PCLinuxOS Phinx 2011.05 RC1 Release

[bicol_willem]

Running on my EeePC - and running very well!

Had one small issue - no sound when first installed. The Mixer claimed Gstreamer couldn't find my sound card. Eventually I added a few of the Gstreamer plugins (based on the same netbook running the Phoenix xfce version) and the sound is back. Not sure if that is just an Intel soundcard issue or not...

Otherwise, lovely iso - runs great. Already started adding in my own little faves - gigolo for example.

Mark

Hmm, dusted off a EeePC 701 resting in my drawer, thinking this Phinx could be THE thing for it. Installs with no problems but one: The keyboard gets confused. Like it was set to a wrong language.... (Its set to US en). Could not get around the problem. This doesn't happen when I install the Gnome version (Which is a bit too large for this dwarf machine). Had to give up for now. Phinx does look great and I regret to have to let it go just for the keyboard error.

Edit: Grrrr.... still have a chance (for once I forgot to check the checksum.....) Downloading again!

Edit 2:  Nagh .. no luck. Burned a new CD and checked it. Installed it and ... same issue with keyboard. It seems Phinx in all it's beauty is not for EeeePC 701 

[Sproggy]

Running on my EeePC - and running very well!

Had one small issue - no sound when first installed. The Mixer claimed Gstreamer couldn't find my sound card. Eventually I added a few of the Gstreamer plugins (based on the same netbook running the Phoenix xfce version) and the sound is back. Not sure if that is just an Intel soundcard issue or not...

Otherwise, lovely iso - runs great. Already started adding in my own little faves - gigolo for example.

Mark

Hmm, dusted off a EeePC 701 resting in my drawer, thinking this Phinx could be THE thing for it. Installs with no problems but one: The keyboard gets confused. Like it was set to a wrong language.... (Its set to US en). Could not get around the problem. This doesn't happen when I install the Gnome version (Which is a bit too large for this dwarf machine). Had to give up for now. Phinx does look great and I regret to have to let it go just for the keyboard error.

Edit: Grrrr.... still have a chance (for once I forgot to check the checksum.....) Downloading again!

Edit 2:  Nagh .. no luck. Burned a new CD and checked it. Installed it and ... same issue with keyboard. It seems Phinx in all it's beauty is not for EeeePC 701 

Hey dude ...

sorry to hear the keyboard is not doing what you want it too ... i dont have an eepc so i cant test this ... but what exactly is it doing? you you set the language at first boot??? ... if not you can set it through the PCLOS COntrol Center >>> HArdware >>> Keyboard ... or if that doesnt stick ... you can set it through XFCE Settings Manager >>> Kayboard >>> Layout ... and add your custom Keyboard settings there .... i hope this helps sort that for you

Kori

[bicol_willem]

sorry to hear the keyboard is not doing what you want it too ... i dont have an eepc so i cant test this ... but what exactly is it doing?Huh you you set the language at first boot??? ... if not you can set it through the PCLOS COntrol Center >>> HArdware >>> Keyboard ... or if that doesnt stick ... you can set it through XFCE Settings Manager >>> Kayboard >>> Layout ... and add your custom Keyboard settings there .... i hope this helps sort that for you


Yes, I set language at first boot/during install. Tried a few. The other options, you brought forward here, I will try .... I'll be back on that.

Edit: Hmmm, can't get in control center ... of course ... due to "wrong password". It starts with su which appeared as s4. De keyboard doesn't write "root" while I type root  . For the same reason I can't get konsole control. Strange but true.

[Sproggy]

sorry to hear the keyboard is not doing what you want it too ... i dont have an eepc so i cant test this ... but what exactly is it doing?Huh you you set the language at first boot??? ... if not you can set it through the PCLOS COntrol Center >>> HArdware >>> Keyboard ... or if that doesnt stick ... you can set it through XFCE Settings Manager >>> Kayboard >>> Layout ... and add your custom Keyboard settings there .... i hope this helps sort that for you


Yes, I set language at first boot/during install. Tried a few. The other options, you brought forward here, I will try .... I'll be back on that.

Edit: Hmmm, can't get in control center ... of course ... due to "wrong password". It starts with su which appeared as s4. De keyboard doesn't write "root" while I type root  . For the same reason I can't get konsole control. Strange but true.

you will need to disable your Num Lock using your Function key ...

