KLV-Airedale-alpha Released for Experimentation and Improvement by the Puppy community

[fredx181]

Now gone for a "cute-sy" look!!

Ahhh....
Looks great all together Mike!
@rockedge You gotta hire Mike for the finishing touch

[mikeslr]

Rockedge has established that a 'frugal' install of Void including xbps package-manager [OctoXBPS is a nice touch] is possible.
This is rockedge's project. So he can do whatever he wants. But I've noticed for the last few days what's occurring is fleshing out KLV-Airedale using weedog mechanisms rather than exploring how to obtain a 'Woofed' operating system employing Void as its 'binary compatible'.
IMHO, what also seems evident is that despite calls for xfce as window-manager --maybe nice for true newbies-- the rox-jwm combo makes accomplishing projects easier for those slightly more advanced. Openbox with a panel (lxpanel is still my fav as the most easily customizable) might be a good compromise.
If we are still in an 'exploring' void's potential phase, there's another piece of the puzzle yet to be examined. AFAICT, neither Void nor KLV-Airedale can AVOID preserving screw-ups OOTB. Something every Puppy can do running as Pupmode13 with Automatic Save turned off. Having a 'roll-back' feature is not the same. With the web being the 'mother of all ills' shutting down without Saving everything including 'trojans and viruses' you didn't know you caught is far better than having the potential to remove them after you've discovered you've been invested. Pupmode13 with Automatic Save removed is one of Puppys true advances and the primary reason to prefer Puppys over other Linux OSes.
fred brought to my attention that KLV-Airedale does not employ aufs, but rather the 'merge-in-RAM' mechanism of Overlays. gyrog has done some exploration in developing a means by which overlays can be used in a Pupmode13-LIKE way. He called it Pupmode67, viewtopic.php?p=38517#p38517. Exactly how it functions is 'above my paygrade'. Which is one of the many reasons why my attempt to employ it under KLV-Airedale didn't work.
gyrog's implementation may (or may not) be what I initially visualized after learning that overlays were employed and doing a little research. Keep in mind that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
The idea I had was to create a folder in RAM to hold changes. Only at shut-down (or manually) would they be written to the storage folder on media which would be over-layed on reboot. Isn't that the essence of Pupmode13?

p.s. Alpha4 includes AppFinder. If you use Whisker-Menu rather than the default Menu, it's not needed: Whisker-Menu provides the same information just more conveniently. I had suggested on the now deleted 'Community Puppy' thread to install the 'Menus under Xfce' file as it 'translates' categories appearing in applications created for Puppys for their use under Xfce. It works with AppFinder and Whisker-Menu. [Untested with xfce's default Menu application]. I've since repackaged it as a pet, viewtopic.php?p=44528&hilit=appfinder#p44528. But the 'raw' version --which can be place in EITHER /etc/xdg/menus and/or /root/.config/menus-- can still be obtained here, https://oldforum.puppylinux.com/viewtop ... 26#p961426. IMHO, it does a much more rational job of organizing applications for display on a Menu than xfce does by default; even if applications designed for Puppys aren't involved.

[bigpup]

Her is one, but I think it is actually a cat.
Got to be a dog one.
Still looking.
.

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[rockedge]

@mikeslr There are facilities already in place to be able to make KLV-Airedale have a similar functionality as PUPMODE 13. Also selected on the boot stanza kernel line /upper_changes is in RAM only. A utility can be written or borrowed, that will write on command to an upper_changes.sfs or simply to a folder. But being in an Alpha stage and me not having Internet until 5 minutes ago, I have not created yet the tools to do this. The foundations are there and in early WeeDog/Firstrib times there were some scripts created that did things like merge the save directories and write from RAM.

With this system you can add digits to upper_changes and keep layering them as well.

Anyway give peebee's new VoidPup32 a spin.

[rockedge]

@mikewalsh I wish my desktop looked like yours! "Freaking awesome" they'd say around my street.

I will definitely be coming back to you for advice and design input for a final GUI design with the xfce4 desktop. Really nice work Mike.

[wiak]

@mikeslrSimply put the following argument on kernel line of your grub config:

Code: Select all

w_changes=RAM2

That creates a session changes folder (upper_changes) in RAM and uses the last harddisk/media upper_changes as a read-only overlay. At the end of the session you can chose to save or not. To save at end you need a small rsync back to harddisk/media bash utility. I always do that on my home system. I just use a simple one-liner rsync command and have been using that for months now and it works reliably for me. Fredx181 does similarly in his latest debbiandog, which also uses overlayfs, but uses a more sophisticated rsync script. I am leaving further info about this till later for this community Kennel release since would complicate overall development at this alpha stage.

