLC or Mplayer?
I'm using FF.sfs

I gather that this is an issue for all puppy firefox users. Why does Firefox 3.06 keep crashing on Puppy Linux 4.1?. I tried accessing the above site with 4 versions of firefox, 1version of seamonkey, 1 version of Opera and two different versions of flash. The first 5 all crashed. Opera opens the page no problem but I get a nice sky blue colour where the flash images should be. I have a windows machine that's been trying to download those images for about 30 minutes. Just black screens right now.

My advice, try using Opera on those problem sites. Might not work but it doesn't crash, for me anyway. That's the beauty of ChoicePup. If you need a different program just load it and use it. Unload it when you're done.

As for which programs are better, thats a real can of worms. I have Opera, pwidgets, and games set to load at bootup. All the rest I load when I need them and unload when I'm done. I put together a lot of packages because over the last couple of years I've been seeing people on the forum argue about what programs should be included in Puppy. I figured with ChoicePup everyone could decide for themselves. If you want to know what other people think then go to http://www.wellminded.com/puppy/pupsearch.html and search the forum. There are lots of people with opinions.

Good Luck. Keep us posted on the problem. J

rheya,
If its not too private please post a copy of one of your .tif files and I'll have a look at what happens.

I just did it , thanks jrb
hugs

I'm quite impressed!
First of of the 4 series that I've tried that will set up a wifi connection with a Netgear WG111T usb dongle and keep the settings after a reboot. Not had to add anything to rc.local either (maybe that was a 3.01 thing). - on a Dell 610 laptop, and an Armada 3500.
Detected the sound card on the 3500 very neatly, but not quite got it working fully yet (not had much joy with any versions apart from Grafpup and Breezy). But at least Alsaconf looked like it knew what it was doing, rather than spew out a load of error messages then tell you it was successful! (Not)
I think this is a keeper for a USB stick for the Dell 610 laptop (1.7ghz), but a little sluggish for the Armada (PII 300mhz, 192mb RAM, 2G CF card ). Frugal installs for both.

Another plus: The 3500 has another CF card in a pcmcia adapter. This was recognised and icons displayed on bootup. I've known only one puplet (MeanPup) to recognise this card straight off. 3.01 for instance, needs the card to be reinserted to show up. None of the 4's I've tried have even recognised it until now.

jrb wrote:.... If you want to know what other people think then go to http://www.wellminded.com/puppy/pupsearch.html and search the forum...

there is a custom google search on the web desktop that yields nearly identical results (as long as you choose the forum search)... and if not you can go back and search other puppy sites

p.s. let me know if I am missing any other important puppy sites in favorites, search etc... also maybe ChoicePup needs a home?

Hello Keef,
Wow, did I do all that? I wonder how. Seriously, any improvements to wireless, sound or disk recognition over Puppy4.1.2 are coincidental. I removed some programs, changed Xorg, added some libs, added some patches to files that conflicted with certain .sfs packages, put in some small features and got lucky I guess. Maybe it has to do with Leon's initrd.gz.

I'm really glad its working well for you. As for your Armada, I'm considering building a really stripped version of ChoicePup for low ram machines. My life is pretty busy right now but when I get a bit more free time thats the direction I'm headed.

Thanks for the feedback. Hopefully its working as well for others.

Cheers, J

For those who don't know technosaurus has a really excellent webpage (Puppy Web Desktop) which has links to all kinds of web based resources. Really nice if you have good bandwidth. You can get there by clicking Puppy Web Desktop at the bottom of any of his posts.

As for ChoicePup needing a home. I'm trying to keep it simple. I only have so much time and energy for ChoicePup right now. I know if I over do it, it won't be fun any more.

Happily, J

I have added ch-Classic_Invaders-i486.sfs. It plays well in ChoicePup4.1.2, although I didn't.

Many thanks muggins, J