VectorLinux5.9-rc3 bugs/annoyances

[Pita]

Ok, this merits an entire new post.

I hate computers at times :/

May be that's your problem. You have to love them and treat them gently as you would a woman. (Guess my gender?).

[BlueMage]

Nine Hells!  It was WORKING!  xorg was bloody working before I restarted.  And now?  Ghost text again.  This is getting frustrating.

[Mihail121-tera]

I'll take on the Transmission not downloading everything issue once again. It just so happens, that torrents, for which Transmission would give "Tracker not found" error run perfectly smooth with rtorrent or ctorrent. Not that I have a problem with installing a package in 4 seconds, but Transmission just takes extra space.

[BlueMage]

Ok, this merits an entire new post.

I hate computers at times :/

May be that's your problem. You have to love them and treat them gently as you would a woman. (Guess my gender?).

I'm an engineer - I don't treat anything gently

Also, my hatred is justified - I can't seem to replicate the same series of events that led to xorg working before - I just keep getting the ghost-text.

[Mihail121-tera]

I'm an engineer - I don't treat anything gently

Does Santa know about this?

[caitlyn]

More annoyances:

xfmedia not present
slapt-get is a useless system, does not resolve dependencies, netpkg from Zenwalk is a much better system
Glsapt is annoying.  Will crash all of a sudden, will lock up with no explanation if it loses connection.

xfmedia was an optional package in VL 5.8 in the Extra repository.  That's likely where it will end up again.  XMMS is far superior to xfmedia, as is xine.

slapt-get can resolve dependencies just fine.  It certainly did in VL 5.8.  It does for Slackware 12.  It does for Wolvix 1.1 as well.  What dependencies didn't it resolve for you?  What went wrong specifically?  What is so much better about netpkg?  (Methinks nothing.)

I've not had the problems you've seen in gslapt.  Perhaps if you can post details of what you were doing when it crashed or locked the developers can work on it. 

[BlueMage]

Well, this morning I'm back to fully disappearing ghost text across all WMs when using xorg.  No amount of fiddling and replicating past sequences of events could break it.

[Triarius Fidelis]

During setup, I ran into some weird business along the lines of "setup not complete, are you sure you want to quit?" after I chose the time zone (US/Eastern, I believe). Otherwise no bugs so far.

[Pita]

Well, this morning I'm back to fully disappearing ghost text across all WMs when using xorg.  No amount of fiddling and replicating past sequences of events could break it.

Bluemage, have you alrady told this forum what kind of graphic card you have?

I had a hell of a problem with mine with this new xorg until Uelsk was able to make a new driver which works now for my savage card. Or could your off and on working xorg indicate some hardware problem, monitor, HD not related to the sofware? Just guessing. The people on this forum are rather good on sorting things out if the correct information is supplied step by step.

In the meantime just stay cool.

[vector]

Bluemage, I would like you to try something for me please. First download these two files and install them via installpkg:
http://vectorlinux.osuosl.org/Uelsk8s/libbash-0.9.10a-noarch-2vl59.tlz
http://vectorlinux.osuosl.org/Uelsk8s/xconfig-2.1.1-noarch-2vl59.tlz
then run in the Terminal xconfig -s 1024x768-24@75 then restart your xserver see if there is any improvement. First backup your /etc/x11/xorg.conf as this program overwrites without doing a backup. For a quick explanation you are making a new xorg.conf with the values of screen res 1024x768 color depth 24 bit at a frequency of 75mhz. If any of this will blow up your monitor then you can adjust the values, most importantly the @75 can be reduced to @60 which is safe for anything built in the last fifteen years. Not sure if this will do anything to help but its a new program we are experimenting with that shows promise. If anyone else would like to experiment with this feel free and let us know.

cheers,
vec

[BlueMage]

Will test and report back shortly.

[BlueMage]

Well, this morning I'm back to fully disappearing ghost text across all WMs when using xorg.  No amount of fiddling and replicating past sequences of events could break it.

Bluemage, have you alrady told this forum what kind of graphic card you have?

I had a hell of a problem with mine with this new xorg until Uelsk was able to make a new driver which works now for my savage card. Or could your off and on working xorg indicate some hardware problem, monitor, HD not related to the sofware? Just guessing. The people on this forum are rather good on sorting things out if the correct information is supplied step by step.

In the meantime just stay cool.

I ... think I might've forgotten that.  Sorry, my bad.  It's an onboard Intel graphics ... gimme a sec...

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 82865G Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 02)

There, that's from lspci.  I'm pretty sure the monitor is fine - it's a Samsung Syncmaster that I use as part of my dual-monitor setup for my vista box and has shown no problems with that.  The graphics hardware I'm not so sure about - this machine was a custom job put together for us by a not-so-reputable computer repair group in Cairns (before my parents sufficiently trusted my skills so far as putting these things together) and they made what I consider to be some questionable design choices. 

Now, to try out what Vector recommended.

Sorry Vec, can't say the results are good.  Text has become miniturised, and icons are now bunched up.  I've tried specifying both 1024x726 and 1280x1024 with the same result - it almost looks like, in terms of desktop space, I've got it set to 800x600.  Text is also visible but ghostly/transparent.

[toothandnail]

I have no idea whether this problem is limited to the 5.9 setup (I don't currently have anything other than 5.9 RC3 installed). Strange problem it is....

I fired up info to check for the full bash manual (which doesn't seem to be there anyway...). The directory node only showed one entry:

Code:

libcdio: (libcdio).      Compact Disc Input and Control Library.

So I thought I would use install-info to update the complete list. Did that, and started info again. Same result. So I deleted /usr/info/dir.gz and ran install-info again. When I started info, the full contents was there. Thinking I had the problem solved, I gzipped /usr/info/ir. Only to find that the problem returned. Only one entry in the top node.

I had built Pinfo for Zenwalk a few days ago, so I tried installing it. Started it, and even though I had the same item as the top node entry, I could access the rest of the topics. However, unless I use an uncompressed /usr/info/dir, I cannot access anything excelpt libcdio using the normal info command.

I've not managed to find another copy of dir lying around, and I also can't find an info file for licdio.

Argh! This is becoming confusing. Can anyone shed any light on what is going on?

paul

[Triarius Fidelis]

Uncompress dir.gz

[uelsk8s]

I ... think I might've forgotten that.  Sorry, my bad.  It's an onboard Intel graphics ... gimme a sec...

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 82865G Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 02)

BlueMage,
Can you post the output of lsmod.
there are some kernel modules that are supposed to help, but we have found they actually make some cards worse.
look for intel-agp drm and i915 in the ouput of lsmod
if they aren't there try adding them if they are try different combo's of them
also you can try the i810 driver if none of that works

Let us know,
Uelsk8s