Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

Changing from Xwayland to Xorg worked. I have sct again in 64. Thank you.

I booted back into 32 to see what that error was, and this time the internet connected. I have no idea what was different this time.

Now in 64 I'm not able to connect to the internet. I missed it when I first started because changing to xorg for Display Control is necessary to use the system for me. I went Applications>Setup>Internet Connection Wizard>Wired or wireless LAN Icon. Then the box closes and nothing ever happens. No window letting me choose my wifi ever opens.

If I right click on the wifi icon, the toggle opens, but no option to connect to the wifi.

I tried rebooting and the same thing.

hundido wrote: ↑Mon Dec 06, 2021 9:53 am

If I right click on the wifi icon, the toggle opens, but no option to connect to the wifi.

Right-click the tray icon, enable WiFi, then left-click the tray icon, and select the network.

williwaw wrote: ↑Sun Dec 05, 2021 9:02 pm

what is the preferred way to boot, at least the rolling development releases?

I'm working on bootable flash drive images with a new, simple installer (see https://github.com/puppylinux-woof-CE/woof-CE/pull/2666), as an alternative to today's BIOS-only .iso images.

It works very well and I hope to have it merged in time for 9.0.15 (https://github.com/puppylinux-woof-CE/w ... 9?closed=1)

@dimkr,
I see from reading your post, that you are using efilinux.
I can only find it on github last commit in 2014. Is it still maintained somewhere?

BarryK wrote: ↑Mon Dec 06, 2021 5:18 pm

I can only find it on github last commit in 2014. Is it still maintained somewhere?

https://github.com/puppylinux-woof-CE/efilinux

(Moved it from https://github.com/dpupos/frugalify, and the bootable images PR is part of an effort to merge https://github.com/dpupos/woof-CE into https://github.com/puppylinux-woof-CE/woof-CE)

I never considered efilinux. Chose refind. I probably got influenced back then, by Roderick's comment:

https://www.rodsbooks.com/efi-bootloaders/

Another EFI boot loader for Linux, efilinux, is an out-of-kernel precursor to the kernel's EFI stub loader. It's got the stub loader's disadvantages and few of its advantages. I've had little success getting it working, although I've only tested it on a couple of systems. I therefore don't cover it here, aside from this paragraph.

@jamesbond (aka Fatdog) ISO images are universal for BIOS and UEFI PCs.

Can be used to boot images, directly, as well.

It remains as one of the, if not 'the', best booting subsystem for all 64bit PCs, IMHO. (That is, along with the current one in WoofCE PUPs from other PUP developers.)

BarryK wrote: ↑Tue Dec 07, 2021 2:46 am

Another EFI boot loader for Linux, efilinux, is an out-of-kernel precursor to the kernel's EFI stub loader. It's got the stub loader's disadvantages and few of its advantages. I've had little success getting it working, although I've only tested it on a couple of systems. I therefore don't cover it here, aside from this paragraph.

It's a simpler simple "boot loader" that runs vmlinuz with parameters defined in efilinux.cfg. The main disadvantage of booting the kernel directly is the hardcoded parameters. efilinux is an easy way to make the kernel parameters configurable, without having to rebuild it.

Clarity wrote: ↑Tue Dec 07, 2021 4:18 am

It remains as one of the, if not 'the', best booting subsystem for all 64bit PCs, IMHO. (That is, along with the current one in WoofCE PUPs from other PUP developers.)

search.php?st=0&sk=t&sd=d&sr=posts&keyw ... or=clarity

Please stop nagging about ISO images, UEFI, Ventoy and SG2D. You're overdoing it.

dimkr wrote: ↑Tue Dec 07, 2021 6:27 am

Clarity wrote: ↑Tue Dec 07, 2021 4:18 am

It remains as one of the, if not 'the', best booting subsystem for all 64bit PCs, IMHO. (That is, along with the current one in WoofCE PUPs from other PUP developers.)

search.php?st=0&sk=t&sd=d&sr=posts&keyw ... or=clarity

Please stop nagging about ISO images, UEFI, Ventoy and SG2D. You're overdoing it.