Union Filesystems and such arrangements have been around for decades (1988!!!), so, despite claims, there is nothing revolutionary in WDL overlay structures (I did some dev work on User Mode Linux back in 1999 and even its cow file mechanisms were similar in terms of how you could organise them). Maybe human nature to claim innovation, but many claims are fake news indeed - research labs do (sometimes) innovate though - a requirement of PhD level studies also I suppose.

Unioning file systems: Architecture, features, and design choices:
https://lwn.net/Articles/324291/

I chose to implement overlayfs from first principles (simply reading the kernel docs on that and some simple tutorial examples) so do not know how others do their tricks; well, that was true until recently, when I checked fredx181's rsync script because I worried the one-liner I used might be inadequate (been ok so far, but yeah, saves caches unnecessarily). That check incidentally also showed me how DebianDogs changes on EXIT layers are arranged (DD changes on EXIT mode being something I often used a lot in the past when DDs were my first choice of distro). I haven't used Puppy for years actually except for providing dotpets for it and dpkg/apt sfs addons and never studied how it implements its various pupmodes, nor even which one means which, and no, actually I've never studied its initrd though I have glanced at the code with a view to study it, but too much in it and couldn't be bothered trying to work out its operation. Clearly works fine, which is good enough for me.

I have no idea if the following situation has changed, but my preference is whatever the Linux kernel team chooses to adopt (hence overlayfs):
https://lwn.net/Articles/327738/

Given the incredible flexibility and feature set of aufs, why isn't it more popular? A quick browse through the source code gives a clue. Aufs consists of about 20,000 lines of dense, unreadable, uncommented code, as opposed to around 10,000 for unionfs and 3,000 for union mounts and 60,000 for all of the VFS. The aufs code is generally something that one does not want to look at.

[mikewalsh]

@mikewalsh I wish my desktop looked like yours! "Freaking awesome" they'd say around my street.

I will definitely be coming back to you for advice and design input for a final GUI design with the xfce4 desktop. Really nice work Mike.

Ah, hell..... This is where I start getting embarrassed (because I don't really DO anything to warrant any sort of praise.....and I daresay there's several here who will agree whole-heartedly with that blunt assessment).

You guys - Phil B., peebee, mistfire, wiak, 01micko, dimkr, yourself ( & several others whose names escape me ATM) are the guys who do what I call the "real" work.....actually making the system functional. All I do is mess around with customizing & throw the odd package together (more by luck than judgement, if I'm honest!)

Id be happy to place my meagre abilities at your disposal if ya think they'll help, though I think it shows remarkably poor judgement personally! Graphic design has been a "hobby" of mine for the best part of half a century, IIRC, 'cos I like to make things look good (and I'm a fussy sod into the bargain).....but don't expect too much.

Mike.

[bigpup]

Wonder if this could be done for KLV-Airedale?
viewtopic.php?t=4745
Check out the images of it in operation!

Sure is a different look.

[bigpup]

aaryan-junnarkar-pug1.jpg (64.07 KiB) Viewed 1027 times

[bigpup]

mikewalsh,

The force is strong in this one!

I find your lack of faith disturbing.

[Clarity]

@wiak Thanks!!!

Code: Select all

w_changes=RAM2

Persistence works as does it does for other DOGs.

Thanks, again, (@rockedge and @fredx181, too) for this "boot-time control" eye-opener in this KLV distro.

[mikewalsh]

mikewalsh,

The force is strong in this one!

I find your lack of faith disturbing.

@bigpup :-

The 'lack of faith' is entirely about my own abilities, mate. I've never been good at accepting compliments, from anyone.....I always wonder what they're really after..!

Ignore me; I'm in danger of becoming a "grump", I think.....

Mike.

[rockedge]

KLV-Airedale-alpha5 is now available
viewtopic.php?p=44012#p44012

added pure-ftpd with GUI from Puppy Linux
Load_SFS is integrated
run-as-spot
run-as-weedog

[wiak]

KLV-Airedale-alpha5 is now available
viewtopic.php?p=44012#p44012

added pure-ftpd with GUI from Puppy Linux
Load_SFS is integrated
run-as-spot
run-as-weedog

Great I'll get back on to testing this again now. Been on voidpup32, nice playing with xbps, for a few days now.

