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Alextreme
01-21-2003, 12:17 PM
Well, been working my *ss of (totally borked a number of CDRW's), but Morphix is becoming usable (with 2 mainmodules, and a number of mini's). Got a sf project page (http://sourceforge.net/projects/morphix) up, if anyone wants to help out just let me know.

If all goes well, i'll have some time this afternoon to start uploading iso's and modules to my mirror (http://am.xs4all.nl/drupal/node.php?id=20), interested if it meets up to expectations. Havn't included any changes of 20-1-2003 into the Basemodule, and it still hasn't any way to install to hdd, but it's coming along quite nicely, imho

Note: I've mentioned privately to a number of people Morphix would be a total rewrite, but i reconsidered and decided that building ontop of KnopBase/KNOPPIX would be a whole lot faster. sorry if i got your hopes up, but otherwise it would have taken 2 months(years?) instead of 2 weeks ;)

(oh yeah, i'll throw up some screenshots this evening, the XP-minimodule is really bad :D

eadz
01-21-2003, 12:25 PM
seems your mirror is down.. may i sugest you use the sourceforge mirrors?

Alextreme
01-21-2003, 04:00 PM
Mirror down?

ftp://dl.xs4all.nl/pub/mirror/drupal/Morphix works perfectly here, got the url wrong in my former post. It should work (anonymous ftp), uploading with 2MB/s ;)

Everything is uploaded now, also included tools.tar.gz, it has a modified compress-app, modified cloop, example commands and a personal cleaningscript for /var (wasnt satisfied with apt-get clean, i'll merge it with Knoppix.clean lateron).

Have fun! :D

PS. included is also the source, not that my modifications are that earthschokking :)

roadie
01-24-2003, 05:01 AM
Just wondering if Morphix is on any other mirrors. I can't connect witj Gftp & I'm on dial-up so I need to be able to resume a download.

Thanx,
roadie

John
01-24-2003, 05:19 AM
Roadie, you may want to use wget -> "wget -c ftp://..."
It works well. I had a flaky connection and lost net access dozens of times on a large file, but wget handled it fine without corrupting the data.

Alextreme
01-24-2003, 09:48 AM
hmm, strange that some people are having problems, could you mail me the (g)ftp-output? It works perfectly here, but if there are problems i'll appreciate it if you can give me some feedback that i can pass on to xs4all...

Rixel
01-24-2003, 10:10 AM
Worked fine for me, but two quick questions, Alex.

Can I rawrite the boot.img to make the cd floppy bootable?

and

Is there any way to save changes to the environment, eg- floppyconfig?

Would that require a remaster?

Very fast, though...love it!

Alextreme
01-24-2003, 11:11 AM
Worked fine for me, but two quick questions, Alex.

Can I rawrite the boot.img to make the cd floppy bootable?

IDHTFI (I dont have the foggiest idea :))

try it, let me know if it works. I'll have a look at it later today



and

Is there any way to save changes to the environment, eg- floppyconfig?

Would that require a remaster?

Very fast, though...love it!

I'm looking into persistant settings, but in this release there isn't a way. I might add it in a minimodule (floppy/hdd/cdr-multisession?)

great to hear that you like it, if you have more questions or ideas just let me know! :D

roadie
01-24-2003, 05:14 PM
The only output from Gftp is "host not found"
I get the same with wget as well, Galeon, Mozilla connect fine, just can't resume a download

Thanx,
roadie

John
01-24-2003, 07:24 PM
Try this:
ftp://194.109.6.22/pub/mirror/drupal/Morphix

roadie
01-24-2003, 07:47 PM
Nope, I get name or service not known.

Hard to figure cause I connect fine to other ftp sites.

Thanx,
roadie

eadz
01-24-2003, 08:00 PM
Try this:
ftp://194.109.6.22/pub/mirror/drupal/Morphix

works for me... both work for me now.

Alextreme
01-24-2003, 09:14 PM
and just using dl.xs4all.nl as host, logging in with anonymous and making your way to the morphix folder manually? if that doesn't work i'd think you might be using a proxy of some sort, but the fact that other ftpservers do work seems quite strange...

roadie
01-24-2003, 09:46 PM
Got me, I'm not using a proxy, I can connect w/ browsers & gftp connects to most other sites


roadie

Alextreme
01-24-2003, 09:57 PM
and using plain ftp (ftp dl.xs4all.nl)?

roadie
01-24-2003, 10:02 PM
Nope, tried all different names & layouts, just does'nt want to connect.
I'll keep working on my remaster, thanx for the help

roadie

Rixel
01-24-2003, 11:25 PM
Alex, I was able to create a boot floppy with the boot image on the cd. You may want to include rawrite with the next version.

