VectorLinux SOHO Beta4 bug reports and suggestions

[Dweeberkitty]

Taking the liberty of creating a new thread for Beta4 reports.

Beta4 can be downloaded here:
http://vectorlinux.osuosl.org/veclinux-6.0/iso-test/VL6.0-SOHO-B4.iso
http://vectorlinux.osuosl.org/veclinux-6.0/iso-test/VL6.0-SOHO-B4-CD2.iso

Bug tracker here (not sure if we are still using this):
http://vlcore.vectorlinux.com/trac/vlcore/report

Please post bug reports and suggestions here.

[Dweeberkitty]

Beta4 is looking good for me. I did have major problems with the included OpenOffice package. Although it looks much better than Beta3, it had issues with objects and specifically formulae. I opened some of my old documents that were created with OpenOffice 3.1.1.

When I click on a formula object that was created with a previous version, I get a dialogue error that says "General Error." Then my formula object goes blank with red text with the object number. In fact, after opening a few several documents, I got the same problem. One document that I was working on and saved my changes, then found that it had messed up all the equations.

From here, https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/openoffice.org/+bug/384489 it seems that this problem comes from OpenOffice directly (I realize that the package on SOHO is the go-oo package). However, using the latest OpenOffice release directly from OpenOffice.org causes no problems and works.

Unless the go-oo people fix this problem, we will need to go back to the regular OpenOffice.org. The installed version of go-oo is 3.2.0.5 and I downloaded and installed this 3.2.0.7 package here, http://slackware.opennix.com/?slackversion=13.0&name=openoffice but had the same problem.

[Dweeberkitty]

Should probably start a new thread..... Beta 4.

Installed, though due to a screw-up on my part (brought the wrong CD with me), I've so far only installed from CD1.

Installer was fine in operation, though it still has a problem with keyboard layout. I selected UK during the install and I'm getting UK on the desktop. Console is defaulting to US. Please fix!

I created a new user, as a test to see if UID was being correctly handled. Just as well I'm going to reinsall later - I'm still ending up with UID 1001 when creating new instead of importing. This really is a pain!

Every time the desktop starts, I get a prompt for the root password - wicd wants root access. I know I've seen that one before, but I can't recall what the problem is....

Attempting to log out results in a grey screen with a flashing cursor top left. No way to get back to the login prompt. I have to login to console and shut down from there. That is a new problem - not seen it in any of the previous betas.

Every time the desktop starts, I get a box - starting Akonadi server ?? Followed by another box about migration of the default address book. Once is surely enough - I really don't need to have this on every start, do I?

I had to fight to get my sound working - the last couple of beta's it has simply come up. Not this time, I had go Mixer > Settings > Configure Channels and (after a good deal of swearing) drag and drop the speaker item to get it in the contols, then tick the box to get it unmuted. That is a distinct step back, and one that will almost certainly throw any newbie trying to get an Intel HDA system producing sound.

Long standing KDE bug - even though I've selected UK, it still thinks I'm in Gurnsey. Worse, this build doesn't allow me to change that - no way to get root access to make the change.

Hurray! I now get prompted for the root password if I select Samba from the advanced KDE settings. So that has been fixed.

Still errors with power management. It complains about issues, then comes up with an error regarding Consolekit or Powerdevil. CPU scaling policy fails to allow 'ondemand', which is my prefered option.

I'll reinstall once I have the second disk available, and this time either import an existing user or create a new one after install to avoid the UID problem. More then....

Paul.

[Dweeberkitty]

KDE Kickoff-style menu display problem - just shows the outline of where the menu should be but none of the actual menu itself.  This happens on my system using the 'nv' driver.  I've been able to fix this by adding the following option to xorg.conf: Option "XAANoOffscreenPixmaps" "1"

This option has also resolved many issues relating to rendering problems in Firefox and seamonkey using various open-source display drivers (nv, ati, radeon, openchrome).

[Dweeberkitty]

This is strange. I've got home (I do love 13 hour shifts), and reinstalled B4 with both CDs available. I also skipped adding a normal user, logged in as root, removed the new user created by the first B4 install and created a new user (which got me the needed 1000 UID).

