VectorLinux Core 7 Alpha4 is up and ready to test

[Pita]

Alpha4.16

gkrellm does not open: Illegal instruction

None of the players in Multimedia would play an audio CD. xine even hangs and had to be xkill(ed).

/usr/bin/cdda-player plays an audio CD well.

none of my printers are detected. Cups shows only SCSI as local printer.

[nightflier]

A4.16 on real hardware:

Code:

$ geeqie
geeqie: error while loading shared libraries: libexiv2.so.5: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

Code:

$ scribus
Cannot find plugin: /usr/lib/scribus/plugins//libscriptplugin.so: undefined symbol: openpty

Code:

$ hp-toolbox
/usr/bin/hp-toolbox: line 4: /usr/share/hplip/toolbox.py: No such file or directory

Code:

$ exaile
INFO    : Loading Exaile 0.3.2.0...
INFO    : Loading settings...
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/lib/exaile/exaile.py", line 51, in <module>
    main()
  File "/usr/lib/exaile/exaile.py", line 48, in main
    exaile = main.Exaile()
  File "/usr/lib/exaile/xl/main.py", line 96, in __init__
    self.__init()
  File "/usr/lib/exaile/xl/main.py", line 132, in __init
    self.__show_splash()
  File "/usr/lib/exaile/xl/main.py", line 260, in __show_splash
    import xlgui
  File "/usr/lib/exaile/xlgui/__init__.py", line 52, in <module>
    from xlgui import cover
  File "/usr/lib/exaile/xlgui/cover.py", line 40, in <module>
    from xl import (
  File "/usr/lib/exaile/xl/player/__init__.py", line 61, in <module>
    PLAYER = get_player()()
  File "/usr/lib/exaile/xl/player/__init__.py", line 47, in get_player
    from xl.player.engine_normal import NormalPlayer
  File "/usr/lib/exaile/xl/player/engine_normal.py", line 32, in <module>
    import pygst
ImportError: No module named pygst

Looks like some missing Python pieces.

The gucharmap-2.28.2-i486-1vl70 package is incomplete, missing executable.

These look like orphans:
/usr/share/applications/sun-java.desktop
/usr/share/applications/sun-javaws.desktop
/usr/share/applications/sun_java.desktop

Opera license agreement box is empty
/usr/share/applications/opera-widget-installer.desktop file has no category,
and the command "opera -widget %f" gives error "Failed to determine Opera personal directory."

[Pita]

STD-Alpha-4.21

Beautifully installed with vinstall-iso-ng.

This time the KB has to be plugged in PS2 port same as mouse.

And I could not believe my eyes my 2 printers are working with me practically
doing nothing. Great.

Internet connected on its own, me just given my server name.

Sound working. audio CD playing with MPlayer and gnome-player. Have not
tried the others.

'at' working.

gkrellm does not open. Again saying illegal instruction

'look' installed, however, /usr/share/dict/words: No such file or directory
so don't complain about my missspelling.

[stretchedthin]

More testing notes on alpha 4.21...
Starting scribus get the following warning..

Code:

There is a problem loading 1 of 29 plugins.
libscriptplugin.so
This is probably caused by some kind of dependency issue or old plugins existing in your install directory. If you clean out your install directory and reinstall and this still occurs, please report it on bugs.scribus.net.

Could not confirm gkrellm error on my machine (only have one with me on the road, will check others on thus.) On this machine gkrellm starts just fine.

Accessories menu has an entry called 'help' that opens a browser to here..file:///usr/share/doc/xfce-utils/html/C/index.html
This file is not on the computer so firefox reports file not found.

Choosing 'Root Terminal' out of the accessories menu doesn't open anything.

[Pita]

strace gkrelm ends:

open("/usr/share/fonts/TTF/DejaVuSans.ttf", O_RDONLY) = 7
fcntl64(7, F_SETFD, FD_CLOEXEC)         = 0
fstat64(7, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=683528, ...}) = 0
mmap2(NULL, 683528, PROT_READ, MAP_PRIVATE, 7, 0) = 0xb6613000
close(7)                                = 0
brk(0x820e000)                          = 0x820e000
brk(0x8206000)                          = 0x8206000
--- SIGILL (Illegal instruction) @ 0 (0) ---
+++ killed by SIGILL +++

Choosing 'Root Terminal' out of the accessories menu doesn't open anything,
whereas 'Terminal' opens.
Opening 'Root Terminal' as a user a window opens asking for password and
when entered nothing happens, no terminal.

[Pita]

More testing notes on alpha 4.21...
Starting scribus get the following warning..

Accessories menu has an entry called 'help' that opens a browser to here..file:///usr/share/doc/xfce-utils/html/C/index.html
This file is not on the computer so firefox reports file not found.

It should read:

file:///usr/share/doc/xfce-4.8/xfce-utils-4.8.1/html/C/index.html

[budulay]

A21:
After the installer copies all the files and moves on to create a boot manager, I get this:

This application has raised an unexpected error and must abort.
[45] File or directory does not exist.
Md|BootMngr.?.0

EDIT:
Could not install with vinstall-iso-ng from VL7-A16 host. I get "No install medium found" error.

