Porteus-XFCE-v1.2-rc1-x86_64.iso is ready for testing!

New features which should be implemented in Porteus; suggestions are welcome. All questions or problems with testing releases (alpha, beta, or rc) should go in their relevant thread here, rather than the Bug Reports section.
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Rava
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Re: Porteus-XFCE-v1.2-rc1-x86_64.iso is ready for testing!

Post#31 by Rava » 09 Mar 2012, 08:47

You are welcome, Ahau!
Ahau wrote:I just tested mine with 'delay=' and it needs 1 second to sleep before it properly performs fsck. I'd been operating under the assumption that it was performing the check and was either skipped because it's mount count was low, or passed. Not the case! several errors were found (in fact, I had to boot with copy2ram and fsck it manually to get them all fixed). So, now I'm good to go :)
Does that mean, the stick is already mounted, or half-mounted?
I thought the fsck cheatcode would enable fsck to check for and eliminate all errors. :(
Cheers!
Yours Rava

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Re: Porteus-XFCE-v1.2-rc1-x86_64.iso is ready for testing!

Post#32 by Ahau » 09 Mar 2012, 14:06

no, it's not partially mounted. If you boot with copy2ram it mounts your flashdrive and copies the modules into RAM, then unmounts the flashdrive so you can remove it if you don't want to have it plugged in while you are running the system. So I just did copy2ram and left the stick plugged in, so it had an entry in /dev/ but was not mounted.

linuxrc is the script that runs the fsck during boot-up. It runs fsck (e2fsck in my case, because it's an ext partition) with the -p switch. From the e2fsck man page:
-p Automatically repair ("preen") the file system. This option
will cause e2fsck to automatically fix any filesystem problems
that can be safely fixed without human intervention. If e2fsck
discovers a problem which may require the system administrator
to take additional corrective action, e2fsck will print a
description of the problem and then exit with the value 4 logi‐
cally or'ed into the exit code. (See the EXIT CODE section.)
This option is normally used by the system's boot scripts. It
may not be specified at the same time as the -n or -y options.
I had some errors that were nasty enough that I needed to manually go through and approve the fixes by selecting 'y' or 'n'. I only had to do this once (fsck passes now). Thus, I am grateful for all of this, because my poor abused flash drive is in better shape now :)
Please take a look at our online documentation, here. Suggestions are welcome!

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Re: Porteus-XFCE-v1.2-rc1-x86_64.iso is ready for testing!

Post#33 by Rava » 12 Mar 2012, 22:17

Ahau wrote:no, it's not partially mounted. If you boot with copy2ram it mounts your flashdrive and copies the modules into RAM, then unmounts the flashdrive so you can remove it if you don't want to have it plugged in while you are running the system.
And when you not run the system with copy2ram BUT use the fsck cheatcode?
Cheers!
Yours Rava

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Re: Porteus-XFCE-v1.2-rc1-x86_64.iso is ready for testing!

Post#34 by Ahau » 13 Mar 2012, 06:04

If I use 'fsck' and 'delay=2' without the copy2ram cheatcode, then the drive gets fsck'd and any errors that can be repaired without user interaction are fixed. The fsck cheatcode initiates fsck before the drive gets mounted (the kernel and initrd are copied into RAM using only the built in BIOS I/O operations, prior to any hardware mounting -- fanthom, correct me if I'm wrong). After fsck, the drive gets mounted (twice actually -- once by initrd, then again into the live filesystem after linuxrc completes and pivot_roots into the life filesystem) The only reason I used copy2ram in order to manually run fsck was so that the stick could be unmounted after I booted from that same drive. As you know, fsck can not and should not be run on a mounted drive. I could have also booted from another flash drive, then inserted the flash drive containing errors and fsck'd it then.
Please take a look at our online documentation, here. Suggestions are welcome!

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Re: Porteus-XFCE-v1.2-rc1-x86_64.iso is ready for testing!