Kori

[bicol_willem]

sorry to hear the keyboard is not doing what you want it too ... i dont have an eepc so i cant test this ... but what exactly is it doing?Huh you you set the language at first boot??? ... if not you can set it through the PCLOS COntrol Center >>> HArdware >>> Keyboard ... or if that doesnt stick ... you can set it through XFCE Settings Manager >>> Kayboard >>> Layout ... and add your custom Keyboard settings there .... i hope this helps sort that for you


Yes, I set language at first boot/during install. Tried a few. The other options, you brought forward here, I will try .... I'll be back on that.

Edit: Hmmm, can't get in control center ... of course ... due to "wrong password". It starts with su which appeared as s4. De keyboard doesn't write "root" while I type root  . For the same reason I can't get konsole control. Strange but true.

you will need to disable your Num Lock using your Function key ...

Kori

Num lock using Function key ... ?? Well, I just wonder as to why that would be so using Phinx and not using any other acceptable to the machine distro  I didn't encounter such problem aside of Phinx. Second, I can't try that suggestion for a day or five.... Mrs. saw and remembered "her" EeePC and took it with her! Back on Saturday..... She could be shocked to find a tinned out Gnome edition on it with NO office etc... hahahaha 
But, once its back i go and try again. Phinx really looks 'the right size' for it.

[Sproggy]

sorry to hear the keyboard is not doing what you want it too ... i dont have an eepc so i cant test this ... but what exactly is it doing?Huh you you set the language at first boot??? ... if not you can set it through the PCLOS COntrol Center >>> HArdware >>> Keyboard ... or if that doesnt stick ... you can set it through XFCE Settings Manager >>> Kayboard >>> Layout ... and add your custom Keyboard settings there .... i hope this helps sort that for you


Yes, I set language at first boot/during install. Tried a few. The other options, you brought forward here, I will try .... I'll be back on that.

Edit: Hmmm, can't get in control center ... of course ... due to "wrong password". It starts with su which appeared as s4. De keyboard doesn't write "root" while I type root  . For the same reason I can't get konsole control. Strange but true.

you will need to disable your Num Lock using your Function key ...

Kori

Num lock using Function key ... ?? Well, I just wonder as to why that would be so using Phinx and not using any other acceptable to the machine distro  I didn't encounter such problem aside of Phinx. Second, I can't try that suggestion for a day or five.... Mrs. saw and remembered "her" EeePC and took it with her! Back on Saturday..... She could be shocked to find a tinned out Gnome edition on it with NO office etc... hahahaha 
But, once its back i go and try again. Phinx really looks 'the right size' for it.

hahaha thats just typical ... women playing with mens toys ... ::::::::::::::::flees ::::::::::::::: from the ladies lolol

[kernowyon]

Ah - now you mention the issue with entering the password, I had that - but I put it down to my clumsy fingers. The NumLock had been enabled as you suggested. Once I turned it off and entered the correct password all was fine - and the NumLock hasn't re-enabled itself. Like you, this is a 701.

As Kori says, the NumLock is on the F11 key, and you use the Fn key to turn it on or off.... one of the joys of cramming loads of stuff onto a small keyboard I guess!  At least it is not quite as bad as the old rubber keyed Sinclair Spectrum which required some pretty impressive finger gymnastics to get some of the features!

[Sproggy]

Ah - now you mention the issue with entering the password, I had that - but I put it down to my clumsy fingers. The NumLock had been enabled as you suggested. Once I turned it off and entered the correct password all was fine - and the NumLock hasn't re-enabled itself. Like you, this is a 701.

As Kori says, the NumLock is on the F11 key, and you use the Fn key to turn it on or off.... one of the joys of cramming loads of stuff onto a small keyboard I guess!  At least it is not quite as bad as the old rubber keyed Sinclair Spectrum which required some pretty impressive finger gymnastics to get some of the features!

oh i had the Sinclair Spectrum ZX81 with a 8k RAM Pak .... wow those were the days lol

[jlf001]

Hi Kori,

I finally had time to get RC1 up and running on one of my test machines, a Dell Inspiron 8600 laptop.  This machine has a P4 1.5GHz processor, with one gig of ram and a 64Meg Nvidia card from around 2003.  All is working fine after running alsaconfig and adding the gstreamer plugin you mentioned earlier.  I'll be leaving Phinx on this laptop for more testing, if need be.

Jeff

[charsan2]

Thank you for the XFCE spin! The only issue I had was install the realtek driver it wanted to regress to a lower kernel from .38 bfs to .37 pae

I wanted to also say that synaptic also wanted to uninstall the basesystem as well.

