Precise Extra

[amethyst]

Removed

[ally]

bad link

[amethyst]

Yeah, Google has a problem with the file, I've uploaded to Mega. See new link.

[amethyst]

See edit to first post.

[amethyst]

See this post for using vdpau as Video Output for this Puppy: viewtopic.php?p=68567#p68567 Highly recommended, makes a huge difference on my machine.

[amethyst]

Now running with glibc2.30 libraries. Should run the very latest 32-bit Palemoon and Seamonkey browsers. See first post for download link of new bdrv (5MB download).

[keniv]

@amethyst
Given my limited success in getting RacyExtra to work and the fact that I've seen a number of other posts mentioning PreciseExtra I thought I'd give it a try. I followed your instructions above. I used the "new bdrv" from
https://mega.nz/#!RDQ3lIaZ!QvTBNlFmLpsk ... pjXePEx844
I used the 5.4.158 32bit pae kernel from
https://archive.org/download/Puppy_Linu ... ae.tar.bz2
and renamed rename kernel-modules.sfs-5.4.158-oz-pae to zdrv and vmlinuz-5.4.158-oz-pae to vmlinuz as you suggest. All of these files I placed in a directory called 22preciseextra on sda2 formatted as ext3. The contents of this directory are shown in the image below. I'm booting with grub4dos. The menu.lst entry is also shown

Code: Select all

title PreciseExtra (32bit) (sda2/22preciseextra)
  find --set-root uuid () 60e6917a-e1db-44f9-8d58-6f0df737eeb5
  kernel /22preciseextra/vmlinuz pdrv=60e6917a-e1db-44f9-8d58-6f0df737eeb5  psubdir=/22preciseextra pmedia=atahd pfix=fsck
  initrd /22preciseextra/initrd.gz

This boots to a desktop but this desktop appears to be frozen. The only way to get out of this is to do a hard shutdown. I do not know where to go from here other than try the other kernel. I therefor have two questions.
1) Do you have to be an expert to get RacyExtra or PreciseExtra to work?
2) Has anybody got either of these to work and if so can I ask if they would be good enough to post and tell me how it was done. I am sure that one or other of these would be useful to me if I could just get them to work.

[mikewalsh]

@amethyst :-

Just out of curiosity, Nic, what are your hardware specs? What do you run?

I'm only asking because I'm wondering if it may provide some clues as to why these work properly for you, yet not for Ken.....or me either, for that matter. Neither will boot properly on either of my machines, though I have a sneaking suspicion that in MY case, at least, the GPUs may be to blame. A discrete Nvidia GPU - by choice - on the big rig, and a built-in Nvidia mobile chip in the 'new-to-me' Dell Latitude D630 lappie. The latter gives me no choices for an alternative; I'm stuck with it, since it's soldered to the mobo.

For me, both will boot but are totally unusable, due to the fonts rendering as though a spider dipped its feet into an inkwell then crawled across the screen..! They're completely illegible....

Mike.

[amethyst]

@amethyst :-

Just out of curiosity, Nic, what are your hardware specs? What do you run?

I'm only asking because I'm wondering if it may provide some clues as to why these work properly for you, yet not for Ken.....or me either, for that matter. Neither will boot properly on either of my machines, though I have a sneaking suspicion that in MY case, at least, the GPUs may be to blame. A discrete Nvidia GPU - by choice - on the big rig, and a built-in Nvidia mobile chip in the 'new-to-me' Dell Latitude D630 lappie. The latter gives me no choices for an alternative; I'm stuck with it, since it's soldered to the mobo.

For me, both will boot but are totally unusable, due to the fonts rendering as though a spider dipped its feet into an inkwell then crawled across the screen..! They're completely illegible....

Mike.

See next post and first post.

[amethyst]

@mikewalsh and others.
Had another go at it, hopefully with better results. Added an improvement package. See first post for details, etc. There was also an alternative adrv for Racy Extra posted in the Racy Extra thread which seemed to work for another poster on his machine.

[keniv]

@amethyst

@mikewalsh and others.