Post#35 by Rava » 21 Mar 2012, 07:42

I was on my way creating some new xzm modules... So I first checked if the few I use on a regular basis already (opera and such) do not have an /usr/share/man path, but as slackware does in:
have this in /usr/man... and found two errors in rc1:

Code: Select all

bash-4.1$ pwd
/mnt/live/memory/images
bash-4.1$ find . 2>/dev/null |grep mount.cifs.8.bz2 
./001-core.xzm/usr/share/man/man8/mount.cifs.8.bz2
./001-core.xzm/usr/share/man/man8/umount.cifs.8.bz2
bash-4.1$ find . -name gnome-ppp.1.gz 2>/dev/null
./0091-xfce-apps.xzm/usr/share/man/man1/gnome-ppp.1.gz
As you can see: the man pages for mount.cifs and gnome-ppp are in the wrong folder (should be in /usr/man/man8 and they are /usr/man/man1); they are also bz2 or gz compressed, but should be uncompressed...

//edit

Also I realized that the man page for Terminal is there for looots of languages. Should it really be like that? I thought only English is in the original modules, and only when the LST got told to add a man page language for all programs, than this is added:

Code: Select all

./0090-xfce-rava.xzm/usr/man/ca/man1/Terminal.1
./0090-xfce-rava.xzm/usr/man/da/man1/Terminal.1
./0090-xfce-rava.xzm/usr/man/el/man1/Terminal.1
./0090-xfce-rava.xzm/usr/man/es/man1/Terminal.1
./0090-xfce-rava.xzm/usr/man/fr/man1/Terminal.1
./0090-xfce-rava.xzm/usr/man/gl/man1/Terminal.1
./0090-xfce-rava.xzm/usr/man/id/man1/Terminal.1
./0090-xfce-rava.xzm/usr/man/it/man1/Terminal.1
./0090-xfce-rava.xzm/usr/man/ja/man1/Terminal.1
./0090-xfce-rava.xzm/usr/man/man1/Terminal.1
./0090-xfce-rava.xzm/usr/man/pt/man1/Terminal.1
./0090-xfce-rava.xzm/usr/man/ru/man1/Terminal.1
./0090-xfce-rava.xzm/usr/man/sv/man1/Terminal.1
./0090-xfce-rava.xzm/usr/man/ug/man1/Terminal.1
./0090-xfce-rava.xzm/usr/man/zh_CN/man1/Terminal.1
Verfasst after 13 hours 23 seconds:
______________________________________________

update

another issue:

system\power saver switch only gives me this error:

Code: Select all

Couldn't activate power-save mode on this CPU, required ACPI kernel driver
may be missing. Just in case try to run this script once again.
Press enter to exit.
______________________________________________

How can Thunar be opened in root mode, not from a root shell (that would be via ( Thunar & ) ) but from the XFCe menu?
Cheers!
Yours Rava

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Re: Porteus-XFCE-v1.2-rc1-x86_64.iso is ready for testing!

Post#36 by Ahau » 21 Mar 2012, 14:33

Thanks, Rava.

I've fixed gnome-ppp's man pages (migrated that package from debian and didn't catch this). mount.cifs would need to be addressed by fanthom, since it's in the standard edition modules.

I'll double check the man pages for Terminal -- if I left them in there, I'll make sure to move them to the LST module for RC2-- I was working in 32-bit this morning instead of 64 ;) The localized man pages weren't messed up in 32-bit and I did my best to follow the same process for both...

regarding power-saver switch -- what kind of processor do you have? Try opening a Terminal and run PowerTop -- it doesn't give me full information at this point (haven't had time to make sure it's configured properly). It should give info on your cpu speed, etc. Laptop_mode is also installed in the XFCE edition and should handle cpu adjustments as well.

To open thunar from a menu item in the panel, create a file with this text:

Code: Select all

[Desktop Entry]
Exec=ktsuss 'thunar /root'
Icon=Thunar
Name=Super User Mode - Thunar
Type=Application
Categories=Application;System;
And save it as /usr/share/applications/su-thunar.desktop

You'll need to do this as root. Then exit back to guest and run 'xfce4-panel -r' to restart the panel.

I will add this to RC2.
Please take a look at our online documentation, here. Suggestions are welcome!

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Re: Porteus-XFCE-v1.2-rc1-x86_64.iso is ready for testing!