Thanks,
Rixel

Alextreme
01-25-2003, 12:22 AM
Good idea, i'll add them for the next upload. Thanks for trying it out!

In the mean time, i've started work on a HeavyGUI module, based on... Gnome2!

I've uploaded a screenshot, it doesn't have all that much more than light now, and it weighs in at 270MB. It includes, besides most of the lightGUI apps: Galeon + Mozilla, GNUCash, pan, xine, a few games (frozen-bubble returns! :D) and a few others i forgot. the die-hards can take a look at the module in the incoming dir (should finish uploading in about 10 hours), but it has quite a number of bugs (even more than lightGUI? yes, even more :D), so i don't recommend it.

Alextreme
01-27-2003, 01:45 PM
Well, i've uploaded iso's in the incoming dir of my mirror. If anyone has some time left to test them, please help me out! :D

- lightGUI module is updated (added sudo, new version of icewm, Combined ISO)
- HeavyGUI module is working (Combined ISO)
- Gamersmodule is working (Combined ISO, still needs some work on the menus though)

John
01-28-2003, 05:06 AM
I played with the lightGUI version, nice work! I could see you have put some time into it. Cool splash screen. Okay, now some critiquing...

I was missing my command line utilities within five minutes. I went to launch Mplayer and the gui didn't load. I figured it was a settings thing so I opened a term window and typed 'man mplayer' -- no man. So I wanted to find out what packages were installed so I typed 'dpkg -l | less' -- and there was no less....


I understand you are trying to make room for the likes of gnumeric, but the term utilities are a lot more important in my opinion.

Phoenix crashed when I tried a page with flash, that's probably a Phoenix bug and not yours. (Just fyi -- I went to look at the licence for the flash player. It looks like it is alright to redistribute)

More minor stuff, spell check would be nice for Abiword.

>Speed
It didn't really seem slower than knopNL.

Alextreme
01-28-2003, 12:01 PM
Thanks for your extensive post, your testing and your critique!

it is true that gmplayer didn't load with the former versions, could you test it with the latest version? It was just some permission problem in the theme-folder, thought i had fixed that one. Could you mail me the cmdline output? (just start it with gmplayer)

I understand your critique on the commandline utilities, and you are right! The idea was to have everything GUI-only, but for testing reasons including commands like less would be handy. I'll think it over, have to find a balance between commandline and GUI tools, but there stil is 30MB compressed space left (goal was 200MB) for these kind of problems.

I did remember including flash, never tested it though *shame*. Great to see you looked into the license, forgot all about it. I'll try to get a working version up tomorrow, i'll take a look into spellchecking too.

And about the speed, i've never clocked it. It just seemed that with the increased overhead it just had to be slower, but instead i get reports that it's actually faster than KnopNL. Maybe it's because of increased ramdisk usage?
Still have a few tricks to make it go even faster, but first i'm diverting some time to have some sort of preliminary hdd-install-method and better documentation (placed a few HOWTO's and a modified cloop-utils deb)

In other news, i've added HeavyGUI to the 'official' iso-section, it worked quite nicely here. The GameModule did have a few problems, i'll upload that one again. all updated iso's and modules have been changed to version 0.1-1

BTW, Does anyone know what's the status of the nvidia modules? are these free-to-distribute?

Alextreme
01-31-2003, 11:13 AM
Well, yet another morphix update:
added an adapted knx-hdinstall (dialog-based only for now, working on something gtk2 based as i find (g)dialog not suited for anything more complicated than popping up a question, take a look if you feel like risking it) to light (in the menu), fixed a few bugs (yet not the flash bug, and havn't looked at spellcheck, been a bit busy messing up my system with the installer :D), added a few apps and console tools, the regular bladieblabla...

Also started a wiki on morphix.org, if you have bugs or wishes throw them up there, as i tend to forget to check the forum while i'm busy

dvessey
02-01-2003, 02:14 AM
I was thinking about Morphix a bit, and a new idea struck me... why not instead of loading one compressed ISO(knop base) and then another(a module), make a directory for modules, and then at boot up have a choice of which compressed ISO you want to load off of the CD? This would get rid of the chroot work-around.


