DSL v2.3 RC2

Forum: Release Candidates
Topic: DSL v2.3 RC2
started by: roberts

Posted by roberts on Mar. 21 2006,06:10

Release Candidate Two for DSL v 2.3 is now posted < here. >

Change Log for DSL v2.3 RC2

1. New auto mydsl. Auto scan for directory named mydsl will automatically load extensions.
2. New DSL natively booted can now recognize the Qemu virtual harddisk. Allows for shared backup.
3. Upgraded Qemu to v0.8 for both Windows and Linux versions.
4. New background image (Saturn) to match current theme.
5. Stop duplicate saves of wireless and printer.
6. Fixed boot options frugal and toram when used together would try to remount /dev/shm
7. Updated .xinitrc with another correction for better German keyboard support.

Posted by fuzzybud on Mar. 21 2006,09:59

The Saturn background hits me in the face when I first booted up. I love it. It made me smile. It adds pizazz to dsl, something that users will remember. Now I have to go back and look around to see what other surprises it has.

Posted by roberts on Mar. 21 2006,15:17

Just to share some of my thoughts on this cut:

Seeing the confusion of where to place extensions for auto loading lead me to make a new feature.
Usually we say place them in the base directory of the boot device.
This is true, but when using USB-ZIP there is no room in there. Or if using a liveCD, you cannot do that unless you remaster or use mkmydsl. So, I made a new feature. By making a directory called mydsl and placing the extensions in that directory, you will have autoloading of the extensions without having to use the mydsl=hdXY boot option. This allows for a hands free boot from liveCD to your custom desktop of extensions. If you use mydsl=hdXY then this will override the auto scan feature. Hopefully this feature will make it even easier to enjoy the community made mydsl extensions.

The second area that I see growth is the use of Qemu and sharing of the virtual harddisk (hdb). It was already available to mount when natively booted. But when natively booted the restore would not take place. This was because it is not a real device. Now with the qemu boot option not only is the virtual device availble for mounting by the restore will also work. This is achieved by booting your Qemu based DSL natively, i,e, BIOS, boot floppy, or cdrom, with the following:
boot: dsl qemu frugal restore=harddisk

Hope you enjoy this version of DSL.

Robert

Posted by saidiadude on Mar. 21 2006,16:59

Pardon the newbie question, but what version of Firefox will be included in v2.3? I couldn't find any release notes for v2.3. If it's older than 1.5.1, how hard will it be for the noob user (me) to upgrade to 1.5.1 (just a simple download/install or do I have to compile the code, etc).

Thx for all your work on DSL. It will bring new life to an old UMax 233MHz laptop. The machine will be used as a wireless terminal w/browser and picture display screen saver.

Posted by saidiadude on Mar. 21 2006,17:12

Another question: what powersaving options will v2.3 have? Standby, screen off, CPU fan off, etc.

Posted by roberts on Mar. 21 2006,21:04

The change log is quite complete. But to answer your questions anyway....

Firefox 1.5 as per their site requires gtk+2.0 or higher and Recommended: 500Mhz or higher cpu.

Not exactly damn small or for older machines.

You can grab the gtk2 extension and download that version of firefox and try it.
But I suspect for your 233Mhz you would be better not too!

apm is supported by DSL, no change there. Works fine on older laptops.

John and I are concurrently working on a kernel 2.6 version which will support a higher level of power management.
But as stated in our road map thread, it is not for older computers nor is it a replacement for DSL.

Posted by syamajala on Mar. 21 2006,22:11

are there any plans to add support for more file systems? I would love to see xfs and jfs modules. It was really a pain compiling the xfs module on my system.

Posted by roberts on Mar. 21 2006,22:48

You know, this is really not feedback on the release candidate.
Maybe just venting?

As the saying goes only 50lbs of potatoes fit in a 50lb sack.
We try to pack the most useful 50lbs that we can.

It should be a simple matter to grab modules off the full Knoppix release cd. No compiling. No hassles. We even provide a modules boot option to load extra modules, or you can use the standard Knoppix method of the expert boot option to load speciality modules.

Posted by clacker on Mar. 21 2006,23:24

I was playing around with the embeded version and I noticed a problem unmounting hdb. If I open emelfm, I can mount /mnt/hdb using the mount option in the menu I get when I right click on it. umount fails, though, saying:

umount: /dev/hdb: not mounted
umount: must be superuser to umount

This used to work in previous versions of embeded, although I haven't tried it out recently.

