EasyOS Scarthgap-series version 6.3.1

[Caramel]

Here are the files /var/log/Xorg.0.log (=/mnt/wkg/.session/var/log/Xorg.0.log) after 2 boots from fresh installs of easy 6.0, one with language=de and another language=fr (Remove the false gz extension)

Xorg.0.log-de.gz

(43.09 KiB) Downloaded 18 times

Xorg.0.log-fr.gz

(34.57 KiB) Downloaded 19 times

The real differences start with "config/udev"

In fr

[ 40.568] (II) config/udev: Adding input device Logitech USB Laser Mouse (/dev/input/event1)
[ 40.568] (**) Logitech USB Laser Mouse: Applying InputClass "libinput pointer catchall"
[ 40.568] (**) Logitech USB Laser Mouse: Applying InputClass "evdev pointer catchall"
etc

In de

[ 43.619] (II) config/udev: Adding input device Power Button (/dev/input/event3)
[ 43.619] (**) Power Button: Applying InputClass "libinput keyboard catchall"
[ 43.619] (**) Power Button: Applying InputClass "evdev keyboard catchall"
etc

Still so mysterious

[TerryH]

Last week I did a new manual frugal install to my internal NVME drive of Easy 6.0 (5.93) RC1, adding a boot stanza to existing Grub2. No easyos issues have been indentified, all has been running well. I have just used the update process. Once again the update went well, with Easy 6.0 running very smoothly.

Above I stated that I had no easyos issues, but I did have an issue, which I have had since 5.8, which as has been mentioned here had issues. The issue which I have now fixed, seemed to start with Easy 5.8. I was having boot issues that the keyboard wasn't being identified in some installations on my Asus laptop. With EasyOS it caused the Keyboard it caused the Keyboard selection dialogue to be run on each boot, as per first boots. I had initially thought it was something due to issues with 5.8.x, and didn't link it to the other installs where I had no keyboard on cold boots( reboots weren't affected).

The penny dropped and some web searches I found on the Linux Mint forum, that others with Asus laptops were having keyboard issues. The fix was to add i8042.probe_defer , as a boot command line parameter.

So with no issues EasyOS is running really well. Thank you for this excellent release, it's very much appreciated.

[BarryK]

Federico,
That is good news you have identified the culprit.

Now all we have to do is find out why.

You are not the only German user of EasyOS, there is at least one other.
He probably hasn't tried QV or Easy 6.0 yet.

[FeodorF]

Federico,
That is good news you have identified the culprit.

Now all we have to do is find out why.

You are not the only German user of EasyOS, there is at least one other.
He probably hasn't tried QV or Easy 6.0 yet.

Nobody mentions this - why not?
It happens with the us image as well as with the de image.

WhyDidNobodyReportOnThisIssue.png (49.53 KiB) Viewed 1815 times

[BologneChe]

@FeodorF @BarryK

I have this window that appears that I want to select a variant of the Canadian keyboard layout (ca)

[Federico]

Federico,
That is good news you have identified the culprit.

Now all we have to do is find out why.

You are not the only German user of EasyOS, there is at least one other.
He probably hasn't tried QV or Easy 6.0 yet.

@ Barry K

I will be for ever grateful to you for having given me the honour to cooperate with you.

@ everyone

Please accept my apologies if sometimes I look a little pedantic / bookish. Being an engineer I'm used to develop new things or to let already existing things work and obviously I have difficulties to accept things which do not work as expected without any reasonable explanation (there must be an explanation).
Since I had already reported issues with the X server on Quantum Vis one month ago and did not receive any reply / solution about that, I started even to think that something was not OK with my flash drives.

[Federico]

Nobody mentions this - why not?
It happens with the us image as well as with the de image.
WhyDidNobodyReportOnThisIssue.png

Yes I've also noticed that. It doesn't seem to have any consequences: settings are saved despite the error message.

[BarryK]

@FeodorF @BarryK

I have this window that appears that I want to select a variant of the Canadian keyboard layout (ca)

I found the cause, fixed, see blog post:

https://bkhome.org/news/202406/xkb-conf ... r-bug.html

Everything else works for me.
I don´t know why FeodorF is getting an error.

[don570]

A quick way of testing whether a script has illegal non-ASCII characters
is to use the utility --> xgettext

For example if the script_name is 'textstrings'
Here is terminal output...

Code: Select all

# xgettext -L shell textstrings
xgettext: Non-ASCII string at textstrings:50.
          Please specify the source encoding through --from-code.
# 
# xgettext --from-code=UTF-8 -L shell textstrings

https://oldforum.puppylinux.com/viewtop ... 55#p686255

[measter]

Just reporting a positive in EasyOS 6:

I dl/ed xkbset_0.8-1_amd64.deb from debian's site (us.debian.org/debian/pool/main/x/xkbset) and installed.

