EasyOS Scarthgap-series version 6.4.5

[BarryK]

I'm wondering though, instead of just having /files/shared shared with the main filesystem, why not share the entire /files?

/files is for keeping all your personal stuff, such as photos, videos, projects, etc.
It might be practical to have access to all of that from within containers.

There is still some isolation, /files/apps have folders for apps that run non-root, other non-root apps not allowed to see into other folders under /files/apps

It is all very well to think of isolated containers, but for practical usage, might want apps inside containers to work with almost as much freedom as apps on the main desktop.

Done, all of /files is now shared:

https://bkhome.org/news/202411/share-fi ... ainer.html

Will set this for the next release of daedalus sfs.

[LHESTIA]

OK, switching scarthgap to non-ram mode, daedalus works fine, icons persist on desktop and foxtrot works fine without additional download.
Thanks Barry, it will be perfect soon, as usual, we are sure.
Sincerely.

[BarryK]

Daedalus and Scarthgap have a password manager in the tray, builtin.

I'm planning to remove that, replace with a clipboard manager.

Does anyone have any objection to that?

There is a security risk having both a password manager and a clipboard manager, as the password manager transfers passwords via the clipboard.

But even without a clipboard manager, any malicious app can monitor the clipboard.

Best is to have passwords written down elsewhere, or you can trust the browser to keep them safe.

[SteveS]

I don't know for other users but I have no objection to that.

[CF-DKS]

Daedalus and Scarthgap have a password manager in the tray, builtin.

I'm planning to remove that, replace with a clipboard manager.

Does anyone have any objection to that?

Fine with me.

[Stogie]

Daedalus and Scarthgap have a password manager in the tray, builtin.

I'm planning to remove that, replace with a clipboard manager.

Does anyone have any objection to that?

There is a security risk having both a password manager and a clipboard manager, as the password manager transfers passwords via the clipboard.

But even without a clipboard manager, any malicious app can monitor the clipboard.

Best is to have passwords written down elsewhere, or you can trust the browser to keep them safe.

Go right ahead, please! A lot of people, myself included, prefer simple pen and paper (can't be hacked into without a physical home break-in, plus it's also immune to data loss and corruption except in case of fire which is easily fixed by having a second copy at a trusted off-site location). Sometimes old ways are best. Having a password manager is useless, one that's already running in the tray is less than useless, it's a waste of RAM, CPU cycles and tray space.

Go right ahead and do that, I'd love that change!

[don570]

Chromebook has a built-in feature - last 5 clipboard entries

View clipboard history: Press Search + V to open a pop-up of recently copied items

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[George]

@ BarryK
Dear Barry, I think your idea of daedalus container within scarthgap is really great, so i tried it a few days ago using scarthgap's /files folder as shared folfer of the container (wrote it manually into the container's configuration file). After setting scarthgap not running in ram all works rather well in the container with the exception of audio, that doesn't work at all. You answered someone who reported the same problem suggesting to use MSCW, so i did in sakura, getting this message:
"# mscw
ALSA lib pulse.c:242:(pulse_connect) PulseAudio: Unable to connect: Connection refused
amixer: Mixer attach pulse error: Connection refused".
Obviously audio still doesn't work at all, so my use of daedalus is very limited.
Thanks for all your wonderful and useful work that i hope you can continue for many, many years.

[BarryK]

@ BarryK
Dear Barry, I think your idea of daedalus container within scarthgap is really great, so i tried it a few days ago using scarthgap's /files folder as shared folfer of the container (wrote it manually into the container's configuration file). After setting scarthgap not running in ram all works rather well in the container with the exception of audio, that doesn't work at all. You answered someone who reported the same problem suggesting to use MSCW, so i did in sakura, getting this message:
"# mscw
ALSA lib pulse.c:242:(pulse_connect) PulseAudio: Unable to connect: Connection refused
amixer: Mixer attach pulse error: Connection refused".
Obviously audio still doesn't work at all, so my use of daedalus is very limited.
Thanks for all your wonderful and useful work that i hope you can continue for many, many years.

Note that you can't use MSCW inside the container. Sound has to be setup in the main filesystem, then it should be working in the container also.

[BarryK]

Latest news, fast startup, clipboard copy:

https://bkhome.org/news/202411/containe ... -copy.html

[don570]

Downloaded easy-6.4.5-amd64.img and MD5sum checked out

Code: Select all

48d25d566011727b8c27c8a1931ba608  easy-6.4.5-amd64.img

https://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/amd64 ... 024/6.4.5/
____________________________________________________

[AmStaff]

I was negligent in getting back to you, Barry, but Scarthgap 6.4.4 does produce sound on the old rock solid Lenovo T-430. As for the Dell desktop I had trouble with, it's a sort of weird bird anyway, I mean it has PS/2 ports for keyboard and mouse and it dates from 2019, for example, but I bought it because it had a fairly fast processor, (5th generation i5, 3.3Ghz) and 32GB of ram, came with a keyboard and mouse and was only around $150.00 US. Certified Refurbished! Paired with a 27" Samsung monitor it does what I need admirably.