This next part might not be clear, so let me know if you don't understand...

if you still wanted to have the configuration all do ne, could you add that stuff to boot.img? any idea how big boot.img can get? _OR_ could boot.img just re-direct to another boot image that's bigger?


I have no idea if this would make any sense or not...

Alextreme
02-01-2003, 04:59 PM
Great idea, but alas, the first one has been in Morphix since the start, partially...

You can put more than one main module in the /mainmod dir, at booting it will give you the choice which one to load. It's not anything fancy yet, and i havn't tested it all too much, but with the latest Morphix base 0.1-2 it should work afaik with multiple mainmods.

Now, having more than one base on a CD should be an option in the future, i was working in this direction to have different translated basemodules. The idea however, was to let base handle configuration and booting, and then jumpstart the main module.

Your idea is to combine the base and main module would be workable, but then morphix wouldn't be as modular (and that was the whole point :D). Having one base and multiple main's decreases the changes i have to make to the configuration and detection process, and people working on main modules don't have to worry about configuration and booting. Now, everyone is following KNOPPIX' changes, while this could be done by one person, while others work on the things that really matter: building useable enviroments. You might curse the chrooted-way how i've 'solved' it, but i see it as a more effective way to create multiple enviroments (and the overhead is small, both in memory as in cdrom-space).

I do understand your second idea: saving the detected configuration would be quite handy. Fitting it in boot.img seems a bit messy, a third option would be to have boot.img check for a third kind of module (BootMods? StartupMods?) in about the same fashion as main and mini modules are detected after loading base and main. Within such a module you could save configuration and an adapted bootscript, and it could be located on the cdrom like the other modules.
boot.img is the size of a floppy (1440kb), and it's quite maxed out now as it is. having it boot another image is already done: as it boots the base compressed ISO ;)

Oh, in other news: a friend has built a perl script to ease the creation of combining multiple modules into one ISO, i've linked it on the morphix wiki. It does need testing though... :P

Alextreme
02-04-2003, 06:24 PM
Yes people, i'm bothering you all again, uploaded 0.2 today:

changelog (base, light, heavy, game)
- added new kernel (using 2.88 image, 1.44 bootflop image still in the base/ dir)
- added abiword spellcheck to light (+ gtk2 version), english only
- added AA + fonts to light
- added nvidia drivers to game
- added wireless support (hopefully) to kernel
- and updated each module.

get it while it's hot at the mirror (ftp://dl.xs4all.nl/pub/drupal/Morphix), for more info check www.morphix.org



[edit] Oh, has alsa too. Seems to work nicely, but like always: you test, i break ;)

RockMumbles
02-08-2003, 08:40 AM
a friend gave me a mobo and a 630 MB hd yesterday so I put together some spare parts and was running knoppix from cd using the hd for storage and swap. I had been thinking about running a smaller version. A week or so I had down loaded the heavy GUI Morphix which was the best gnome 2.x setup I've ran, I had a few problems with it, but it sure looked nice.

So today I down loaded the 0.2 "lgui+mini" Morphix iso, and did a hd install on the 630MB drive, it doesn't have much space left but it runs good, I'm going to loan it out as a demo linux box.

The only problem is that it looks so good ... the default icewm theme, the aa fonts, etc, who could ever go back ...

The only thing I miss is an easy way to mount the cd-rom and floppy (for non-linux types) with icewm (that's why I used to run gmc in my office with icewm so my boss could use it easily).

great job, thanks much,

rock

Alextreme
02-08-2003, 06:13 PM
Thanks for your remarks!

Could you place those problems that you had with heavy on the bug-page? I'm mostley playing around with light, so bugs can always slip in, i just need to know what/where they are so i can get them out on the next release ;)

since the earliest versions i've included idesk, so mounting could be done through an icon (or i could add that automount support i had removed, that would be better :)). Oh, and i'm replacing gentoo with gmc in light, as everyone i've asked didn't (want to) use gentoo, can't blame them...

btw, you're using the aqua theme? It's nice, but it's not the default (yet). Ii'm thinking about making light+heavy+game all aqua-themed (default gnome 2.2 is a bit boring), although i don't really like the icewm aqua-taskbar.

Oh, and before anyone tries, i think the new gamemod might not work with nvidia cards, f*cked something up, sorry :P

prpatel
02-11-2003, 09:02 PM
Hello,

I can not get Morphix lgui, installed to the HD, to boot. The CD boots fine. I am able to run the knx-hdinstall to run fine (it shows version 0.37 btw). Some messages flash by very quickly, but I am unable to see them as the curses(?)-based GUI quickly refreshes and wipes out the messages.

