Openbox versions 2011 08

[Yankee]

Something such as djohnston did so well here for the Education version:
http://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php/topic,94160.msg791923.html#msg791923

+1

Such talent, what a template, I wish I had such creativity.
I'm sure my progeny, kindred, children or whatever you want
to call them will use this program.    While they're not
noodling or learning a little golf, of course.   

Patrick013

[djohnston]

Melodie,

I can do one for Openbox Full Edition the same way. I'll have to do it tomorrow. My main desktop's CPU is going very flaky on me. Just tell me where you want the stuff posted.

[melodie]

Melodie,

I can do one for Openbox Full Edition the same way. I'll have to do it tomorrow. My main desktop's CPU is going very flaky on me. Just tell me where you want the stuff posted.

Hi djohnston,

First, thank you very much ! I knew it has to be done, but didn't feel like getting into it now. I suggest when you have it ready you send a mail to me and I send it back to you after I have a look, and will send it back to you with any addition I can think of. I would also send you a description I did for Bonsai and did not publish, then you could post it at the Announcement section. Texstar has uploaded both Openbox versions to ibiblio, but no announcement has been done yet so...

I send you a pm to give you my mail.

Regards,
Mélodie

[raycleve]

Hi,
I just downloaded and installed Openbox 2011.08. It looks great. I'll have to play with a while and see if I can handle it.
Cheers. Ray

[Yankee]

Melodie,

Here's something unexpected that happened today.   I earlier added lxpanel, lxappearance,
and shutdown-dialog.py.   All working smoothly as expected.   Then today I backed-up  four
partitions, totaling  6.5 GB compressed and archived, fairly heavy use.   Those appear
well done.   

Well then I opened Leafpad and wrote a small text file to save , and the machine locked up, went into
the background color for the desktop not the graphic file selected for the desktop.    After three
reboots it finally cleared up and started to work correctly.   I wish I had that Leafpad command
in a terminal for reading but I don't.

I wonder if this is related to the shutdown problem I had earlier after heavy use, or an entirely
different problem after heavy use because of some configuration deficiency now related to trying
to use lxpanel, lxappearance, and/or shutdown-dialog.py  ?

When I do these extra large backups with OpenBox I certainly find a problem.   This is
one of my primary reasons for using OpenBox, to use as a system backup/rescue program, you know.
Your advise ?    Get rid of the lx* additions ?

THX.

Patrick

[melodie]

Hi,

Could you have a system backup using console mode ? If yes, you could just logout from X and  login to a tty.

And the shutdown-dialog.py from the repos might not be what you want for now... It might need update and fix... Could you copy it's content between code tags hereafter ?

[Yankee]

Hi,

Could you have a system backup using console mode ? If yes, you could just logout from X and  login to a tty.

And the shutdown-dialog.py from the repos might not be what you want for now... It might need update and fix... Could you copy it's content between code tags hereafter ?

Hi,

Well the problem occurred right after these large backups.   Nothing other than that, shutdown-dialog.py
was not activated before, just Leafpad, and then the lock-up occurred.   I think I'll uninstall the lxpanel,
lxappearance, and shutdown-dialog.py packages I  installed and leave OpenBox run as per the ISO then.
I need to get these to work with the GUI provided you know.  It's not hard to uninstall those, no
dependencies as I can remember.   I have a couple partitions left to backup this month so I should be
able to  test then what happens.   Shutdown-dialog.py wasn't apparently the problem, I suspect
the lxpanel or lxappearance packages didn't fit exactly into OpenBox.   Don't really know.   Time will tell.

Sound good ?

Thanks for your response.

FF

edit: the caches on these flash drives are extremely small, but something like Leafpad
should run or at least "wait in queue" and run OK eventually if it needs cache space.
More experience necessary I guess if I can use this combination confidently for what I'm trying
to do for these monthly backups, which is Openbox+16GB flashdrive=backup files.    In
theory it should work.   I'll work on it. 

[melodie]

Hi,

It is possible that lxpanel would use a little resource, which could be the small amount you found missing... If you want a small text editor, you can get rid of geany and a few more things... viewnior, and even pcmanfm along with gnome-icon-theme and replace it all with the xfe suite (very small suite with a text editor, a file browser, an image viewer and a text viewer... the package manager part is of no use for us... ).

