jackalpup 0.0 - (rc3) plug and play audio puplet

[geo_c]

I keep everything at 48000 for consistency. However the ardour devs recommend using alsa with ardour unless you have a specific need to use jack, like to run jack apps alongside ardour that don't have a plugin. With alsa, ardour needs to be the only one using the soundcard.

That's interesting, because I have run Ardour both ways since using jackal, but I seem to remember that Ardour was originally an all jack application. So it's a little surprising seeing them recommend ALSA. Of course if there are no other applications being run in jack and connected, that makes perfect sense. Why add the extra layer?

[puddlemoon]

Hi
So I've been tinkering along still. Working toward a final version of 0.0
I have uploaded the latest iteration including an .img file for a new (better?) install option. It's a wip but so far so good.
The image contains a fat boot partition and an ext4 main partition. It can be used with dd in linux and with balena etcher from windows.

The .img is zipped with 3 scripts, easydd, for a simple safe way to dd from linux, one script to mount the image at 2 temporary mount points next to the .img, and one to unmount and remove the mount points. So current jackalpup installs can be updated by grabbing the .sfs files from the 2nd partition. (note to use the mount scripts, the files can be moved but need to stay together). If using a mainstream linux run the scripts in a termial with sudo.

The boot partition has boot files for refind (uefi) which is ready to boot, and also grub4dos for legacy bios. Grub4dos needs to be rerun to boot (select, only this device and do not rewrite menu.lst) but the boot flag is set.
The main partition is 1.3 gb and the remainder of the drive will be unallocated so one will need to expand the partition with gparted or similar before making a save. The .img can also be dd'd to an internal drive for a fresh full install of course. Just make sure it's the one you mean.

This version has some interesting changes...
--Updated, Mixxx, odin2 (ydrv)l, geonkick, guitarix, pkg2, kx-repos, palemoon (puppy.sfs) Cardinal (puppy, adrv)
--Removed Sequencer64... just has been too much work to get it sort of working. imo there are better options on board.
--Now using the 5.13 rt1 as default kernel
--New addition, Bespoke Synth. This is a very special one man project. A modular DAW environment so to speak. Not quite like anything else. It is also a plugin host but only vst. Until now I have stripped all the vst out in favour of lv2 but This is worth throwing a few in.
--Added AirWindows starter kit (plus some extra) these are very clever mix/mastering plugins with no special gui. cool guy and nice sounds. Odin2 is a rather large plugin so I switched to the vst3 as it seems to play well with Bespoke. Also included the Vitalium and zynaddsubfx vst3.
--Ildeail is a vst3 plugin that is an lv2 plugin host... essentially a mini wrapper for carla without the patchbay. there are 3 versions, Synth for all the instruments, FX for well... effects and Midi, for all the midi utilities. So with ildaeil you can still run all the lv2 in Bespoke but without the ability to modulate the parameters from the main host.
-note, I have had some odd behavior with some plugins in Bespoke (like slow to respond) and one of my machines crashes with most vst that have a gui. (the graphics card is suspect). Consider saving your state or using autosave before adding too many...
There is a quick help for Bespoke and DIN in jackal-info. Also included a little script there to enable natural scrolling for touchpads (: I think that's it...

Enjoy

disk image

unzip to usb

hybrid iso

[geo_c]

Well, I downloaded rc3 but haven't installed it yet. I did some jazz trio recording using Jackalpup at the studio yesterday, and tried out my new very groovy Soundcraft MTK-12 board/interface. It's small but powerful, and sounds great. I have used soundcraft boards in the past, and they have a certain predictability in the mic pre-amps. Clean and clear.

Life is much easier now that 'class-compliant' is the thing, because after all 'it works on mac' so now audio companies make sure that equipment can work in unix without specialized drivers.

This board is plug and play, and if I set it as the hardware in jack, then ardour creates a new project automatically set up with 14 tracks and the inputs all properly routed. I wasn't expecting ardour to do that, so that was a treat.