[bicol_willem]

Ah - now you mention the issue with entering the password, I had that - but I put it down to my clumsy fingers. The NumLock had been enabled as you suggested. Once I turned it off and entered the correct password all was fine - and the NumLock hasn't re-enabled itself. Like you, this is a 701.

As Kori says, the NumLock is on the F11 key, and you use the Fn key to turn it on or off.... one of the joys of cramming loads of stuff onto a small keyboard I guess!  At least it is not quite as bad as the old rubber keyed Sinclair Spectrum which required some pretty impressive finger gymnastics to get some of the features!

Well, that is good news then ... If your's is a 701 and Linx run on it .... I guess I will be getting somewhere then. This Numlock thingy is however kinda boobytrap! (Who thinks about this?).

Mrs! Come back soon, I got things to do!! 

[ltelmo]

Sproggy,
I installed Phnix yesterday and i noticed a couple things. When i installed Libreoffice the dark gray background carrys over into the office suite causing it hard to use. Not sure this is a issue per say just thought i pass it on. I also am getting a hang on shutdown. If i click shutdown I starts shutdown screen, might go have way or so then locks.

Just trying to help what i saw.

Thanks Sproggy!

[bicol_willem]

I was able to split Mrs. from "her" EeePC 701 and installed Phinx. This time being warned about the num lock problem (I think that really needs solved as it REALLY confused me and I am as good as sure it will confuse many).
Well, it works rather great on this little machine .... BUT .. Mrs. is NOT impressed, LOL!
Put salt on these little things without a single miss, like .... why isn't Youtube working??? (Ehh yeah Mrs. wait plse .... I will install this and that ... sigh!).
Nagh she wants her Easy PC back asap!  (Problem is that this is OLD meanwhile and upgrades run it of the rather small hdd).
Anyone know how to explain this to Mrs. in layman terms? 

OK, being on it anyway, I installed it on a older laptop Acer Aspire 3610 as well which is in use by my son. Again, runs very smooth and this hdd is big enough to set up things he want it.
(How NICE such a "real screen" laptop! Who ever pushed these "wide screen" crap through our throats!?).
So, one lost for Phinx, one win!

[busprof]

@Sproggy

Good work.  I'm running from the live cd right now - plan to install to HDD later.  Just a couple of quick suggestions/issues:

I'm on an older laptop (Dell Inspiron 2650 - running Pentium 4M CPU and Invidia GeForce2 graphics card - 512Mb RAM).  I had to resort to "safe boot" mode to get the live CD to run.  I've noticed problems with kernel 2.6.38.x in the past on this machine - don't know if it's the kernel or the video card that cause the issues.  I've even custom-compiled a couple of times with another distro with no luck, so this kernel is ahead of at least my own efforts.  Here's my lspci output though, if it helps decision-making on kernel options, etc., for older equipment:

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 82845 845 [Brookdale] Chipset Host Bridge (rev 05)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82845 845 [Brookdale] Chipset AGP Bridge (rev 05)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801CA/CAM USB Controller #1 (rev 02)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801CA/CAM USB Controller #2 (rev 02)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev 42)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801CAM ISA Bridge (LPC) (rev 02)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801CAM IDE U100 Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801CA/CAM SMBus Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corporation 82801CA/CAM AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.6 Modem: Intel Corporation 82801CA/CAM AC'97 Modem Controller (rev 02)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV11 [GeForce2 Go] (rev b2)
02:01.0 Ethernet controller: 3Com Corporation 3c905C-TX/TX-M [Tornado] (rev 78)
02:04.0 CardBus bridge: O2 Micro, Inc. OZ601/6912/711E0 CardBus/SmartCardBus Controller

The iso did ultimately boot, though, and all of the appropriate modules/drivers seem to be loaded, so maybe there's no need to think about this.  Just a bit of trouble with initial boot into the live mode.

The first suggestion is to set numlock off on default.  It was a bit of a surprise to have numbers show up when I was typing in my wireless LAN ESSID.  I did tumble to the issue, but I noticed at least one other user had problems figuring this out. 

The other suggestion is to replace lynx with elinks as the CLI browser for the final release (just my personal prefence, but I do think elinks is both easier to use and more powerful with available extensions, etc.).

Other than that - so far so good.

Thanks again for the hard, very creative work.

