Slacko Puppy 7.0

[mikewalsh]

@puppy_apprentice :-

I understand that USB modems are often seen as a drive mount-point, due to them frequently having an additional port to plug a microSD card or similar in. I used them myself in the past, so I know all about that.

But I can honestly say this is the first time I've ever seen one show up as "sr0"; the primary optical drive mount-point...!! (Mind you, seeing it's a Huawei, I wouldn't put anything past 'em...)

Mike.

[puppy_apprentice]

Windows shows it as CDROM and Linux too. SR0 is read-only modem internal flash memory with Windows drivers. I can mount it from Pmount app, but icon doesn't show on desktop (so it is cosmetic bug). Bionic showed icon after insertion. SR0 icon is showed in S7.0 only on desktop when modem is inserted into usb port during boot. This computer doesn't have optical drive but when i plug-in external optical drive (LiteON) icon shows on desktop immediately.
https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic ... 748#p13748

Edit: sr0 icon appears after Xorg reset.

[TerryH]

@puppy_apprentice :-

I understand that USB modems are often seen as a drive mount-point, due to them frequently having an additional port to plug a microSD card or similar in. I used them myself in the past, so I know all about that.

But I can honestly say this is the first time I've ever seen one show up as "sr0"; the primary optical drive mount-point...!! (Mind you, seeing it's a Huawei, I wouldn't put anything past 'em...)

Mike.

Just guessing here, but maybe something to do with the iso9660 f/s type which is displayed being optical disc file system type.

[Sage]

Slacko 7.0 - brilliant, thanks a bunch.
Both versions 64 & 32bit boot from CD on all my 64bit machines, BIOS & UEFI, AMD & Intel straight into the DT but the 32bit version refuses to start up on any of my 32bit machines giving 'failed to find bootable source' or some such - double checked d/l and discs - all fine. Anyone else having this problem? Are there some files that need juggling around from another version? how to do it? other suggestions?

[MagicZaurus]

Windows shows it as CDROM and Linux too. SR0 is read-only modem internal flash memory with Windows drivers. I can mount it from Pmount app, but icon doesn't show on desktop (so it is cosmetic bug). Bionic showed icon after insertion. SR0 icon is showed in S7.0 only on desktop when modem is inserted into usb port during boot. This computer doesn't have optical drive but when i plug-in external optical drive (LiteON) icon shows on desktop immediately.
https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic ... 748#p13748

I can observe something similar. I'm running Slacko 7 (32-Bit) in Virtualbox and when I virtually insert a CD the CDROM icon doesn't show up on the desktop, but it shows in Pmount and I can mount it there and access the contents. In Bionicpup32 the CDROM shows up on the desktop. But really not a problem, just need to know that can use Pmount.

Compiling of the the Virtualbox Guest Addition drivers works after loading the DEVX and Kernel Sources SFSes. The drivers run and screen resizing and mounting folders from the host works fine, however once activate Mouse Integration, then mouse pointer disappears. Again not a problem, as everything works fine without the Mouse Integration, just one additional key press to switch between host and guest.

Thanks for the nice Puppy.

[MagicZaurus]

Slacko 7.0 - brilliant, thanks a bunch.
Both versions 64 & 32bit boot from CD on all my 64bit machines, BIOS & UEFI, AMD & Intel straight into the DT but the 32bit version refuses to start up on any of my 32bit machines giving 'failed to find bootable source' or some such - double checked d/l and discs - all fine. Anyone else having this problem? Are there some files that need juggling around from another version? how to do it? other suggestions?

Don't know if this gives any clue, but it seems the default 32-Bit kernel needs PAE. In Virtualbox (32-Bit host), if I don't enable PAE I cannot boot Slacko 7 (32-Bit). So it seems a 32-bit CPU needs to be able to support PAE. Might need to be enabled in the BIOS.

[Clarity]

Want to run Puppies & DOGs in very fast virtual machines as guests? Run KVM-QEMU: Old document here is still reasonably relevant for Slacko64.

Post problems here.