So what am I running on it? Windows 10 Pro, and I boot either Easy OS Kirkstone (which has sound) or Bookworm64 from flashdrives. This is working for me for now.

Thank you. It's a joy to talk to you. I consider you a genius, Barry Kauler.

[Airdale]

I just wanted to post and say that I've really enjoyed using this distro. I've been using Barry's distros for many years and EasyOS has come a long way. Scarthgap is a rock solid nice little distro and is quite polished.

Excited to try out Easy Daedalus! Now with all the added app managers it's gotten a lot easier to add most of the apps I use to the OE versions of Easy. I've gotten better scrounging up dependecies and getting a few things running that aren't in any of the package managers.

That being said, sometimes theres an app I just can't get to work and I like using containers for that. I used an Easy Buster container for that purpose for a long time, and Easy Daedalus will have much more up to date packages. I think it's a great improvement to Easy.

[BarryK]

As don570 already discovered, Scarthgap 6.4.5 is released!

See blog announcement:

https://bkhome.org/news/202411/easyos-s ... eased.html

A few things got fixed that never made it into a blog announcment. That includes dbus fix in container, at least I think so; chromium started from a terminal no longer complains about broken dbus.

Flip into the daedalus container, there is now a button for flipping back to the scarthgap desktop. I'm thinking, perhaps users would prefer that button to be in the tray, on right-hand-side?

The clipboard can now be copied in and out.

The entire /files is shared inside the container. Folder /files is a direct link to storage, at /mnt/wkg/files, so not running in RAM. This is very convenient in the daedalus container, not restricted to passing via /files/shared

[George]

@ BarryK
Dear Barry, I think your idea of daedalus container within scarthgap is really great, so i tried it a few days ago using scarthgap's /files folder as shared folfer of the container (wrote it manually into the container's configuration file). After setting scarthgap not running in ram all works rather well in the container with the exception of audio, that doesn't work at all. You answered someone who reported the same problem suggesting to use MSCW, so i did in sakura, getting this message:
"# mscw
ALSA lib pulse.c:242:(pulse_connect) PulseAudio: Unable to connect: Connection refused
amixer: Mixer attach pulse error: Connection refused".
Obviously audio still doesn't work at all, so my use of daedalus is very limited.
Thanks for all your wonderful and useful work that i hope you can continue for many, many years.

Note that you can't use MSCW inside the container. Sound has to be setup in the main filesystem, then it should be working in the container also.

As always you were right. Audio worked in my main system and didn't work in daedalus container; i had to change twice the audio settings of the main desktop and the audio of the container started. Parhaps we can say that the audio of daedalus container is not "rock solid".
About the new combination scarthgap/daedalus container i'm wondering what happens when there is a new release of Debian or EasyOS. Must we download a new container and re-make all the settings as at the switching fron dunfell to kirkston and to scarthgap? Find a way to avoid that the transition to the new combination, oyherwise perfect, involves doubling the update work would be great.
Thaks, Barry, for all.

[BarryK]

About the new combination scarthgap/daedalus container i'm wondering what happens when there is a new release of Debian or EasyOS. Must we download a new container and re-make all the settings as at the switching fron dunfell to kirkston and to scarthgap? Find a way to avoid that the transition to the new combination, oyherwise perfect, involves doubling the update work would be great.

That is going to need some more thought.

But the current situation is if you have the daedalus container working, there is no need to update it.
Update scarthgap in the usual way, that's all.

But yeah, if there is a bug in the daedalus container, then we need a mechanism to update it without having to completely remove then reinstall.

[BarryK]

Audio worked in my main system and didn't work in daedalus container; i had to change twice the audio settings of the main desktop and the audio of the container started. Parhaps we can say that the audio of daedalus container is not "rock solid".

Note that any change to audio setup in the main desktop, you will have to kill the container then restart it, for the change to carry over.

[BarryK]

I'm working with Alfons to try and figure out something...

pClock, in the Personal menu category, isn't working in the daedalus container.
It was fixed, supposedly.

Also non-us-english keyboard layout was supposed to be fixed.

/mnt/wkg/containers/daedalus/container/.control/daedalus script has code (from line 59) that was supposed to have fixed these issues.
Running the code in a terminal in the container might work, at least it does fix pclock.

I'm wondering if maybe running those utilities too soon.

