VL-5.9-STD-BETA1 Bugs/annoyances

[GrannyGeek]

Today I installed the new beta on my Celeron 1.3 GHz desktop and my Turion 64 X2 laptop--the one on which I can't get wireless and sound to work in 5.8 Standard.

The desktop installation was very easy and although I haven't done much testing, so far everything is working. Midnight Commander in Terminal worked fine and wonder of wonders, Orage STARTS ON SUNDAY!!!That's the custom in the US but previous Orages started on Monday (workaround could get them started on Sunday). The computer has a Radeon 9200 video card, so I tried the proprietary ATI driver first. X wouldn't start. Fatal error. So I switched to the open source radeon driver and that solved the problem.

The laptop is another story. First of all, I couldn't get any kernel to install except scsi2. The other three got stuck on "io schedular dfg registered (default)" but would continue if I tapped the Power button on the laptop. (Weird?) But then they'd get to "Floppy drive(s): fd0 is unknown type 14 (usb?); fd1 is unknown type (usb?)" There's a number after unknown type but I can't read my handwriting. After that line appears, the computer locks tight and I have to press and hold the power button to shut down. The scsi2 kernel does work, fortunately. I don't know why, as this computer has no SCSI. However, there's something called iSCSI that appears several times in the boot messages and also in Windows Vista's Device Manager. There is, of course, no floppy drive and perhaps the messages about fd0 and fd1 are about the built-in USB ports.

I first tried to install the proprietary nVidia video driver but X wouldn't start--Fatal Error, something about no server could be found. Then I used the open source nvidia driver and the XFce desktop came up fine. When I had 5.8 Standard on the laptop, I installed the nVidia driver from nVidia's Web site and it worked fine and gave me true 1280x800 resolution (the open-source nVidia driver just squashes the screen though it's not too bad).

No sound driver was loaded and no wireless.

However, I noticed the possible cause, which I've experienced on previous VL releases and which really should be fixed. If you install anything but the default choice for kernel, no modules are loaded. As I learned before, that's because the scsi2 kernel isn't finding what it needs in /usr/src, so no modules are found or loaded. I was once told how to fix this, but of course I can't remember. If we're going to offer more than one kernel choice, it should install correctly and WORK when the user starts for the first time after installation is complete.

I won't bother to see if I can get my sound and wireless to work in the 5.9 beta until I know how to get this module thing fixed.

So my results are very good on the older desktop, a mess on the laptop. I won't be trying this beta on my newer desktop, though I'm considering installing the 64-bit release in the Linux partition. I have a very nice VL in VirtualBox under XP on that computer and am leaning toward sacrificing my actual Linux partition for the sake of testing 64-bit VL.

How can I get the scsi2 kernel to find the modules?

Also, is there any way we can do better as far as setting up wireless networking? It's so obscure. Take a look at PCLinuxOS and its distro-specific wireless setup stuff. So easy and clear you don't need to read instructions and diddle around with stuff. VectorLinux would get a huge boost if we could have something similar to make a wireless setup easy.

One other thing: I HATED the default wallpaper in 5.9. I rushed to change it IMMEDIATELY.
--GrannyGeek

[exeterdad]

One other thing: I HATED the default wallpaper in 5.9. I rushed to change it IMMEDIATELY.
--GrannyGeek

Perfect example of how different peoples tastes are.  I think the wallpaper is awesome    It's beautiful and relaxing, yet sports the VL name.

[The Headacher]

When I log out of xfce, I don't get back to KDM like expected. Instead, I drop all the way to the terminal.

When I press "ctrl + alt + F7" to see what's up on X my system hangs, and turning it off is needed. I tried removing ~/.xinitrc and linking /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc to /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.xfce but this doesn't seem to have had any effect.

[toothandnail]

Minor annoyance - MC in 5.9 beta does not recognize .tlz packages as archives.

Is there any easy way to activate .tlz support?

paul.

[toothandnail]

I like Vlpackager, but it doesn't seem to scale much, and the fonts are too large for the laptop 1024x768 screen.

paul.

Can you take a screen shot and post the link here?

This problem should be fixed. Also make sure you are running vpackager-1.0.1 RC2

Sorry to be slow getting back to you - I'm working nights at the moment...

I downloaded rc2 (eventually worked out that the 5.9 beta has rc1 installed) and the problem is pretty well gone. In fact, if anything, its gone slightly the other way. Two of the buttons on the first screen are being mildly truncated. The first button has the label 'build from a source tarball', and on my laptop, I lose the last l in tarball...

The middle button (labeled Cruxports4slack) is missing the C at the start, and the k at the end..

A very useful package. I've been  making a bit of use of the Cruxports4slack package, and using it through Vpackager is excellent. Used it earlier today to build an updated madwifi package.

paul.

[GrannyGeek]

Just a report that I've been using 5.9 Beta all day on my Celeron desktop and it's SWEET. I've had no problems. I'm writing this in Opera, which I downloaded from opera.com and installed myself, rather than using the package that comes with the distro. I've also installed OOo 2.3 (package from linuxpackages.net), Inkscape .45, SoftMaker Office, Tuxcards, and have made various modifications to XFce to suit my taste.

5.9 Beta is as speedy as can be. Now I need to get some printers installed, install Picasa for Linux, see what's going on with Xara LX (apparently not included), and find any buglets that show up.