I also noticed that the version was missing from the start up Dillo page, again in the embeded version.

I have found that fluxter (the small set of squares in the lower left hand corner that show thumbnails of the current workspaces) dissapears when I run the window manager-> restart option for fluxbox. I need to do this in embeded because sometimes the keyboard won't accept any input when I alt-tab between windows and dsl. If I change to jwm and then back to fluxbox, it returns. I pretty sure it's not your problem, but if it's something easy to fix it would be nice.

Posted by JohnH on Mar. 22 2006,02:10

Since you have set up a /mydsl and default search for it, doesnt it make sense to put Firefox, Xmms, Xpaint and many others into /mydsl?

This would allow the super minimal system some have requested by suimply emptying the /mydsl.

Those who want to upgrade standard programs would have an easier time too.

I hope you stay focused on the 2.4 kernel and the P-II class machine and just refer those wanting kernel 2.6 to the knoppix version.

DSL is so sweet with it's focus, simplicity, reliability and speed.

Posted by mikshaw on Mar. 22 2006,02:44

I can see the logic in that (it sounded like a great idea to me for a second), but you have to consider the way that mydsl extensions work with the base system, particularly *.dsl extensions. These packages are loaded as additions to the initial system, and often require mkwriteable to be run...both of these factors cause heavier ram usage than running the application from within the KNOPPIX file system.

The only way I can think of that would make this actually be a benefit is if all of the included applications were UCI packages, hence no additional ram usage.

Posted by JohnH on Mar. 22 2006,03:07

Concerning the pendrive set up. When the optional boot command input step is presented, should I type "dsl toram" or just "toram" ?

I'm still suffering over the filesystem stuff. i. e. save to cd to get to pendrive and then getting disk full messages.
should I be saving to /mnt/auto/cdrom? the /auto/ pops up mysteriously when I click on /cdrom in Emelfm

Posted by jls legalize on Mar. 22 2006,03:27

< dsl-2.3RC2.iso torrent >

PS I see that in the RC2 the arrows in the fluxbox menu are still missing.

Posted by odbod on Mar. 22 2006,05:11

Will there happen to be USB wireless support? Or is it already there, but I can't get it working? (I made a post about it in netowrking).

(DWL-g120, installed with ndiswrapper, not detected as wlan0, but detected with lsusb, ndiswrapper -l states it's not there)

Posted by roberts on Mar. 22 2006,17:26

odbod, Yes usb wireless is supported at the same level that Knoppix v3.4 did. I am using a usb wireless, a netgear ma111.
I believe someone already suggested where to find ndiswrapper support. The ndiswrapper community has much support, including a wiki, irc, and others. It is not difficult to search for support on their site for your particular < card. >

Posted by roberts on Mar. 22 2006,17:31

Quote (jls legalize @ Mar. 21 2006,19:27)

PS I see that in the RC2 the arrows in the fluxbox menu are still missing.

I did not build this theme. This is really the Kharisma theme. Does it have the tiny menu arrows? Maybe someone can verify?

Posted by roberts on Mar. 22 2006,17:35

Quote (JohnH @ Mar. 21 2006,19:07)

While running from the install script, additional boot parameters you would only use toram if so desired.

The other part of your question depends on the install type.
You should view the free space available. As I have stated before USB-ZIP has only a small partition for /dev/sda1.

Posted by roberts on Mar. 22 2006,17:44

Clacker,
The version number has been moved from dillo startup page to system stats first tab.
Regarding emelfm and mount. Many times programs assume an isomorphic mapping between mountpoint name and device name. This really should not be depended on but instead should be fetched via mtab. From what you described it appears that this might be the issue your are experiencing. And it being a binary, there is not much that I can do about it. I don't have the issue when using the new GUI mount tool or manual mount commands.
Your right about fluxter.

Posted by cbagger01 on Mar. 22 2006,18:06

FYI,

If you moved all of those applications out from the base ISO and into a bunch of UCI extensions, you would quickly fill up your 8 available UCI mounts.

Methinks the current DSL base iso software mix is for the most part ideal given the options available.

