VectorLinux5.9-rc3 bugs/annoyances

[lagagnon]

Did you check the MD5?
If the md5 matches, you could try some cheatcodes, at my box I have to pass noapic as a kernel parameter. I think pressing F1 or F3 at the prompt gives you a list of 'more used' kernel parameters.
Let us know.

Pressing F1 brings up a list of boot kernels.  F3 doesnt do anything, when I hit F1 and throw in 'linux noapic' it doesnt do anything.  I tried disabling Power Control in the Bios but that didnt help.

It seems to me that is a bad burn or a faulty download of the ISO file. Please check the md5sum as the previous poster suggested.

[rang501]

I downloaded and installed Vectorlinux 5.9 RC3 again, and now it is working quite well.
But some problems:
1. Some problems with opera.
2. I'm using laptop and I have problems with touchpad. I can't use scrolling buttons.
3. After closing xine, Pcm control in volume control goes to zero. There was an easy fix: Settings->Setup..->Audio->notify changes to hardware mixer and unchecked alsa hw mixer (*) option.

One best improvement is wireless support. I can use my rt61 wireless card
I like the new VasmCC

Good luck!

[mr_volvo]

So i just installed 5.9 and my lappy loves me for giving the page file a slight rest (256mb and kde made for some fun computing). But I have a few problems:

-is there an openoffice for 5.9 yet, and if someone hasn't packaged it, has anyone tried compiling it successfully? (i can't really get out of using MS doc formats at work... at least not until I become the boss)

-now and then black lines appear on the screen. hey! it just happened while i was typing that. Text (or whatever belongs in that area of the screen) disappears and patchy black lines/single pixels appear in different places on the screen. I doubt it is a screen issue as minimising the window and then maximising it makes them go away. And as I have been typing this post sections of text disappear  and i need to move the cursor back over them to get them to reappear. ?? odd

-After installing i had to edit lilo.conf and set the vga mode to 'normal' as I got an error telling me I had 'passed an undefined video mode number'. I googled and this seemed to be the solution, but could this have something to do with my previous problem. I should add that the black lines were appearing before I edited lilo.conf and just pressed space to continue at the error message.

-my cd drive doesn't work. I had the same issue in 5.8 but not 5.8 soho. After plugging in the drive if I press the eject button nothing happens, where as in soho it would work immediately.

My pc is (as it says in my sig. a Dell Latitude C400)

I feel a bit bad saying all this in my first post about 5.9, but I should add that I love the new VasmCC and wifi radar actually works for me now! (It is just as easy to connect in VL as in windows). And of course its fast like a vector... :-p

[JohnB316]

So i just installed 5.9 and my lappy loves me for giving the page file a slight rest (256mb and kde made for some fun computing). But I have a few problems:

-is there an openoffice for 5.9 yet, and if someone hasn't packaged it, has anyone tried compiling it successfully? (i can't really get out of using MS doc formats at work... at least not until I become the boss)

Truthfully, OpenOffice is a PITA to build from source unless you have a ton of Gnome and other dependencies on your box at build time. (I've tried it, so I say that from experience.) With that said, there is a repackaging of the official binaries built by the OpenOffice folks at linuxpackages.net. It should work just fine on your box. In fact, I'm downloading it to mine as I type this post.

-now and then black lines appear on the screen. hey! it just happened while i was typing that. Text (or whatever belongs in that area of the screen) disappears and patchy black lines/single pixels appear in different places on the screen. I doubt it is a screen issue as minimising the window and then maximising it makes them go away. And as I have been typing this post sections of text disappear  and i need to move the cursor back over them to get them to reappear. ?? odd

-After installing i had to edit lilo.conf and set the vga mode to 'normal' as I got an error telling me I had 'passed an undefined video mode number'. I googled and this seemed to be the solution, but could this have something to do with my previous problem. I should add that the black lines were appearing before I edited lilo.conf and just pressed space to continue at the error message.

Do you get this kind of artifacting all the time or just in VL? If you have another operating system on your box, do you get similar video artifacts when you are using it?