The board is particularly groovy because it's a quality build, and small enough to tote to gigs and multi-track.

https://www.soundcraft.com/en/products/signature-12-MTK

And for $590USD it came with 4 20' xlr cables, and a carrying bag in bundle from Sweetwater.

[puddlemoon]

Nice! Glad to hear this puppy is staying busy.
Yes, my first midi controller was "class compliant" but still the drivers were not part of the linux kernel at that time, not until 4.xx, almost 5.xx that it finally worked. I felt like a second class citizen when I spoke to arturia, who had zero interest in making any effort towards linux driver... Things are much better now.
I am using a 20 year old behringer board now with a recent 8 channel sound card, also behringer. Nice to have both but would be good in a different way to have a more compact all in one setup.. Thanks for the tip.
But yeah, amazing possibilities when all your ins and out on the card/mixer are exposed in the software. I have ironically spent the last many months intentionally omitting the computer entirely while exploring hardware synths and only just recently diving into the integration of the two. Mind boggling possibilities! My card also has a 5pin midi in/out so even more ways to integrate. To me, the addition of cardinal and bespoke pretty seriously raises the bar and opens up some very dynamic workflows. But I think in modular these days (:

[bob93]

Hi friends.
... ...
-adrv (161 MB) adds Ardour 6.6, calf rack, some more synths and several hundred more plugins.
... ...
So if you have a need, interest, curiosity... Please try it out.

Hi. I was looking on the forum for a newer version of Ardour than the one that comes with fossapup64 and I stumbled upon this thread. I'd like to ask, is Ardour 6.6 the newest version available on this pup, or is it possible to update it further? thank you

[geo_c]

Hi friends.
... ...
-adrv (161 MB) adds Ardour 6.6, calf rack, some more synths and several hundred more plugins.
... ...
So if you have a need, interest, curiosity... Please try it out.

Hi. I was looking on the forum for a newer version of Ardour than the one that comes with fossapup64 and I stumbled upon this thread. I'd like to ask, is Ardour 6.6 the newest version available on this pup, or is it possible to update it further? thank you

The short answer is no. Jackalpup is a remaster of fossapup64_9.5, and there are too many crucial libraries, like C libraries that will break the system trying to upgrade.

I know because just last week I made an attempt to install Ardour Debian SID packages and dependencies on fossapup F96_CE4 in. It broke the system beyond repair.

In order to use the most recent Ardour you will have to use a very recently built pup or KLV.

I run KLV-spectr and KLV-airedale with pipewire-jack and all the available jack audio applications available in the Void Linux repos. See here: viewtopic.php?p=112232#p112232 This link is for KLV-spectr which is a tiling window manager and takes some experience using. KLV-airedale uses Xfce window manager and is more conventional. I haven't created an "08layer" for Airedale though, only for Spectr. You can can use the OctoXbps package manager in KLV-airedale-SR10 to install any audio apps you'd like, though to use jack apps on pipewire there are a few considerations, like DON'T install jack audio server, instead install the pipewire-jack library.

Ardour updates versions quite frequently and it's beneficial to use a pup that's able to take advantage of a rolling release package manager. I use KLV distros for that reason among others, and Ardour is always maintained and upgraded in the Void repo.

[bob93]

I know because just last week I made an attempt to install Ardour Debian SID packages and dependencies on fossapup F96_CE4 in. It broke the system beyond repair.

Holy sh...

Actually, I think I'm OK with Ardour 6.6. It has the main thing I was looking for which is the latency info on the toolbar.

Now, what's bothering me about this jackalpup is that I can't seem to be able to change the folder icons as seen in Rox. I tried changing the icons from jwm settings manager but nothing happens.

[geo_c]

Actually, I think I'm OK with Ardour 6.6. It has the main thing I was looking for which is the latency info on the toolbar.

Now, what's bothering me about this jackalpup is that I can't seem to be able to change the folder icons as seen in Rox. I tried changing the icons from jwm settings manager but nothing happens.