The install is almost completely different. Different wallpaper, different setup on the taskbar. Different default icon sizes, different font size in konsole. Overall, a much more usable setup. But I don't understand why there should be such a substantial difference between the two installs.

A few different problems. I'm still getting US default keyboard layout (didn't really expect that to change). I'm also still being prompted for the root password on initial logon (my error in the earlier report - it is only on initial login, not any time the desktop is started). Once that is done, Wicd works as it should.

I still can't set locale data correctly.. I select the correct locale, 'apply' is grayed out. So I try to move on. At which point I get prompted to apply or discard the changes. If I select 'apply', I get a popup error box which says:

Code:

Unable to authenticate/execute the action: 4

When I click ok after the error box, the systems setting applet closes.

While I am now able to access the Samba settings in the advanced mode of System Settings, when I came to enter a share name, I get an error for every character I enter. I managed to get the basic share path entered, but I had to acknowledge an error for every character of the path. Not usable at all.

VasmCC is still showing an icon for vlcpufreq, but nothing happens if I attempt to open it.

On a more positive note. The desktop seems markedly snappier in operation. And with all the fancy screen effects turned on, responsiveness is a good deal better than it was with the earlier beta.

Looks good, but still has a number of outstanding issues.

More later.

Paul.

[Dweeberkitty]

I installed beta 4 on the 1.3 GHz Celeron today. The GUI installer worked flawlessly for me. I'm sorry to see that the option to install LILO to a floppy disk is missing, as it has been on all the betas I've tried. No big problem--I can install LILO to a floppy later with VASM. I reboot with the installation CD.

It would be good to have a prompt and pause for removing the CD before the reboot following installation. At the end of the installation, the second CD is in the drive. If the user is going to reboot through the CD, the wrong CD is in the drive. Some CD drives close rapidly if you open them while something is going on and the user doesn't have enough time to remove CD2 and replace it with CD1. I can select to boot from the CD drive by hitting Esc when I boot, but not all computers offer that option.

I skipped creating a user account at that point in the installation because I remembered the user would get the UID 1001, which creates a HORRIBLE mess if you want to network with other computers having that user or if you want to mount other VL installations on your computer and transfer stuff from that user's home directory. toothandnail reports that the user created during installation is still being numbered at 1001. I created the user through VASM after the initial reboot and the UID was 1000, so all is well.

I got asked for the root password for wicd. I didn't think I had wicd running, as I don't have anything wireless, but I couldn't confirm this as I don't know where it loads.

CUPS--what happened to the driver selections? No gutenprint drivers. I installed hplip during the installation but didn't see any signs of it, but I don't know what to look for. I tried to open the hplip thing from the Launcher but nothing happened. I ran Gslapt and installed gutenprint and whatever else was lacking and was then able to set up  my printers.

I was sorry to see that older versions of Firefox and SeaMonkey were installed. Since the newest versions have important security fixes, I think they should be installed, not the older versions. And we should get them out of testing and into the regular repo. I have them on three systems and they're working fine. And why not use the latest Flash version? That's another security upgrade. I installed it myself and it's working fine in all the browsers.

Performance seems reasonably good, considering that I'm using SOHO beta 4 on pretty old hardware (see 1.3 GHz Celeron in my sig). I toned down the eye candy quite a bit, mostly to make it easier for this aging computer but also because I really don't like most of those effects. For that matter, I don't like KDE, either, but being a good Vectorian I feel duty bound to test the beta.<g>

Will do more testing tomorrow. So far, so good.
--GrannyGeek

[Dweeberkitty]

I guess the beta3 thread is now the beta4 thread.

While a cursory load and look through went without a hitch further use produced problems. It is distracting having wicd as for root authority on each boot as is mentioned above. I have also had frequent "hard freezes" with the following: using a USB flash stick (PNY Attache 1Gb) locks up everything every time, when using Audacity, 1.3.7 from the repo, if I use ctrl-z to undo anything all locks up everytime, and I get a few random freezes after no user input for a while (I don't know how long as I'm away from the machine and come back to find I have to power off then on). Other notes that don't freeze the machine are that my external drive is not recognized (it is a USB device) and suspend to RAM works intermittently.