Well not mikewalsh I'm afraid, just an "other".
I've used your improvement package and this has transformed Precise Extra. It now seems to be working pretty well. I've found some problems on setting up two of which were easy to solve.
1) I set up the wifi using Simple Network Setup. This worked but gave no persistence on reboot Tried using the same tool a couple of times but the problem persisted. Used the Internet Connection Wizard to select Dougal's Network Wizard which worked with persistence.
2) I could not set to a UK keyboard on QuickSetup first run settings. Nothing showed in the box. I tried using the Mouse/Keyboard Wizard. However, the only choice shown here is the US keyboard. I haven't solved this. Is it possible to set the keyboard using a terminal? If so can you tell me how it's done.
3)Had the trouble with no sound but this was solved the same way as it was in Racy Extra.

I'm using kernel 3.14.56 but a newer kernel may also work.

I'm using kernel 5.4.158-oz-pae as was originally recommended. Should I change to kernel 3.14.56?
Have not tried the palemoon 31.3.0.1 .sfs. I'm still using Mikes portable version from which I'm posting. I have not done much testing other than that which I've outlined above. Any help with setting the keyboard to a UK keyboard would be appreciated. I've attacked an image of my desktop.

Regards,

Ken.

[amethyst]

@keniv
Questions 1 & 2 - None of these things have been changed from the original Precise release so it is what it is. This version of Simple Network Setup does not seem to save settings (didn't save my wireless settings either). I suppose one can rip a newer version of Simple Network Setup from a newer Puppy and try to use it with this Puppy . The US keymap seems to be the only one available with this Puppy (built into the Xorg version that is used with this Puppy, I think). As far as I know there is very little difference between the US and UK keyboard layout anyway?
No, use the kernel you want to use which works best with your hardware. The 5-kernel was mentioned as an upgrade that also works on my machine. I use an old series kernel because I don't have the newest hardware so the necessary drivers are available for me in the old kernel. I also use the old kernel to keep the system as small as possible.

[amethyst]

@mikewalsh
It will be interesting to know which new browsers (new versions) will work with this Puppy. We know that Palemoon and Seamonkey will/should work. I'll be very surprised if one gets Firefox and Chromium going. Since you have packaged a lot of different portable browsers, I was thinking which of the 32-bit ones will work? It will be very useful information. Thanks

[keniv]

@amethyst
Have fixed the keyboard issue by copying the the /lib/keymaps directory from racy to precise and running Mouse/Keyboard Wizard and selecting UK. /etc/keymap also now shows as UK and the keys like " and @ which are reversed in the US keyboard now work properly. Have also changed to the 4.4.95 kernel as I hope to use this on a 32bit machine. The 3.14.56 kernel did not work for me. Boot up stopped with an error and would not move on and required a hard shutdown.

Regards,

Ken.

[amethyst]

@amethyst
Have fixed the keyboard issue by copying the the /lib/keymaps directory from racy to precise and running Mouse/Keyboard Wizard and selecting UK. /etc/keymap also now shows as UK and the keys like " and @ which are reversed in the US keyboard now work properly. Have also changed to the 4.4.95 kernel as I hope to use this on a 32bit machine. The 3.14.56 kernel did not work for me. Boot up stopped with an error and would not move on and required a hard shutdown.

Regards,

Ken.

[keniv]

@amethyst
I thought I would try to load the palemoon 31.3.0.1.sfs. I removed the desktop icon for the portable version from the desktop. When I tried to load the .sfs version I got the "mount point" message shown in the image below. I did not choose to add a "new mount point" as it was not recommended. I looked at the load sfs box again shown in the second image bellow. I wondered if the bdvr and cdvr had to be loaded in this way thinking that they might be loaded anyway at boot up. Is this the case and if so can I unload bdvr and cdvr from the load sfs box so as to leave a mount point for palemoon 31.3.0.1 .sfs? If I can't do this can I load palemoon 31.3.0.1 .sfs using boot manager?

Regards,

Ken.