Posted by odbod on Mar. 22 2006,18:39

Quote (roberts @ Mar. 22 2006,12:26)

Here is the little problem, NDISWRAPPER supports it!!! Just the only problem is this:

ndiswrapper -l
Installed drivers:
g120 Hardware, NOT present

lsusb
xxxx:xxxx(x=numbers, I don't remember by heart) D-Link DWL-G120 [hex]

Posted by ber on Mar. 23 2006,10:37

does this DSL version includes webcams spca5xx driver? as a newbie I dont know how to compile it. running DSL in HD install mode, MMX 166Mhz. 32MB RAM. 422MB HD.
if not, wich brand of wecam is working for sure with a out of the boox DSL? I'm trying to set up a webcam control system. only DSL and Puppy works in this machine.
thanks in advance. great job.

Posted by andrewb on Mar. 23 2006,11:01

Hi,

Great new RC. It seems to cope with the sound system on the Libretto 100 without needing any 'manual' intervention via bootlocal.sh (previous versions needed the sound system to be modprobed to work properly). Still a problem with DMIX & the Libretto using 2 mixer channels - I think I'll have a go at hacking the DMIX script as it can't be the only system that has this problem - probably most of the OPL3 sound systems will be similar.

On another point - the .cis & .dat files in etc/pcmcia/cis are once again caught in a symbolic link loop (see my posting: < http://damnsmalllinux.org/cgi-bin....fem556b > for a full descrption). Can they please be put back for the final 2.3 release.

Posted by roberts on Mar. 23 2006,15:59

Thanks andrewb,
Seems to be fallout from the rollback.
I will have it corrected in the 2.3 release

Posted by webherper on Mar. 23 2006,23:15

Okay, I tried RC2 and it errors out in Windows XP on qemu right when it says loading KNOPPIX ...RC1 works fine....anyone else having this problem?

Posted by desnotes on Mar. 24 2006,00:19

I've run it standard with XP quite a few times and it works every time for me.

desNotes

Posted by ldsl on Mar. 24 2006,01:31

RC2 on an ibm 560z laptop as a testbed:
bootfloppy and pcmciafloppy work great as in RC1,
however dsl can not recognize a usb harddrive -
specifically a western digital passport 80gig,
used right out of the box (it comes formated with fat32)
this same drive is easily seen in kubuntu on another machine.
please advise.

Posted by webherper on Mar. 24 2006,07:00

Quote (desnotes @ Mar. 23 2006,19:19)

I've run it standard with XP quite a few times and it works every time for me.

desNotes

I am going to try and download it again....wonder if I got an error on d/l...I will let you know the results...

Posted by Patrick on Mar. 24 2006,13:44

Hallo y' all,

I just burned V2.3 RC2 on cd and booted a HP pc (D31M, 2.4 Ghz) and everything works well. I updated/upgraded? my usb-stick which has a working dsl-hd-install on it (OK, upgrading worked great, my stick still boots and my settings were still there)

Then i tried to boot from cd/usb on a Hp Pc (DX2000M, 3 Ghz)... That didn't work.. (even with failsafe, strange.. there was also NO bootpicture, f2 and f3 did work and i tried al sorts of cheatcodes)

To bad.. I still love DSL

Some data concerning the Dx2000M:

Pentium ® 4 Hyper threaded
Intel ® 82801 EB LPC/PCI bridge/SMBus controller
Intel ® 82865/PE/P/GV/8284P Processor to IO controller
1500 Mb internal memory :-)

Greetz from the Netherlands

Posted by webherper on Mar. 24 2006,17:58

Quote (webherper @ Mar. 24 2006,02:00)

I am going to try and download it again....wonder if I got an error on d/l...I will let you know the results...

Okay, I think I have narrowed it down....I compared the dsl-windows.bat file from RC1 (which works) to RC2 (which doesn't)

When I run the RC2 Bat file, a second Command window opens with an error, but usually too quick to shutdown with an error for me to catch...but I did it says:

could not open '\\.\kqemu' - QEMU acceleration layer not activated

So I continued to examine the .bat files and fiddle with them. If I remove the -m 96 -soundhw sb16 from the .bat file, it will start fine albiet with no audio.

Did the version of QEMU change also? Any help would be greatly appreciated. I am still wondering if anyone else has this pronblem, or if I am the only one...

Posted by desnotes on Mar. 24 2006,18:58

Qemu did change to version 0.8.0 and that is why the commands changed. If you downloaded the embedded zip file, you should have the latest version of Qemu with the correct commands.

