Salix Live Xfce 13.37 RC1

[gnomic]

Hmmm, about the wifi, keep calm and carry on . . . . Sorry about false alarm.

Trying again this morning, and find more normal results. Dmesg logs missing bcm firmware and message about getting it (b43/ucode5.fw) which is as expected when firmware is not present. The pc card wifi 'just works' as it should do both wrt the slot and the ath5k (ar2413 chip) since no firmware is required in recent kernels. The Linksys usb authenticates but doesn't get a dhcp lease, which seems to happen in more than one distro - reason unknown at this point. Maybe something to do with wicd and rt73? Don't think I've seen this with NetworkManager.

Think last night's problems probably a result of rebooting straight from using another live CD, the hardware must have been left in an indeterminate state.

Actually when I say the ar2413 card just works, it does all the right things in terms of authentication and getting an ip address but the web behaves very oddly when using it. Slow loading websites, endless wheel spinning, ie pages that claim to be loading but never arrive, etc. Haven't worked out what this is, the driver or what? But not a Salix issue afaict.

Yes, use iwconfig to determine what the system is calling a particular interface since results can vary and it's often necesary to tell wicd what the wifi is called. Often wlanx for example, but sometimes find a distro which calls the same setup ethx.

Just going back to the missing firmware for bcm4318, don't know why it's not present in Salix, but I believe there is free firmware for this chipset as seen in aptosid for example. Something of an oddity, since it's the only firmware aptosid does supply ootb I think, whereas Broadcom in general is often problematic, the more so the more 'free' the distribution concerned.

[gnomic]

Booted live on Compaq Presario V6000 laptop, 1.6 GHz Celeron M, 2g RAM, i945 video. This machine's screen is cracked so requires an external monitor on the VGA port. Initially external screen remains blank, as the builtin LCD shows almost nothing, it's necessary to step through the couple of initial option screens in the dark so to speak. Some distros display on both monitors from the outset.

Wifi in this case bcm4311, as with the V2000 machine, firmware is missing. However I found the Linksys usb wifi would work in this case - it seems it is necessary to set wicd to seek an ip address automatically rather than having dhcpcd selected which appears to be the default setting on the live CD currently. The reason why I cannot tell.

External monitor came up initially at 1024x768. Xfce was able to reset it to the default 1280x1024.

Mounted a couple of usb sticks, and opened a pdf. Uptime one hour so far.

[gnomic]

Now posting from the ThinkPad R40 in live CD session - more egg on my face, but good news. This time round the machine booted without difficulty. Cosmic rays or a speck of dust on the CD? Anyway, OK for now. Will try booting again and see if the problem shows up.

[gnomic]

Booted live on a ThinkPad Z60m (1.86 GHz Pentium M, 1gig RAM, i915 video). No problems seen during session, connected to web via wifi with ipw2200.

[ikke]

After intensively using Salix Live Xfce 13.37 RC1 found another small problem :

Code: Select all

root[one]# mount -o loop Documents/myiso686.iso /mnt/loop
mount: could not find any free loop device

Any hint?

The problem of not shutting down doesn't occur every time. But most of the times.

I can use opera 11.52 after installing it with 'installpkg'. When using a module made from the same file the desktop icons and image disappear. Very strange...

Thank you for attention.

[mimosa]

Regarding the loop mounting, Live uses up nearly all the available ones, as you can see by doing losetup -a. I think there's just one free. Try unmounting anything non-essential to free one up. See losetup's man page.

So you've been having problems with shutdown too? Are you using persistence?

[Shador]

After intensively using Salix Live Xfce 13.37 RC1 found another small problem :

Code: Select all

root[one]# mount -o loop Documents/myiso686.iso /mnt/loop
mount: could not find any free loop device

Any hint?

You can create a new loopdevice on the fly with (whereas <num> is a number not yet used by a /dev/loop* device):

Code: Select all

mknod -m660 /dev/loop<num> b 7 <num>
chown root:disk /dev/loop<num>

Alternatively you can use the kernel parameter "max_loop=<some number>" to increase the amount of maximum loopdevices available, if you know it in advance. Press 'e' at the "Start salix-live-...." menu entry and enter at the end of the line starting with linux the parameter. Then press 'Ctrl + X' to execute the modified menu entry and thus boot the kernel.

I guess, I'll discuss with JRD to what value max_loop should be risen from the default for the livecd.

[ruario]

I can use opera 11.52 after installing it with 'installpkg'. When using a module made from the same file the desktop icons and image disappear. Very strange...

Firstly, let me start by saying I know nothing about how these modules work and haven't bothered to read up before I post this. That said, I would guess it has something to do with the calls to update-desktop-database and gtk-update-icon-cache in the the doinst.sh within the Opera package's doinst.sh. These are present to ensure that Opera's icons and desktop files show up immediately. This works exactly as described in a typical desktop setup, but perhaps it is causing an issue when part of a module for some reason. You could test by making modules with these packages, which I have tweaked to remove the calls to update-desktop-database, update-mime-database and gtk-update-icon-cache for you.

http://people.opera.com/ruario/test/ope ... 86-2ro.txz
http://people.opera.com/ruario/test/ope ... 64-2ro.txz

[pwatk]

AFAIK, spkg will run update-desktop-database and gtk-update-icon-cache (?) regardless of any commands in the doinst script.

Just to make you aware.

[ikke]

Regarding the loop mounting, Live uses up nearly all the available ones, as you can see by doing losetup -a. I think there's just one free. Try unmounting anything non-essential to free one up. See losetup's man page.

Thank you for this info about 'losetup'. I didn't know that program. It appears I have 10 loop devices. Am unable to unmount anything : need the 6 modules provided by the system and 4 homemade modules. Need every bit of it. What I could do is eventually combine two homemade modules to have one.

So you've been having problems with shutdown too? Are you using persistence?

Yes I've been having problems with shutdown since the beta version (posted a mail at that time). No, I am not using for the time being 'persistence' since I have put all my settings, preferences, programs into those home made modules.

Thank you!