It works just fine. I like sticky keys, so I use it to turn on sticky keys, no twokeys, no latchlock, no expiry.

I also learned about what Scarth Gap means and the story of A. Wainwright

[BarryK]

I also learned about what Scarth Gap means and the story of A. Wainwright

Very interesting

https://wainwrightlakelandsketches.co.u ... carth-gap/

...kind of makes the wallpaper appropriate!

[tammi806]

I also learned about what Scarth Gap means and the story of A. Wainwright

Very interesting

https://wainwrightlakelandsketches.co.u ... carth-gap/

...kind of makes the wallpaper appropriate!

How do you choose/pick the names of your releases.

[bugnaw333]

Very interesting

https://wainwrightlakelandsketches.co.u ... carth-gap/

...kind of makes the wallpaper appropriate!

Beautiful!

[FeodorF]

@BarryK

@FeodorF @BarryK

I have this window that appears that I want to select a variant of the Canadian keyboard layout (ca)

I found the cause, fixed, see blog post:

https://bkhome.org/news/202406/xkb-conf ... r-bug.html

Everything else works for me.
I don´t know why FeodorF is getting an error.

I have looked at Kirkstone rules and it looks like this - we are missing more than one link. Beside xorg.lst I have also added xorg.extra.xml and xorg.xml

xkb_rules.png (33.4 KiB) Viewed 1474 times

I am still trying to get the German version to work on my Lenovo BIOS PC from 2010 -Intel Core Duo-, but I end up with black screens. The English version works just fine !

[Caramel]

Here are the files /var/log/Xorg.0.log (=/mnt/wkg/.session/var/log/Xorg.0.log) after 2 boots from fresh installs of easy 6.0, one with language=de and another language=fr (Remove the false gz extension)Xorg.0.log-de.gzXorg.0.log-fr.gz

In the file from the installation in German(de), there are lines with "removing" like this

[ 44.045] (II) config/udev: removing GPU device /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:04.0/0000:01:00.0/drm/card0 /dev/dri/card0
[ 44.045] xf86: remove device 0 /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:04.0/0000:01:00.0/drm/card0
[ 44.045] failed to find screen to remove

There are no such lines in the installation in French

if it means anything to anyone...

Unless I'm mistaken, the files for the germen locales in Easy are
- /usr/share/i18n/locales/de_DE
- the .mo files in /usr/share/locale/de/LC_MESSAGES
(EDIT: another file : /usr/locale/de)

The only thing I noticed is that 2 files (desksetup.mo and usns.mo) are dated from 2029, but it was already the case in Easy 5.8.3.

There is also a directory de.us-ascii in /usr/share/locale

[Federico]

Regarding scripts, I think that commands and parameters are never translated: they are always just in english, regardless of the system locale. So I don't think that the issue is caused by german umlauts or italian / spanish accents.
Arguments of scripts, like file and folder names for example, may differ depending on the system locale.
Maybe one command still uses the english name for a folder as argument, wheras it should correspond to the name used for it in the german translation etc... etc...
Or perhaps some translation strings are still missing for the new operating systems and therefore some windows / pieces of the UI cannot be built / shown.

[FeodorF]

@BarryK
I have added the links within '/etc/X11/xkb' and '/usr/bin/xkbconfigmanager' works fine now. Using the English version with German keyboard now (ß ö ä ü and so on) .

added-links-for-xkb-rules-work.png (33.81 KiB) Viewed 1440 times

[FeodorF]

@BarryK
Something is still off.
I have set up the German keyboard - and cold restarted - but Pup-SysInfo still shows 'Keyboard us'.
At the same time 'Configure Xkb Layout' reports 'You are currently using the following Layout(s): de German (which is true: äöüß).

German_keyboard.png (38.91 KiB) Viewed 1424 times

[BarryK]

Just to let you know, I'm busy working on my trike tonight and tomorrow.

If you guys haven't solved the de black-screen problem by the weekend, I'll take another look at it.

Last night I made a copy of the .session folder at second bootup and again at third bootup
--- and it is very frustrating, as they are almost the same!!!

I used the 'cmptree' utility to compare the two folders.

Obviously there has to be some difference that is causing the black screen!!!

Also, I confirmed that fr locale is ok.

[Caramel]

It seems the problem comes from the script clean_desk_icons (called by /root/.xinitrc itself called by xwin) that do not stop in Easy 6 with german language.

Here is an smaller script with the problematic part.