Yeah, Clarity and a couple others nag me as well, via emails. At least some of them just let me know once and that's it, which is fine, I can certainly take on board any contrary viewpoints. But with Clarity it is scriptural litany, to be endlessly chanted. Sorry, Clarity, if that comes across as harsh, but I for one think the ISO format has had it's day, and don't want to be pestered by someone extolling the virtues of ISO. Yes, it does have virtues, but for EasyOS I made a very carefully considered decision to retire the ISO format. It was VERY CAREFULLY CONSIDERED and I won't be going back to ISO.

So, to any other old-timers reading this who think the ISO is the bee's knees, heed this. Dima, sorry for hijacking your thread with this post, but your post triggered a lingering annoyance that I finally decided to express.

BarryK wrote: ↑Tue Dec 07, 2021 9:33 am

I for one think the ISO format has had it's day, and don't want to be pestered by someone extolling the virtues of ISO

I think everyone knows the limitations of this format, almost nobody boots Puppy off optical drives these days, and yet, I'm pretty sure some "Puppy fundamentalists" will decline https://github.com/puppylinux-woof-CE/woof-CE/pull/2666 and avoid using this feature.

dimkr wrote: ↑Tue Dec 07, 2021 3:47 pm

almost nobody boots Puppy off optical drives these days

So what? People are conflating the idea of the ISO as a bootable, "burnable" mechanism with it just being a convenient package format.

rcrsn51 wrote: ↑Tue Dec 07, 2021 4:20 pm

dimkr wrote: ↑Tue Dec 07, 2021 3:47 pm

almost nobody boots Puppy off optical drives these days

So what? People are conflating the idea of the ISO as a bootable, "burnable" mechanism with it just being a convenient package format.

Uh oh! I knew when I posted about my annoyance, that shouldn't have. Don't want to start arguments.
It was only a slight annoyance, should have just gone and made a cup of coffee or something.

williwaw wrote: ↑Sun Dec 05, 2021 9:02 pm

vanillapup-9.0.14.iso, downloaded and burned to cd, booted fine.
from booted CD, using bootflash to create ext3 with grub4dos on a usb flash drive,
it copied over most needed files, but I needed to manually copy over /boot and ucode.cpio

just for the record, burning to cd is not my usual work flow to creating a frugal install.
I initially experienced a failure to boot a manually created frugal, and only fell back to the tried and true cd burning to....
1. verify the integrity of my download
2. use the installer supplied with vanilla, before reporting my problems.

I also tried isobooter for vanilla without success, on account of an issue with initrd.gz

For this user, when creating dedicated disk installs, a dd'able image is preferred. If an image needs to be mounted in order to copy files and create a new frugal on a existing multi frugal disk, any image type suffices.

rcrsn51 wrote: ↑Tue Dec 07, 2021 4:20 pm

So what? People are conflating the idea of the ISO as a bootable, "burnable" mechanism with it just being a convenient package format.

I agree it's a convenient format, because there's an entire ecosystem of tools around it (all the image writing tools, etc').

But still, there are many graphical wrappers around dd (or image writing tools that do what dd does), so raw disk images should be convenient. Maybe not as convenient as the more common .iso, though.

OK, I got it.

But, as is pointed out, ISO or IMG is merely a 'container' that intends to identify a content. They were intended to alert possible utilities that may be applied to deconstruct to show its contents.

Whether I say it or its said by others, we are merely presenting info. My methods seems to be more annoying while not pointing out if it is invalid. Its it not invalid, please articulate. If its undesirable for any reason, merely ignore versus attacking.

And yes, I have ALWAYS considered ISO, as well as IMG as a mere filetype for a packaging...not a device format. Although, in practice, it could contain elements where when deconstructed to a device it makes the device capable some proper layout that may provide booting ability.

I feel if any format provides ease of use to make use by users friendly, and simple, it is welcomed. If its intent is to limit its target audience, then that is any developer's choice. ... Choice by the developer should be apparent.