I tried
knx-hdinstall 1 > /var/log/installlog
and
knx-hdinstall 2 > /var/log/installlog

but neither show the messages I see when running the installer...

Anyhow, I run through the installer. On rebooting from the HD, I notice these two errors:
VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem)
kmod: failed to exec /sbin/modprobe -s -k block-major-8, errno=2
VFS: Cannot open root device "801" or 08:01
Please append a correct "root=" boot option
Kernel Panice: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 08:01


I've spent a good many hours on this now, and I can't figure out what is wrong. The lilo.conf looks fine, it is pointing to the right drive /dev/sda1.
I've also tried formatting the / fs as xfs and ext2... no luck... each time the fstab has the correct fs type but still does not work.

If anyone can help, that would be great!

Alextreme
02-12-2003, 01:03 AM
Hmm, i did adapt knx-hdinstall 0.37 for morphix, but it wasn't meant to be any more than a quick (temporary) fix (that, and it's not heavily tested, you're the first to try it with scsi afaik :P)
to make matters worse, the installkernel of lGUI-0.2 only has ext2 builtin, so only ext2/3 can work (these all should, hopefully, be fixed when the next light is released, including a more-or-less working gtk installer)

what could have gone wrong? to be honest i don't have the foggiest idea, could you post or email me your lilo.conf and fstab? it might be some small bug that slipped in there somewhere...

Sorry for the problems, hope things will work out :)

prpatel
02-12-2003, 11:11 AM
Hello Alex,

This morning, before reading your message, I tried installing against a IDE drive (isn't VMWare great?)... and it worked great. I can boot from hda1 with no problems.

I agree that this may have something to do with the SCSI, but I don't know enough of lilo/booting Linux to understand what could have gone wrong. Here's a question: from the short list of boot messages I sent you, do you think it found the kernel and started booting? To me, it looks like it did, as the previous messages, during booting, said the system found the ide/cdrom, scsi _controller_ etc...

OH, I don't have the lilo.conf or fstab, as I nuked the install and now have one thats working :D
But I can recreate the errors if you like, and dig out the two files and send them along... but I just checked the two files in my current HD build, and they are identical to the ones under the SCSI build, except, of course s/hda/sda/g:

fstab-----------------------------------
# /etc/fstab: filesystem table.
#
# filesystem mountpoint type options dump pass
/dev/hda1 / ext2 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1
/dev/hda5 none swap sw 0 0
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/fd0 /floppy vfat defaults,user,noauto,showexec,umask=022 0 0
/dev/cdrom /cdrom iso9660 defaults,ro,user,noexec,noauto 0 0
# partitions found by Morphix


lilo.conf---------------------------------
boot=/dev/hda
vga=791
prompt
timeout=50
append = "hda=scsi hdb=scsi hdc=scsi hdd=scsi hde=scsi hdf=scsi hdg=scsi hdh=scsi apm=power-off nomce"

image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.20-xfs
label=morphix
root=/dev/hda1
read-only


## A Windows installation, example for partition 1 on first IDE harddisk
# other=/dev/hda1
# label=dos
# optional
# table=/dev/hda


once again, these config files were EXACTLY the same except that hda=sda. I had cfdisk'd both drives (scsi and ide) the same (*da1= Primary bootable Linux ext2 700M, *da5= Logical Linux swap 300M).

cheers
prp

Alextreme
02-12-2003, 06:56 PM
Hey prp,

i'm busy with the latest release, that (hopefully) will be ready tomorrow with a new installer, having those files would be nice but i could use someone trying it out scsi-style :D

Have you tried installing knoppix with it btw?

Alextreme
02-13-2003, 10:37 AM
Well, uploading Morphix 0.3 as i'm typing this, throwing it directly into the Morphix/ folder. Would be greatful to get some more feedback, especially for the installer (as i've only tested it on my own pc, don't be surprised if it gobbles up the cat :D)