Please send me nearest to alpha5 f_00 build plugin if you can since helps me work out fixes or extras I might want to try.

[one]

KLV-Airedale-alpha5 is now available
viewtopic.php?p=44012#p44012

added pure-ftpd with GUI from Puppy Linux
Load_SFS is integrated
run-as-spot
run-as-weedog

Hi @rockedge,

great work ...

Please provide sha/md5 sums as you did for the previous alpha versions.

peace

[rockedge]

Please provide sha/md5 sums as you did for the previous alpha versions.

I have uploaded a new version of the alpha5 ISO with matching checksums sha/md5 to the location:
(changed the default background wallpaper)

Kennel Linux Version Airedale Alpha5 441 M download size ->
https://rockedge.org/kernels/data/iso/K ... alpha5.iso

MD5
SHA1

or in the ISO section of
https://rockedge.org/kernels

Also the first post of the topic contains the links.

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[mikewalsh]

@rockedge :-

Erik; a question, if I may? Can the 'upper_changes' & 'work' directories be re-used from one alpha to the next.....or do they have to be set up all over again, for every single new release?

If that's the case I may stick with Alpha 3 for now, since all my portables are working so well with it.....plus I have a 'rooted' version of Chrome-portable that runs very happily like that, and even updates in that mode. (Iron-portable, the only other one with an updater, does of course run & update as 'root' anyway...)

As the old saw has it; "if it works.....leave it the hell alone."

It's running Fossa64's kernel & zdrv, which is why gKrellM worked OOTB; it's the one I compiled for Fossa originally. Fossa is glibc 2.31, KLV is 2.32.....close enough that it makes no real difference. I just copied everything into place manually, and it fired-up immediately.

BTW, thanks for the built-in 'Sensor Viewer' package. Meant I could get both core-temps of this Pentium Gold showing next to the CPU graph, too! Sweet.

(Even for an 'alpha', this thing is already really smooth & stable. Whether that's due to its Void Linux roots, I really couldn't say, but it's totally usable 'as-is'. Just need to get printing working, and I'll be a happy bunny!)

I've already spent 2 whole days in KLV, without firing-up any of the 'kennels' at all. That, for me, is impressive, 'cos most other distros bore me to tears.....but THIS is fun to use. Well done, mate.

(*shrug*)

Mike.

[rockedge]

@mikewalsh I think you can take the 07KLV-airedale_rootfs.sfs from the alpha5 ISO and simply use this to replace the one in alpha3. You can rename the original alpha3 rootfs SFS and copy in the one from the alpha5 ISO.

or set up a new alpha5 directory and copy over the /upper_changes, /work directories from alpha3 to the new alpha5.

Good test either way. Let us know how it goes!

Though sticking with what you have and keep working on alpha3 is perfectly fine and every discovery helpful.

alpha5 has more of the ideas and scripts shared from members built into it, but is very close to alpha3 at it's core.

[mikewalsh]

@rockedge :-

Well, I've had an interesting last couple of hours.....and killed TWO birds with one stone, into the bargain.

I decided it's time to - sadly - retire the old Dell lappie. She's done me proud for almost 19 years, but it's getting to the stage where, despite the proliferation of 32-bit Puppy software still available, the Pentium 4 severely limits what's really practical with it. You can't watch Youtube, or play any media on it, because that immediately pegs the CPU at 100% and bugger-all happens until you kill everything again.

You can't record any screencasts on it for exactly the same reason.

I've got so used to the amazing speed of the kennels running on this new HP rig that the Dell really is painfully slow to use now. And I no longer use it in the way that I used to.....sometimes she sits in the drawer for months at a time.

So.....what to do with some of the hardware?

----------------------------

I knew exactly what I wanted to do with that 64GB SSD; even on an IDE/PATA interface it still has a respectable turn of speed (35 MB/s write : 115 MB/s read; that's comparable with my SanDisk USB 3.2-gen drives, so definitely worth the effort). I invested a few quid in a PATA to SATA convertor block a fortnight ago; this pushes onto the 44 PATA/IDE pins on one side, and gives you a standard, combined SATA power/data connector on the other. Together with my spare USB3.0 to SATA converter cable (I bought two of these last year; I had to get a second, differently-configured one to run the almost-new optical tray-loader from the old rig as an 'external' optical drive), I've built a small caddy for it, and it now sits on the 'wall' of my desk footwell, against the tower, and runs through a front USB 3.0 port.