I have decided to be a bit less passive, confronted with all the ISO-lovers on this forum. Here is a statement on my blog:

https://bkhome.org/news/202112/why-iso-was-retired.html

BarryK wrote: ↑Wed Dec 08, 2021 12:31 pm

I have decided to be a bit less passive, confronted with all the ISO-lovers on this forum. Here is a statement on my blog:

https://bkhome.org/news/202112/why-iso-was-retired.html

First of all my own preference and view is that I am NOT interested in iso file format. Furthermore, I also get 'tired' reading so many repeated posts extolling the wonders of Ventoy and SG2D. However, your above news post does not in fact address what these iso-lovers love them for, which is not for burning to CD/DVD as a boot mechanism, nor for writing hybrid version to usb stick for booting. Rather they like being able to simple store the iso as a file in a directory on either their hard drive or on a usb stick that has been specially prepared to include Ventoy or SG2D - the reason being that there is to a large extent 'nothing' extra needing done after that; for example SG2D via a suitable iso-included loopback.cfg file will automatically find and allow the iso to be booted from the iso FILE. So the wish of those (Clarity at least) who advocate for iso file (with suitable loopback.cfg and code support) is nothing at all to do with burning the iso to disc prior to booting, nor of writing it to usb stick in the case of hybrid iso. Your news post unfortunately does not give any reason why you think it is useless to support booting from iso file via the likes of SG2D or Ventoy.

Truly, I would also prefer not to support booting from iso file because it sometimes requires additional work/code in the likes of initrd/init to allow the likes of SG2D to 'find' the iso in such a way that it could boot from it directly, and also the creation of the associated specially configured loopback.cfg file. Nevertheless, I do see that it is extremely convenient for some to be able to simple download iso files, of various live distros, onto a specially prepared SG2D usb stick and then boot them without needing to prepare typical frugal install installations. Is it worth the effort supporting that? Clarity thinks so. I'm not so sure, but several distros discussed on the forum already do support the method including Puppy Linux, the DebianDogs, and FatDog (I think but haven't checked). Personally, I never boot directly from iso files - I much prefer typical frugal installs and consider that simple enough so even a tar.xz or similar of the files involved is fine to me and saves bothering even producing any type of 'iso' as long as grub2 or similar is already installed and working, which is a separate matter really.

Just a comment from the cheap seats, but the main advantage the ISO format has for me is that I can right click on it, mount it, and copy it's contents to a directory (without having to burn it to a flash drive or look something up first) so I can write the menu.1st/*.cfg entry manually.

I little universal linux utility that did that would smooth things over for the "manual frugal installers".

dancytron wrote: ↑Wed Dec 08, 2021 1:16 pm

Just a comment from the cheap seats, but the main advantage the ISO format has for me is that I can right click on it, mount it, and copy it's contents to a directory (without having to burn it to a flash drive or look something up first) so I can write the menu.1st/*.cfg entry manually.

I little universal linux utility that did that would smooth things over for the "manual frugal installers".

No, that is not an advantage of iso format. In EasyOS, can do exactly the same thing with an image file, just click on it to open it up and extract the contents and manually do a frugal install. Being able to click on an image-file to open it would be easy to implement in Puppy also.

I have written some tutorials, but basically, you click on the img file to open it, then copy the three files 'vmlinuz', 'easy.sfs' and 'initrd' to a folder in your hard drive where you want the frugal installation. You then click on 'initrd' which enables automatic configuration for that location, then create an entry in the boot manager.

Or, if you want to use an entire internal drive for EasyOS, it is simplicity itself: just copy the image file to the drive, as explained here:

https://easyos.org/install/how-to-insta ... w-ssd.html

...the UEFI setup will automatically recognise it and you can choose to boot from it. The EasyOS image file has its own boot manager, REFInd, and can present a menu to choose other OSs.