Post#37 by Rava » 21 Mar 2012, 22:06

powertop:

Code: Select all

PowerTOP 1.98     Overview   Idle stats   Frequency stats   Device stats   Tunab

Summary: -nan wakeups/second,  -nan GPU ops/second, -nan VFS ops/sec and -0.0% C

                Usage       Events/s    Category       Description
            100.0%                      Device         Audio codec hwC0D0: Analo
            100.0%                      Device         USB device: UHCI Host Con
            100.0%                      Device         USB device: UHCI Host Con
            100.0%                      Device         USB device: UHCI Host Con
            100.0%                      Device         USB device: UHCI Host Con
            100.0%                      Device         USB device: USB2.0 Hub
            100.0%                      Device         USB device: USB DISK Pro
            100.0%                      Device         USB device: DataTraveler
            100.0%                      Device         USB device: USB DISK 2.0
              0.0 pkts/s                Device         Network interface: eth0 (
            100.0%                      Device         USB device: EHCI Host Con
            100.0%                      Device         PCI Device: Intel Corpora
            100.0%                      Device         PCI Device: Intel Corpora
            100.0%                      Device         PCI Device: Intel Corpora
            100.0%                      Device         PCI Device: Intel Corpora
            100.0%                      Device         PCI Device: Intel Corpora
            100.0%                      Device         PCI Device: Intel Corpora
            100.0%                      Device         PCI Device: Intel Corpora
            100.0%                      Device         PCI Device: Intel Corpora
            100.0%                      Device         PCI Device: Intel Corpora
            100.0%                      Device         PCI Device: Intel Corpora
            100.0%                      Device         PCI Device: nVidia Corpor
            100.0%                      Device         PCI Device: Intel Corpora
I will try the Thunar root tweak as soon as I start another PC, since I have to go from this one soon.
Tell you then how it went. Thanks so far.
Cheers!
Yours Rava

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Re: Porteus-XFCE-v1.2-rc1-x86_64.iso is ready for testing!

Post#38 by Ahau » 21 Mar 2012, 23:21

While powertop is running, press the left arrow button to change screens. It should show you how often your processor spends at idle, full speed, and steps inbetween.
Please take a look at our online documentation, here. Suggestions are welcome!

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Re: Porteus-XFCE-v1.2-rc1-x86_64.iso is ready for testing!

Post#39 by Rava » 27 Mar 2012, 08:12

Code: Select all

PowerTOP 1.98     Overview   Idle stats   Frequency stats   Device stats   Tunab

>> Bad           VM writeback timeout                                           
   Bad           Enable Audio codec power management
   Bad           Power Aware CPU scheduler
   Bad           Autosuspend for USB device EHCI Host Controller [usb1]
   Bad           Autosuspend for USB device UHCI Host Controller [usb2]
   Bad           Autosuspend for USB device UHCI Host Controller [usb3]
   Bad           Autosuspend for USB device UHCI Host Controller [usb4]
   Bad           Autosuspend for USB device UHCI Host Controller [usb5]
   Bad           Autosuspend for USB device USB2.0 Hub [1-2]
   Bad           Autosuspend for USB device USB DISK Pro [        ]
   Bad           Autosuspend for USB device USB2.0 Device    [Generic ]
   Bad           Autosuspend for USB device Flash Disk [4-1]
   Bad           Autosuspend for USB device USB to Serial-ATA bridge [Sunplus In
   Bad           Wake-on-lan status for device eth0
   Good          Runtime PM for PCI Device Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family US
   Good          Runtime PM for PCI Device Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family US
   Good          Runtime PM for PCI Device Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family
   Good          Runtime PM for PCI Device Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family US
   Good          Runtime PM for PCI Device Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family PC

 <ESC> Exit | <Enter> Toggle tunable 
Lot's of Bad there... Must compare that to my other PCs. Most are Intel Pentium , but one at least is an AMD multi core Athlon.
Cheers!
Yours Rava

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Re: Porteus-XFCE-v1.2-rc1-x86_64.iso is ready for testing!

Post#40 by Ahau » 27 Mar 2012, 14:11

There's a long list of "bad" that shows in powertop, but the major power consumers are handled already by the kernel/distro. Run 'laptop_mode' and a lot of those should change over to good (I havent' finished configuring laptop mode tools for Porteus yet, but it catches a lot of stuff on my machine). It will save a few watts, but the big savings, in my experience, come from cpu frequency scaling (should be handled already by the Porteus kernel), gpu drivers (nvidia is better than nouveau) and screen brightness. Of course, your hardware might have some rogue power consumers that mine doesnt...