Code: Select all

!/bin/sh

export LANG=C

ONEDRV=sda

DRVMODEL1="`grep -o '<Summary>.*</Summary>' /root/.pup_event/drive_${ONEDRV}/AppInfo.xml | cut -f 2-9 -d ':' | cut -f 1 -d '<' | tr -s ' ' | rev | cut -f 3-99 -d ' ' | rev | sed -e 's%^ %%'`"

echo $DRVMODEL1

To test, replace sda with the name of your drive

The script works in Easy 6 with french language but not in Easy with german language. (No problem if export LANG=C is omitted)

Still mysterious for me

[Federico]

It seems the problem comes from the script clean_desk_icons (called by /root/.xinitrc itself called by xwin) that do not stop in Easy 6 with german language.

Here is an smaller script with the problematic part.

Code: Select all

!/bin/sh

export LANG=C

ONEDRV=sda

DRVMODEL1="`grep -o '<Summary>.*</Summary>' /root/.pup_event/drive_${ONEDRV}/AppInfo.xml | cut -f 2-9 -d ':' | cut -f 1 -d '<' | tr -s ' ' | rev | cut -f 3-99 -d ' ' | rev | sed -e 's%^ %%'`"

echo $DRVMODEL1

To test, replace sda with the name of your drive

The script works in Easy 6 with french language but not in Easy with german language. (No problem if export LANG=C is omitted)

Still mysterious for me

Do you mean /sbin/clean_desk_icons? Why didn't you post the whole script? It's not that long.
I don't have the lines beginning with ONEDRV and DRVMODEL1. Maybe the session needs to be saved once beforehand?
I'm going to give it a try.

[Federico]

@ Caramel

I commented the line export LANG=C inside the script and it really seems to work: I saved the session 5 times. The only non-normal thing which still happens is that, when the X server doesn't start automatically and you have to manually type xwin (this has always happened sometimes for me, since Easy Dunfell) I get this:

Screenshot.jpg (77.44 KiB) Viewed 1305 times

It doesn't even leave me time to type anything: the screen gets immediately filled up with all that stuff and the system freezes.

Anyway, thank you and congratulations! How did you find out that? You are for sure a profound connoisseur of the operating system.

The only remaining point is: what happens if that line is removed / commented? I assume that an environment variable is missing within the system. Are there any consequences? And why does it cause issues only when using certain locales? We should ask Barry.
And finally, this should also be tested on Quantum Vis.

[Caramel]

@ Caramel

How did you find out that?

---
And why does it cause issues only when using certain locales?

We needed a new approach.

(EDIT : We can use /mnt/wkg/.session to modify EasyOS6 via another OS in graphical mode. Nevertheless we can also modify EasyOS6 staying in it but we must work in text mode if the X server do not work)

In Easy 6 the last line before the black screen mentions /root/.xintric.
In .xinitrc, we add lines of test like this

Code: Select all

echo MARK1 >> /root/test

to folllow the script execution.

The last marker (written in /root/test) was before the execution of clean_desk_icons. So we add lines of test in this script too.
Thereby the problem with the line 78 appeared.

line 78 :

Code: Select all

DRVMODEL1="`grep -o '<Summary>.*</Summary>' /root/.pup_event/drive_${ONEDRV}/AppInfo.xml | cut -f 2-9 -d ':' | cut -f 1 -d '<' | tr -s ' ' | rev | cut -f 3-99 -d ' ' | rev | sed -e 's%^ %%'`"

I have made the small script cited in my previous message to check.

The problem with German comes from the word "Größe" found in /root/.pup_event/drive_${ONEDRV}/AppInfo.xml . In French it's "Taille" and in English "Size".

I don"t know why it's a problem in Easy 6 and not previously.

(EDIT : I don't know why X is not broken at the second boot because the files Appinfo.xml exists after the first save of session)

[Caramel]

I don"t know why it's a problem in Easy 6 and not previously.

(EDIT : I don't know why X is not broken at the second boot because the files Appinfo.xml exists after the first save of session)

The problem comes from the command rev when LANG=C. In this case, rev only recognizes the C characters.

With a character like ö or ß rev freezes in EasyOS 6 hence clean_desk_icons do not stop and x do not start.

There is also a problem in EasyOS 5.8.3, but this time rev stops with an error, clean_desk_icons stops and X can start. The script clean_desk_icons did not actually execute but there are probably few visible consequences.

In fact if the pup_event_icon_change_flag exists in /var/local, the problematic part of clan_desk_icons with the command rev is not executed. In the second boot of EasyOS this file exists and so X starts in this case

[Federico]

You know, it's very complex and there are still too many open questions from my side:

- What is exactly the script clean_desk_icons used for?

- What is the computation of the reversal of strings needed for?

- If the rev command doesn't work for special characters of foreign languages, can we maybe use another command or program? A more recent version of it (we are using 2.39.3)?

- If I simply issue:

Code: Select all

# echo Größe | rev
eßörG
#

Hence, there doesn't seem to be any problems with german characters... why is that?

