PCLinuxOS Education 2011.12 - please test it ! :)

[melodie]

One question. Which kernel is to be used? bfs or non-bfs?

Hi djohnston,
It is bfs. The one I added was to fix some problems met after I put the hard drive in another machine, then switched back. (I don't redo initrd by hand, rather install another kernel, reboot to it, remove the bfs, reinstall it later).

Regards,
Mélodie

[melodie]

Hi,

The dkms packages removed, the "rpm -e draklive-install" line commented in the /etc/rc.sysinit, the related error messages are no more.

I have remastered Edu twice on a row, to try to get Gcompris loading fast in a live. I have setup prelink this way, the first time (after full removal and reinstall, checking no leftovers from prelink where left in the system before reinstalling):

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# /usr/sbin/prelink -R /usr/bin/gcompris
missing the "-m" on purpose. (I am a bit tired now, so won't explain much more but if you check "man prelink" you should get the idea... ). It happened to react too slow in the vbox, as live.

This roughly explained, makes prelink only a limited number of libs, and particularly all the ones which are used by gcompris. Then, the need to remove prelink at post-install becomes not so necessary : I would like prelink to stay... discrete, not making the hard drives noisy too after the cron job starts.

The vbox being still slow I did a new remaster where I added the "-m" option. Who knows, maybe keeping the memory address reserved for Gcompris could help. But it vbox, still slow... the little sign which appears when double-clicking fade away and the process would show in htop, but Gcompris really shows long after the program was started.

I then decided to burn a CD, and now, in the Live CD, it does not fade away when double-clicking the Gcompris icon on the desktop, and only a few seconds are necessary to get it started. It seems better.

Under /etc, the files belonging to prelink are:

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# find . -name "prelink*"
./sysconfig/prelink
./cron.daily/prelink
./logrotate.d/prelink
./prelink.cache
./prelink.conf
./prelink.conf.d
./rpm/macros.d/prelink.macros

I looked at /etc/sysconfig/prelink and saw that one line could eventually be commented, so to get every... so much time, a quick prelink instead of a normal one. It is this one line at the end:

# How often should full prelink be run (in days)
# Normally, prelink will be run in quick mode, every
# $PRELINK_FULL_TIME_INTERVAL days it will be run
# in normal mode.  Comment it out if it should be run
# in normal mode always.
PRELINK_FULL_TIME_INTERVAL=14

Can you confirm I understand correctly ? And what about the last line of the file, after you read the commented lines in between ?

Last, wouldn't the "cron.daily/prelink" file be better in the "cron.weekly" directory, considering the goal is just to make gcompris start faster ?

Thanks for comments,
Mélodie

PS: I'll install to hard drive tomorrow.

[melodie]

Hi,

The last of 4 versions with different prelink setups : the best now, 3 seconds to start Gcompris in a Live session. prelink to minimum, just:

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# prelink -vmR /usr/bin/gcompris
the cron file in the cron.weekly directory : I hope there is nothing else to change, so that it is started weekly, and the line above said in /etc/sysconfig/prelink, in order to have only quick prelinkings when cron job starts it (let's not scare the people and schools with the noises in the hard drive).

To change the prelink setup, I did:

# prelink -au (to remove all former prelinking)

# rm -f /etc/prelink.cache (to finish removing former prelinking)

# prelink -vmR /usr/bin/gcompris

With the "prelink -p" command, we can see all the libs which are prelinked.

A benchmark in my laptop T60, dual core, 32bits, 1833 MHz, 2 GB ram:
* The above setup allows having Gcompris start in 3 seconds in the live CD;
* The same setup but with all prelinked (option "-avmR") made Gcompris start in more than 27 seconds in the live CD;
* No prelinking at all : in the live, Gcompris takes several minutes before starting, which made a French speaking user think the icon was not launching anything.

I am going to install it to hard drive later this evening, and in the meanwhile upload it, if some of you wish to test it again. (I didn't try again the time needed for it to start, in Virtualbox... anyhow it is not Vbox which is going to be used most, but CD's, I think, and a few also might use it with the thumbdrive).

djohnston : I asked someone to redo the firefox icon, so that it looks more like a red panda cub and not to the Gimp icon (what animal is it supposed to be ? ). I am waiting for it, and when I get it will include in the last version of the year.

Regards,
Mélodie

[melodie]

Hi,

The new version as of today is available, and you can find the link in the first page.
I will be looking forward to your feedback.

Regards,
Mélodie

[jlf001]

Hi Mélodie

I have your current EDU ISO 12-12-11, up and running in VirtualBox.  Boot speed appears to be back to normal. So far, so good.

Jeff

Edit:  Live CD runs fine, including GCompris.

[Brian36]

Why not enable midwifi only thru root?

[melodie]

Why not enable midwifi only thru root?

Hi, what is "midwifi" supposed to be, and what exactly is your question ?

Thanks,
Mélodie