If you remove a built in package, is in layered fs or in the pup sfs?

[vtpup]

Finally a thank you to misaligned -- that was probably a real solution method. But too difficult to do because VLC's dependencies are so numerous. And because many of those dependencies are no longer available from the Ubuntu repositories. Bu you were absolutely correct in what you suggested.

[Misaligned]

vtpup, sorry I just now saw you had troubles with the find command. I tried it here on a fresh Tahr 6.05 and it worked. gave me a list of all .wh files. - you could try this one " find ./ -name '.wh.*' " , but it seems like you are done with it.
Have you tried to find and run an AppImage of vlc? This might be another option.

[amethyst]

Try

Code: Select all

cd /initrd/pup_rw
find . -name "*.wh.*" -type f -delete

and reboot after changes are saved.
or
if it's a savefile > boot without it, mount it after the boot, run the above commands (cd to the name of the mounted folder first), unmount, boot with the savefile.

[vtpup]

Amethyst, Misaligned, sorry, but as mentioned above I was already able to find .wh files. Also deleting all of them globally would likely cause even more problems in the case of correctly .wh-ed entries.

As also mentioned, I just decided to give up on Tahr32 and use OS Bionic64 from here on out, I will just visit Tahr32 on occasions where I need to run some old oddball program that doesn't work elsewhere (mostly old Wine engineering programs). I won't need VLC while there.

When Tahr VLC was running it was not able to show some new video formats -- the Tahr default was an old version, now seemingly obsolete. That was in fact the reason for trying to upgrade it -- and the botched upgrade was the cause of all of the current problems. I believe the upgrade was auto-aborted partially because Ubuntu Tahr archives have now been stripped of many dependencies. Well that's my guess anyway.

So thank you all for trying so hard. I just think it was a rabbit hole of obsolescences, and it was time for me to bite the bullet and move on.

[amethyst]

@vtpup
I take the point that you have moved on now. Just as a matter of interest though - I do not see how removing/deleting all whiteout files alone could have led to more problems. Remember, none of these files are actually deleted from the base sfs but only hidden by the system (unless you have done a remaster afterwards). Worst that could have happened is that files that you really wanted to "delete" from the base sfs would not be hidden anymore. It's your unsuccessful upgrade of vlc and gawd knows what else you did that caused the issues. One of the reasons I never use a save file or save folder. I've had this corruption of a save file before and it's not fun to sort it out. I never install anything and only work with read-only sfs files so nothing can go wrong. So, all the additional programs I want to use are loaded as extra sfs files and small system configuration changes are saved to an adrv. Have been working like this for years.

[vtpup]

@vtpup
It's your unsuccessful upgrade of vlc and gawd knows what else you did that caused the issues.

That was unnecessary.

[Misaligned]

@vtpup, I know you already moved on. But just out of curiosity, I felt the urge to give this another try. And I was able to successfully reactivate vlc. It is somewhat tedious and there are a few more steps involved if you have some more built-ins removed.

I did this on new Tahr 6.0.5 usb install, so after removing vlc. I rebooted into ram mode, to avoid loading the savefile.

Step 1: mount your save file and open a terminal at this location. To doublecheck you can type pwd.

Step 2: type "find ./ -name ".wh*" > ~/disabled.txt" (this will write the output of find into a text file in your
home folder. Since I only removed vlc, it was easy to locate the files listed and delete them. If you
have more then one built-in removed, you have to check the dependencies listed in the .packages
folder.)

Step 3: After deleting the .wh files, unmount the save file and reboot with savefile enabled.

Step 4: Now you have to hunt down some more .wh files. Again "find / -name ".wh*" > ~/disabled1.txt"
Now this is the tricky part, there are some more files listed, then what you need to delete.
So, only delete the obvious files, like those who have vlc in the path or name.

Step 5: In the terminal run "fixmenus" and then restart jwm, you may have to restart X. And that should
be it.

Attached are two text files which list the .wh.files that need to be removed. vlc_disabled_savefile.txt, lists
the files that need to be removed from the mounted savefile. The other file list the .wh.files that need to be removed from the running system.

There might be an easier way of doing that. After going through the whole process, I would not recommend removing built-ins, unless you are absolutely sure you won't need them again.

Maybe there should be a mechanism in Puppy to reactivate apps that have been removed?