You can also highlight those "bad" items in powertop and press enter to toggle them to "good" if the program can manage it (I have a network device that refuses), but powertop isn't designed to make these changes for you on a regular basis. That's why I've included laptop mode tools as well, so users can add it to their rc.local if they want it to run on every startup.

Actually, I'd appreciate it if more folks would run these two utilities and let me know what is and isn't working -- that will help me greatly in configuring (I know it calls for hdparm and we need it to use sdparm instead, for example).
Please take a look at our online documentation, here. Suggestions are welcome!

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Re: Porteus-XFCE-v1.2-rc1-x86_64.iso is ready for testing!

Post#41 by Rava » 28 Mar 2012, 04:58

Code: Select all

root@porteus:~# laptop_mode 
Laptop mode 
disabled, 
not active [unchanged]
root@porteus:~# laptop_mode --help
Unrecognized option --help.
root@porteus:~# laptop_mode -h
Unrecognized option -h.
root@porteus:~#  type laptop_mode
laptop_mode is hashed (/usr/sbin/laptop_mode)
root@porteus:~# fw.sh laptop_mode
/usr/sbin/laptop_mode: POSIX shell script, ASCII text executable, with very long lines
(fw.sh is by me and just runs file on the which) Comes in handy quite often. :)

I looked into /usr/sbin/laptop_mode, but it's huge and confusing. :P

I try the man page...

Code: Select all

laptop_mode is a  program  that  applies  the  settings  given  in  the
       /etc/laptop-mode/laptop-mode.conf  configuration  file.
So... do I need to alter the /etc/laptop-mode/laptop-mode.conf to have it running?

Verfasst after 4 minutes 30 seconds:

Code: Select all

root@porteus:~# laptop_mode status
Mounts:
   proc on /proc type proc (rw)
   sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw)
   aufs on / type aufs (rw)
   fusectl on /sys/fs/fuse/connections type fusectl (rw)
   /dev/sda1 on /mnt/sda1 type fuseblk (rw,noatime,allow_other,blksize=4096)
   /dev/sda2 on /mnt/sda2 type ext3 (rw,noatime,nodiratime,commit=0)
   gvfs-fuse-daemon on /home/guest/.gvfs type fuse.gvfs-fuse-daemon (rw,nosuid,nodev,user=guest)
 
Drive power status:
 
(NOTE: drive settings affected by Laptop Mode cannot be retrieved.)
 
Readahead states:
   /dev/sda1: 128 kB
   /dev/sda2: 128 kB
 
Laptop Mode Tools is NOT allowed to run: /var/run/laptop-mode-tools/enabled does not exist.
 
/proc/sys/vm/laptop_mode:
   0
 
/proc/sys/vm/dirty_ratio:
   10
 
/proc/sys/fs/xfs/xfsbufd_centisecs:
   100
 
/proc/sys/fs/xfs/xfssyncd_centisecs:
   3000
 
/proc/sys/vm/dirty_background_ratio:
   5
 
/proc/sys/vm/dirty_expire_centisecs:
   3000
 
/proc/sys/vm/dirty_writeback_centisecs:
   500
 
/proc/acpi/button/lid/LID0/state:
   state:      open
 
/sys/class/power_supply/ACAD/online:
   1
This part
Laptop Mode Tools is NOT allowed to run: /var/run/laptop-mode-tools/enabled does not exist.
is weird... Why is it not allowed to run that?
I can just touch /var/run/laptop-mode-tools/enabled , or not?
Cheers!
Yours Rava

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Re: Porteus-XFCE-v1.2-rc1-x86_64.iso is ready for testing!

Post#42 by Ahau » 28 Mar 2012, 14:36

No, I don't think you can simply create that file, I think it's a plain text config file. When I run laptop_mode, it does correct many of the "bad" items shown in PowerTop (even when it says it is disabled and not active), but it doesn't catch everything and I think it's not running as a daemon. It is huge and complex, as you noted, which is why I haven't dug into it yet. I do want to have it running smooth before we release final.
Please take a look at our online documentation, here. Suggestions are welcome!

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