Get also rid of gdm and gdm-themes, then login with XDM. It's ugly but you will get back yet more resources. If you don't want to use any login manager, you can edit /etc/inittab to have your usb stick install boot to init3, then login as user in a tty and you can start the X session with the command "startx" : the distro has the necessary $HOME/.xsession file used by our Xorg to start the X session (and I have added a copy of it under the name ".xinitrc" as this is what might be needed one day... by some program).

Then if you need to access internal storage (partitions) you will need to mount them manually with the mount command in a root console. I suppose that for the need you have, this would not be a problem ?

[Yankee]

I suppose that for the need you have, this would not be a problem ?

Hi Melodie,

I can see the theory behind having less things running to interfere with a dedicated process.
But, I have the Window Manager running now, rather than a desktop, could go smaller like
you said but today results are better.

Uninstalled the lxpanel, I'm betting it has a small bug, finished doing several more compressed
archives, and tested several programs in between archive making looking for the lock-up.   
Well it didn't occur.

Then I copied over 9 GB's of archive files from flash drive to portable HD with mc.   Set
xscreensaver to power off at 2 minutes to see if that would bother mc.   Well it didn't
either on those big transfers.   Transfer speed was 11MB's/second.   Tested several
programs afterward as before, rebooted, then shutdown completely.   No problems.


Need to reread your last message several times to understand what I would have then,
and order another flash drive or two.

Thanks for the response.

FF

[melodie]

Hi,

Instead of mc to operate your datas transfers I suggest you use either just "cp" (with -R and or -a options if needed), or rsync. These tools are not so difficult to learn to use, and are more performing than mc.

I have tried to use mc in a machine where the hard drive was dying, it was too slow, whereas "cp -R" did get the family pictures of our friend to the pendrive where we wanted them to be copied.

If you get rid of gdm for the pendrive with backups, you will also improve the capacity of your backup system.

I don't think that you can say Lxpanel has a bug, just with what you met with. If you can't describe it in a way it can be reproduced it's probably not a bug, but an additional load that you don't need.

Regards,
Mélodie

[Yankee]

I don't think that you can say Lxpanel has a bug, just with what you met with. If you can't describe it in a way it can be reproduced it's probably not a bug, but an additional load that you don't need.

Thanks for your advise.  Just going to enjoy OpenBox without lxpanel for awhile.   Have used
"cp -a source target"  recently, to clone this drive I'm using right now with Openbox.   Good advise.

[melodie]

I don't think that you can say Lxpanel has a bug, just with what you met with. If you can't describe it in a way it can be reproduced it's probably not a bug, but an additional load that you don't need.

Thanks for your advise.  Just going to enjoy OpenBox without lxpanel for awhile.   Have used
"cp -a source target"  recently, to clone this drive I'm using right now with Openbox.   Good advise.

Hi,

the -a option is for "preseverve, no-dereference". It keeps the attributes. The "-R" is for copy recursively. You can use "-Ra" if you want to have both combined. (from "man cp", which comes from the coreutils-doc package... knew it but often prefer to check before posting)

[Yankee]

I don't think that you can say Lxpanel has a bug, just with what you met with. If you can't describe it in a way it can be reproduced it's probably not a bug, but an additional load that you don't need.

Thanks for your advise.  Just going to enjoy OpenBox without lxpanel for awhile.   Have used
"cp -a source target"  recently, to clone this drive I'm using right now with Openbox.   Good advise.

Hi,

the -a option is for "preseverve, no-dereference". I keeps the attributes. The "-R" is for copy recursively. You can use "-Ra" if you want to have both combined. (from "man cp", which comes from the coreutils-doc package... knew it but often prefer to check before posting)

-a, --archive    same as -dR --preserve=all     (from cp --help)

The -a option includes -d and -R.   Which is no dereference, and copy recursively, and preserve=all(timestamps, attributes., etc..)

One command to remember that clones or copies exactly.  At least it does on my machine.   It worked.
Might break a link sometime if only one file is copied that was linked somewhere, but the file copied would be OK.

[melodie]

-a, --archive    same as -dR --preserve=all     (from cp --help)

The -a option includes -d and -R.   Which is no dereference, and copy recursively, and preserve=all(timestamps, attributes., etc..)

One command to remember that clones or copies exactly.  At least it does on my machine.   It worked.
Might break a link sometime if only one file is copied that was linked somewhere, but the file copied would be OK.

Ok, I get it. Thanks for the details.

[Yankee]

Ok, I get it. Thanks for the details.

Oh, by the way...I posted a short release info message on a handful of local
Linux user's groups.   I know some of them downloaded it.   I hope they
have some questions.