VL-5.9-STD-BETA2 Bugs/annoyances

[GrannyGeek]

Thanks very much. I downloaded the file to a shared partition and got it loaded. modprobe ndiswrapper worked.

Unfortunately, I have the same inability to make a wireless connection with WPA as I had in VL 5.8 and the earlier betas.

So I'm batting zero on the two major problems: no wireless (hence no Internet) and no sound.
--GrannyGeek

[uelsk8s]

GrannyGeek,
these drivers are supposed to fix your sound issue. http://vectorlinux.osuosl.org/Uelsk8s/alsa-driver-1.0.15_2.6.22.10sm-i586-2vl59.tlz

does unsecured wireless work for you? if so what steps do you take to enable wpa?

What model gateway laptop do you own?

Thanks,
Uelsk8s

[demigaucher]

Hi everybody

At boot, I get first the message "Failed to read splash image (overify (hd0,0)/boot/bitmap/boot.xpm) etc..."

No really a problem: I just hit the <RETURN> key, and obtain the GRUB multiboot menu; but could be puzzling
for a newbie.  By the way, I checked: in /boot/bitmap, there exists boot.xpm, which is a link to boot-grub.xpm,
itself present and being an image.  I don't understand.

More tests to come (problems with USB pendrives).

By the way, the problems I could not overcome in VL5.9-BETA_1 with graphic display seem to have been solved.
Congratulations.

Best regards to all

Demigaucher

Old pentium 4 @700 MHz, 320 MB ram

[toothandnail]

I'm having problems with Gslapt under the beta. Using 'update', 'mark all upgrades' followed by 'execute' results in some of the packages being installed, followed by a lockup. I can kill the process and restart, but it locks every time left to itself.

Selecting individual packages seems to work ok.

On another topic, its nice to have Wbar included, but the package is incomplete - no sign of the man pages, which makes it a bit difficult to customise.

I've been running 5.9 beta2.3 for a couple of days now. Generally stable, looks good... I just had to reinstall it a short time ago, after Gslapt did something it shouldn't have (and my knowledge of problem recovery under Vector was insufficient to fix the problem). On reinstall, the keyboard under X was misset again, even though I had selected UK during the install.

paul.

[MikeCindi]

First install of b2 and it is typical VL - fast. I used the vinstall-iso method after resizing a few partitions with GParted Live. After about an hour of use this is what I noted:
-no "compact" line in lilo.conf so I added it and got rid of all the dots on boot and saved about 7 seconds
-the blue "satin sheet" background looks nice but distracts from the VL logo's visibility; perhaps using a different shade of blue would be better?
-in terminal using apps that have F10 to quit doesn't quit but rather opens the File menu
-ppracer works for the first time ever on my laptop
-vpackager has multiple problems: doesn't auto-create /tmp/vpackager-builds so I manually did that, then will stop with error on finding other existing directories (looks like it truncates or drops characters in the path it's trying to cd to), occasionally it would stop in the middle of decompressing the tarball with no warning or error.
-several shared libs that are part of 5.8 seem to be missing
-appreciate that Tux-On-Ice (suspend2) is enabled on the default kernel although I did not try it as I haven't added the pointer to my swap partition to lilo (will try that later)

I would request that ntfs-3g be the default ntfs access used. While editing fstab is not a problem I would suspect that most who dual boot with Windows ntfs partitions would prefer that approach.
Mike

[nightflier]

-in terminal using apps that have F10 to quit doesn't quit but rather opens the File menu

That drove me nuts until I found out how to change it: Terminal > Edit > Preferences > Shortcuts > Disable menu key.

[MikeCindi]

Thanks, I'll do that right away! 

[toothandnail]

-in terminal using apps that have F10 to quit doesn't quit but rather opens the File menu

That drove me nuts until I found out how to change it: Terminal > Edit > Preferences > Shortcuts > Disable menu key.

  Even better - Terminal > Edit > Preferences > Appearance > untick Display Menubar in new Windows.

The right click context menu gives you all you need, and you get better use of the window area without the menubar.

paul.

[didfem]

My comments regard mostly the wording of some windows shown during install.

The message that states "FOUND EXISTING XORG.CONF ..." is very confusing since "OK" is not an answer to the question asked. It may have to be rephrased.