So at least this is continuing to give service..!

(I shan't throw the Dell out, even so. Despite being built in 2002, it had the honour of being one of the very first machines on the market to possess bootable USB ports; if the worst comes to the worst, even though it now has no internal drive I can still boot a Puppy from USB. There's method in the madness, y'know; some manufacturers didn't implement this ability for another 6 or 7 years!)

--------------------------------------------

I did the above for two reasons:-

• One, because I wanted to give KLV "Airedale" its own, dedicated drive.

• Two, because ever since adding KLV to the kennels in its own sub-directory, every time I boot a regular Puppy the boot readout is running fsck and having to 'recover the journal'.....sometimes to the tune of hundreds of inodes and thousands of blocks. I don't know what's causing it, but I want to see if giving KLV its own drive will fix this, because it's only been happening since I first installed KLV a couple of weeks ago. The obvious conclusion is that the two ARE somehow related; all Puppies 'recover' OK and boot up fine, but it's curious that it's happening at all.....

------------------------------------------

Moving KLV was a piece of cake. I re-formatted and re-partitioned the SSD. I copied the KLV sub-directory across exactly as-is.

I ran Grub4DOS on the new sdc1; obviously there's no Puppies to be found, so it simply installed the Windows boot-loader thing. I then copied the existing KLV boot-stanza from the main boot menu across to Grub4DOS on sdc1, adjusted the UUID and other bits to suit, and it fires up from the Grub4DOS 'advanced' menu. Oh, I know it would be 'technically' more satisfying to chain-load from one Grub4DOS to the other, but honestly, using the sdc entry in 'Advanced' is just as easy.

And because every one of the 'portables' I've 'installed' the Menu entries for was done via the command-line, KLV has given everything a full, 'absolute' $PATH to its launcher.....so everything is still working, 100%, without any messing about at all. I'm well impressed with that.

Posting from the 'rooted' Chrome-portable in KLV "Airedale" at its new home right now.

You've excelled yourself with this thing, Erik! I LIKE it......and for me, that's saying something nowadays.

Mike.

[wiak]

Whilst still a few missing utilities (particularly for wd_changes=RAM2 use, which allows optional rsync saving of per-session boots) everything in this KLV proving pretty solid and useful.

Should be relatively easy to modify this build to provide alternative Desktop Environment - obviously JWM/Rox is a Puppy favourite, but I'm an Openbox/tint2/pcmanfm fan so I might steal configurations for that out of my WDL_Arch64 distro for use in the KLV-airedale build, though I guess the result might be called something different from Airedale? I should try and use a nicer looking Start Menu than my WDL_Arch provides - I tend to not care about eye-candy unless it provides truly useful additional functionality for the extra resources generally involved with fancy-DE-tricks. XFCE is nice though - comes with lots of integrated utilities, which is a bonus for sure. So if I do produce an Openbox/tint2/pcmanfm variant expect horrible-looking Start Menu on my first stab. I became a fan of Openbox/tint2 through years of using fredx181 debiandogs, but I didn't copy his much nicer openbox menu config method but instead followed absolutely basic Arch Linux wiki config, so no doubt fredx181 could easily make anything I release look a lot better...

However, I mistook my left-index finger for a thin tree branch yesterday and lacerated it badly with a hand saw so typing with less fingers than usual right now and not fit for doing much of anything despite this being summer here now (less computing in summer anyway).

[wiak]

@rockedge:

wondered if you recalled where you posted the command you are using to build the iso; I keep forgetting such details (despite my cherrytree notes memory...)?

[Clarity]

Had no problem is booting, directly, the ISO files for Alpha 3 or 4. But Alpha 5 is struggling when boot attempts via the 2 Boot Listers on my BIOS mode 64bit PCs.

Should I post, or wait on next update to alpha?

[wiak]

Whilst I haven't finished this (or produced an iso as yet) I have taken rockedge's under development build plugin for KLV-Airedale, removed the XFCE components and created a somewhat simply configured Openbox/tint2/pcmanfm (desktop pinboard) version, which is booting fine, per the attached screenshot.

Thus not far away at all for this KLV (based partly on KLV-Airedale) release.

It will be released as an alpha1, but I will endeavour to keep it somewhat synchronised with developments as they proceed on KLV-Airedale. I will of course start a second thread for this one simply to cover developments related to Openbox/tint2/pcmanfm desktop configurations - main thread otherwise should remain KLV-Airedale though since that is where I will be reading and posting for the majority of parts that will be in common.

