Vector 6.0 beta2 feedback and bug reports

[MikeCindi]

The installer for 2.2 worked without a hitch but I didn't try to "stress" it either.

ADD: After "playing around" for a while I decide to build wesnoth only to find that checkinstall is not part of the tools included with 2.2. Why?

[sparkyhall]

Installed VL6.0 B2.2 on three systems (P3 750, Athlon XP 3200+ & Athlon X2 4840e) and I am pleased to say all went smoothly using new GUI installer. The P3 and Athlon X2 were full installs on the entire disk whereas the Athlon XP is a multi boot system so I installed Lilo in partition sector. I do however have some very minor issues to report:

1)If you go back from user set-up to root user set-up and then back any previously set-up users are not displayed in the list. If you the try to set these users up again you of course get the message “these users already exist”.
2)On the user rights management page I think the list of options may be confusing to people new to Linux so it may be worth confirming that the default options are fine for the majority of users and they can be changed by VASM once installed in the help dialogue. I guess I am referring to “lp, adm, sys, wheel & plugdev”. Come to think of it I've been using Linux for several months now and I don't know what they all mean.

Once installed some of the previously reported problems exist such as Hardinfo  crashing (clicking on PCI devices and then USB devices gives “glibc detected double free or corrupt (out))” when hardinfo run from a terminal.

On two of my machines I have to re-connect to the network after a re-boot although the P3 750 re-connects on it's own.

Chris

[Lyn]

downloaded some programs via Gslapt

icewm doesn't show up in the log on options as a window manager

now gnucash exits on start up with the following info when I launch from a terminal
lyn:$ gnucash
gnc.bin-Message: main: binreloc relocation support was disabled at configure time.

ERROR: In procedure open-file:
ERROR: No such file or directory: "/usr/lib/slib/mklibcat"

Frozen Bubble gives:

lyn:$ frozen-bubble
/usr/bin/perl: symbol lookup error: /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.10.0/i586-linux-thread-multi/auto/Locale/gettext/gettext.so: undefined symbol: Perl_Tstack_sp_ptr

Trying to install anjunta give the following warning in gslap  mozilla-firefox: Depends: gsb-desktop >= 2.22.1-noarch-6vl60

Gslap reports that XMMS is installed but doesn't show in menus - reinstalled at it doesn't show but does launch from a terminal

Installed Audacious but does not run from menu - from a terminal I get a segmentation fault
lyn:$ audacious
Segmentation fault

[toothandnail]

Beta 2.2.

Install works without major issues, though it seemed quite slow compared to the last time. One item - when importing an existing user, real name is no longer saved (was in the last version, I think), and even if a picture is selected during the import, a default one is used by GMD.

My laptop locked up hard at the end of the install. First time this has happened with any VL install. I also spent some time thinking that I had bricked the machine - while it would restart, all I was getting was the initial splash screen from the BIOS. I was able to get into the BIOS settings, but it would not even attempt to boot. I eventually pulled both power and battery and left it to cool down for some time, and its working. Makes me more than a bit wary of reinstalling just at present though 

If this is verging on an RC, there are still a number of things that need to be fixed in the installed setup.

ALT-F2 still fails to pull up the run dialog.
Vcpufreq is still missing in action
Hardinfo has serious problems and crashes consistently.

The problem I had with VasmCC in a couple of the earlier betas seems to be fixed - it is no longer locking up on me.

More later (maybe I'll get brave enough to try another install.....).

paul.

[toothandnail]

  SWAT works in this beta (I kept forgetting to mention that it was broken in the earlier ones...). However, the dialog boxes in Vasm have problems in 2.2 that they didn't have in earlier betas - the font size is much too large for the boxes (and much too large for my taste as well). When opening the Samba configuration option, much of the text is unreadable, since it overflows the box.

Font sizes in all Vasm items have suddenly expanded. I remember the same thing happening in 5.9, and I would really like to be able to fix that. It looks dreadful.

Ahh. I think I see part of the problem - we seem to have a double on Xdialog - /var/log/packages has two versions listed. I will try pulling the -3vl60 and reinstalling the -2vl60 version, see if that fixes things.

Also, on the subject of things that could be fixed, could we lose the ASCII art produced by /etc/issue? I think that detracts from the clean appearance of the rest of the system. While I remove it after install, it would be nice if it wasn't there at all.

paul.

[pevsner]

Hi,

Testing beta 2.2 - looking good. I like my 5 button mouse recognised.
I still have a font issue though, all fonts look fuzzy (they were perfect on 5.9) - it seems as though hinting has no effect.
My normal setting is sans 10, 96dpi, slight hinting no sub pixel.
I have tried all settings - hintings (no effect),sub pixel,freq etc -still fuzzy.
I have a 1440x900, 96dpi monitor with gforce6200.

Any suggestions would be welcomed.

[toothandnail]

Hmm. I have to take back my comment about SWAT - it ran once. This morning I'm getting failures again. Browser opens, but can't load the SWAT interface.