Rox has a menu in Rox Options to choose which icons it uses separately from JWM. The JWM/Rox interaction takes some getting used to. The "pup standard" icons are for desktop and menus mostly, and if you want complete system icons they are in a different location. I'd have to boot a pup and take a look to give you the whole scope.

[bob93]

Yup, I was under the false impression that Rox icons could be changed from jwm settings manager.
Now there's only one thing left to do. Change the system theme text color from cyan to white. I think I have to edit a text line for that, but there's a bunch of files in the theme folder. Do you know which one it is?

[geo_c]

Yup, I was under the false impression that Rox icons could be changed from jwm settings manager.
Now there's only one thing left to do. Change the system theme text color from cyan to white. I think I have to edit a text line for that, but there's a bunch of files in the theme folder. Do you know which one it is?

I think you'll have to fiddle with gtkrc in the theme gtk-2.0 folder first, which might do it, but you probably have to edit the gtk.css in gtk-3.0 folder also.

You can install any themes you like by downloading them from gnome-look.org and copying them to usr/share/themes. I actually have about 100 themes sitting on my hard drive and I symlink them to /usr/share/themes so I can use them all in different distros.

If you want to see just how far I took that concept, see this thread: viewtopic.php?t=7229

It works!

note: my desktops and themes look a lot a better now than the screenshots posted in that old thread.

[puddlemoon]

Hi folks. Long time no chat…

Yes the the theme endeavor in puppy has been painstaking. @geo_c has dialed it in much further than I. I have also been away from the computer for a year or so now so it’s all a blur. I actually have a final version with a much refined theme that I never uploaded… but we are all so particular it started to seem redundant.

Glad to see there is still some interest anyway (:
I am still using it and for the record I have had no problem updating to Ardour 7.xx as it is largely self contained.

Thanks for chiming in people

[geo_c]

Hi folks. Long time no chat…

Yes the the theme endeavor in puppy has been painstaking. @geo_c has dialed it in much further than I. I have also been away from the computer for a year or so now so it’s all a blur. I actually have a final version with a much refined theme that I never uploaded… but we are all so particular it started to seem redundant.

Glad to see there is still some interest anyway (:
I am still using it and for the record I have had no problem updating to Ardour 7.xx as it is largely self contained.

Thanks for chiming in people

Great to hear from you!

What repository did you use to load that Ardour7 package? Or did you compile?

Ardour didn't stick with version 7 very long before moving to 8, which I found rather annoying, but Ardour8 is running really well in the KLVs.

[bob93]

I just realized I cannot get jack running.
On the live cd it worked, however since I installed the pup qjackctl is showing the error "Cannot lock down 82280346 byte memory area (Cannot allocate memory)". The full log is this:

Code: Select all

Cannot lock down 82280346 byte memory area (Cannot allocate memory)
22:45:11.622 JACK was stopped
22:45:11.623 Post-shutdown script...
22:45:11.623 killall -9 jackd jackdbus a2jmidid
22:45:11.623 JACK has crashed.
killall: jackd: no process killed
killall: jackdbus: no process killed
killall: a2jmidid: no process killed
22:45:12.040 Post-shutdown script terminated with exit status=768.
22:45:13.617 Could not connect to JACK server as client. - Overall operation failed. - Unable to connect to server. Please check the messages window for more info.
Cannot connect to server socket err = No such file or directory
Cannot connect to server request channel
jack server is not running or cannot be started
JackShmReadWritePtr::~JackShmReadWritePtr - Init not done for -1, skipping unlock
JackShmReadWritePtr::~JackShmReadWritePtr - Init not done for -1, skipping unlock

I tried changing some settings before starting such as selecting dummy driver but it still doesn't start What could be the problem here? Why would it work fine on the live cd but not start after installing the pup?

