VectorLinux 6.0 RC4 feedback and bug reports

[StrayBit]

I replaced RC3 with RC4 last night:
1) Check files worked on first click, took a very long time, then reported as bad.  Restarted into RC3 and, on copying a second download, discovered my first one was only half the size.  Restarted installation and check files reported good after an even longer check.
2) Imported 2 users that have never been on this machine but failed importing me.  Created me (but don't know the effect)
3) Was happy to see that it saw my install partition but it failed to install to the mbr.  On reboot, it still showed Linux gui, tui and install but froze on gui.  When installing install, it warned of some memory problem but I was able to start it 3 times previously - now the memory split stopped it.

I have replaced my home disk with a cd-rom and have 5.9 live running.  Used gparted to split / so that I can install 5.9 in the third partition.  Hopefully, I can use that until I get RC4 working.
  hda1 swap 494MiB #as reported by gparted
  hda2 / RC4 8.46Gib
  hda3 / 5.9  3.72GiB
  hdc1 install 9++MB #holds .iso for cd-less install
  hdc2 /home 3.9GB

[wcs]

Finally got RC4 on the aspire one.
Fantastic work! Wireless, touchpad, hibernate/suspend, resolution... all working out of the box. Also default acpi script working fine (single press on the power button triggers shutdown).

Problems:

1. As before, it's very difficult to use the graphical installer at this resolution, because many scroll screens/lists do not show up. For example, the locale region, the screen where one choose the bulk packages, etc... In the end, I was missing too many options, so went back to the text installer.

2. Wicd does not connect right away to the wireless network after reboot or hibernate/suspend... it tries to connect to the wired network instead, and only after a long while does it go to the wireless one (even though no cable is plugged in). Options to automatically connect and to reconnect on connection loss are checked.

3. Choice of language for gdm does not persist after reboot (only after log out, login). The system language remains the chosen one, but not the login language.

4. Perhaps video drivers for intel chipsets should be updated, but I'm not sure if that conflicts with anything else. Current xf86-video-intel is 2.6.0 (but installed is 2.2.1) and current libdrm is 2.4.4 (but installed is 2.3.1).

5. Had resolution problems when connecting to an external monitor. I had to comment out the HorizRefresh and VertRefresh options in xorg.conf to get the maximum (native) resolution on the external monitor.
This happened both when starting X with the cable plugged in or when plugging the cable afterwards and using xrandr.

6. Hibernate script could also be upgraded to 1.99

7. Get errors when doing halt/init 0... all errors are saying that snd_* modules are in use. But it shuts down anyway.

Very minor issues:

apm says failed (acpid is running)
firefox has evolution as the default mailto program
it would be nice if the splash screen configuration showed a preview of the VL splash, instead of the default.

Thank you so much!

EDIT: Haven't tested card readers yet... chances are it will be a pain, though there are rumours that it will be handled better with 2.6.29.

[GrannyGeek]

I installed yesterday (text install from CD) on my Athlon 64 X2. No problems with installation or afterwards, except when I tried to run qtconfig it complained about a missing libGL.so.1, which surprised me because I didn't get this complaint when I ran qtconfig on the other two computers on which I've installed RC4. I copied the library and its missing symlink from another RC4 computer and now qtconfig runs. However, it seems odd that it was missing only from this one computer.

The fonts in VASM and some other programs are wretchedly small and I have to struggle in order to read them. Please, can't we have either larger fonts or some choice of font size? Many computers are using much higher resolutions these days and fonts that work on low-res monitors are simply intolerable on high-res screens. The monitor on the Athlon 64 X2 is 1600x1200.

With my laptop I continue to struggle with wireless. I did blacklist forcedeth and that, together with some editing in /etc networking files, has kept a wired eth0 from being created. It is difficult or impossible to get my wireless network working if a wired network is in the picture. I found I absolutely CANNOT blacklist rtl8180, even though I'm using ndiswrapper around an XP driver for rtl8185. If rtl8180 isn't a loaded module, the computer locks up tight and I have to turn the power off before I can reboot. I'm still not 100% sure of the connection, but there is a pattern of locking up without rtl8180 loaded. The wireless connection tends to just disappear sometimes and the only way I can get it back is to reboot. I have many other problems with wireless on this notebook--which puzzles me because once I got it set up in 5.9 Standard, it worked quite well and came on automatically. It seems wireless has changed considerably in VL6, which makes it difficult to set up a connection using the old command line tools like wpa_supplicant. /etc/ifplugd also seems to have disappeared as well as wifi-radar. I'm pretty desperate for my wireless to be working better than this when Final comes out. I didn't expect things to go backward from the earlier release to the later!

On all three computers after I log in a message comes up:
starting slapt-update-notifier-d
(slapt-update-notifier:3460): GTK-WARNING **: cannot open display:

Then things continue as normal.

I got an error (it didn't way what it was) when I tried to install the proprietary ATI driver on the Athlon 64. It's using the open-source radeon driver, which seems fine.

Now I'm hoping my wireless connection will stay up long enough for me to send this.
--GrannyGeek

[wcs]

Also,

* cups config gives 404 not found
* gslaptd was not activated in services, but the update notifier pops up anyway
* skype has no sound after suspend (perhaps this version of alsa breaks it, 1.0.18 working fine in VL 5.9, but need to do some more testing)

[MikeCindi]

If rtl8180 isn't a loaded module, the computer locks up tight and I have to turn the power off before I can reboot. I'm still not 100% sure of the connection, but there is a pattern of locking up without rtl8180 loaded.

Perhaps adding "/sbin/rmmod rtl8180" at the end of rc.modules (actually before "/sbin/modprobe ndiswrapper" which for me seems to have to be the last line of the file) would allow the machine to boot but not block wireless from starting. Just a thought...