[amethyst]

Just ignore the new mount point warning and choose yes/OK. It was just a general warning at the time the Puppy was released because I think additional mount points were deemed "experimental" at the time. I've never had problems with it. You shouldn't be able to unmount additional drives (which were loaded automatically at bootup) during a session and you shouldn't try to unmount them as this will definitely mess up your system. The editing of the initrd to envoke the use of additional drives is technical and still deemed "experimental" at his stage. It may in some way impact with the sfs_load script (which deals with loading of extra sfs files during a session) and the sfs_load script may also need to be edited to be "safer" but in all the years I've been using/experimenting with these additional drives I have never had issues in normal operating conditions despite never editing the sfs_load script as well. But this is all technical and I'm not going into this any further, safe to say it has been working well for me over the years. Still, the envoking of the additional drives are not Puppy standard and still deemed "experimental" at this stage (only a very few of us have actually experimented with this sofar) so it's a matter if you want to go with the "experiment" or not. The addition of the adrv and ydrv were only implemented after the original Precise release (I think the Tahr release was the first to have it) so these additional drives won't be possible if you were to boot the original Precise release and its initrd and kernel back then. The newer kernels and modification of the initrd have made the implementation of the additional drives possible (with efforts like mine to extend the implementation to even more additional drives like the bdrv,cdrv, etc,) If you want to get rid of the adrv, bdrv and cdrv, you can always incorporate its contents into the base sfs but obviously you will then lose the added advantage of the "modular benefits" it brings.

[keniv]

@amethyst

Just ignore the new mount point warning and choose yes/OK.

I did this and loaded palemoon 31.3.0.1.sfs. I spent sometime setting this up including making a .desktop file. All appeared to work as expected, however, I rebooted the machine and again I saw "the next boot will be faster text" and the positions of the Lock, Zip and Trash icons on the desktop had moved similar to the problem I had with in Racy Extra. I rebooted several times and each time what I described above was repeated. I unloaded palemoon 31.3.0.1.sfs and rebooted. The first time I did this I saw "the next boot will be faster text" but on successive reboots this message had disappeared and the desktop icons stayed in place. I decided to try loading palemoon 31.3.0.1.sfs using boot manager. This worked but what I've described above was repeated.

The editing of the initrd to envoke the use of additional drives is technical and still deemed "experimental" at his stage.

I thought what I described might point to a problem here so thought it might be better to convert the palemoon 31.3.0.1-1.gkt2_i386.deb into a .pet. On a search of the forum I found deb2pet.rpm3pet-0.0.4.pet (which is quite old) and I downloaded and installed it. This first extracted the .deb then produced a .pet. This .pet did appear to install but I could find no evidence of palemoon files having been installed. The palemoon.deb was 39MB and extracted was 110MB but the .pet was tiny so I assumed the deb2pet process had not worked. I'm not sure if I used the app correctly. If you know of a method to convert a .deb to a .pet would you be good enough to tell me how it's done so as I can make a palemoon 31.3.0.1-1.gkt2_i386.pet

Regards,

Ken.

[amethyst]

I don't use a save file so don't experience your issues (neither did I when I tested a save file on my machine when using Racy so don't know the origin of your problems).The loading of extra sfs's (a lot of sfs's) is not a problem. I have about 7 extra sfs's loaded, it's not an issue. But if you do want to install Palemoon as a .pet > Extract with UExtract > place the extracted folder in /root and rename it to say Palemoon > run dir2pet Palemoon from terminal (Just click OK all the way through the process). But this will probably not work with Precise if .deb files can't be handled so you will have to do the conversion with a newer Puppy which has the deb modules.

[keniv]

@amethyst
Thanks for the information on how to make a .pet from a .deb which I have followed and now have a palemoon-31.3.0.1.pet. I was able to install this without problems. I have set it up and I'm posting from it now. I have rebooted and shutdown and rebooted and I'm not seeing the problems that I was when I was using the palemoon.sfs.