[Sage]

Thanks for suggestion Magic. The proc/cpuinfo shows pae flag present. I run all the old bangers clocked, but unclocked a XP2200+ - no change. Use a third party BIOS on most machines but, although pae is not featured as such, I can run most stuff like Devuan, Mint18.1 as well as most other Pup variants without problems.
Finally solved the problem by reconnecting the HD - no idea why this succeeded? Plenty of mem., at least 1Gb on all 32bit machines. Maybe presence of swap space?

[MagicZaurus]

Thanks for suggestion Magic. The proc/cpuinfo shows pae flag present. I run all the old bangers clocked, but unclocked a XP2200+ - no change. Use a third party BIOS on most machines but, although pae is not featured as such, I can run most stuff like Devuan, Mint18.1 as well as most other Pup variants without problems.
Finally solved the problem by reconnecting the HD - no idea why this succeeded? Plenty of mem., at least 1Gb on all 32bit machines. Maybe presence of swap space?

I can boot with 768 MB RAM and no swap without any problems. Confirmed that there is no swap space with swapon -s. It only showed the zram created by Slacko.

[bigpup]

I discover that Micko's 'Desktop settings' app gives absolutely no option for changing font sizes.
Mike.

menu->Desktop->Desktop Settings->Font->Size tab->Choose Global Fontsize

Screenshot.png (34.54 KiB) Viewed 1983 times

[Wiz57]

@01micko
Just an update...I've successfully done a manual kernel swap, hopefully correctly...after
renaming vmlinuz and the zdrv, I copied known working ones from an ScPup32 with LXDE,
then went through the boot process...voila! Installed Palemoon 28.17 via deb package, and
here now in Slacko7 32. My wifi was detected properly (Atheros), driver loaded and then
chose my default access, logged on with SNS tool, here I am! So far so good. The kernel
I'm using is a 5.4.46-pup32 SMP, this on an old Acer Aspire One AO150 netbook, 1.6 gHz
Intel Atom N270 CPU, 1 gig RAM, 120GB HD, 1024 x 600 resolution via Intel graphics
(stuck at that resolution too, no higher available). Will give this Slacko a workout and
report any further problems! Thanks!
Wiz

[TIFTAF]

Hi everybody.
Until I had figured out why gnome-player played videos with a very low volume I installed VLC, believing I would not have this problem.
Well, VLC player, which by the way I downloaded with the PPM, does play with a very strong volume but has a different problem.
VLC plays a video for a few seconds, than stops for more than a second and starts playing again for a few seconds, until it stops again. I have tried every adjustment available to find the problem without success.
Does somebody know why VLC behaves like that. I am using a HP 8470p laptop with 16 GB RAM.
Is it possible that Slacko needs also a SWAP partition in order to run VLC properly ?
Thanks for your help.

[puppy_apprentice]

Until I had figured out why gnome-player played videos with a very low volume

Try this: click RMB on the speaker icon in the tray and choose Full Window and try maximize some sliders.

[TIFTAF]

Hi puppy_apprentice.
Thank you for your efforts. Unfortunately there seems to be a misunderstanding. Please read text again. Thank you.
Until I had figured out why gnome-player played videos with a very low volume I installed VLC, believing I would not have this problem.
Well, VLC player, which by the way I downloaded with the PPM, does play with a very strong volume but has a different problem.
VLC plays a video for a few seconds, than stops for more than a second and starts playing again for a few seconds, until it stops again. I have tried every adjustment available to find the problem without success.
Does somebody know why VLC behaves like that. I am using a HP 8470p laptop with 16 GB RAM.
Is it possible that Slacko/VLC needs also a SWAP partition in order to run VLC properly ?
Thanks for your help.

[puppy_apprentice]

Edited:
Try this:
https://superuser.com/questions/683520/ ... line-files
or maybe this:
https://www.howtogeek.com/260784/how-to ... eleration/

or try open file from terminal, you should get some messages about problem.

PS. I have some problems to play movies with big bitrate on S7 the same on S632. Sometimes audio and video lose synchronization. But in Bionic not.

[MHHP]

Firstly:
Sincere thanks for a new slacko pup !

Questions:

1.
In older pups, up to and including slacko 6.9.99, it was possible to use F10 for programs run in a virtual console.
Where is the binding of F10 to JWM's "window" set?
Have not found it, is this setting hard-coded?
If so, how can it be overridden for to use in programs like htop run in lxterm?