I'll upload the seperate base/mainmodules tomorrow, or when i feel like it. Have fun, for the people new to morphix check www.morphix.org or download directly from ftp://dl.xs4all.nl/pub/mirror/drupal/Morphix



changelog:
13-02-2003 (version 0.3 base, light, heavy, game)
base:
- fresh kernel, minor bugs (wokay, forgot most things that i changed, sorry ;))

all main modules:
- morphix gtk installer (harddisk install for all! :o)
- console installer available for light+game as backup
- added alt-f2, f3 etc rootconsoles
- added generic minimodule support (ALL-tag)
- put back /etc/skel support, added defaults for all modules in mainmod/etc/skel
- added that it doesn't automagically reboot (must add icewm-reboot though)
- fixed minor loadmod/init bugs (+ automount support?)
- added ssh

light:
- new default theme+background
- xchat 2, number of minor updates

heavy:
- new default metacity theme
- added wine, you never know...
- xchat 2

game:
- fixed that it actually could work with nvidia (or any other card, for that matter)
- new default theme+background
- added pingus, gxmame

prpatel
02-13-2003, 10:37 AM
Alex,

I look forward to the new release. I will be happy to try the new Morphix/installerinstaller against SCSI. This time I will move the lilo.conf and fstab to another box to send to you. Let me know if there are any other files installed to the hd that you'd like to see.

And No, I haven't tried knoppix, I don't need 90% of the stuff in it.

thanks again for your efforts! :D

-Pratik

PS: which time zone are you in? I havent spotted you online on MSN messenger, I had some q's about how you are putting morphix together... please IM me on MSN messenger... my MSN id is kitsaws@yahoo.com... BTW I am in London, UK.

Alextreme
02-13-2003, 03:09 PM
Well, i'm mostly online during the evenings, but i'm almost never on MSN. If i remember to i'll boot it up this evening, but you are always free to ask me on IRC, there is a #knoppix channel on freenode.net that i'm idling on (and you can always mail me :D)

Now about 0.3, Light works okay but there are a few issues with Heavy:

- the GTK Morphixinstaller and Knoppix.net/Morphix.org links on the desktop have fanished, to start the installer: sudo /morphix/gtkinstaller/morphixinstaller

- openoffice doesn't start up, rm ~/.sver-something to boot.

I'll upload a fixed version tomorrow, it works okay except for these issues. Game remains untested as of now ;)

archtron
02-13-2003, 05:44 PM
Hi Alex,
Morphix HeavyGUI 0.3 is gnome 2.2 or 2.0???
Detect Radeon video cards?
HeavyGUI include xine?

prpatel
02-13-2003, 06:31 PM
While I was hacking at Morphix-base today, two neurons fired off at the same time, and I had a great idea... I actually tried this, so it does work ;)

***** The only thing new here is the way to 'remaster' the build AND TEST the build before rolling it out (using chroot and apt-get)

***** Note that the _base_ is changed, not a module itself

***** Apologies to Alex for hacking his fine work and his docs :shock:

***** This can NOT be done if you have booted from a Knoppix/Morphix CD.. it has to be done while running Linux from HD
Here it is - CUSTOM MORPHIX/KNOPPIX MAKER

- Unpack MorphixBase-UK-0.2.iso
> mount -o loop MorphixBase-UK-0.2.iso /mnt/virtualcd1
> cp -R /mnt/virtualcd1/* /tmp/boot-img

- Start with the base ISO image (base/Morphix), uncompress + copied to a temp dir, let's say /tmp/CustomMorphix
> extract_compressed_fs /tmp/boot-img/base/morphix > /tmp/CustomMorphix
> mount -t proc proc /tmp/CustomMorphix/proc
> cd /tmp/CustomMorphix/
> chroot ./

- Now that we are in the chroot 'jail' we can run most commands
just as if we were inside a 'live' morphix environment

- to customize the environment, run the normal commands while in the chroot environment
> apt-get update
> apt-get install vim
> apt-get install emacs
> ETC
- test while in the chroot environment
> emacs file.txt
> vi file.txt
> ETC

- to get out of the chroot environment
> exit
> CNTRL-D

- make sure you do this before proceeding
> umount /tmp/CustomMorphix/proc

- now we simply need to repack the base ISO image as a compressed iso9660 fs
> mkisofs -R -U -V "MyMorphix" -P ""MyMorphix" " -hide-rr-moved -cache-inodes -no-bak -pad /tmp/CustomMorphix| nice -5 create_compressed_fs - 65536 > /tmp/boot-img/base/morphix

-now we create the bootable Morphix/Knoppix CD image
> cd /tmp
> mkisofs -pad -l -r -J -v -V "MyMorphix"-b base/boot.img -c base/boot.cat -hide-rr-moved -o mymorphix.iso boot-img

- write mymorphix.iso to CD, run and enjoy.

