No desktop? share your virtual terminal hacks

[williwaw]

gpm came installed with fossa? Perhaps a configuration file is in fossa also

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/General_purpose_mouse

[williams2]

I'm not running Fossapup but I mounted the Fossa .sfs files,
and FossaPup64 seems not to have a gpm executable,
It does have a script to download source and Linux-From-Scratch patches to compile gpm.

/var/packages/builtin_files-norm/gpm
/usr/share/buildpet/internet/gpm.bp

[geo_c]

I'm not running Fossapup but I mounted the Fossa .sfs files,
and FossaPup64 seems not to have a gpm executable,
It does have a script to download source and Linux-From-Scratch patches to compile gpm.

/var/packages/builtin_files-norm/gpm
/usr/share/buildpet/internet/gpm.bp

Well that was the weird part. It said "already installed" on the ppm, came up in the list of built in packages, but none of the files were where they were in the debian package. So I think that in fact it was not actually built in.

So maybe if I compile it, it'll run?

[williams2]

The service returned started, but this gave me no mouse at all.

If you use an init.d script, you need to configure the mouse (in /root/.config/)
You need to tell it the /dev .. mice/ directory,
and you need to tell it what kind of mouse you are using. eg imp2

it could click, but it wouldn't open anything. It would simply leave a dead cursor where clicked.

What are you trying to click?
I could drag the mouse over text to select the text.
then I could middle click to paste in the shell input (where you type commands to the terminal, which get passed to the shell)

Are you trying to click in an app like mc (Midnight Commander) ?
Software like that needs to be compiled with mouse support,
and may need to be configured to enable the mouse support.
And not everything would be clickable.

When running X (xorg, xwindows, wayland) you can click most of the desktop without anything happening,
but there are certain places that are clickable, like an icon that is clickable and is configured as a link to something. But most places on the desktop pinboard do nothing when clicked.

In this Firefpx window, there are many places to click, but most places on the window will do nothing if clicked (like the text that I;m typing, or the text of the posts, or just about anywhere that there is no button.)

[williams2]

So maybe if I compile it, it'll run?

Compiling an app is often the best way to get an app that is compatible with your environment (library files, especially libc, and all the other applications, and hardware drivers.etc)

And if you are lucky, it might just need

Code: Select all

./configure
make
make install

to compile.

But there is always the possibility of dependency hell.

[geo_c]

If you use an init.d script, you need to configure the mouse (in /root/.config/)
You need to tell it the /dev .. mice/ directory,
and you need to tell it what kind of mouse you are using. eg imp2

Yes, that's the line I used which you posted earlier. I ran that line after starting the service with the debian package installed. But it seems to 'work' without gpm installed at all, though it doesn't make a selection, just the dead cursor.

What are you trying to click?
I could drag the mouse over text to select the text.
then I could middle click to paste in the shell input (where you type commands to the terminal, which get passed to the shell)

Are you trying to click in an app like mc (Midnight Commander) ?
Software like that needs to be compiled with mouse support,
and may need to be configured to enable the mouse support.
And not everything would be clickable.

Yes I tried mc, tilde, ranger, mutt, etc... I'm pretty sure mc is compiled with the gpm mouse support, because the config file has the options for mouse settings enabled, and gpm's website says mc was one of the first adopters of gpm.

I think I will probably try compiling gpm.

[geo_c]

So ranger file manager in urxvt is working perfectly in fossapup after installing all the dependencies from https://packages.debian.org/buster/ranger at the suggestion of @williwaw. It previews all scripts, html, jpgs, audio files, configs, in the terminal, everything except video files which open an mpv window.

However when I use ranger in tty2, the jpgs don't preview or open. Ranger also previews file info with the mediainfo dependency installed. So that's nice as it works in tty. I'm wondering if a tty terminal just doesn't have the capability of displaying graphics.

Should I look further into configuring tty?

[williwaw]

http://www.svgalib.org/rus/zgv/#download

[geo_c]

http://www.svgalib.org/rus/zgv/#download

So I looked into this last night, and it gave me pause. The svgalib page has the following information, and I'm not sure what to make of it. I suppose I could just install it on a backup save and see what happens:

glibc2 Or libc.so.5?

You probably know that libc is the library that includes all the standard C commands (such as printf, read, open, etc.and so on) as well as system calls. Up until 1997, the only library available was the GNU libc v1, which since the move to ELF binary format was given major number 5 (/lib/libc.so.5). In 1997, the Free Software Foundation developed GNU libc v2, with the intention of being cleaner, more portable, and more standard (POSIX compliant). Under Linux, this version got major number 6, hence it's called libc6. These two libraries are incompatible -- if a program is compiled with one libc's headers and stubs, it can't be used with the other. Some of the distributions (RedHat since version 5, Debian since 2, SuSE since 6, and Slackware since 4) have moved to libc6 (meaning that most binaries are compiled with libc6, and the development environment contains libc6 headers and produces programs that work only with libc6). The distributions still contain libc5, as well as other libraries that are linked with libc5, in order to run libc5 binaries, which will usually be programs where the source is not available (such as Quake, etc). The problem is that if a user of the system wants to use a new version of one of thoese libraries, s/he can't compile them, because only libc6 programs or libraries can be produced.