-my cd drive doesn't work. I had the same issue in 5.8 but not 5.8 soho. After plugging in the drive if I press the eject button nothing happens, where as in soho it would work immediately.

This could either be a udev or a hal issue.

My pc is (as it says in my sig. a Dell Latitude C400)

I feel a bit bad saying all this in my first post about 5.9, but I should add that I love the new VasmCC and wifi radar actually works for me now! (It is just as easy to connect in VL as in windows). And of course its fast like a vector... :-p

I'm glad that wifi-radar is actually working for you. ;-)

Cheers,
John

[easuter]

-now and then black lines appear on the screen. hey! it just happened while i was typing that. Text (or whatever belongs in that area of the screen) disappears and patchy black lines/single pixels appear in different places on the screen. I doubt it is a screen issue as minimising the window and then maximising it makes them go away. And as I have been typing this post sections of text disappear  and i need to move the cursor back over them to get them to reappear. ?? odd

mr_volvo, what video driver are you using for xorg?

[turquoise]

I downloaded and installed Vectorlinux 5.9 RC3 again, and now it is working quite well.
But some problems:
1. Some problems with opera.
2. I'm using laptop and I have problems with touchpad. I can't use scrolling buttons.
3. After closing xine, Pcm control in volume control goes to zero. There was an easy fix: Settings->Setup..->Audio->notify changes to hardware mixer and unchecked alsa hw mixer (*) option.

One best improvement is wireless support. I can use my rt61 wireless card
I like the new VasmCC

Good luck!

Can't help with issues 2 and 3 since I haven't had those problems but concerning Opera, I have had some problems where it would freeze when opening some pages and such. The problem is not with Vector but with Opera. I have solved the problem by deactivating the plug-in support and it worked. There is a well-known problem with some versions of Flash for instance. I don't know if it's the case for everyone, but it sure happened to me and to others. It's rather annoying, but there is still Firefox when I want to visit websites that use Flash...

[mr_volvo]

mr_volvo, what video driver are you using for xorg?

from xorg.conf

Code:

Identifier  "Card0"
Driver      "intel"
VendorName  "Intel Corporation"
BoardName   "82830 CGC [Chipset Graphics Controller]"
BusID       "PCI:0:2:0"
EndSection

Being the intelligent human being I am I didn't backup my previous xorg before installing RC3, so I don't know what it used to be... But from what I've found on the net the laptop has an i830 chip.

John B316,
It had never happened until I installed 5.9 (and started immediately post install) but alas I cannot prove it is 5.9 as I am a one OS kinda guy... operating monogamously if you will.

Thanks for the linux packages tip, OO installed without any effort on my behalf and is running smoothly.

Regarding the CD drive: at install you get to chose the swanky non resource hogging method of mounting devices or the same system that everyone else uses, I chose the VL system. Could the other method be the default when installing 5.8 soho?

[BlueMage]

The other (HAL) isn't a part of VL 5.8 SOHO - it's a new feature in 5.9

[Joe1962]

Finally installed RC3 (inside vmware) and gave it a checkup. Here are my notes so far in a hierarchical list (hopefully not too late, though some of the issues may be history by now):

Code:

CONS:
Desktop icons
VASM: calls "vsuper vasmcc", rename icon to VASMCC
Panel
Menu button: too wide, selection box defeats purpose of shape
Program Launcher
vcpufreq, description: typo
vl-hot-config, description: thumbdrive???
Mixer applet: volume control works only after resetting in properties
Xfce Settings Manager
Desktop
Adjust Brightness: default=19, should be 0
File Manager
Advanced
Volume Management
Configure (Removable Drives and Media)
PDAs: set to unavailable gnome utilities
Printers: set to unavailable gnome utilities
Panel
Appearance (Size): default 36, too tall, maybe better 32, (I use 28)
User interface
Icon theme: default Vista-inspirate (still ugh!)
changing, then back to default => lost icons in Panel Menu,
recovered on logout/login
Window Manager
Advanced
Window snapping: default "Snap windows to other windows" disabled
Double click action: Unix/Linux default is shade, not maximized???
File system
/mnt: clean up!
Thunar
Hidden files: default show, should be hide?
Gimp
Help browser: shows a lot of "???TITLE???" entries on left pane
Gnumeric
Help
Contents: does nothing
K3b
Settings
Preferences
Programs: still some missing (normalize, transcode, vcdx*)
QT
qtconfig: default (root and user) theme is Motif, should be Polymer