[wedgetail]

Downloaded ISO, installed as LiveHDD, seems to run fine as such. Then I decided to do a test install to hard drive.
I set up a new 20 GB partition  /dev/sda16, foramatted this ext4 then called draklive-install, all from Phinx root terminal.
During process something fails, looks like towards the end.  Here is the terminal record, from the second attempt,  

Code: [Select]

[guest@localhost ~]$ su
Password:

[root@localhost guest]# draklive-install
/media/ user
Gtk-CRITICAL **: IA__gtk_widget_set_size_request: assertion `width >= -1' failed at /usr/lib/libDrakX/fs/partitioning_wizard.pm line 390.
Gtk-CRITICAL **: IA__gtk_widget_set_size_request: assertion `width >= -1' failed at /usr/lib/libDrakX/fs/partitioning_wizard.pm line 390.
Gtk-CRITICAL **: IA__gtk_widget_set_size_request: assertion `width >= -1' failed at /usr/lib/libDrakX/fs/partitioning_wizard.pm line 322.
Gtk-CRITICAL **: IA__gtk_widget_set_size_request: assertion `width >= -1' failed at /usr/lib/libDrakX/ugtk2.pm line 84.
mount: /dev/sdb19 already mounted or /root/.inspect_tmp_dir busy
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sdb21,
       missing codepage or helper program, or other error
       In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try
       dmesg | tail  or so

umount: /dev/sda16: not mounted
Setting up swapspace version 1, size = 4088504 KiB
LABEL=swap4000, UUID=061c4ede-3435-4b06-8be5-e07ba90e2191
Setting up swapspace version 1, size = 4088504 KiB
no label, UUID=6fdbb9bb-f52e-4f56-8c4b-844de0960066
tune2fs 1.41.14 (22-Dec-2010)
tar: ./var/run/gdm_socket: socket ignored
tar: ./var/run/acpid.socket: socket ignored
tar: ./var/run/uuidd/request: socket ignored
tar: ./var/run/saslauthd/mux: socket ignored
tar: ./var/run/dbus/system_bus_socket: socket ignored
tar: ./var/run/avahi-daemon/socket: socket ignored
Warning: syslog is needed by crond in runlevel 2
Warning: syslog is needed by crond in runlevel 3
Warning: syslog is needed by crond in runlevel 4
Warning: syslog is needed by crond in runlevel 5
Warning: syslog is needed by crond in runlevel 2
Warning: syslog is needed by crond in runlevel 3
Warning: syslog is needed by crond in runlevel 4
Warning: syslog is needed by crond in runlevel 5
Warning: syslog is needed by crond in runlevel 2
Warning: syslog is needed by crond in runlevel 3
Warning: syslog is needed by crond in runlevel 4
Warning: syslog is needed by crond in runlevel 5
Warning: syslog is needed by crond in runlevel 2
Warning: syslog is needed by crond in runlevel 3
Warning: syslog is needed by crond in runlevel 4
Warning: syslog is needed by crond in runlevel 5
mount: /dev/sdb19 already mounted or /root/.inspect_tmp_dir busy
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sdb21,
       missing codepage or helper program, or other error
       In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try
       dmesg | tail  or so

add_entry at /usr/lib/libDrakX/bootloader.pm line 604, <> line 9.
standalone::bug_handler() called from /usr/lib/libDrakX/bootloader.pm:604
bootloader::add_entry() called from /usr/lib/libDrakX/bootloader.pm:1109
bootloader::suggest() called from /usr/lib/libDrakX/any.pm:211
any::setupBootloaderBefore() called from /usr/lib/libDrakX/any.pm:135
any::setupBootloaderBeforeStandalone() called from /usr/sbin/draklive-install:308
main::setup_bootloader() called from /usr/sbin/draklive-install:73
main::install_live() called from /usr/sbin/draklive-install:42
[root@localhost guest]#


The reference to /dev/sdb19 the partition holds the Phinx LiveHDD and it is from here the install is taking place, there is probably about 6 other OS held here each in single directories and none of those have failed to install many times.

I have seen similar failure as above when the BIOS sequence  for drives have been screwed up. At present I believe I am running a pretty stable pc handling 6+ systems pretty well.

Any suggestions where my problem can be

I have looked in partition /dev/sda16 and it appears that Phinx fielsystem is installed here, so that it is only the boot loader install that gives up.

Therfor I manually constructed a stanza in my menulist and ran this.  The page with the spinning circle shows and the comet advances slowly at the bottom of the screen and reaches the end after about 3-5 minutes.  At this stage I gave up and hit reset button.