Great job, devs! I can't wait for the final release.

I'll see if I can get the laptop working later tonight. Maybe a symlink will do it.

One other thing: I vote for the 2.4 version of the Gimp if it's as stable as people are reporting.
--GrannyGeek

[Joe1962]

...see what's going on with Xara LX (apparently not included)...

Apparently (and very regretfully, IMO) it is practically in "death mode". Hopefully something can still change though...

Here's a recent article about the issues:
http://www.linux.com/feature/119790

[uelsk8s]

Moe has built a new vpackager that should resolve the display issues with it.
you can get it here: http://vectorlinux.osuosl.org/Uelsk8s/vpackager-1.0.1RC2-i586-2vl59.tlz
let us know how it works for you.

Thanks,
Uelsk8s

[GrannyGeek]

Apparently (and very regretfully, IMO) it is practically in "death mode". Hopefully something can still change though...

Very sad, as Xara had great potential. I knew it was going through rough times but wasn't aware that it is on its deathbed. I never got into it much because knowing the outlook was shaky, I didn't want to invest the time in the considerable learning curve.

If Xara came out with a proprietary version for Linux that we could buy, I'd get it.
--GrannyGeek (heretic)

[Masta]

Yeah, that's too bad about Xara. Well, so far anyways. Go GImp Go 

[thump]

Just another installation report.
I have installed  5.9beta1 on a Compaq PIII-600, 320M RAM, ! each 40G, 120G, and 10G EIDE drives, 1 CD-RW, Nvidia 5500GT vid card, Ensoniq ES1371 sound card, Intel and Lite-On ethernet cards.
I am running the Nvidia beta driver, and haven't had the lockup problems others have had.
I have two problems, neither of which is a major annoyance.
Problem #1 --- When I boot up, I cannot get the LILO bootloader to accept any input from my keyboard . Compaq Wireless Keyboard [CKI18g] This means I am stuck either using a wired keyboard to select OS or using only VL5.8.
Problem #2 --- I have a 80G partition on hdb that I want to use with the XFS (just to play) and I cannot get either VL5.9 or VL5.8 to automount it.
From /etc/fstab [duplicated on each]

Code:

/dev/hdb7    /media/data1   auto   users,auto,rw,exec,noguid,nosuid    0 0

No problems using this partition in PCLOS.
On the other hand, I'm really liking the beta1 edition. [Sorry for shouting but.....] I LOVE the stock background. So do my Wife, 2 Sons and 3 Grandchildren. Looks like a place we all like to play.
This really looks good, acts good, and plays well with my test box.
Thank You.
Bill

[nightflier]

/dev/hdb7    /media/data1   auto   users,auto,rw,exec,noguid,nosuid    0 0

try this:

Code:

/dev/hdb7    /media/data1   xfs  noatime    0 0

For your keyboard, you probably have to enable "legacy USB" in BIOS.

[GrannyGeek]

I've installed my printers (LJ4, LJ4PS, Epson Stylus Color 760, Lexmark X1270) and other stuff, including J-Pilot.

I think there is an error in /etc/fonts/fonts.conf. The line
      <dir>       <dir>~/.fonts</dir>
should be
<dir>~/.fonts</dir>

If you never add or remove fonts from your font directories you won't notice it, but if you run fc-cache as root to change what fonts the system recognizes, you'll get an error message about the error in the line above. I said "I think there is an error" rather than "there is an error" because I had tried to add some directories to /etc/fonts/fonts.conf and it's possible I made an inadvertent mistake while I was in there.

Would it be possible to include inkscape in 5.9? It's currently the leading vector graphics program for Linux. I added it myself (package from linuxpackages.net, I think), but there are quite a few missing dependencies (libraries not in /usr/lib). I had a working Inkscape on an earlier VL 5.8 installation on this hard drive, so I just copied them one by one until Inkscape didn't complain when I tried to start it from a terminal. But someone who didn't have the missing libraries easily accessible would have to hunt them up somewhere.

I downloaded J-Pilot from linuxpackages.net and it complained about missing a libpisock.so.8 file. I fixed that creating the needed symlink. The base file (libpisock.so.8.0.5 may have had to be copied from my older Linux partition, too. I don't remember. Anyway, once I made the symlink, J-Pilot worked fine and I synced my Sony Clie.

Qt applications like Tuxcards had a weird pink background. I changed it with qtconfig.

I haven't found any major bugs yet. I'm really liking 5.9 beta1.
--GrannyGeek

[exeterdad]

Would it be possible to include inkscape in 5.9?

It's on my list to package this week.  I've done it for 5.8 so 5.9 will be a breeze.  Also FYI, XaraLX has been packaged for a while. It's in package purgatory I think.  Couldn't tell ya if they will be on the 5.9.iso though.

[GrannyGeek]

Would it be possible to include inkscape in 5.9?

It's on my list to package this week.  I've done it for 5.8 so 5.9 will be a breeze.  Also FYI, XaraLX has been packaged for a while. It's in package purgatory I think.  Couldn't tell ya if they will be on the 5.9.iso though.

Great! I don't need it for this beta, but it'll be nice when the next one comes along. I don't care whether or not Inkscape is on the ISO as long as a version with dependency checking is available in the repos.

I guess I'll not bother with XaraLX unless it gets a sudden resurrection. No point in going through a learning curve for something on the road to extinction.
--GrannyGeek