2.
Also, in older pups, when moving the pointer to the left side of the desktop and scrolling up, first all windows were shaded, then desktops were shifted.
Can this function be restored in modern pups, or has it disappeared with newer versions of JWM?

/MHHP

[mikewalsh]

@MHHP :-

Firstly:
Sincere thanks for a new slacko pup !

Questions:

1.
In older pups, up to and including slacko 6.9.99, it was possible to use F10 for programs run in a virtual console.
Where is the binding of F10 to JWM's "window" set?
Have not found it, is this setting hard-coded?
If so, how can it be overridden for to use in programs like htop run in lxterm?

2.
Also, in older pups, when moving the pointer to the left side of the desktop and scrolling up, first all windows were shaded, then desktops were shifted.
Can this function be restored in modern pups, or has it disappeared with newer versions of JWM?

/MHHP

1. If it's anything like most other Pups, you should find these in /etc/xdg/templates/_root_jwmrc, down toward the bottom of the script...

2. Can't help with this one. Me no "expert" where JWM's concerned, I'm afraid. I know how to use it, but I know very little about what makes it tick, and even less about how you can modify its code..!

Mike.

[mikewalsh]

@TIFTAF :-

I know there's always lots of discussion around the need for swap in Linux.

The old school of thought said you should always run with double the amount of swap to what you had as RAM. More recently, with 'standard' RAM increasing by leaps & bounds (4 GB used to be heaps. Nowadays, it's considered barely sufficient for a mediocre experience...8 GB is considered the 'norm', 16 GB is 'better'), the thinking then became that with large amounts of RAM, there was no point in having swap.....because otherwise you have unused RAM.....and unused RAM is "wasted" RAM.

More recently still, that way of thinking is returning to the older line of thought. Yes, you may have larger amounts of RAM to play with, but every app you run is now using a lot more than it did in years gone by, so proportionately not much has changed. Even with 32 GB - like me - I still need a sizeable swap partition because I suspend frequently.....and the suspend process requires a contiguous chunk of swap at least equal in size to the amount of installed RAM. Even if it's only 5-10% full, the whole lot is still 'mirrored' prior to shutdown.....and the OS complains like a bitch if it can't find it when you request it.

So, yes; even with 16 GB RAM I would still run with a swap partition, or a swap-file. (I know the latter are possible, and the info is floating around the forum somewhere, but it's not an option I've ever tried.....so have zero experience of such)

Hope that helps.

Mike.

[wiak]

One thing that changes the swap equation is that nowadays the external storage media can have fast access times. Old mechanical ATA drives could be very slow, so use of swap on them came with a big penalty. USB 2 sticks not exactly fast either but most would probably avoid putting swap on these since good to avoid constant writing to them. But modern machines with swap on fast ssd drives may well be perfectly fine performance-wise - not sure how their lifetime is effected, maybe fine too with their wear-level handling. Because some of my computers remain old with ATA drives I never use swap normally, but I never use hibernation either since boot up delay gives me time to contemplate what I'm doing...

[williams2]

I am running BionicPup64 with 4GiB with no swap. Suspend works properly. As far as I know, Linux does not use swap for suspend, Linux does use swap for hibernate.

As an experiment I had a 240MiB swap file. Puppy typically used zero bytes of swap. Once, one day, it used about 100MiB of the swap file, I don't know why.

The contents of my swapfile (mostly zero bytes):

Code: Select all

# hexdump -C ./swapfile 
00000000  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |................|
*
00000400  01 00 00 00 ff ff 00 00  00 00 00 00 fc 52 c7 cc  |.............R..|
00000410  98 f2 41 70 a4 2e aa 4f  41 ec e6 9c 00 00 00 00  |..Ap...OA.......|
00000420  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |................|
*
00000ff0  00 00 00 00 00 00 53 57  41 50 53 50 41 43 45 32  |......SWAPSPACE2|
00001000  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |................|
*
10000000
#

[user1111]

I'm with williams2, believing that its hibernate that requires swap, not suspend. Much depends upon how/what you run. If for instance you like to boot a puppy to ram such that drives can be disconnected for security once the system has booted then a typical puppy might have a 500MB sfs (broadly rounding) of highly compressed content, that is perhaps 3x that size when decompressed. sfs files are similar to zip files, except whilst zip files store contents as files, sfs's store thing as disk blocks. If during a session all blocks are accessed then the kernel will have fully expanded the content (each/every block) and cached those, so perhaps 2GB of ram used just to have all 'files' cached, before counting operational space/usage. If you download a 2GB compressed file into Puppy space you're up at 4GB, perhaps 4.5GB after allowing for operational needs. Hibernate and you're looking at a 4GB+ swap being required.