Still, the evoking of the additional drives are not Puppy standard and still deemed "experimental" at this stage

I think that my problems in in using the .sfs version both in racy and precise extra could be to do with the above though I know you're not seeing these problems. I don't really understand why this should be other than it could be to do with the use of different hardware though given that most people that use puppy will have different hardware yet still get it to work I do wonder about this. However I'm now able to use the newest version of palemoon on precise extra. I also intend to try this .pet on racy extra and see if it solves the problems I had with it.

Regards,

Ken.

[amethyst]

@amethyst
Thanks for the information on how to make a .pet from a .deb which I have followed and now have a palemoon-31.3.0.1.pet. I was able to install this without problems. I have set it up and I'm posting from it now. I have rebooted and shutdown and rebooted and I'm not seeing the problems that I was when I was using the palemoon.sfs.

Still, the evoking of the additional drives are not Puppy standard and still deemed "experimental" at this stage

I think that my problems in in using the .sfs version both in racy and precise extra could be to do with the above though I know you're not seeing these problems. I don't really understand why this should be other than it could be to do with the use of different hardware though given that most people that use puppy will have different hardware yet still get it to work I do wonder about this. However I'm now able to use the newest version of palemoon on precise extra. I also intend to try this .pet on racy extra and see if it solves the problems I had with it.

Regards,

Ken.

You could also have tried booting the palemoon sfs as an additional drive like a ddrv instead of loading it as an extra sfs file. This could make a difference because the additional drives have preference to the base sfs. The additional drives can't be a problem per se because if it were a problem your system wouldn't function because the loading of the bdrv (with the glibc) for example is essential. I have always loaded Palemoon as an extra sfs file and have never had problems (but then again I never use a save file either). Extra sfs files are loaded with the sfs_load script which is a brainchild of Shinobar, I think.

[mikewalsh]

@amethyst :-

Nic;

With regard to other 32-bit browsers....

As you say, you know Pale Moon and/or SeaMonkey either do (or ought to) work with this re-master as-is. It's a slightly different story where Firefox and Chromium-based browsers are concerned.

Firefox - You could probably run the last-but-one Firefox ESR okay (v91.9.1.0). I doubt you'll have much luck with the current ESR (v102), or indeed any Firefox after about 101. Mozilla have altered their compiling environment, somehow; it's no longer dependent on just a newer kernel or newer glibc.....they've altered things so that a whole heap of newer system binaries/dependencies are now required. Because I'm not a Firefox user, it's not a priority for me to find out what.

Chromium (and 'clones') - With the exception of certain individual 3rd-party builders, all the clones have switched to 64-bit only. The 32-bit Chromium builds that peebee produces are based around releases built by AlienBob over at Slackware.....who has taken the source code and compiled the entire thing from scratch. However, if I understand it correctly, these have been built to work against the 32-bit build of Slackware-current (Slackware 15.0?) So, again, they only work in very new, up-to-date 32-bit Puppies.....and Peter is about the only Puppy dev still producing these on anything like a regular basis.

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

Fact - I happen to be a single, full-time carer, looking after my elderly Mum, who's not far off 90. This last few months, she's had a protracted 'rough spell', which basically means I've had very little time for 'play' (and Puppy, for me, definitely comes under this category). It's why I haven't produced very much in the way of new packages, for instance......and I just haven't had time to experiment with Precise Extra.

On top of this, the replacement for the anciente Dell Inspiron 1100 is another Dell - this time a Latitude D630.....only this one's stuck with an Nvidia mobile GPU. I don't have any other options, and I think this is at the root of why older Puppies - although they'll boot - have such godawful graphical reproduction on this machine. Seems the older kernels/dependencies/runtime environments of older Pups don't play nice with older Nvidia chips; even the older 'nouveau' kernel driver modules aren't happy on this machine. Newer 64-bit Puppies are OK, because I can compile and run the 'official' drivers on here.....but older 32-bit Puppies are proving to be a real handful, and I simply haven't got the time to troubleshoot properly.