PROS:
Xfce Settings Manager
Sessions and Startup
Logout settings
Automatically save session on logout: default disabled
User interface
Theme: Xfce-dawn (much better than previous ones)
Window Manager
Style: default Sassandra (better)
Thunar
Custom actions: nice selection!

NOTES (a few additional notes):
- xorg autoconfig works, except resolution selection, got 1024x768 instead of 1440x900, though Xfce Display Settings shows all of them.
- mouse wheel worked
- no Xfce terminal issues
- no Panel Menu "Quit" issues.

[wcs]

Quote from: wcs on December 13, 2007, 12:48:52 AM
Strangely enough, the volume mixer bug now shows up all the time after reboot.
The reason seems to be that I plugged in a USB webcam that also has a microphone. When the camera is plugged in, the volume mixer always goes down to zero automatically. Although this can be fixed by going to properties and then closing, it doesn't survive reboots.

But even crazier, now this is also a problem in 5.8 Standard.

I had the same problem When the camera is plugged, it becomes the default soundcard. The howto from The Headeacher solved the problem.

Checking the default soundcard didn't do it. It seems that the right card (not the usb microphone) is the default. And indeed the sound works just fine. But whenever the camera is plugged in, volume always goes to 0%, until I go through the daily ritual of opening properties and closing.

I think I've seen this reported elsewhere, so I suppose the xfce-mixer people will eventually fix it.

[caitlyn]

One clarification from a previous post of mine:

zip/unzip weren't correctly associated in Thunar but that wasn't the issue with rar/unrar.  They aren't included in the iso image at all.  It seems odd to me to leave out these small and very commonly used tools.

[toothandnail]

Completely unrelated to Vector (well, almost). One of the beta/rcs had a 2.6.23.9(?) kernel. Can anyone tell me which one it was, and also if it is possible to install it without mucking up the existing setup?

Reason I ask is I'm also running a (very) beta version of Zenwalk on my T40. The latest version of Zenwalk includes a 2.6.23.9 kernel and I'm seeing some significant delays during boot. I don't recall seeing anything like that from the version of Vector that was using a similar version kernel, so I wanted to reinstall it just to check my findings...

paul.

[MikeCindi]

I don't recall any with 2.6.23.9 but I think the first beta had 2.6.23.1.

[Joe1962]

Since ifplugd wasn't working, I went to vasm services and found that no services are active by default for runlevels 2 and 4, with the exception of gpm for runlevel 2.

[Pita]

Completely unrelated to Vector (well, almost). One of the beta/rcs had a 2.6.23.9(?) kernel. Can anyone tell me which one it was, and also if it is possible to install it without mucking up the existing setup?

Reason I ask is I'm also running a (very) beta version of Zenwalk on my T40. The latest version of Zenwalk includes a 2.6.23.9 kernel and I'm seeing some significant delays during boot. I don't recall seeing anything like that from the version of Vector that was using a similar version kernel, so I wanted to reinstall it just to check my findings...

Check this post in Distro Development.
new kernel to try.----2.6.23.1

Douwnload kernel and modules. Change suffix .tlz to .tgz
Open kernel with mc and copy pertinent files to /boot.
Open modules with mc and copy modules to /lib/modules/
Go to /boot and change the symlinks for the new kernel. 3 files.
Do lilo, to accommodate the new kernel and reboot.

If you want t change back to the old kernel, change the symlinks in boot, lilo, reboot. That way you muck up nothing.

Regards