I understand the benefit in the 'modular' way that Morphix does things, using a MainMod and MiniMod(s), and I believe this is a good thing. I thought I would post my work so far so others can better understand how Morphix/Knoppix work...

-Pratik

Alextreme
02-13-2003, 10:39 PM
prp,

Heh, i didn't have apt-get in base for nothing, it's derived from my knopBase and is 'live' enough to build on (that was the point of knopBase :D). It's whole purpose was to give people the possibility to build their own knoppix-based distro, and, although i'd rather see a new main-module, everyone is free to build on base for their own hideous creations :D

Why keep the modular system then, you may ask? Beacuse i was working on two remastered versions, and realised that i was doing double work updating it. Morphix needs getting used to, but it saves work in the long run. For the ones still baffeled at all this morphix-mumblejumble:

http://am.xs4all.nl/phpwiki/index.php/WtfIsMorphix

So prp, don't be sorry, i'm sorry i didn't point it out clear enough! :P

archtron,

Heavy 0.3 includes Gnome2.2 (0.2 did aswell though).
It should detect Radeon, but i don't have one to test it out on. As a rule of thumb: If knoppix works on it, then morphix will work. If it doesn't work on knoppix, let me know and i might make a mini-module to fix things for you (made msmouse-minimodule for people with usb-problems)
and yes, Heavy also includes xine :)

archtron
02-14-2003, 05:15 PM
Hello Alex,
Using Knoppix I made a file xf86config (http://www.elcacique.com/english/files/XF86Config-4.rve)for my Radeon VE but I don't know how initiating it in each session. If you could do a module for Morphix to initiate with that file instead of vesa. The section "Monitor" is for my monitor, could to be more generic.
Thanx for all :)

Alextreme
02-15-2003, 12:44 AM
Hey archtron,

Well, i've uploaded a minimodule generator script to hopefully help in letting you fix problems yourself ;)

http://am.xs4all.nl/morphix/minimod-gen.pl

note that for this to work properly, you need to have the adapted cloop-utils installed from http://am.xs4all.nl/morphix/debs . Also, you need to run it as root (it uses mkisofs to build a compressed loop module)

It's still pretty immature and mostly untested (you can only define what file gets copied where on loading), but it's a nice starting point. I'll probably include a simple menu-adding tool, linking options instead of only copying, and hopefully slowly working towards generating more complicated modules (like from .deb, now that will be a challenge :D)

Vick
02-15-2003, 10:12 AM
When do you think to make available a MorphixCombined-KDE3.1-HeavyGUI & MorphixCombined-KDE3.1-LGUI :?:
With things like: hdinstall, wine, phoenix, nvidia drivers… with no fancy geek’s :shock: things

The KDE Morphix will be a must for us, do you know that :?:

Its just we are not all geeks :shock: and gnome lovers, but love your existing work and becoming Aficionado :D

Ciao. Awaken The Giant In You 8)

Alextreme
02-15-2003, 02:09 PM
Hey Vick!

KDE? well, i'm setting up something to increase the amount of modules i'll be able to build and maintain (in less time, thanks prp ;)), but the main reason that i havn't made a KDE-based module is that Knoppix and eadz both already have it! Now, this might be a bad excuse, but i thought i might as well work on some new ideas than copy others that already exist. (also a bad excuse though, if those ideas are better :))

As for now, i'm more busy working out the bugs of the existing modules, but there have been a number of people suggesting it, so if enough people bother me i _might_ work on it, wokay? :)

otoh, are icewm and gnome2.2 fancy geek :shock: things? Then again, i'm clearly biased ;)

I'll keep you posted :D

Vick
02-15-2003, 06:46 PM
My comment was not on your work, your work is beautiful and excellent.
icewm and gnome2.2 are nice and stable but to stiff not really configure friendly, KDE is very friendly configure we can change almost everything with in easy, it's intuitive.
Sum will say thing different that's why gnome, kde and icewm exist, it’s made for all the different kind of people in this word that we have to respect, sum love buffalos jeans and others love Levi’s and that’s ok :wink:
Cheers 8)

Alextreme
02-15-2003, 07:42 PM
Hehe, don't worry, it wasn't an attack on your post, just a few counter-arguments on why i'm not focusing on a KDE -based module now ;)

a KDE module might be made within a few weeks, Morphix shouldn't be just Levi's, you are perfectly right, it ought to be the shop that includes a number of different flavours... but we're still in the process of building it up, so just be patient :D

archtron
02-17-2003, 04:18 PM
Hi forum,
I liked Heavy GUI 0.3 with Gnome 2.2. Look and feel good and works fast but i have some problems:
- it does not work with 64 MB of RAM. It does not request to use the hard disk for SWAP.
- In the boot options (cheatcodes) it does not appear Wheelmouse.
- When booting morphix/gnome 2.2 not autodetect the HD partitions.
- it does not work: df -k
- In menu Actions > Open Recient, appears files that do not exist.
- Gmplayer does not work, error in gui.