[GrannyGeek]

I tried to duplicate MikeCindi's problems and wasn't able to.

I tried two thumb drives and had no problems. One is a 256 meg Sandisk and the other is a 4 gig Kingston Data Traveler. I turned on my USB hard drive and it automatically mounted.

One thing, though--I didn't get desktop icons for any of these USB drives. I had to look in a file manager to see if the drives were mounted. I was able to unmount the flash drives as user, but I had to su to root to unmount my external hard drive.

I haven't installed Audacity and I don't use Suspend to RAM.

How would I install XFce on SOHO 4? I really don't like using KDE--it feels too much like Windows. I would also need to have no KDE libraries loading unless I started a program that needs them.
--GrannyGeek

[MikeCindi]

I'll try reloading beta4 this weekend as all the crashing that occured may have corrupted something. Perhaps that will fix the flash drive problems as I didn't have them with b3.
With KDE4 I've not gotten desktop icons just the notification on the appropriate taskbar app.
Suspend to RAM seems to be set up by default. I've not had to do anything special just selected it on the shutdown menu. Suspend to disk fails to reload with an error that is not addressed the the tuxonice site. I've not pursued it either at this point...not enough time in my days/weekends.
Thanks for "testing" on your machine GrannyGeek.

[toothandnail]

One thing, though--I didn't get desktop icons for any of these USB drives. I had to look in a file manager to see if the drives were mounted. I was able to unmount the flash drives as user, but I had to su to root to unmount my external hard drive.

If you look on the task bar, just next to the VL menu icon, there is another icon (a 'device notifier). When I plug a USB device in, it pops up a panel showing the device, with a note (for USB devices, it is '3 actions for this device'). If you click on that panel, it will give you the options - on the USB drive I'm using it is download photos twice (presumably with different software) and Open with File Manager, which will open Dolphin to show the files. Once you close the file manager (or the photo download software), if you click on the notifier again, it will show the device. Move the mouse to it, and there should be an up arrow symbol, which will allow you to unmount the device.

Not to my taste at all, but I'm not a big fan of KDE....

How would I install XFce on SOHO 4? I really don't like using KDE--it feels too much like Windows. I would also need to have no KDE libraries loading unless I started a program that needs them.

I used slapt-get to install the latest Xfce to the last beta, but that wouldn't help with not loading KDE libraries, I'm afraid. I didn't want to fiddle with that, since the system is using KDM rather than GDM, and also using kdesu. I was afraid I would end up with nothing working if I tried to remove bits of KDE to reduce the overhead.

Paul.

[Joe1962]

After a couple of days in Beta4, I have only 2 issues (so far):

- I can't find a way to stop the desktop icons from rearranging themselves on login or whenever they feel like it!!! Reminds me of the dreaded dancing icons¨ problem from KDE 3.x... 

- I get the already mentioned request for root password on login from wicd. But after that I get an error popup:

Code:

Could not connect to wicd's D-Bus interface.  Check the wicd log for error messages.

EDIT: Sorry, my bad, I am not on Beta4, but rather Beta3 with the all the KDE 4.4 deps, packages and extras installed. Thought I had installed Beta4, but just remembered I didn't have time last night.... 


Regarding this OpenOffice.org package, it won't let me open more than one file by clicking on them. I had to go back to my own repackaging of 3.2.0.

[rbistolfi]

I made up a few mins for installing this one. Can anyone confirm this? Whenever I change an associated program for a mime (right click and open with) it changes the mime for many types, not only the intended one (for example I opened a png with glewnview and now every file launchs it)

[caieng]

Taking the liberty of creating a new thread for Beta4 reports.

Thank you.  Much appreciated.

Daniel and I both reported, in the prior thread, inability to boot Beta 4 on "old" machines, i.e. PIII's.

Beta4 is looking good for me.