Ballpark I'd say 3x ram for 2GB or lower systems, 2x ram for 2GB to 8GB of ram, 1.5x ram for above that. IF you use hibernate. Above 64GB and don't use hibernate, Also if you don't generally use hibernate at all, and have less need to run totally in ram, then for 2GB ram or less use 2x ram, above that use =ram up to 8GB of swap max.

I sometimes boot totally in ram, at other times I boot with minimal amounts loaded into ram (instead use a lz4 (fast) main sfs, that is read as needed, that when initially booted uses around 250MB of ram total). As I use a encrypted swap approach and a fixed swap partition I set that swap partition size to be large, to accommodate 'more than enough'. For me and many, disk space is plentiful and inexpensive, so even if much is totally unused I care little as much of my 1TB disk space remains unused anyway. But its there and activated should the need for it ever arise. If I'd booted to ram and had downloaded a 2GB video file that I was editing and rendering within Puppy (all in "ram") on my 4GB ram system, then the rendering that might take a day or more won't fail. As I also dual boot, have both Fatdog and OpenBSD running concurrently (kvm/qemu) then that further eats into a large chunk of ram being utilised.

Rarely do I see anything other than a relatively small amount of swap being used, the kernel will swap older/less used pages to swap to free up space for more regularly used pages, which might involve perhaps <100MB or so of swap being used. Much less rarely GB's of swap might be used and a pain from that is when it comes to shutdown the swapoff action can take ages. Linux swapoff is pretty poor, as it cycles around checking pages looking for matches against programs that might have used the page, and then looks at all active programs to see what pages they might have used ... i.e. cycles around repeated page checks that can take ages. Which under some circumstances can be like a lunch hour break time to shut the system down (start shutdown, go off for lunch).

Swap files are easier to resize than a swap partition so I guess are more preferable. For no particular reason when I initially partition I allocate a Puppy boot partition (where puppy sfs and menu.lst/grub4dos are stored), and a swap partition that I set to a 'decent' size to accommodate the largest amount likely to be called upon. If a 4GB ram system initially, that could in years to come be expanded to 16GB/ram, where hibernation may be used then 24GB (i.e. 1.5x ram) of swap partition size type allocation/thinking. Then the remainder of partitioned space is left for 'data'. In contrast on Mike Walsh's 64GB ram beast I'd probably go with a 8GB swap file choice.

[mistfire]

WARNING!

Suspend-to-disk a.k.a HIBERNATE makes the filesystem dirty. Any modifications of hibernated partition can cause huge trouble or even data corruption.

[666philb]

@01micko 7
congratulations!!
been giving it a go on my desktop and a laptop.
on the desktop the nvidia driver installed ok but steam didn't work initially as libgbm.so.1 & libgbm.so.1.0.0 are missing from the 32bit compatibility sfs. i added them from the 32bit slacko and it fired up.

on my dell latitude laptop i was missing firmware iwlwifi-6000-4.ucode (this was missing in bionicpup as well ).
maybe it could be added to the extra kernels.

[bigpup]

Good to see this version of Slacko finally finished

Wondering what hardware this is good to use on?
Should I consider this as the middle of the official Puppy versions?
Not for very, very new computers?
Slacko64 7.0, having a series 4 kernel, is not going to work well with very, very new computers.
The kernel is not going to have stuff in it for some of this very, very new hardware support.
Yes, people are using Puppy on some really, really new computers.

Also wondering how new a Woof-CE build this is?
Is it using the latest changes that are in Woof-CE or one that is close to the latest?

