Using fixmenus in Fossapup

[elroy]

First off 666philb, I’d like to congratulate you on your excellent distro. Out of the box it feels solid and is certainly fetching. I had to compile a driver so that I didn’t have to perpetually use a dongle (rtl8821ce), but I’ve had to do that with every Linux distro I’ve used in the recent past, so I’m used to that (my main experimental ‘puter is a Lenovo IdeaPad S145). At least my Elan touch-pad works out of the box (your Bionic distro actually allowed me to install my wifi driver via quickpet, but I had to use a USB mouse. I didn’t bother compiling a driver for the touchpad. At the time I just moved on).

I’m a fan of xfce, but I’ve decided that I can live with a traditional puppy so long as I can have a terminal that allows easy cut/paste on a touchpad without having to be a finger-acrobat (not to mention being able to easily resize the fonts and text color via a settings dialog) and a familiar file-manager. I’ve installed lxterminal on Fossa with absolutely no issues. I’m currently working on making pcmanfm behave as it should. I can install it with no problems from the repo, but when I make it the default file manager that's when the issues start. And I don't expect you to resolve my issues, because my course of action isn't in line with your supported software. I get that, and I'll fix that on my own time.

But I have noticed a couple of minor glitches. I’m a big believer in bringing up a glitch only if I can provide a possible solution. From my own past experience I can only imagine that your plate is full, and offering up a complaint without a possible resolution would be nothing short of a pain in the arse. So with that in mind...

(x64)
In the Main menu, Fixmenus doesn’t fire. Here is my proposed fix -

edit /root/.jwmrc line 221
change: <Program label="Fixmenus" icon="menu.svg">exec fixmenusM</Program>

to: <Program label="Fixmenus" icon="menu.svg">exec menumanager</Program>

then (if any one is actually reading this): Menu --> Exit --> Restart window manager. (or reboot)

Thanks again for taking the time to develop this distro. I’m enjoying it immensely. I haven’t used a Puppy since I was working on the early releases of the non-official Carolina. It’s amazing how much has changed. I’ve stopped by a few times over the years and have tried out a few of the official distros, but none of them reached out and grabbed me. But your distro has. And I certainly thank you for that. And too, RIP Mr. (de) Murga. Thanks again, 666philb. And don't forget to take some time-out for yourself.

[mikewalsh]

@elroy :-

For a terminal that's easy to work with via touchpad, you might like to take a look at Sakura. Even more configurable than LXTerminal, it should be available via the PPM.

It's been my personal favourite for a couple of years since I discovered it.


Mike.

[bigpup]

menu->Fixmenus seems to be working for me in Fossapup64
It may seem to not be doing anything, because it gives you no action window or visible indication it did anything.

menu->Fixmenus runs:
fixmenusM is a simple script file to run fixmenus and reloads jwm which is usually needed to get the new menu active.

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#!/bin/sh
fixmenus
jwm -reload

Fixmenus takes very little time to do what it does. Only a few seconds.

It is only going to do something to the menu when a new program adds a correctly coded .desktop file to /usr/share/applications directory.

I have installed programs from deb packages and fixmenus did nothing to the menu, because the provided .desktop file was not coded correctly or no .desktop file was provided.

[elroy]

Well, I tested it using a fresh ISO with no save file, nor any modifications upon loading it other than going into quickpet and installing the offered update for the distro. I doubt it’s a hardware issue when the issue relates to a file name (on the surface it looks to me like a missing script). In the event that it is a hardware issue, my test was done on a Lanovo ThinkPad S145 (x64).

[elroy]

@elroy :-

For a terminal that's easy to work with via touchpad, you might like to take a look at Sakura. Even more configurable than LXTerminad l, it should be available via the PPM.

It's been my personal favourite for a couple of years since I discovered it.

Mike.

Sorry, Mike. I'm still trying to figure out this forum. If I already replied to you previously,,,oh well. No harm intended. An if I didn't, just think of me as your crazy uncle. k?
Is Sakura. lighter than lxterminal? (fewer dependencies, etc.) I only need something that I can adjust the colors and fonts on easily from a GUI. I've seem to gone blind in the past few years, and easy adjustments are of a paramount value to me.

[bigpup]

Well, I tested it using a fresh ISO with no save file, nor any modifications upon loading it other than going into quickpet and installing the offered update for the distro.