MichielioZ
02-17-2003, 04:19 PM
Hey Alextreme...
I tried your Morphix HeavyGUI ...
I never tried Gnome before, as I kinda thought from the get go that KDE was/is a better X ... but ... Gnome is quite nice, thnx for letting me try it this way !!
There are however a few minor problems I got :
* It doesn't setup my DHCP automagically ...
I had to edit the resolv.conf myself to get internet working.
* It doesn't automount anything in my setup.
Couldn't get XMMS to play any mp3's from HD, CD or floppy.
* I couldn't browse the network... but this could be just me
Beside these (minor) problems, again : Thnx for introducing me to Gnome.
Hope you got some information you can use from my problems...

Alextreme
02-17-2003, 04:43 PM
Hey archtron and MichielioZ

Oooo, goody, lots of feedback. thanks to both of you! :D
Nice that you liked Gnome! I'm glad i can introduce more people here to the diversity of Free Software :) I guess i should change the gui some more, as it can get a lot better, but you get the general idea.
I'll put these on the wiki, so i shouldn't forget (however, the site seems down atm, i'm a lowsey admin ;))


Hi forum,
I liked Heavy GUI 0.3 with Gnome 2.2. Look and feel good and works fast but i have some problems:
- it does not work with 64 MB of RAM. It does not request to use the hard disk for SWAP.
- In the boot options (cheatcodes) it does not appear Wheelmouse.
- When booting morphix/gnome 2.2 not autodetect the HD partitions.
- it does not work: df -k
- In menu Actions > Open Recient, appears files that do not exist.
- Gmplayer does not work, error in gui.

- yups, have to include that swap, you're right, dead-on. I'm a bad person for removing the check. Sorry!
- 'morphix wheel' should work, i'll change the cheatcodes. If it doesn't work, you're free to yell at me :P
- Yups, will fix (hopefully)
- df -k? hmm, why doesn't it work? i'll test it out tonight :)
- will remove. are those desktop icons there btw? i made a few nice links to knoppix.net and morphix.org, and one to the installer, but don't know if they where included in the release last week...
- dammit, thought i fixed that one, must hurt myself, must hurt... :P



Hey Alextreme...
I tried your Morphix HeavyGUI ...
I never tried Gnome before, as I kinda thought from the get go that KDE was/is a better X ... but ... Gnome is quite nice, thnx for letting me try it this way !!
There are however a few minor problems I got :
* It doesn't setup my DHCP automagically ...
I had to edit the resolv.conf myself to get internet working.
* It doesn't automount anything in my setup.
Couldn't get XMMS to play any mp3's from HD, CD or floppy.
* I couldn't browse the network... but this could be just me
Beside these (minor) problems, again : Thnx for introducing me to Gnome.
Hope you got some information you can use from my problems...


- DHCP after the install is indeed broken. It should work from CD though, could you pass me your /var/log/syslog if it is from CD?
- automount is broken, been messing around with it too much. Will fix :)
- I'll have to try out XMMS, maybe i missed a plugin, maybe it didn't detect your soundcard?
- havn't figured out the SMB-network browser, maybe i'll try a newer Gnome2.2 version, as this still was a pre-release...

Thank you both again for the feedback! If you have any idea's, features, problems, flames, don't hesitate to blame me! (this includes everyone else ;))

Alextreme
02-19-2003, 09:50 PM
Working on the bugs submitted (by email, wiki or forum posts), hope to release new modules within the next few days.

Got a test-iso on the mirror containing KDE3.1. Couldn't handle the pressure from you all (then again, i must admit KDE is very flashy ;)), it's a bare iso with only some of the latest KDE/QT packages in Debian Sid: 275megs in all. For more information, check the wiki on morphix.org (not much up yet)

It does have some problems (would like to have confirmed that X doesn't start up proper, takes some time, but could be my test machine), so don't see it as an 'official' release. The adventurous may take a look, the ordinary home-user wanting a stable ride should just use eadz KnoppixKDE. Wishlists for extra packages are always welcome, as are bugreports and all the other bladiebla.