Will report back, hopefully with a fix.

[scsijon]

The settings for a package (eg $packagename$) in scarthgaps /root/.$packagename$ and container-Daedalus /root/.$packagename$ don't coinside once you change what's in one of them. Wouldn't matter until you change one to suit what your doing and switch to use a package between them without changing in the second.
Also consideration for changes between package versions in each being different may need to be taken I think.
Then there's the thougts of what happens when you have a number of containers of one and if you allow flowover between containers or not, like you have done with /files. Not sure I want it happeing at that level. I still think /files/shared should be enough.
And then there's thoughts of adding a third container type....
UGH......., time to go to bed I think.

[don570]

Scarthgap-series version 6.4.5 review

-Easyshare set up SAMBA server properly with Chromebook laptop
-pclock worked with a countdown
-prun worked
-gwhere catalog worked
-gwaveedit recorded audio input (mhwaveedit doesn't record)
-webp files support with viewer
-ripmime allows uextract to rip mhtml files
-my wine package worked to edit mp3 file
viewtopic.php?t=13121

KRITA 5.2.6 appimage launched with a click and worked with Wacom Bamboo tablet driver
(of course it must be loaded at bootup)
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One negative thing- Even though Wacom Bamboo tablet worked with mtpaint
I found that I had to reset the preferences each time I launched mtpaint. This also happens with Daedalus edition as well.
This happened in some other versions of Puppy linux. Fatdog linux works fine.
It's not very important however.
_______________________________________________

One odd thing - Using mhwaveedit in Daedalus I found a strange stutter in editing waveform of long audio files.
gwaveedit in Scarthgap doesn't have a stutter problem.
______________________________________________________

Also 3 desktops in tray I find too many so I reduced it to 2
using jwm configuration file.
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[CF-DKS]

I have updated one USB drive and one hard drive to Scarthgap 6.4.5. Curiously, in both cases I got a "not found" on first attempt to download Daedalus with SFS get. Second attempt, no problem, downloaded and installed, but also in both cases the icon did not appear in the containers list until I switched to icons on desktop (it appeared), then when I switched back to icons in the tray it was there. No big deal, just a curiosity. Interestingly I had no issues previously with wallpaper changing, as reported by some users, even before this update. My chosen wallpaper stuck through several reboots on both the USB and hard drive. And it was my own wallpaper, not one that was supplied.

O.K. now this is interesting...with the update, my chosen wallpaper for Daedalus no longer persists! Not idea why. It flashes on the screen, then reverts to the default. I even tried renaming the files, making mine "default" and it still reverts to the original. If I remove the default file it goes to a black screen.

One other suggestion, not happy with the button in the middle of the screen. Can it be moved to somewhere less conspicuous?

[BarryK]

The settings for a package (eg $packagename$) in scarthgaps /root/.$packagename$ and container-Daedalus /root/.$packagename$ don't coinside once you change what's in one of them. Wouldn't matter until you change one to suit what your doing and switch to use a package between them without changing in the second.
Also consideration for changes between package versions in each being different may need to be taken I think.
Then there's the thougts of what happens when you have a number of containers of one and if you allow flowover between containers or not, like you have done with /files. Not sure I want it happeing at that level. I still think /files/shared should be enough.
And then there's thoughts of adding a third container type....
UGH......., time to go to bed I think.

The reason for having the daedalus container is to run apps that are not available in the main scarthgap desktop.
I don't know why anyone would run, say, shotcut, in both.

So, I don't see a problem with both accessing the same /files

But yes, potentially, different versions of shotcut having the same project files under /files might be a problem. Like, you create a project with a recent version of shotcut on the main desktop, then in the container run a very old version of shotcut and share the same project.

[BarryK]

One other suggestion, not happy with the button in the middle of the screen. Can it be moved to somewhere less conspicuous?

Yes, I'm thinking of having the option of moving it into the tray, on right-hand-side.

[BarryK]

I'm working with Alfons to try and figure out something...

pClock, in the Personal menu category, isn't working in the daedalus container.
It was fixed, supposedly.

Also non-us-english keyboard layout was supposed to be fixed.

/mnt/wkg/containers/daedalus/container/.control/daedalus script has code (from line 59) that was supposed to have fixed these issues.
Running the code in a terminal in the container might work, at least it does fix pclock.

I'm wondering if maybe running those utilities too soon.

Will report back, hopefully with a fix.

If anyone wants to experiment with non-us-english keyboard layout in the daedalus container, the problem is due to the settings not carrying over from the main desktop to the xephyr nested server.