[Lyn]

When I launch a terminal on my i810 Compaq X restarts, and I am back at the log on prompt.  IIRC we had this problem before with this machine with 5.9

[GrannyGeek]

Perhaps adding "/sbin/rmmod rtl8180" at the end of rc.modules (actually before "/sbin/modprobe ndiswrapper" which for me seems to have to be the last line of the file) would allow the machine to boot but not block wireless from starting. Just a thought...

There's never a problem with the machine booting. But it seems that if I rmmod rtl8180 at any time, I'll get a lockup soon after. And all h*ll breaks loose if I blacklist it. So I'm leaving it alone.

Today I haven't lost the wireless connection since I posted my prior message 11 hours ago. rtl8180 does appear in lsmod, as does ndiswrapper. I'm delighted because now I'm sure that wireless CAN be solid (if the gremlins stay away :-) ). We'll see if the connection comes up when I turn the notebook on tomorrow.

Oh--and by the way, I found out how to disable the touchpad completely and have just my wireless mouse working. I checked my xorg.conf file from my 5.9 installation (which I copied to an external hard drive) and then did the same in xorg.conf on the new 6.0 RC4 installation. It worked!

At the moment, things are looking almost perfect in RC4.
--GrannyGeek

[vector]

The fonts in VASM and some other programs are wretchedly small and I have to struggle in order to read them. Please, can't we have either larger fonts or some choice of font size? Many computers are using much higher resolutions these days and fonts that work on low-res monitors are simply intolerable on high-res screens. The monitor on the Athlon 64 X2 is 1600x1200.

In your $HOME folder you have a hidden .gtkrc file edit that for font size should be pretty obvious set at 12 now try 14 or 16 see if that works better for you.

Vec

[edgeofthewoods]

So any ideaon getting the wired network to autostart on boot? In vasm I reconfigured and told it firmly to start on boot, but at every re boot I need to open WICD and have it connect to the network. Other than that it runs GREAT!! Fast and stable.Oh thanks for the tip on HPLIP that brought things in nicely.

Chuck

[sparkyhall]

The only way I managed to get my network interface to start was by disabling wicd in both xfce autostart and services in vasm. Once done your network should start providing it's been setup in vasm.

Chris

[tawie]

there is a bug when use vasmcc to config wireless, is anybody report this?

when input ssid, if the name of ssid have blank, vasmcc will use the part after blank as the key, and the key you input no use.

as example, my ssid name is 'H3C WBR204g+', when I input this into ssid inputbox, and the generate file of /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf as follows:

# cat /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf
---------------------------------
# See /usr/doc/wpa_supplicant-0.5.7/wpa_supplicant.conf.sample
# for many more options that you can use in this file.

# This line enables the use of wpa_cli which is used by rc.wireless
# if possible (to check for successful association)
ctrl_interface=/var/run/wpa_supplicant
# By default, only root (group 0) may use wpa_cli
ctrl_interface_group=0
eapol_version=1
ap_scan=1
fast_reauth=1

network={
   ssid="H3C"
   #psk="WBR204g+"
   psk=54972dc1797b4cc87ccf9a59f5e7b52b92e62bde6d24f297ac1ff4920891e28a
}
----------------------------------------------

the name of ssid and key all wrong here, so the wireless never have a chance to connect.

[caitlyn]

I installed VL 6.0 rc4 on my new Sylvania g Netbook Meso.  As wcs already pointed out the GUI installer is a "whole lot of no fun" at less than 1024x768 so I did a simple, hosted install this time.  The results:  everything, and I do mean everything, works out of the box     OK, I need to add webcam software (packages coming soon) but the sound, wired and wireless networking, sound, and video @ 1024x600x24 were all setup correctly.  Very, very nice.

It was also nice to see that samba is no longer started by default.  The minimal set of automatic ready-to-go services is spot on.  It's easy enough to add things in vasm or vasmCC.

I did notice that the notifier does run even without the gslaptd daemon being selected.

[rbistolfi]

you may need to change some of the options to make it to work with your cam, but If you want to just test the camera I use something like

Code:

mplayer -cache 128 -tv driver=v4l:width=640:height=480:outfmt=i420 -vc rawi420 -vo xv tv://

of course I made an alias for it, I don't type all that each time I want to see my pretty face

[GrannyGeek]

In your $HOME folder you have a hidden .gtkrc file edit that for font size should be pretty obvious set at 12 now try 14 or 16 see if that works better for you.

Thanks for the suggestion. Unfortunately, it didn't change the font size that is too small for my eyes at all. I wish I could attach a screen shot to a message in this forum. I don't have a place where I can post a picture that does not reveal more of my identify than I want out on the Internet.

The screens in question are those that I get after clicking on an icon in VASMCC: for example, BACKUPSYS MENU, DISPLAY MANAGER CONFIGURATOR, SET SERVICES MENU, and all the rest. The text in the Dillo Address Bar and the Dillo Icon Bar is tiny, but the text on Web pages is fine because it's adjustable in dillorc. The right-click menu text in XPDF is tiny. I don't know where the font size of these screens is controlled. (I've been asking this question for years.)

I use a program called CheckBook Tracker to keep a check register on my computer. It uses the same tiny text size as Dillo and XPDF in its menus and unadjustable screen text. The font and text size of the check register itself can be selected by the user, but there is no setting for the menus and unchangeable text. I assume CheckBook Tracker, Dillo, XPDF, etc., get their menu text font and size from some system setting, but where is it?
--GrannyGeek

[vector]

Thanks for the suggestion. Unfortunately, it didn't change the font size that is too small for my eyes at all. I wish I could attach a screen shot to a message in this forum.

Granny did you logout and log back in? Changes will not happen till you do that.

Vec