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

These older 32-bit Pups just won't run on the big rig, the HP Pavilion desktop, at all. It's UEFI - no old-style BIOS stuff here - and all older Pups before Tahrpup look for something called 'VESA BIOS extensions' during boot. Because they can't find them on this machine, they stall, and refuse to boot to desktop.

The upshot of all this is that anything pre-Tahrpup just won't fire up on the HP.....which is very annoying, because I had some sweet Pups running on the old Compaq desktop before it died at the beginning of 2020. From Tahrpup onwards, Pups began to use certain UEFI-compatible modules which allowed them to run with the hardware, even though they still need to be run in 'Legacy' mode.

Top and bottom of the matter, in certain respects I now have some rather uncooperative hardware! And that's why I mostly stick with 64-bitzers nowadays.......because they're much more amenable, in addition to running a lot more up-to-date software.

Mike.

(EDIT:- I DO have a 'portable-chroot' SFS build of the last 32-bit Iron (v89) available to try. But I don't think this would appeal to you, because it's using a complete basic build of Xenialpup 7.5.....which in the expanded, 'loaded' state consumes almost 1200 MB of RAM (including the portable-Iron in the chroot's /opt). I don't think you have an awful lot of spare RAM to 'waste' like that, do you?)

[amethyst]

Okay, so we are basically stuck with Palemoon and Seamonkey as far as old Puppys go (which is what I thought would be the case). Still useful though as Palemoon remains my default browser. I use Chromium very seldomly to access some hard-nosed google sites which do not seem to want to work too well with other browsers. I do however hate that awful error page report of Chromium which goes something like "aw!!! something went wrong blah blah blah". Reminds me of the dreaded Windows blue screen. Palemoon seems to be less error prone, hardly have any problems with it. As for Firefox, just never liked it. Thanks for checking.

[sucuklu yumurta]

I'm just seeing this, I'll try and report back

Bunu unutmadım değeli dostum, Deneyip geri bildirim yaparım
I haven't forgotten that, my dear friend, I'll try and report back

[amethyst]

I'm just seeing this, I'll try and report back

You will be able to use the very latest Palemoon 32-bit when you use the upgraded glibc2.30 as mentioned in the first post, guaranteed. For an even older and smaller system: viewtopic.php?p=68497#p68497

[sucuklu yumurta]

I'm just seeing this, I'll try and report back

You will be able to use the very latest Palemoon 32-bit when you use the upgraded glibc2.30 as mentioned in the first post, guaranteed. For an even older and smaller system: viewtopic.php?p=68497#p68497

Racy Resurrector sfs files
220 + 87 = 307 mb
Firefox can be 500 mb if I can install one of the older versions
For an even older and smaller system with continue to expand...

[amethyst]

I'm just seeing this, I'll try and report back

You will be able to use the very latest Palemoon 32-bit when you use the upgraded glibc2.30 as mentioned in the first post, guaranteed. For an even older and smaller system: viewtopic.php?p=68497#p68497

Racy Resurrector sfs files
220 + 87 = 307 mb
Firefox can be 500 mb if I can install one of the older versions
For an even older and smaller system with continue to expand...

Just use Palemoon for these old Puppys, it's the best option in terms of an up to date browser and the easiest to get working. I like Palemoon, it's still my primary browser even with the newer Puppys.

[sucuklu yumurta]

If there was something like this plugin for Pale Moon I would use it, other plugins redirect links, this one translates directly, I like Pale Moon too, no other reason.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo ... ginas-web/

[ally]

a quick google...

https://addons.palemoon.org/extensions/?all=1

https://realityripple.com/Software/XUL/BabbleOn/

hth

[mikeslr]

If there was something like this plugin for Pale Moon I would use it, other plugins redirect links, this one translates directly, I like Pale Moon too, no other reason.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo ... ginas-web/

.

See this post, https://www.forum.puppylinux.com/viewto ... 667#p89667, but note its Caution and its last paragraph. Typing 'Translate' into the Search box of Classic Addons reveals 57 relevant addons. I have no idea of how many 'updated' versions for each of those. From experience, it's generally best to test with the newest first, then work you way backward if necessary.