[geo_c]

I just realized I cannot get jack running.
On the live cd it worked, however since I installed the pup qjackctl is showing the error "Cannot lock down 82280346 byte memory area (Cannot allocate memory)".

What kind of install did you do, and on what kind of partition, ntfs or ext, and did you make a savefile, or are you running in ram?

I don't really know what's causing that, but if it's a memory issue maybe one of those variables might have something to do with it.

I will say that the jackalpup I used for 3 years was not the most recent version @puddlemoon published. Mine never had any issues starting jack, or any issues at all (Ardour was another story, and tended to be buggy about opening projects on different machines)

The more recent version that perhaps you're using may be a differnt kernel/firmware combination.

[bob93]

What kind of install did you do, and on what kind of partition, ntfs or ext, and did you make a savefile, or are you running in ram?

Installed to an ext3 partition. If I go to the livecd and mount that partition I see two folders: jackalpup-0.0frugal and lost+found, so I guess the type of install is frugal. In other puppies I've seen the option to either do a frugal or full install, however I didn't see any of that on this live cd. I just opened the installer, selected "internal hard disk/ssd", then the partition and then OK.

I did create a savefile which was recommended during first shutdown. The savefile is called jackalpup-save and it's inside the jackalpup-0.0frugal folder along with initrd, vmlinuz and some sfs files
Did I make a mistake? should I have installed jackalpup differently?

I will say that the jackalpup I used for 3 years was not the most recent version @puddlemoon published. Mine never had any issues starting jack, or any issues at all (Ardour was another story, and tended to be buggy about opening projects on different machines)

The more recent version that perhaps you're using may be a different kernel/firmware combination.

I'm using jackalpup rc1 full (the 923MB ISO). Is that the jackalpup you used for 3 years?

[geo_c]

I did create a savefile which was recommended during first shutdown. The savefile is called jackalpup-save and it's inside the jackalpup-0.0frugal folder along with initrd, vmlinuz and some sfs files
Did I make a mistake? should I have installed jackalpup differently?

I'm using jackalpup rc1 full (the 923MB ISO). Is that the jackalpup you used for 3 years?

It looks like you probably have a solid install.

Now, as to what version I've used, looking back through this thread, it may be the kernel package from rc-0 combined with the adrv, ydrv of rc1. Later tonight I'll break out one of my installs and look at it closely.

I could upload my working files and give you a link.

I retired my jackalpup usage about 6 months ago when the KLVs included pipewire and I could run all the jack apps in the pipewire framework. So I need to fire jackalpup back up to look at it thoroughly. Jackalpup continued to work for me, but being that the pipewire works so well and is updated in the Void rolling realease, it seemed time to make the leap.

[geo_c]

The more recent version that perhaps you're using may be a different kernel/firmware combination.

I'm using jackalpup rc1 full (the 923MB ISO). Is that the jackalpup you used for 3 years?

Here's a link to a gzip of my jackalpup known to work on lots of different machines.

https://mega.nz/file/bT41FbwD#mMaZPxtma ... ipCyT6bwM4

You should be able copy into a folder and more or less copy the stanza you used to boot your install. Just give the folder a different name and change the boot stanzas to match.

[puddlemoon]

Hi @bob93
Try to select your main sound card again in qjackctl I have seen the default settings not work after install occasionally if I remember correctly. It should be something like ‘hw:PCH’ unless you’re using a usb card.
Also, for the rox filer icons, if you right click to bring up the menu, go to >options >types >themes to change icons (:
Thanks for checking it out. I May as well go ahead and upload a final version soon. Better late than never I suppose. It’s true that pipewire changed the game and fossa is pretty dated but it really should be done. For the archives…

[Clarity]

I think I rejected this when I found samba+findsmb missing. If this is a woofCE distro please include. If a remaster, it would be nice if operational OOTB ... same as FossaPUP64.

Thanks for consideration.

Edit: I just checked and found that it would not boot in a QEMU VM from its ISO file. Issues with your boot folder and GRUB2 mixed up.