Tested it exactly how?
Did you add something that menu->fixmenus should have found and added to the menu?

[elroy]

I hoped it'd be kind of self-explanatory...sorry, that's on me.

Here's the jist of it:
I booted into a fresh ISO with no save file and connected to the web (via dongle). I went to quikckpet and installed the current disto updates. I then went to 'Menu --> Fixmenus', which did nothing...regardless of how long I waited. After applying my edits (described earlier in the thread) and restarting the Window manager I successfully executed Fixmenus using Menu -->Fixmenus.

[mikewalsh]

@elroy :-

With regard to Sakura, I believe it only has one dependency; libvte. The PPM should pull that in during install, anyway. Everything else is there by default.

And yes; both fonts AND colours are very easy to set up.


Mike.

[666philb]

I hoped it'd be kind of self-explanatory...sorry, that's on me.

Here's the jist of it:
I booted into a fresh ISO with no save file and connected to the web (via dongle). I went to quikckpet and installed the current disto updates. I then went to 'Menu --> Fixmenus', which did nothing...regardless of how long I waited. After applying my edits (described earlier in the thread) and restarting the Window manager I successfully executed Fixmenus using Menu -->Fixmenus.

hi @elroy

fixmenus just rebuilds the menu. it's useful sometimes when apps don't appear in the menu after installing or when you've edited a .desktop file.
an example of use would be

opening/usr/share/applications/palemoon.desktop in geany
changing the icon line to Icon=/usr/share/icons/PMaterial/scalable/apps/palemoon.svg
then run fixmenus to rebuild the menu
new palemoon icon now shows in the menu

the menu editor is still there in menu>>desktop>>jwmdesk>>menu>>item manager

if you give me a link to your wifi driver i can add it to quickpet.

[bigpup]

applying my edits (described earlier in the thread) and restarting the Window manager I successfully executed Fixmenus using Menu -->Fixmenus.

Exactly what are you seeing it now do???????

[elroy]

@bigpup

After sobering up I see that I was wrong. I think I got confused by the icon for Fixmenus being the same as the icon of 'Puppy Setup/Menu Manager', and was expecting Fixmenus to work as Menu Manager does.

@666philb

I noticed after running lsmod that the 8821ce was already loaded, but on my system wlan0 wouldn't show up so I couldn't get a wireless connection without a dongle. I compiled 8821ce in fossapup64, unpacked the puppy_fossapup64_9.5.sfs and replaced the existing /lib/modules/5.4.53/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/8821ce.ko with the one I compiled. Squashed it, rebooted, and I have wlan0. Here's a link to the file - 8821ce.ko.

[ferike]

thank you very much for posting 8821ce.ko module....you have save me....I also have an ideapad S145 with wifi not working....now I can use Fossapup! in this laptop there is no ethernet entrance so the only internet access is by wifi module, so it is essential......I could not solve myself the problem, because I do not found (after a week of search) source code that could compiled in simple manner (make...) what I found needs Dkms and other stuff (I have little experience in compiling)
I found that this module is part of 5.9.x kernel, I tried to cheat (with no succes) co copy only this module source in fossa kernel and compile it...so I thank you again and ask if you have the spare time to post in forum the source code and how exactly you compiled this kernel module to help other people in need and to know how to compile if kernel change....thanks

[elroy]

rtl8821ce compiling instructions:

The module needs to be compiled against Fossapup64's kernel. Make sure you have Fossapup64's devx and kernel sources sfs files loaded.

Get the source code from https://github.com/tomaspinho/rtl8821ce. Download the zip and unzip the file. Enter the directory, open the terminal, and type

Code: Select all

make

After a bit you should end up with a 8821ce.ko file located in the same directory. You don't need to install any other pets or debs (DKMS) before or after compiling.

Fossapup64 comes with the rtl8821ce on board, but it doesn't seem to work. Maybe it was compiled against a different kernel version. So we need to remove the old one first. In the terminal type

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modprobe -r 8821ce

Then overwrite the file at

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/lib/modules/5.4.53/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/8821ce.ko

with the one you just compiled. After you've done that, type

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modprobe 8821ce

into the terminal. Then try connecting to wifi. You can save the 8821ce.ko file on another thumb drive or some other medium to use if you create another save file/folder in the future, as long as you're using the same kernel. Then you won't have to recompile every time. If you upgrade (or downgrade) to a different kernel version, you'll have to compile a new one.