The message : "KEEP DEFAULT KEYBOARD MAP & LAYOUT" near the end of the install relates to keyboard mapping and configuration for the X server, but it's not indicated. What I mean to say is that the user does not realize that it's a setup different from the one that was previously done for the text console keyboard mapping. The normal user (I sometimes indulge myself into thinking that I am "normal"!) does not realize that it's a different setup this time and doesn't do the necessary change. It is precisely what I did (or what I didn't do, to be grammatically correct!). I managed to set it right afterward, once I rebooted into VL. By the way, that XWINDOW option in VASM is great. Was it there in 5.8?

Another problem that is not related directly to VL-5.9 or any VL, but has more to do with the packages in the distribution is the spellchecker in AbiWord. I have been attempting for hours to change it to French Canadian, trying everything I found on the Web, but to no avail. It would be nice to add a French version of AbiWord in the list of availalbe VL packages.

A little annoyance is the requirement to configure the cdrom in VASM, as if the system didn't know there is a cd drive although it was just used to install the distro ...!

Of course, localisation for French and Canadian French would be nice, particularly in light of the fact that Vector Linux is Canadian. I am quite willing to help translating the distro.

Still, on the overall, VL is a wonderfully efficient distribution that, like a good wine, was made with the best ingredients but becomes better with age.

didfem

[M0E-lnx]

I'd like to ask everyone to report vpackager related bugs in the Beta releases to this other thread

http://www.vectorlinux.com/forum2/index.php?topic=4259.0

This would help keep them isolated from the general Distro bugs, and I can find them easily and get them worked out.
Filling out an official bug report is also an option. This can be done at http://code.google.com/p/vpackager/issues/list

This would help make the vpackager development more efficient and much faster.
Thanks

[GrannyGeek]

these drivers are supposed to fix your sound issue. http://vectorlinux.osuosl.org/Uelsk8s/alsa-driver-1.0.15_2.6.22.10sm-i586-2vl59.tlz

What model gateway laptop do you own?

I thought I was going to have great news to report because I finally succeeded in getting connected with WPA. I was able to set up an nfs network with my other computers and to be on the Web for several hours. But then what I feared would happen did happen. On the only two LiveCD distros where I was able to get wireless WPA working (PCLinuxOS and Mandriva One), the connection would disappear for no reason and it would be difficult or impossible to get it back without rebooting. Alas, the same thing happened in 5.9--several times. The network connection just vanished and I couldn't re-establish it without rebooting. It's the network connection itself, not just the Internet connection. In Vista the wireless never drops, never has problems, is always very strong. Any ideas on what might be going on?

After three reboots caused by the wireless going out three times and not getting established again, I gave up. It's just not usable. Maybe there's a fix, but given that it has happened under PCLinuxOS and Mandriva One and now VL 5.9, things don't look good.

I downloaded and installed the driver file for ALSA that you posted. Well, it's worse than ever now, if such a thing would be possible given that there was no sound before. I ran alsaconf as root and it found hda=intel for the sound, etc., and said ALSA is ready for use. Ha! Not by a long shot! When I tried to run alsamixer, I got this dreaded message:
alsamixer: function snd_ctl_open failed for default: No such device

And indeed, there is no snd-hda-intel in lsmod. If I do
modprobe snd-hda-intel
I get this:
FATAL: Error inserting snd_hda_intel (/lib/modules/2.6.22.10sm/kernel/sound/pci/hda/snd-hda-intel.ko): Unknown symbol in module, or unknown parameter (see dmesg)

This is what's in dmesg:
snd_hda_intel: Unknown symbol snd_verbose_printd
snd_hda_intel: Unknown symbol snd_hidden_kzalloc
snd_hda_intel: Unknown symbol snd_hidden_kcalloc
snd_hda_intel: Unknown symbol snd_hidden_kfree
snd_hda_intel: Unknown symbol snd_verbose_printk
snd_hda_intel: Unknown symbol snd_ctl_boolean_mono_info
snd_hda_intel: Unknown symbol snd_hidden_kstrdup
snd_hda_intel: Unknown symbol snd_hidden_kmalloc
snd_hda_intel: Unknown symbol snd_verbose_printd
snd_hda_intel: Unknown symbol snd_hidden_kzalloc
snd_hda_intel: Unknown symbol snd_hidden_kcalloc
snd_hda_intel: Unknown symbol snd_hidden_kfree
snd_hda_intel: Unknown symbol snd_verbose_printk
snd_hda_intel: Unknown symbol snd_ctl_boolean_mono_info
snd_hda_intel: Unknown symbol snd_hidden_kstrdup
snd_hda_intel: Unknown symbol snd_hidden_kmalloc

In my previous attempts to fix sound under 5.8 Standard I did build all the 1.0.15 stuff from ALSA, not just the drivers. No joy. I also tried building with a patch that was reported to help some problems with snd-hda-intel, but I got a bunch of those "Unknown symbol" errors.