[bob93]

Hi @bob93
Try to select your main sound card again in qjackctl I have seen the default settings not work after install occasionally if I remember correctly. It should be something like ‘hw:PCH’ unless you’re using a usb card.
Also, for the rox filer icons, if you right click to bring up the menu, go to >options >types >themes to change icons (:
Thanks for checking it out. I May as well go ahead and upload a final version soon. Better late than never I suppose. It’s true that pipewire changed the game and fossa is pretty dated but it really should be done. For the archives…

Default qjackctl settings are
driver: ALSA, realtime: yes, sample rate:48k, and there's 3 options for the Interface (I have no external audio interface, I want to use the built in one).

I went through the 3 options and also tried a few other iterations such as changing sample rate to 41k, to no avail. Even dummy driver doesn't work. This is what I get:

Code: Select all

08:12:08.898 Startup script terminated successfully.
08:12:08.899 JACK is starting...
08:12:08.899 /usr/bin/jackd -r -ddummy -p1024
08:12:08.911 JACK was started with PID=14190.
jackdmp 1.9.12
Copyright 2001-2005 Paul Davis and others.
Copyright 2004-2016 Grame.
Copyright 2016-2017 Filipe Coelho.
jackdmp comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY
This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it
under certain conditions; see the file COPYING for details
JACK server starting in non-realtime mode
self-connect-mode is "Don't restrict self connect requests"
Cannot lock down 82280346 byte memory area (Cannot allocate memory)
08:12:08.994 JACK was stopped
08:12:08.994 Post-shutdown script...
08:12:08.994 killall -9 jackd jackdbus a2jmidid
08:12:08.995 JACK has crashed.
killall: jackd: no process killed
killall: jackdbus: no process killed
killall: a2jmidid: no process killed
08:12:09.412 Post-shutdown script terminated with exit status=768.
08:12:10.951 Could not connect to JACK server as client. - Overall operation failed. - Unable to connect to server. Please check the messages window for more info.
Cannot connect to server socket err = No such file or directory
Cannot connect to server request channel
jack server is not running or cannot be started
JackShmReadWritePtr::~JackShmReadWritePtr - Init not done for -1, skipping unlock
JackShmReadWritePtr::~JackShmReadWritePtr - Init not done for -1, skipping unlock

I installed jackalpup with the rc1 ISO. Perhaps I'll be lucky if I try the rc3 ISO?

[grey38]

This is a really really cool remaster. I love seeing these puppys built for a specific purpose.

[captainkennway]

@globetrotterdk yes, I have realised that those instructions were vague at best. Sorry for that.
Easy for uefi but slightly more involved to get legacy going. I have updated that part of the post to be more clear I hope.

Hmm indeed, odd that you are having more issue with what "should" be the more stable kernel. The main reason for the jumble of those different uploads was to make the 5.10 low-latency kernel optional because there was a shutdown issue with some hardware.
Perhaps the 5.10 will be better for you after all, certainly the choice if you want to use the nvidia drivers. (which are not included in any puppy that I know of and would need to be added after install)
If you start with the 14-3-21.zip, then add the puppy_jackalpup.sfs, you will be caught up and in good shape to troubleshoot.
I don't already know the answers but am happy to brainstorm. Everything works on the machines I have to test with.

@gyrog
Thanks for the interest. It is a side issue so to speak but it is the main method I use when booting via usb. The method could use some refinement no doubt. A script that would install g4d to the drive and leave the menu.lst and other drives alone would be cool but beyond me currently.
Another big advantage is to have the ability to exchange sfs files so that the bootable usb can be updated (or in this case kernel swapping) without a save or persistence.
If you do download... the ydrv and ardv are optional addons so you can slim it down that way

I am enjoying working with jackal pup. Great standalone guitar amps and nice DAW. I can't run tuxguitar on it though, I had the same issue with fossa, read somewhere about timidity installation. timidity 2.14 already installed,yet no run on tuxguitar clicking.