If you build a spinoff using woof-CE and add/remove a bunch of things, make sure to include the module in the same location and use a script like Fossapup64 does to load the module at startup. Fossapup64 uses

Code: Select all

/etc/init.d/depmoda

to do this.

EDIT:
The code contains scripts for installing on a system with DKMS, but they can be safely ignored when compiling for Puppy Linux. The Makefile doesn't need DKMS to successfully compile. If you're using running on an actual full-blown Arch or Ubuntu system, install DKMS and use the provided scripts. Those two distros are rolling releases, and after installing the module it will automatically get removed, recompiled, and re-installed every time those distros upgrade their kernel.

[PineapplePizza]

@elroy

Thank you so much. I bought a nice shiny new Asus L210MA 11.6" netbook style laptop about 4 days ago and knew I had to kill that intrusive Windows 10 S Mode from it, so right after letting it install W10S I turned off fast boot and secure boot and started booting linuxes on it and replacing the hard drive with them: Slacko, Ubuntu 20.10, Lubuntu, Mint, Gparted live, and none of them had the RTL8821CE driver included, or in the case of Gparted Live it just didn't work, but otherwise things worked good on all of them, and without wifi the "Additional Drivers" and "Package Managers" were useless to download the missing driver packages and dependencies. A few days later I tried fossapup64 9.5 and loved it's design and ability to do things like save files and open mm0p1 without figuring out a ton of annoying sudo terminal commands, and it had all the programs I could ever need already at under 500MB. When looking for the devx and kernel-sources I found a RTL8821CE pet in the same folder and tried that first, but couldn't get sns to show anything for wifi after installing it, even after restarting or even after trying to put the ko file into the fdrv, so I tried this "compile it yourself" method, downloading the rtl8821ce github source code and the dmks deb file from the internet at the library and running it's ./dkms-install script, and the wifi finally showed up in SNS after trying it with a clean boot, making a save folder, and restarting twice.

I guess the method I tried that finally worked was:

1. Download the github rtl8821ce-master.zip and dkms_2.8.1-5ubuntu1_all.deb file
2. Boot into a fresh fossapup64 iso (without save), then load the devx and kernel_sources
3. Click on the dkms deb to install it
4. Extract the github rtl8821ce-master.zip and run it's ./dkms-install
5. You should see the file it made in /lib/modules/5.4.53/updates/dkms/8821ce.ko
6. Restart fossapup64, creating a savefolder on mm0p2 ext4 partition
7. Let it do the whole "merging the filesystem" thing at boot and go to desktop, then restart again
8. Run sns and hopefully it should finally show up as wlan0 option

The funny thing was, when I compared the ko file I compiled with the one already on ibiblio in the rtl8821ce-5.5.2.1-x86_64.pet with cmp, they were exactly the same. Maybe I should have used that modprobe helper program you suggested too, it seems that compiling it myself did something special like update the modules list or something or maybe it just required a lot of restarts to get it working either way. Surely a pain in the rear as you said but glad it's finally working (and I didn't need to use a dongle! just needed the fossapup64 iso, devx, kernel_sources, rtl8821ce github source zip file and dkms deb file), and am now posting this message from my working wifi in fossapup64 at Burger King! I would send you all some burgers and poutine through the internet as thank you if I could.

[bigpup]

The funny thing was, when I compared the ko file I compiled with the one already on ibiblio in the rtl8821ce-5.5.2.1-x86_64.pet with cmp, they were exactly the same.

These have to be compiled for a specific Linux kernel and will only work if that kernel is being used.
By the name of that pet package.
It was compiled for the 5.5.2.1 kernel.
Fossapup64 9.5 is using the 5.4.53 kernel.

The compiled files may be the same size, but they are made to work with a specific Linux kernel.

Most people making a pet package of something that is for a specific Linux kernel and only that kernel, will put the kernel series number in the name of the pet package.
rtl8821ce-5.5.2.1-x86_64.pet is for kernel 5.5.2.1
nvidia-340.107_K4.19.23_x86_64.pet is Nvidia graphics driver for kernel 4.19.23

A lot of stuff is not kernel specific, but a few things are.
Added kernel modules and drivers are the most common kernel specific.

[elroy]

@PineapplePizza

You're very welcome. Nothing worse than not being able to connect to your wifi after buying a new laptop
I've updated the directions above to hopefully make it a little easier to follow.