wiak wrote: ↑Wed Dec 08, 2021 1:02 pm

BarryK wrote: ↑Wed Dec 08, 2021 12:31 pm

I have decided to be a bit less passive, confronted with all the ISO-lovers on this forum. Here is a statement on my blog:

https://bkhome.org/news/202112/why-iso-was-retired.html

First of all my own preference and view is that I am NOT interested in iso file format. Furthermore, I also get 'tired' reading so many repeated posts extolling the wonders of Ventoy and SG2D. However, your above news post does not in fact address what these iso-lovers love them for, which is not for burning to CD/DVD as a boot mechanism, nor for writing hybrid version to usb stick for booting. Rather they like being able to simple store the iso as a file in a directory on either their hard drive or on a usb stick that has been specially prepared to include Ventoy or SG2D - the reason being that there is to a large extent 'nothing' extra needing done after that; for example SG2D via a suitable iso-included loopback.cfg file will automatically find and allow the iso to be booted from the iso FILE. So the wish of those (Clarity at least) who advocate for iso file (with suitable loopback.cfg and code support) is nothing at all to do with burning the iso to disc prior to booting, nor of writing it to usb stick in the case of hybrid iso. Your news post unfortunately does not give any reason why you think it is useless to support booting from iso file via the likes of SG2D or Ventoy.

Truly, I would also prefer not to support booting from iso file because it sometimes requires additional work/code in the likes of initrd/init to allow the likes of SG2D to 'find' the iso in such a way that it could boot from it directly, and also the creation of the associated specially configured loopback.cfg file. Nevertheless, I do see that it is extremely convenient for some to be able to simple download iso files, of various live distros, onto a specially prepared SG2D usb stick and then boot them without needing to prepare typical frugal install installations. Is it worth the effort supporting that? Clarity thinks so. I'm not so sure, but several distros discussed on the forum already do support the method including Puppy Linux, the DebianDogs, and FatDog (I think but haven't checked). Personally, I never boot directly from iso files - I much prefer typical frugal installs and consider that simple enough so even a tar.xz or similar of the files involved is fine to me and saves bothering even producing any type of 'iso' as long as grub2 or similar is already installed and working, which is a separate matter really.

Hmm, yes. To boot other distros, that are only available as ISOs, then yes, those tools might have a place.

Um, just looked briefly as Super-grub2-disk, looks like it can boot anything, doesn't have to be an iso. It is just a boot manager.

In the case of EasyOS, frugal install is so darn simple, as I posted above. As long as you have a boot manager to create an entry in. Or, you create a small esp vfat partition, that the UEFI will automatically recognise.

Don't want to flog this ISO business to death, but I am one of those grey-muzzled old dogs who view Barry's well-considered decision to retire the format completely with some sorrow.

Back in the day, I recall that clean booting a Puppy from a dedicated optical disk for the purpose of online banking etc. was highly recommended by the Aussie cops as a pretty bulletproof security measure. Of course, I know that Barry has laboured long to build more sophisticated security features into Easy, but I fear that these are less easy to use by yer average Joe (and old mongrels like me). So, whilst respecting Barry's decision, I continue to feel that the good ol' ISO disk may still have a part to play in things for now ... at least for that diminishing number of us who still have a working optical drive ..... just saying ...

@BarryK
@dimkr

Wait a minute? Why Drive image for Puppy?

In EasyOS, yes because it really requires a linux partition for working space. But on Puppy? Not a good idea, it will losses portability in the first place. Also unlike Easy OS, Puppy works without Linux partition. If you want to retain BIOS support on Puppy, ISO was still the best choice for BIOS support. It was easy to install bootloader on USB flash drive. If you want all UEFI support and no BIOS support. Just use zip format for distributing puppy. Because UEFI will just read and execute efi file under /EFI/boot/ folder on a FAT32 formatted drive (both GPT and MBR) in order to boot. All it need was to put the extracted the zip file on the root folder of the FAT32 drive and good to go.

dimkr wrote: ↑Mon Dec 06, 2021 5:02 pm

I'm working on bootable flash drive images with a new, simple installer (see https://github.com/puppylinux-woof-CE/woof-CE/pull/2666), as an alternative to today's BIOS-only .iso images.

Dima is adding an alternative installer to woof-CE. I do not see where anything is getting depreciated. A dev could offer a puppy either way, or both.

williwaw wrote: ↑Thu Dec 09, 2021 3:37 am

Dima is adding an alternative installer to woof-CE. I do not see where anything is getting depreciated. A dev could offer a puppy either way, or both.