However, if you replaced certain DSL files in an USB drive you previously had rc1 on then the version of qemu is 0.7.2 and needs to be replaced.

Posted by roberts on Mar. 24 2006,21:53

kqemu is the accelerator. It is not required.
If you so choose you can install the kqmeu into your windows system.
We use Qemu only in its non-install method. Thus any pendrive with dsl-embedded should work on any windows systems without any installation to the host windows os

Posted by danher on Mar. 24 2006,22:41

I'm happy to see that this round of development does include the scsi drivers as not having them was preventing me from installing on a machine with an Adapter AHA-2940. Now the software finds "SCSI devices handled by aic7xxx.o". However, for some reason the single scsi disk gets recognized as /dev/sdb and not /dev/sda, which prevents using cfdisk within normal DSL. Starting with the "dsl 2" option I can partition the disk (I created sdb1 for swap, sdb2 for the dsl image and sdb3 for /home and /mydsl).
BUT, and here comes my question: I'm not able to do a frugal install (the program says to work only for hda1):
** Is there a modification of the frugal_install.sh script that would work in my case?
** Do I need to change something on the adapter to have the disk be recognized as /dev/sda instead of /dev/sdb.

Thanks!

Posted by roberts on Mar. 24 2006,23:03

Is your scsi adaptec set for channel 0 or channel 1?

Posted by webherper on Mar. 25 2006,00:02

Quote (roberts @ Mar. 24 2006,16:53)

Even though KQEMU errors out, I can still start RC2 if I remove the -audiohw sb16 line from the bat file...I tried setting it to other options (from the QEMU docs) but any time that line is in the file, it crashes the startup routine when it gets to "Uncompressing Linux..."

I haven't installed it on my pen drive yet, as I want to make sure it is working correctly. The QEMU docs didnt help much.

Its weird because the old version of QEMU with RC1 works fine. I am starting to believe it is a QEMU issue and not a DSL issue...

Posted by danher on Mar. 25 2006,11:35

Quote (roberts @ Mar. 24 2006,18:03)

Is your scsi adaptec set for channel 0 or channel 1?

I guess channel 0. The harddisk is device 0 with LUN 0, the Adaptec card is device 7.

Posted by magglass1 on Mar. 25 2006,16:14

Quote (webherper @ Mar. 24 2006,19:02)

Quote (roberts @ Mar. 24 2006,16:53)

I had the same problem, however before making that change Qemu worked fine on my laptop running XP Pro without any errors. Then after I tried runing on my desktop pc also with XP Pro it crashed.

Posted by desnotes on Mar. 25 2006,16:39

I have noticed a difference between the Qemu in DSL 2.3rc2 and the one I downloaded directly, even though they are both version 0.8.0. When running DSL 2.3rc2 I get an additonal DOS window that opens and displays the following message:

Could not open '\\.\kqemu' - QEMU acceleration layer not activated

However, on my computer running XP SP2 it sill runs fine. If you want to try out the same version of QEMU I am using and see if it fixes your problem with having to remove -soundhw sb16 download it here:

< http://www.h7.dion.ne.jp/~qemu-win/ >

Hope this helps,

desNotes

Posted by roberts on Mar. 25 2006,16:43

desnotes,

That is the location that it was downloaded from.
It also works fine on my XP system.
Would you compare the Qemu files on the one with the extra window?

Thanks,
Robert

Posted by desnotes on Mar. 25 2006,17:55

After analyzing the file included with DSL 2.3 rc2 and the one I downloaded I went back to the web site and found out that they recompiled the source with kqemu (if you do not have kqemu installed, include -no-kqemu in the batch file.

At the same time kqemu was included, support was added for the DirectSound, FMOD and AdLib sound cards using the file fmod.dll. This causes the extra DOS window to open and from I can find, there is not way to exclude it. This is probably causing the problem with having to exclude the -soundhw sb16 in computers that may not support the new addition.

Both of these versions are considered 0.8.0 with the only difference in the zip file name and directory name.

I personally believe they should not have kept the version the same with this type of change but it appears to be acceptable in the Qemu community as other support sites are doing the same thing.