I installed beta 4 on the 1.3 GHz Celeron today.

So, then, what are we to understand?  There is some minor, obscure, insignificant defect in the installer, which at least two folks have overcome, in their testing of "old" motherboards/cpus?

If one reads, again, the various complaints/suggestions, from the beginning of this beta release, to the present day, a picture emerges of unreliable software.

The alternative explanation is that (at least in my case) ignorance plays a significant role, trumping any suspicious behaviour by this most recent beta version of the OS itself.

I cannot speak for anyone else, but I certainly would not trust this version of Vector Linux on any of my important office computers, while at least SOME people are reporting an inability to even install the OS.  This is more reminiscent of Linux in the late 1990's, a decade ago.

In view of my having had difficulty, (alone, I imagined, until I read Daniel's comment), and having heard NOTHING on this forum, vis a vis solving this problem with the installer re:  Beta-2 and Beta-3, I CHANGED MY HARDWARE, swapping a perfectly good Trident graphics controller, integrated into the chipset of the motherboard, for a different graphics controller, made by Nvidea, based upon S3, on a different motherboard.  I also swapped cpu, from the Tualatin, I had been using, to an older, "more reliable", PIII, 1133, thinking that perhaps the problem was with that particular chip set or motherboard.  But no.  Same problem. Same lack of solution, months pass, and all I read here, is "installs fine".

Yes, it does install fine, on my OTHER computers, the bigger, faster, newer, "better", 64 bit computers, for which Linux is neither required, nor desired.  What Vector SOHO beta 4 doesn't do, is install on the target apparatus, ten year old motherboards, memory and cpu's all of which install adequately with Slackware 13.0 (and countless other flavours). 

If it is the intention of the architects of this flawed version to exclude older hardware, then, that is not a crime against humanity, but, it would be useful, and save bandwidth on the forum, if that fact could be acknowledged, up front, honestly.

CAI ENG

[jimtib]

I have installed beta 4 on 3 different systems. On the newest one with an amd 64 single core it installed with no problem in beta 3 and 4 but wouldnt install in beta 1 and 2.I also installed on an athlon 1000 and a pentium 3 450 with 256 megs ram without any problems. The pentium computer is almost 10 years old and vl installed without a problem. It had win 98 on it and is so old it has isa slots .It has a riva 16 meg graphic card.

[newt]

I've had a chance to test B4 on two machines so far. One machine installs fine (newer system, but not "new" by any means). The other does not (older system - 1ghz Pentium, ati r128 graphics.

From what I can tell, the problematic machine seems to be stumbling on the graphics driver.  I did a lot of alpha testing and never encountered this problem, however all alpha testing was based on "hard-coded" graphics drivers (i.e. vesa, nv, and perhaps others) directly in xorg.conf. This Beta, at least, seems to be based on on-the-fly graphics drivers (i.e. the graphics drivers seems to be chosen on-the-fly by X server based on the identified chipset). No graphics driver is explicitly specified in xorg.conf.  So, in my case, the X server seems to be selecting the 'r128' graphics driver for my video but the driver itself does not seem to be present in the live installer environment (/usr/lib/modules/drivers/).  I've determine this by booting to 'gui 2' and then simply running 'Xorg' with no parameters, which shows that the r128 driver is not present in the system.

I played a bit with trying to specify a graphics driver and most of my playing failed. I would specify an existing module in xorg.conf and try 'startx' which would typically just sit at a blinking cursor below the command that was just entered (ati and fbdev). I could ctrl-c the command and regain terminal control. Upon trying 'vesa', X would start and I would see jwm but the system would just freeze requiring a hard reboot.  If I removed xorg.conf altogether then it seems that X would start but my monitor would indicate something to the effect of 'No supported input'.

Hope this is somehow useful.

edit: I've just recently checked /var/log/Xorg.0.log after attempting to startx and it also indicates a missing r128 module.  I've also just recently attempted to setup xorg (xorgsetup) via terminal prior to starting X and, again, X stumbles when starting (i.e. screen goes blank and I get a monitor message of 'Input not supported').