Here are some relevant links:

https://superuser.com/questions/209433/ ... ard-layout

https://superuser.com/questions/70428/h ... rd-mapping

https://unix.stackexchange.com/question ... g-properly

...the last one looks particularly interesting. The main desktop is DISPLAY=:0 and in the container is :1
And the comment about using "-kb" does not work. The fix above that looks good, run in the main desktop:

Code: Select all

setxkbmap -display :0 -print | xkbcomp - :1

...I haven't tried it.

Note that /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-evdev-puppy.conf is copied into the container, but not applied to the xephyr server.

I'll get onto it, but taking the day off today, a trip into the city, later on will work on the trike.
Hopefully get back to it tomorrow.

[tammi806]

Daedalus and Scarthgap have a password manager in the tray, builtin.

I'm planning to remove that, replace with a clipboard manager.

Does anyone have any objection to that?

There is a security risk having both a password manager and a clipboard manager, as the password manager transfers passwords via the clipboard.

But even without a clipboard manager, any malicious app can monitor the clipboard.

Best is to have passwords written down elsewhere, or you can trust the browser to keep them safe.

I never trust any password manager.
Never made any sense to me to keep passwords stored on a computer that could possibly be compromised.
I write all of my passwords in a notebook and it has never been compromised and never will be compromised.

Nope no objection from this user to remove the password manager tray button.
As far as I'm concerned you can remove the password manager.

A clipboard manager tray icon button would be very useful imo.

Just my opinion.

Thanks.

[tammi806]

I did a frugal install of Scarthgap 6.4.5 onto a 40 GB 2.5" mechanical hard drive on an old 2007 HP SFF desktop and all went without a hitch.

So far everything I've used works well.

Thanks Barry K.

[don570]

EasyOS Scarthgap-series version 6.4.5 on hp elite desktop
frugal install
limine.cfg used
________________________________

Each time when I checked, I put a text file in /root and then clicked 'Save Session' when rebooting.
I then checked the bootup time option numbers to see if the the files in /root are preserved

Here are the results....

When I choose 1
- I enter the password and then proceed to bootup normally. The files in /root are preserved.

When I choose 3
-This option is supposed to rollback to last saved session, however when I check, the files in /root are missing

When I choose 5
-This option is supposed to rollback to previous version, however this is first time I have installed 'Scarthgap' on my hardrive
so no previous version is found, but there is no warning message. Instead it asks for my password and proceeds to desktop normally.
_________________________________________________________________________________

My question ---> For option number 3 why did the files in /root disappear?

______________________________________________________________-

[BarryK]

EasyOS Scarthgap-series version 6.4.5 on hp elite desktop
frugal install
limine.cfg used
________________________________

Each time when I checked, I put a text file in /root and then clicked 'Save Session' when rebooting.
I then checked the bootup time option numbers to see if the the files in /root are preserved

Here are the results....

When I choose 1
- I enter the password and then proceed to bootup normally. The files in /root are preserved.

When I choose 3
-This option is supposed to rollback to last saved session, however when I check, the files in /root are missing

When I choose 5
-This option is supposed to rollback to previous version, however this is first time I have installed 'Scarthgap' on my hardrive
so no previous version is found, but there is no warning message. Instead it asks for my password and proceeds to desktop normally.
_________________________________________________________________________________

My question ---> For option number 3 why did the files in /root disappear?

______________________________________________________________-

That would be correct.
If you create a file in /root, then at next bootup choose to rollback to last saved session, then that file will be gone.
If you were to roll forward, that file will come back.

[james2]

I have Scarthgap and Daedalus up and running on 3.2 usb's alone and on drives to play with. Presently learning to add deb repo to Daedalus in container.
As usual , big thx Barry and all who contribute here.

[williwaw]

EasyOS Scarthgap-series version 6.4.5 on hp elite desktop
frugal install
limine.cfg used
________________________________

Each time when I checked, I put a text file in /root and then clicked 'Save Session' when rebooting.
I then checked the bootup time option numbers to see if the the files in /root are preserved

Here are the results....

When I choose 1
- I enter the password and then proceed to bootup normally. The files in /root are preserved.

When I choose 3
-This option is supposed to rollback to last saved session, however when I check, the files in /root are missing

When I choose 5
-This option is supposed to rollback to previous version, however this is first time I have installed 'Scarthgap' on my hardrive
so no previous version is found, but there is no warning message. Instead it asks for my password and proceeds to desktop normally.
_________________________________________________________________________________

My question ---> For option number 3 why did the files in /root disappear?

______________________________________________________________-

That would be correct.
If you create a file in /root, then at next bootup choose to rollback to last saved session, then that file will be gone.
If you were to roll forward, that file will come back.

I have also found the described behavior somewhat confusing.

Is the save from the previous session actually done when the computer reboots?

a clipboard manager (with history) please