Unfortunately, I could not find anywhere where the previous zip file is available. I have it but currently do not have a working FTP server. If there is somewhere I could upload it to make it available Robert, email me at desnotes@gmail.com.

desnotes

Posted by roberts on Mar. 25 2006,20:23

desnotes, thanks for the update.

Sometimes it can become difficult to support and integrate with another project like Qemu. What I get from reading their site is that the -kernel option, like we use, seems to be more for testing. I now it would be much more simple from as DSL developer's standpoint is to only support the -cdrom image option. That gets these Qemu updates off my back. But doing so, we lose alot of nice integration and easy access to the many DSL boot options that are needed.

Regarding sound...

I see that one can use the option
-soundhw sb16,es1370,adlib

Specifying all three now supported by Qemu.
Their site says it is selectable by Windows control panel?
Not being much of a Windows user, I am at a loss to test this.

If this solves the other users issues regarding sound then OK.

Otherwise I suppose I could drop the -soundhw option for the final 2.3 release and include in the readme a link to Qemu's site regarding sound.

Or change to the -cdrom option and then it becomes similar to the vmplayer version of DSL.

Testing & Feedback on these Qemu related issues requested.

Posted by friedgold on Mar. 25 2006,22:33

Quote

When running DSL 2.3rc2 I get an additonal DOS window that opens and displays the following message:

I think this should help (I haven't tried it though - I don't use Windows so much):
< http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/qemu-devel/2005-04/msg00437.html >

Quote (desnotes @ Mar. 25 2006,17:55)

I personally believe they should not have kept the version the same with this type of change but it appears to be acceptable in the Qemu community as other support sites are doing the same thing.

The Windows binary isn't put together by the Qemu developers and incorporates various patches not in the Qemu CVS. The Qemu developers haven't made a new release without bumping the version number.

Posted by desnotes on Mar. 26 2006,01:07

I found more information on configuring the sound and also noticed that on DSL 2.3 rc2, the sound configuration is not included like it was in past revisions. Here is what I found:

Quote

When you use Linux as guest a OS, please type in guest OS like this.

[Linux guest]# modprobe sb io=0x220 irq=5 dma=1 dma16=5

If you installed sox package, .wav file is played.

[Linux guest]$ play test.wav

In previous .bat files the following was part of the append:

sb=0x220,5,1,1

I tried it on my computer running both the previous configuration and also using sb=0x220,5,1,5 and was able to run XMMS successfully.

I would recommend that those folks who were having problems add either of the two configurations in the dsl-windows.bat right after

-append "qemu and right before frugal

As for whether to use the -kernel option or the -cdrom option I agree that would probably be easier to use the -cdrom but using the cheat codes and the other DSL integration options does make the -kernel option preferable in my opinion. Also, for what it's worth, when booting DSL in the text mode, using the same cheat codes, the -kernel option boots 17.5% faster.

desNotes

Posted by wavetel on Mar. 28 2006,23:55

Howdy. Just ran up RC2 here.. A couple of things Ive noticed on 2 machines now. On bootup I get the Dillo opening up Getting to know DSL and as soon as I move the mouse it brings up a dialogue box like I right clicked on dillo. These are USB mouses. One is a pure USB mouse on a laptop and the other is a USB mouse through a adapter into a PS2 socket on the MoBo .. I also did a fresh install on a USB drive over the top of my old DSL. This was selected as a new/fresh install of RC2 over a previuos version and not an update. I found that my favorites in firefox and my address book in sylpeed were still there from previous. So basically it didnt wipe the drive and start again fresh.
An update of Firefox would be a good thing. Also I am not mad about the Saturn background. Although its pretty and eye catching its a bit loud to sit in front of continually and the desktop Icons tend to be easier to see on a darker background. The Tux wallpaper in emblem mode is nice. Will try out some wireless devices soon and let you know of any problems.
Tony

Posted by wavetel on Mar. 29 2006,00:00

I forgot to mention. Is there some way of easily distinguishing the different versions of DSL when they are running or booted up. I have not spotted it. Maybee on the desktop on in the bootup it would be a good idea. Ive got a few versions around and now its appearing on USB sticks its not as easy to label and keep track of. It would make some sense to advertise the version number somewhere. The desktop display of system status has the Kernel build and other info so why not the DSL version?

Posted by roberts on Mar. 29 2006,09:12

DSL v2.3 final has now been released. See site news.
Thanks to all for participated in the testing, for the feedback and suggestions.

Robert