I can only find the most recent Xdialog package on the repos, and reloading it doesn't help - Vasm dialogs in all areas are showing fonts that are much too large. What has happened to the older version?

Here is an image of the results with the new Xdialog:



So far, this beta is significantly less stable than any of the ones that have gone before. Apart from the hard lock I hit at the end of the install, I've had it lock on boot twice, once from cold. None of the other installations on the machine are having problems, so I'm reasonably sure its not a hardware problem.

paul

[toothandnail]

Problem with Xdialog is sorted. I checked the most recent VL5.9 version of the Xdialog package, and found that it had a patch included - Xdialog-2.3.1-gtk2.patch. The patch has not been included in Xdialog-2.3.1-i586-3vl60.tlz.

Installing the last VL5.9 Xdialog package has cleared up the font problem in Vasm.

Another oddity - SWAT now works. I'll have to see if it fails on a cold boot, since I have no idea what might have caused it to start working again now.....

Hmm. SWAT fails after a cold boot:

Code:

The connection was refused when attempting to contact 127.0.0.1:901.

Not sure what needs to be initialised, but something isn't right...

paul.

[toothandnail]

I've found the problem with SWAT, though I have no idea why it occurs, or, for that matter, how to fix it...

I normally have Seamonkey mail client running in the background, sometimes the browser as well. If either are running, SWAT will not load (I have Seamonkey selected as default browser). If I exit from any running Seamonkey processes, SWAT will then load (using Seamonkey).

Is there a way of fixing this?

paul.

[M0E-lnx]

It's probabbly trying to start a new seamonkey session. If this is the case, seamonkey wont run using the same profile.

Just a posibility... dont really know

[toothandnail]

It's probabbly trying to start a new seamonkey session. If this is the case, seamonkey wont run using the same profile.

I wondered about that, have seen that behaviour in the past. Doesn't seem to be quite the same though.

For instance, I have Seamonkey running now. If I select the Web Browser launcher from the toolbar, I get the Seamonkey profile manger up, won't allow me to run Seamonkey using the same profile. When I attempt to run SWAT from Vasm, Seamonkey comes up ok, but can't load.

I guess it could be because Seamonkey is being started from a root account? Hmm, I think I can test some of that out.... Back later....

Just a posibility... dont really know

  Me neither. Thanks. Your suggestion has given me something I may try testing.

One other thing - I looked at ~/.bashrc, and changed the export BROWSER= to firefox (just as an experiment). However, it does not seem to have changed the default browser selection. So there must be somewhere else that the browser default is set....

paul.

[toothandnail]

Just installed beta 2.4 (with a bit of trepidation, given the lockup and subsequent problems I had with 2.2).

Install went through ok, but when the system completed the text mode configuration, it locked up at the point that the bootsplash was clearing before GDM startup - some small amount of hard drive activity, but nothing else. I left it for 5 minutes, then power cycled the machine. It then booted properly.

Vcpufreq is still in the menu, but nothing happens after the root password is entered.

Also hit an odd problem. I wanted to install wxgtk for a package I'm building. Selected it in Gslapt, but got a list of deps that seemed to include just about the entire sysgtem, even down to aaa_base. Naturally, I've not got any further installing wxgtk!

Other than that, things seem to be working ok for the moment....

paul.

[uelsk8s]

Paul, what kind of box do you have there?
do you test on more than 1?

[toothandnail]

Paul, what kind of box do you have there?
do you test on more than 1?

At the moment, only one - got to make some space on some of the other machines.

My current test box is an IBM T42 laptop - 1.8GHz Pentium-M, 1GB RAM, 160 GB hard drive. Its generally been a very Linux-friendly machine. Even the Atheros AR5212 wireless card works with either MadWifi or the newer ath5k drivers.

  At the moment it has WinXP, Zenwalk 5.2, VL 5.9, VL 5.9 SOHO, VL6.0 b2.4, Zenwalk 5.4 alpha installed. I did have OpenSUSE 11 installed, but accidentally overwrote it with one of the VL6.0 alphas - no great loss.

I use the OS/2 Boot Manager as a primary boot manager, with Grub installed to the root of the partition that I use as /boot for Zenwalk 5.2.

I've just finished the test cycle on the new version of SME Server, so I'm intending to install VL 6.0 on my test box, which is an old PIII 1.2 GHz machine. Have to pull out the second NIC and clear the drive, but I should get it done sometime in the next few days.

Found the reason for the strange 'upgrade' behaviour - a lot of the files that would normally be in /var/log/packages are missing, so the dep tracking isn't working properly.

The lockup at the end of the install is a bit worrying - never had that sort of problem with any other Linux distribution on the T42.

paul.

[never_stop_learning]

Installed 6.0B2 on an IBM X22 (PIII 900, 640mb RAM).....

WOW.....The install went without a hitch. Detected my SMC USB wireless adapter. Downloaded OOO 3.0 - works fine. I am using this as my regular desktop machine - web, basic office aps, email, IM, etc. - and have not encountered any issues to date.

I am impressed.....!