When you said "these drivers are supposed to fix your sound issue" I wonder if you found something I haven't yet found. From time to time I search the Web hoping there is now a solution and I think I've tried everything suggested, but nothing has gotten sound from the speakers. I think my next step is to contact the ALSA people and hopefully, they'll let me know if there's anything on the horizon that might help.

The laptop is a Gateway MT3423. Here are the results of lspci:
root:# lspci
00:00.0 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Host Bridge (rev a2)
00:00.1 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Memory Controller 0 (rev a2)
00:00.2 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Memory Controller 1 (rev a2)
00:00.3 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Memory Controller 5 (rev a2)
00:00.4 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Memory Controller 4 (rev a2)
00:00.5 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Host Bridge (rev a2)
00:00.6 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Memory Controller 3 (rev a2)
00:00.7 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Memory Controller 2 (rev a2)
00:03.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation C51 PCI Express Bridge (rev a1)
00:05.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation MCP51 PCI-X GeForce Go 6100 (rev a2)
00:09.0 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation MCP51 Host Bridge (rev a2)
00:0a.0 ISA bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP51 LPC Bridge (rev a3)
00:0a.1 SMBus: nVidia Corporation MCP51 SMBus (rev a3)
00:0a.3 Co-processor: nVidia Corporation MCP51 PMU (rev a3)
00:0b.0 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation MCP51 USB Controller (rev a3)
00:0b.1 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation MCP51 USB Controller (rev a3)
00:0d.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation MCP51 IDE (rev f1)
00:10.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP51 PCI Bridge (rev a2)
00:10.1 Audio device: nVidia Corporation MCP51 High Definition Audio (rev a2)
00:14.0 Bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP51 Ethernet Controller (rev a3)
00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] HyperTransport Technology Configuration
00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Address Map
00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] DRAM Controller
00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Miscellaneous Control
06:09.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8185 IEEE 802.11a/b/g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 20)

/proc/asound/cards says
--- no soundcards ---  

So you see the sound situation is dire.

I'm really losing hope of ever getting VL installed on its own partition in this laptop. I was so hopeful when I got wireless established with WPA, but it proved to be so unreliable that it's useless. I'm downloading alpha3 of 64-bit VL and will see if I have better luck with it.
--GrannyGeek

[Pita]

Installed fine w/o freeze unlike beta1 on vlatin installing.

Blank screen after logout fixed, great.

Could not get an audio CD to play, in fact could not mount the CD at all, therfore, not playing anything.

In xfce4 frozen-bubble crashes and kills xfce4. In fluxbox frozen-bubble can be played, no crash.

Cannot get my Epson LQ300 printer to print. Trying to configure in http://localhost:631/admin in Devices: there is no "Unknown USB #1" as I have in VL-5.8 cups-1.2.9. Copying printers.conf over from VL-5.8 and doing lpq I can see the printer jobs, however no printing. Printing a test page I get error: Printer not connected. My Epson is connected with a parallel adapter cable to a usb port.

[BlueMage]

Holy shit this looks nice.  Of course, required some screwing around with the vinstall-iso script - it's not going to screw things up too much that I commented out the "mount /sys" line is it?

Pretty rapid install.  Though, it seems like vl-hot isn't working (it is included, right?) and if it is, it's not creating desktop links.

[toothandnail]

Pretty rapid install.  Though, it seems like vl-hot isn't working (it is included, right?) and if it is, it's not creating desktop links.

Are you using beta 2.3? Vl-hot didn't work for me in beta2, but is working in beta 2.3. HAL still doesn't work properly for me in beta 2.3 though.

paul.

[BlueMage]

Just Beta 2 I'm afraid.  Not that I'm worried - it's enough of a mission to install Vector on this box, I'm not going to let a little thing like vl-hot not working stop me.

That said, I'm also pleased to report that the diversions - all the nice little games and such - work wonderfully.  Even better, I can consistently play Chromium and get sound (on my SOHO5.8 box sound rarely, if ever, works in Chromium) and I can actually play PPRacer.  Interestingly, I know for a fact that the hardware in this machine is not as good as the hardware in my SOHO machine, so I guess that means the dev crew get another tip of my metaphorical hat.