VectorLinux5.9-rc3 bugs/annoyances

[rang501]

I downloaded VL5.9 RC3 iso. md5 didnt match but i wanted to try it anyway. When installation is almost complete, an error is displayed: vlconfig2.tlz is corrupted or hard drive is full... After pressing enter, installer shows that Installation is done, after that new message comes: Vectorlinux is installed, but i'm not sure about configuration....
I rebooted my machine. I was suprised, when I saw a zenwalk's bootmanager (I used zenwalk before). So i tried to install it again. I chosed ext3 filesystem (before I chosed ext2) and continued. I saw same errors again. Rebooted and lilo throws some 99 number.
I tried booting with cd. It was almost successful, I was able to log in as root. Hmmm, what about setup screen?
Under root, I typed startx. Some errors only.
Then I typed vasm to configure x server. That didn't help, same error comed out.
Now I'm using VL 5.8 SOHO. I don't want to download RC3 iso again, because I have slow internet connection .
I know that I have made a many mistakes while typing this message
Anyway, does anyone know, when VL 5.9 Final comes out?

[tab0reqq]

THX for Keyboard layout info. I dont know why i didnt came to this idea.

What about my other questions?

[Witek Mozga]

is this from vasmCC or vasm?

The bug is from vasmCC, vasm behaves OK.

[rjdohnert]

A few issues with 5.9 RC 3

VLC doesnt work
It peaks out the CPU so things like Flash dont play well at all
gslapt crashes constantly
ndiswrapper, even though you tell it to start on boot it doesnt
XFCE performance issues
mediaplayerconnectivity Firefox extention does not work with mplayer on this release

What I do like:

All common codecs supported
Beautiful theme
Quick boot time
Great support for older hardware

[uelsk8s]

I tried to run jpilot on the Turion laptop tonight. I had the exact same results as on the Athlon desktop. So either the method that worked on earlier releases needs to be modified or jpilot has some problems with the newer kernel or the other new stuff.

I tried jpilot on my Celeron desktop. Same result--Clie can't connect, so I can't sync. This time I copied all the relevant /usr/libpisock files from a VL5.8 partition on that computer (after moving the libpisock newer version files to get them out of the way), ran ldconfig, and tried making a connection with the Clie. Same result, so it's not just the newer libpisock. Something else must be going on. When 5.9 goes Final, I'll compile jpilot and see if that will get it going.
--GrannyGeek

can you try to upgrade pilot-link and jpilot from slapt-get/gslapt and tell us if it helps at all?
Thanks

[MikeCindi]

Had some time to play and got wireless working for the first time ever. After reading several reports at the ndiswrapper site that both wireless devices (PCMCIA and USB) were now working...well here I am. As for rc3 I'm finding that for my hardware (Toshiba Satellite A15) all work well so far. I did note that the latest TuxOnIce hibernate script 1.97 did not work (I failed to mention this in previous posts since 1.96 did work). Thanks for fixing the login problems I was having (or if nothing was done differently it work correctly now). I still have to work on USB connections under VirtualBox (in particular ActiveSync while emulating WinXP). I doubt that the change from VL 5.8 to 5.9 will have fixed this but I'll be hopeful for another few hours.
BTW, my laptop loads the Toshiba modules but they have never added any functionality. Just thought caitlyn would like to know.

[rjdohnert]

5.9 RC3 was the only version I could get the WG121 netgear adaptor to work even with ndiswrapper.  I was impressed.

[Joe1962]

What I found a little off-putting was the fact that Vl-hot didn't handle optical media. So any USB mass storage device would be automounted, but I had to go and use something like the Xfce mount applet to mount a CD. HAL handles all removable media, which makes it a bit more seamless.

I really tried to get optical media working, but since I refuse to poll for them and such drives do not signal media change, there is no way that I know of. So you can say it's "by design"...

It looks as though /media is now the norm, at least for things like HAL. I don't much like the idea of splitting mount point up, so maintaining both /mnt and /media seems a bit silly.

We follow the Linux FSH (file system hierarchy) conventions, so both are used. (BEGIN RANT) What I don't understand is why they had to go and "invent" /media, when /mnt was perfectly good for it's purpose and also the long-time standard (END RANT)...

[rbistolfi]

What I found a little off-putting was the fact that Vl-hot didn't handle optical media. So any USB mass storage device would be automounted, but I had to go and use something like the Xfce mount applet to mount a CD. HAL handles all removable media, which makes it a bit more seamless.

I really tried to get optical media working, but since I refuse to poll for them and such drives do not signal media change, there is no way that I know of. So you can say it's "by design"...

I wonder if is to much work to make the device one dollar more expensive and add that feature. Are hardware manufacturers too lazy or what? In the long term, is much more inefficient to use a daemon for that. And looks pretty easy since many cheap devices send a signal to the system.