- Did Barry and his students directly program all of this or were chunks of code provided by other people around the world?

I think that what we found out can anyway already be a good base for Barry.

[Caramel]

You know, it's very complex and there are still too many open questions from my side:

- What is exactly the script clean_desk_icons used for?

- What is the computation of the reversal of strings needed for?

- If the rev command doesn't work for special characters of foreign languages, can we maybe use another command or program? A more recent version of it (we are using 2.39.3)?

- If I simply issue:

Code: Select all

# echo Größe | rev
eßörG
#

Hence, there doesn't seem to be any problems with german characters... why is that?

- Did Barry and his students directly program all of this or were chunks of code provided by other people around the world?

I think that what we found out can anyway already be a good base for Barry.

There is an error with rev only if LANG=C

Code: Select all

export LANG=C
echo Größe | rev

(I think it's even impossible to type and to display Größe when LANG=C)

The problematic part would be useful in case user "have swapped removable drives while pc turned off." (see line 69 of the script). This is a very rare situation

PS for @BarryK : the script retrieves the description of the drive ONEDRV from the Summary line of /root/.pup_event/drive_${ONEDRV}/AppInfo.xml removing start and end of the line.
This description is also available in the file /root/.pup_event/drive_${ONEDRV}/info in a line without non-english characters

[Federico]

@ Caramel

Your base of knowledge about EasyOS is incredibly wide and precise. You look to be one of Barry's students.

I just wanted to add that if I manually add the variable through:

Code: Select all

# export LANG=C
# echo $LANG
C

I can't even type ä ö ü Ä Ö Ü ß on the Sakura shell any more: when I press the keys nothing happens. Only when I press the key for ö, this appears:

Code: Select all

(arg: 6) 

No idea what that means. The keyboard is OK because if I type those characters anywhere else (Geany, a browser etc...) the characters do appear.

If I remove the variable through:

Code: Select all

# unset LANG
# echo $LANG

the situation does not change: the ability to type umlauts and ß onto the shell does not come back. I checked the available locales with:

Code: Select all

# locale -a
C
POSIX
de_DE.utf8
en_AU.utf8
en_CA.utf8
en_GB.utf8
en_NZ.utf8
en_US
en_US.utf8

and, the ability to type umlauts and ß onto the shell comes back if I set the LANG environment variable to de_DE.utf8:

Code: Select all

# export LANG=de_DE.utf8
# echo $LANG
de_DE.utf8
# äöüÄÖÜß

So, now testing what happens if I simply change the line from export LANG=C to export LANG=de_DE.utf8 inside the clean_desk_icons script.

[Federico]

@ Caramel

Very well: I rebooted saving the session and the system keeps working. The locale is now automatically correctly set:

Code: Select all

# echo $LANG
de_DE.UTF-8
# 

On this Internet page I found the following info:

<< The C locale is a special locale that is meant to be the simplest locale. You could also say that while the other locales are for humans, the C locale is for computers. In the C locale, characters are single bytes, the charset is ASCII (well, is not required to, but in practice will be in the systems most of us will ever get to use), the sorting order is based on the byte values¹, the language is usually US English (though for application messages (as opposed to things like month or day names or messages by system libraries), it's at the discretion of the application author) and things like currency symbols are not defined. >>

So maybe the problem is just that that line on the clean_desk_icons script which sets the system locale should be changed from export LANG=C to export LANG=de_DE.utf8 automatically when the user chooses Deutsch as language at the first boot, but for some reason that does not happen and the default C locale is left on the script. Just speculating.

[BarryK]

Great that you guys have chased down that de bug. I'll get onto implementing the fix soon.

Still working on my trike plus other stuff, but took some time today to fix various bugs in 6.0:

https://bkhome.org/news/202406/more-bug ... os-60.html

[FeodorF]

@Caramel , @BarryK
While doing some more testing I ran into this problem:

Code: Select all

find: ‘/home/vivaldi/.cache/doc’: Permission denied
find: ‘/sys/firmware/acpi/tables’: Input/output error
/usr/bin/filemnt: Zeile 109: losetup-FULL: Kommando nicht gefunden.
stat: der Aufruf von statx für '' ist fehlgeschlagen: No such file or directory
/usr/bin/filemnt: Zeile 175: losetup-FULL: Kommando nicht gefunden.

filemnt refers to losetup-FULL, but it does not exist.
losetup exists and returns f.e.:

Code: Select all

# losetup
NAME       SIZELIMIT OFFSET AUTOCLEAR RO BACK-FILE              DIO LOG-SEC
/dev/loop0         0      0         1  1 /mnt/.easy_ro/easy.sfs   0     512

# losetup-FULL
bash: losetup-FULL: command not found
#