[GrannyGeek]

I installed VL7 a4.21. Although my LCD monitor's resolution is 1280x1024, I had to select 1024x768 for the installer. The computer crashes and monitor goes black at 1280x1024 in the installer. The rest of the installation was uneventful. My USB keyboard and mouse worked in the installer and when XFce started.

I haven't had a chance to do any further setting up. Will report on what happens. I really hated the look of XFce when it started but will fix it up to my liking tomorrow.

Any hints about when beta I will come out? I'm about ready to start testing on my other desktop computer but I don't want to take the time to install a4.21 if beta1 is a week or two away.
--GrannyGeek

[uelsk8s]

Any hints about when beta I will come out? I'm about ready to start testing on my other desktop computer but I don't want to take the time to install a4.21 if beta1 is a week or two away.
--GrannyGeek

My best guess would be in the next few days.

[budulay]

A21:
Got it going with vinstall-iso-ng script.

I got a new problem, though - my sound isn't working.
Tried vasm, but it couldn't find it.

[stretchedthin]

A21:
Got it going with vinstall-iso-ng script.

I got a new problem, though - my sound isn't working.
Tried vasm, but it couldn't find it.

I thought so to, turned out they were just muted.
Check alsamixer look for any MM's at the bottom of each control.

[budulay]

Holy cow, I got sound!
Now why in the world have the installer told me that it couldn't find my card?

With sound working I can listen to grabbag and wait for Duke Nukem Forever to come out ;-)


EDIT:
Just tried burning an image with Xfburn - it was saying that the drive was empty even though I put a CD-R in. I had to close and open it up again for it to work. I never used Xfburn before, so I can't tell if it's a problem or that's just the way it behaves.

[Pita]

I have no sound if my webcam is connected to USB port on booting.
Have to remember to unplug before booting. After that I
can plug it back-in and sound stays with alsa and skype will have sound
with USB webcam set as microphone .

Window Manager-Advanced-Double click action, nothing happens like
Shade Windows and others.

[GrannyGeek]

I spent the morning customizing, copying directories for icons, libraries, etc., and installing Tuxcards and CBTracker. I always have to copy libraries for those two from an earlier VL installation. The copied libraries do not overwrite any existing libraries. Sound, proper video, Internet are all working. I'm getting MUCH better glxgears scores than I did in VL7 a4.

Everything was going great until it all went bad. I think there's a serious bug involved here, as the same thing happened in alpha 4.15.

I did something (not sure what) and my icons disappeared, my desktop background went from the picture I use to a darkish blue, and I can't change it. Programs look right except icons are missing. For example, I'm writing this in Firefox. Window controls such as Minimize, Maximize, Close, Pin, etc., are all there. Pictures in the window such as for ads, VL's Donate button, and so forth are there and right. But the icons for Go Back, Open a new tab, Reload, Stop Loading, are missing. Instead there's a little "page" with a red x in it. That's what desktop icons have, too. Launcher icons in the Panel are missing completely, but some icons for running programs are there; others have a generic icon. In XFce Settings, Desktop, Background tab, nothing is listed. I tried clicking on Add an image to the list and selected a file in /usr/share/wallpapers, but nothing was added to the Backgrounds list.

It seems something is amiss in the window manager and I have no idea how to fix it. This happened after I tried changing an icon for a launcher through XFce's new editor for Launcher properties. I also ran qtconfig and changed the GUI style. I don't know the exact sequence when the icons disappeared. I did run qtconfig again and changed back to the original GUI style.

I don't have icons if I run XFce as root, either.

What concerns me is that the exact same thing happened to me in alpha 4.15. I reported it here and asked if anyone had a fix, but got no answers to that. I suspect it's a simple fix. There has to be something wrong, a bug, I expect. I didn't do anything unusual or that any user might try.

I'll wait until tomorrow for an answer about how to fix this, if it's possible, but if I don't find out by tomorrow, I'll reinstall and not run qtconfig. If qtconfig is the culprit, I think it should be removed from the distro because running it may trash your installation.

Actually, things are working except for no icons and no possibility to change the background or add icons.

When a4.15 had the same problem, I tried going back to skel through VASM but that did no good. It's system wide (root has the same problem and I never ran a root desktop until I checked to see if the icons were missing).

I'm sort of tearing my hair out because I really liked what I was seeing until this happened.
--GrannyGeek

[GrannyGeek]

I fixed the problem and the solution is very interesting.

From the error messages I got when I tried to run mousepad, I saw that a bunch of libpixbufloader libraries were not found in /usr/lib/gtk-2.0/2.10.0/loaders. I copied them over from vl7a4, ran ldconfig, and I was able to change the background, get the icons to appear, and so forth.

So something made those libraries disappear. Running qtconfig? I doubt that trying to change an icon was responsible. It would be good to track this down because it's bound to happen to someone else and the fix is not at all obvious.

Phew! Now I can get back to configuring a4.21. I'm glad to have XFce4.8 included. Some of the changes were a bit unsettling but not hard to figure out. I do prefer the old way of editing launchers, as the new way forces an extra step on me.
--GrannyGeek