As you may see, it is very easy to make these alternative Desktop versions by modifying the under development build plugin, which will always use the latest Void packages any time a new build is made. Whilst it is possible to include different Desktop Managers in the same build, that method will add some bloat, but it is so easy to simply run the modified build plugin without that disadvantage.

[wiak]

Configuring Openbox/tint2/pcmanfm variant with octoxbps as per KLV-Airedale

[rockedge]

@rockedge:

wondered if you recalled where you posted the command you are using to build the iso; I keep forgetting such details (despite my cherrytree notes memory...)?

Here are the three main commands I have most recently used:
This command is to squash the firstrib_rootfs that is created uncompressed by the build scripts:

Code: Select all

mksquashfs firstrib_rootfs 07KLV-airedale_rootfs.sfs  -b 1048576 -comp xz -Xdict-size 100% -noappend

To make the ISO with /boot containing the boot mechanism

Code: Select all

mkisofs -b boot/isolinux/isolinux.bin -c boot/isolinux/boot.cat -D -l -R -v -V "KLV-Airedale" -no-emul-boot -boot-load-size 4 -boot-info-table -o "KLV-Airedale-alpha5.iso" KLV-Airedale-alpha5

This is run directly after the mkisofs :

Code: Select all

isohybrid KLV-Airedale-alpha5.iso

[rockedge]

Had no problem is booting, directly, the ISO files for Alpha 3 or 4. But Alpha 5 is struggling when boot attempts via the 2 Boot Listers on my BIOS mode 64bit PCs.

Should I post, or wait on next update to alpha?

Thank you for the report @Clarity
That is odd! I will need to look into that more! Alpha5 is using the exact same system as Alpha4.

Do you have more information on what is happening?

[rockedge]

@wiak somewhat strange is in alpha5 I am using the 5.15.6 Puppy Linux kernel, but using the matching firmware.sfs this machine (Dell PowerEdge R210 II) will not connect to eth0 or eth1. They are "seen" but do not function. I swapped in the firmware.sfs from the huge kernel 5.3.70-rt40 and all the network systems function.

So in alpha5 one sees uname -a the 5.15.6 kernel is loaded, but the firmware SFS comes from 5.4.70-rt40

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[bigpup]

Swapped out the files from alpha3 version with the ones from the alpha 5 version in a directory I have named klvpup.
Used the same boot menu entry I was using in a Grub4dos boot loader menu, I use to boot this drive.

Not used it very much, but a few things I noticed.

Very much improved in general operation.
A lot of stuff, I had issues in earlier alpha's, just work now!

I use etho wired connection for network connection.
It booted to desktop and automatically did everything to give me a working etho connection.
It was already working, when the desktop showed.

I looked in the boot directory, that is in the ISO, to see what you have in it.
Looking at the stuff in the grub directory.
grub.cfg file has all entries for Fossapup64 9.0.5
menu_phelp.lst file seems to be about Fossapup64 stuff.
Not sure why there is a menu.lst.bak file.

The SFS load program, you are using, is new to me, and maybe I just do not understand how to use it.
I got it to load a SFS package with no problem.
But not exactly clear, how to unload it, or what is even loaded, to unload.
Seems to me, SFS-Load-On-The-Fly would be a better program, to have.
.

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.
.
One program I use a lot is Pup-Sysinfo.
I installed it and got it to run.
But it is only providing about 50% of the info it usually provides.
Files it usually uses to provide the info, are not there, or do not provide the info, in a way it can use.

[rockedge]

One program I use a lot is Pup-Sysinfo.
I installed it and got it to run.
But it is only providing about 50% of the info it usually provides.

That is good news. Definitely want this to work. Which version are you trying?

The Load-SFS-on-the-fly operates differently than the Load_SFS in KLV. One uses AUFS and the other is designed for overlay systems and uses symlinksI am about to work on the /boot directory and the configurations. Something is blocking up a clean boot as where alpha4 boots just fine. Same code slightly different config. The original /boot directory comes directly from Fossapup64

[bigpup]

Pup-Sysinfo 3.1
Got it from here:
viewtopic.php?t=3557

I am using it as a SFS package, I made of the pet package, loaded by SFS Load.

But it is only providing about 50% of the info it usually provides.
Some items show nothing.