- Matan Ziv-Av

[Burunduk]

I'm wondering if a tty terminal just doesn't have the capability of displaying graphics.

Have you tried fim? It works well on Fossapup64. You can install it from the PPM.

[geo_c]

Have you tried fim? It works well on Fossapup64. You can install it from the PPM.

fim runs very well, I haven't figured out how to get ranger to use it yet, short of making it the default system image viewer. I'm just reading the fim docs now after using it a bit. I'm glad I decided to read, because the doc README.first has a warning not to use ctrl-C, ctrl-D, or ctrl-S or it will break the terminal graphics. Interesting because I went right to TTY2 before reading that, and I opened a jpg from mc, and then had trouble closing fim, and I think I hit q almost by accident which quit!

The README.debian says that the debian binary is missing some compile options, so I'm going to see what those are and if they look good, I might uninstall and do a compile.

I'm posting from elinks in tty2 at the moment, and one thing that's funny is how much better the console looks than in an terminal emulator. I could probably configure urxvt with smaller fonts and get this general look, but I don't think it will be quite the same.

Making a lot of use of things like w3m, pdftotext, fim, ranger, and getting around a console without the X crutch pretty well now. One thing that I was really happy about was 'previewing' audio files in ranger. They play in the tty console. I'm not sure what tool is playing them yet.

[geo_c]

update on using Ranger file manager. Bottom line, it's great!

I've been using it about 90% of the time while keeping midnight commander open for for some copying. One reason for that is I run ranger in 'miller view' with a preview window, and mc is on hand for some dual pane work.

Ranger has been teaching me vim commands, dd yy pp, and all that. A quick press of the "?" key gives a list of all the commands. I did some changemod with ranger keys, and also some batch pdftotext conversions with the shell command "!"

The one thing I really like about ranger is being able to preview pdf files simply by moving over the file. They display as text, but that's usually what I need to see, and it makes for really fast file organization of pdf libraries. I can't do this kind of quick preview with ROX or Xfe. Same goes for image files previews. Ranger displays them, but I do get some blackout marks a certain percentage of the time, which seem to come from the file list extending over the preview pane.

Also I use ranger for organizing audio files, usually short instrument samples I use in jackalpup. Enter key on the file plays it in the terminal with ffmpeg and exits.

The only real terminal function I'm missing now is playing video files. Jackalpup has mp built in, but ranger pops open an xorg window to play the video, so I don't think that will be working in tty.

[williwaw]

The only real terminal function I'm missing now is playing video files. Jackalpup has mp built in, but ranger pops open an xorg window to play the video, so I don't think that will be working in tty.

does ranger pop open an xorg window when you are in a virtual terminal or are you running ranger in a terminal emulator on the desktop? (urxvt, xterm, etc).

speaking of mp, have you seen some of the music apps from the same dev?

https://triptico.com/software/ahxm.html

[geo_c]

does ranger pop open an xorg window when you are in a virtual terminal or are you running ranger in a terminal emulator on the desktop? (urxvt, xterm, etc).

speaking of mp, have you seen some of the music apps from the same dev?

https://triptico.com/software/ahxm.html

xorg pops open a window from urxvt, but I got it wrong on mp, what I meant to say was mpv for playing video.

Actually, tty isn't displaying video or images. I thought I had that working, but I've been using Jackalpup for a month, so I need to go back to my Fossapup install and try it there. I may not have both systems up to date with each other application wise.

[Burunduk]

It's not a hack but perhaps it might be useful for someone. The recent posts about the python http server have reminded me of the busybox ftpd applet. Running tcpsvd -vE 0.0.0.0 21 ftpd -wA /files/to/serve (this is a command from ftpd --help) on one device and the midnight commander file manager on the other allows to transfer files in a local network (ftp is not encrypted) and works very well except for one small annoyance: mc clutters the bash history file with nonsense like:

Code: Select all

 cd "`printf '%b' '\0057root'`"
 cd "`printf '%b' '\0057root\0057my\0055documents'`"
 cd "`printf '%b' '\0057root'`"

The fix is simple: export HISTCONTROL=ignoredups is not good enough for mc,
it should be export HISTCONTROL=ignoreboth (in /root/.bahrc or /etc/profile) to exclude from the history commands that start with a space.

By the way, mc should be able to connect to a ssh server too.