[HerrBert]

On a frugal install of Slacko64 7.0 i have two issues:

I was wondering, why i couldn't reach some sites on the internet.
It took some time to find out, that pup-advert-blocker is activated by default.
Would have been helpful to know...
When trying to stop blocking, the GUI freezes.
A quick view under the hood shows that the HOSTS variable is not exported.

And again: Osmo crashes when adding a contact.

[keniv]

Hi, I've made a manual frugal install of the 64bit version on a drive with two partitions. sda1 is formatted ntfs and sda2 formatted ext4. The frugal install is on sda1. It booted up fine using grub4dos. My plan was to make a save folder on sda2. However, on shutting down I could not find an option to do this. In the menu I can find Utility> Save folder backup and restore, so I assume there is a way to make a save folder. Could somebody please tell me how.

Regards,

Ken.

Ken, I think Slacko7 will only give you the option to create a save-file. With having your Pup on NTFS, it's relying on the Linux file-system within the save-file to be able to run correctly.

I was going to suggest letting it create the save-folder on sda1, then moving that over to sda2 & sym-linking it back, but that won't work; as I'm sure you're aware, the save-folder requires an underlying Linux file-system already in place.

Do you not get the option of where to create the save-folder?

Mike.

High Mike,
I didn't get the option to make a save folder only a save file which I did make in the absence of the ability to make a save folder but I would prefer to have a save folder. I have the 64 bit version of bionic pup installed. On first shutdown it gave me the option to save to a save file or a save folder. I chose save folder and as sda2 was the only drive which had a linux file system it went there. I also have a save folder for BusterDog on the same partition.

@williams2

Maybe the psave boot kernel option would work. Maybe something like:

psave=sda2

Would I then have to name a save folder a save folder say "slackosave" then give the path i.e. psave=sda2/slackosave? A bit like BusterDog.

@01micko

@keniv try @gyrog 's SAVESPEC facility, Don't download anything as it is all builtin to slacko 7.
If your partitions are labeled use the label and if not use the UUID (not PARTUUID).

I've had a quick look at your SAVESPEC and frankly I don't understand it. I had some trouble making a save folder in BusterDog at first and this looks more complicated. I think it requires a level of expertise that I don't have. I'll have to stick with the save file for now and see how I get on with Slacko Puppy 7.0.

Regards,

Ken.

I've finally got this to work and now have a frugal install of slacko 7 64bit on sda1 (ntfs formatted) with a working save folder on sda2 (ext4 formatted). To do this, I named a save folder as slacko64save on sda2 and then used this menu entry in grub4dos.

Code: Select all

#title Slacko 7.0 (64bit) (sda1/70slacko64)
  find --set-root uuid () 78F3C2FB524E29F8
  kernel /70slacko64/vmlinuz psubdir=/70slacko64 pmedia=atahd psave=sda2:/slacko64save pfix=fsck
  initrd /70slacko64/initrd.gz

I moved the save file I was forced to make when I was not offered the chance to make a save folder on first shutdown out of /sda1/70slacko64. When I booted up I got a clean copy of slacko 7 as expected. I made a few set up changes, set up the wifi, and shutdown. the shutdown looked quite good in terms of on screen messages. When I rebooted I had a working save folder with persistence. Thanks for the help.

Regards,

Ken.

[user1111]

kvm/qemu booted iso.

Nice! Very nice!

Screenshot.png (483.38 KiB) Viewed 1975 times

[Sage]

No idea about Slackware kernels & co., but in BK's Easy + Puppy precusrors he has drivers for P54USB (Prism54 802.11g/ ISL3880/90; UR054g 802.11g Wireless Adapter [Intersil ISL3887]) both installed and activated. Is this possible for Slacko7, please? Slacko7 seems to recognise the unit(?) but not active. If the answer is yes/yes, could one of the gurus explain exactly how to install/activate, please? I mean an idiot's guide not just generalisations!

[Clarity]

kvm/qemu booted iso.

Can you share your QEMU command/screen that you used to boot the ISO you show.

Thanks

[eddy_norton]

Hi
I have just installed SP7 and everything working fine. I was just wondering how to group the open apps in the tray.
I couldn't find any info in old forum.
thanks for your help