I'm adding three things: 1) I'm making woof-CE capable of producing ext4 images (that can be written to flash drives, SD cards, SSDs, whatever), 2) I'm adding an installer to these images, which allows the user to replicate their structure on another block device and 3) I'm adding an updater to these images, which downloads the latest release of the same major version (https://github.com/puppylinux-woof-CE/woof-CE/pull/2669).

All of this is optional, and the default is to create ISO images (without the new installer and the updater).

The installer and the updater can't be used with ISO images, because they locate Puppy's files using partition/file system labels assigned by the image creation script and the installer.

You'll be able to try out everything soon.

EDIT: postponed the images, installer and updater to the 9.0.16 milestone (https://github.com/puppylinux-woof-CE/w ... lestone/10). I'm working on changing the automated releases pipeline so it uploads images alongside the ISO, and I want to test the updater before 9.0.16 is out, to make sure the update to 9.0.17 will work.

9.0.15 will be out on Saturday, with a nice selection of fixes (https://github.com/puppylinux-woof-CE/w ... 9?closed=1).

I uploaded two test releases (8.9.13 and 8.9.14). They're based on the woof-CE testing branch, and not the stable branch, like Vanilla Dpup releases.

To boot 8.9.13 using UEFI and test installation on a virtual NVMe SSD:

wget https://github.com/vanilla-dpup/next/re ... efi.img.gz
gunzip vanilladpup-8.9.13-ext4-2gb-uefi.img.gz
dd if=/dev/zero of=ssd bs=50M count=40 conv=sparse
qemu-system-x86_64 -enable-kvm -m 2048 -drive format=raw,file=vanilladpup-8.9.13-ext4-2gb-uefi.img -drive format=raw,file=ssd,if=none,id=nvm -device nvme,serial=deadbeef,drive=nvm -bios /usr/share/qemu/OVMF.fd -vga cirrus -soundhw hda
(then, run the installer and shut down)

To boot from the NVMe SSD:
qemu-system-x86_64 -enable-kvm -m 2048 -drive format=raw,file=ssd,if=none,id=nvm -device nvme,serial=deadbeef,drive=nvm -bios /usr/share/qemu/OVMF.fd -vga cirrus -soundhw hda

Updates to 8.9.14 work as well.

Looks like save folders are broken - I'm on it.

Once I'm done testing and fixing all issues, these testing builds will be gone, and I'll start preparing a 9.0.16 release.

Thanks you very much @dimkr for the sample QEMU stanzas.

Muchly appreciated.

@BarryK in your blog post "Why ISO was retired", you wrote that using ISO image file on a USB stick will make it "mostly unusable". But a hybrid ISO image is also a HDD image containing the ISO image as a partition. You can add one more partition as the working partition.
And it will be almost the same as your solution (with 2 partitions in a HDD image). However, this hybrid ISO image can also be use as a normal ISO file for anyone who want a read-only boot image or want to put this among other ISO files in his/her USB stick.

dungsaga wrote: ↑Fri Dec 10, 2021 7:33 pm

@BarryK in your blog post "Why ISO was retired", you wrote that using ISO image file on a USB stick will make it "mostly unusable". But a hybrid ISO image is also a HDD image containing the ISO image as a partition. You can add one more partition as the working partition.
And it will be almost the same as your solution (with 2 partitions in a HDD image). However, this hybrid ISO image can also be use as a normal ISO file for anyone who want a read-only boot image or want to put this among other ISO files in his/her USB stick.

I might be wrong here. This post as a new members first post on the forum, appears to me to have the signs of an existing member not accepting a developers explained decision. Creating a new forum ID to argue the point.

If I'm wrong I apologise for throwing dung at a new member.

Ongoing discussion of the merits or demerits of the ISO format, is probably not appropriate in this thread, which is for discussion about dimkr's Vanilla Dpup.

So I started a new thread:

viewtopic.php?t=4690

Oops, I accidentally triggered a 9.0.15 build and cancelled it, so 9.0.15 is called "9.0.16"

EDIT: everything is ready for the first release with the installer and the updater! I'm triggering two builds to do one final test, this time with the normal releases repo and proper version numbers

EDIT 2: installation and update from 9.0.17 to 9.0.18 worked!