A very minor thing, please let me know if I am thinking too much. Are the screen savers too much resource consuming? Reading gkrellm logs I noted the usage of the cpu, and even the gpu is very intensive. The gpu temp is a little high also, after some time running the screen saver. Perhaps we could use something more green.

[newt]

What I found a little off-putting was the fact that Vl-hot didn't handle optical media. So any USB mass storage device would be automounted, but I had to go and use something like the Xfce mount applet to mount a CD. HAL handles all removable media, which makes it a bit more seamless.

I really tried to get optical media working, but since I refuse to poll for them and such drives do not signal media change, there is no way that I know of. So you can say it's "by design"...

Do you know if a signal is sent when the drive is ejected/opened?  I assume not, but if I happen to be wrong then perhaps starting to poll the device at that signal point for a duration could work as a proxy (for say the next 3-4 minutes) and then when the time duration was up the polling would stop regardless of mounting or not.

On another note, IIRC, there was mention somewhere on our forum that some manufacturers may begin adding the "signals".  Does that ring any bells?  If that's actually true, could vl-hot be configured to auto-mount when those types of "signals" are received?

Mostly hopeful thinking here

[Joe1962]

Well, as long as an udev event is generated (that is: catchable by an udev rule), vl-hot can act on it.

[caitlyn]

More bugs to report:

1. Using HAL, I insert a 512MB Lexar Jump Drive.  The icon that appears on the Xfce desktop is a printer icon.  The drive functions normally and everything (mount, unmount, Thunar) work as expected.  It's just the icon.

2. Reboot still doesn't work on my Toshiba laptop as described for RC2.

I had thought about mime type associations in Thunar but didn't have time to play with it before filing my last report.  Yep, that's where the problem lies.  Should be an easy fix for the developers, thankfully...

re: /media and /mnt, I agree with Joe1962's rant, but... /media has become the de facto standard for most distros as has HAL.  I actually really like having a choice between VL-HOT and HAL.  What I *HATE* is the fact that the two assign totally different mount points.  I'd like to see some consistency here.  I also agree the VL-HOT's mount points are terribly long at the command line.  I'm a sys admin by trade so I tend to do a lot at the command line.  HAL may not be perfect and I like not having constant polling but it sure is easier to work with.

-Cait

[GrannyGeek]

can you try to upgrade pilot-link and jpilot from slapt-get/gslapt and tell us if it helps at all?
Thanks

I upgraded pilot-link and jpilot from Gslapt today on the Turion laptop. No improvement. When I started jpilot in a terminal and tried to sync as user, I got this:
me:$ jpilot
pi_bind error: /dev/ttyUSB1 Permission denied
Check your serial port and settings
Exiting with status SYNC_ERROR_BIND
Finished

I had granted read/write permissions for /dev/ttyUSB0 and /dev/ttyUSB1 to all before I started jpilot and I checked to make sure the permissions were indeed correct. After every unsuccessful attempt to connect, /dev/ttyUSB0 and /dev/ttyUSB1 disappear and I have to mknod again. usbserial and visor modules are loaded.

I noticed that the updated pilot-link I installed through Gslapt doesn't seem to put the pilot-link utilities anywhere. In comparing the pilot-link files on my Toshiba that come installed with RC3 with the files on my Turion after updating pilot-link, there seems to be nothing there on the Turion. The RC3 pilot-link has a bunch of pilot-xxxx files in /usr/bin, such as pilot-install-user, pilot-addresses, pilot-xfer,and many more, but none of these files are in /usr/bin on the Turion with the upgraded pilot-link. In fact, a locate command on the Turion shows NO pilot-* files at all and no install-user files or anything close. So it seems the upgraded pilot-link from the VL repos installs nothing relevant except a libpisock.rules file.

I booted into Windows on the Turion to make sure the Clie was working properly. It was--no problem syncing in Windows.

Does this give any clues?
--GrannyGeek

[MikeCindi]

After doing so well earlier now I managed to break things by loading KDE. Since that time I have been unable to get wireless working again. Also and unfortunately I didn't try to load VirtualBox (1.5.2) before KDE...the vboxdrv module never would load (at least in the several attempts that I made). Then I downloaded the rc3.1 xdelta and it failed to update rc3 under both VL-5.9rc3 (after loading KDE) and 5.8 SOHO due to an error. I'll give the exact error later (if anyone wants it) as I'm in WinXP right now. Also noted that vasm wouldn't change the login manager to xdm after loading KDE. Anyway, will try again with rc3.1 and see how it goes...

[Pita]

Hello Uelsk,

to the fluxbox menu I have added nice icons. To me it looks good and if you think it will be a good idea let me know how to send the file to you.

Under Menu Office I have added xpdf.

Regards

Pita, send it over. 

Coming to your e-mail address.

did you happen to check memory usage before and after adding the icons?

576 more bytes.

Thanks,
Uelsk8s