Have fun! :D

Rixel
02-20-2003, 07:23 PM
Alex,
The server doesn't quite start up correctly. Seems to have a problem with the screen resolutions, as it tried several before getting it right. Can't remember the log file for startup, but if you tell me, I can send you it for analysis. Also, the kmenu didn't have the menu entries coloured. They were blank until you ran your mouse over it. I booted in vmware, so that may be one of the problems. Will be burning the disk later tonight and trying it on the test machine. I will post results later.

Thanks for your hard work (and Knopper's as well, of course)




It does have some problems (would like to have confirmed that X doesn't start up proper

Alextreme
02-20-2003, 09:01 PM
Hey Rixel,

Thanks for trying it out! I had the same problems under vmware as you, to my surprise the menu did seem normal when booting from CD. You don't have to get yourself in knots to send the logfile, I had the same problem, just needed to know that it wasn't my hw ;) (it seems to jump to vesa for some strange reason)

Interested in if you miss anything, i'm not a KDE-user so i may have missed some nice apps out everyone would crave for. I might up a new version tomorrow, with an updated version of everything (...that seems to moderatly work :D)

MichielioZ
02-22-2003, 04:20 PM
Hello Alextreme,
Is there a way I can use the new GTK-installer from Morphix on Knoppix ?
I don't know how to adapt this as it would probably look for the "mainmodule" folder on the CD ?!?!
As I am only moderately into the whole remastering process of Knoppix, I don't (yet) understand the idea of remastering modules and stuff you use.
The installer however has a build in feature of changing the default user...
(I planned to add this to my scripts... like to know how you did it)
I saw on the Morphix page that you plan to make it really easy for people to remaster Morphix in the future... I'm trying to do that for Knoppix right now (maybe not as elegant as you though ;)) ... I really like the idea !
As your progress seems to be faster then the progress of Knoppix at this time, I suspect I'll get into Morphix in no time at all.
Thnx Alextreme, for letting people get the most out of Knoppix by creating Morphix...

Alextreme
02-22-2003, 11:22 PM
Hey MichielioZ!

Umm, i guess so, but you would have to do some adjusting to the source of the installer (as it's in C). on www.sf.net/projects/morphix you can download the source through cvs, but i must note that i havn't updated lately, it's in a state of flux. Note also that the whole module-stuff is invisible for both the user and the installer, so it might work, to some extent...

I'm working on that getting-it-easy stuff, and i must say that i have some scripts to facilitate. a minimodule-generator, that has a CLI-step-for-step based way to generate the directory structure of a minimod. Also, i have a small module-building script, that lets you create a compressed image from an unpacked dir in a simple manner (works as well with knoppix-cloop images, with the -h option). They are online, built to get simple tasks done faster. I hope to be able to make some more scripts soon, any ideas are welcome as always.

Must thank you all for using morphix, as without all those posts and e-mails i'd might be working on a different project now! Every time i think: "what am i doing?" or "why should i do this?" i get an email from someone thanking me for what i am doing. Well, that answers those questions :D

Good luck with trying to intergrate the installer, if you need help just let me know, i'll commit the latest source shortly

Alextreme
02-23-2003, 11:03 PM
Just a quicky: got a mailinglist up for those interested: http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/morphix-user

should help in making communication faster, as not everyone hits the forums every hour. Note that it's also for development purposes, i just had to give 'em a name.

SaS
02-24-2003, 09:54 PM
hey and when the next realise comes? with all bugfixes that i see on this page!
Automount!!!!! We need auto maunt!!!

Alextreme
02-24-2003, 10:49 PM
Working on it, working on it, easy does it :D

found quite a few bugs in the installer, and added some lilo-options. Have to test, but trust me: it'll be worth it ;)

SaS
02-25-2003, 01:27 PM
Hey maybe you can add WINE and WMware to morphix kombi?? please

SaS
02-25-2003, 09:01 PM
And please add PPP dialup maanger

Alextreme
02-25-2003, 10:40 PM
wine is in the heavy and kde modules afaik, i havn't checked PPP yet. you can also throw such ideas up on the wishlist, as i don't re-read a thread when i'm fixing things :)

Oh well, might throw the latter on for the next release, slowly moving forward :D

Yes, all modules have been adapted and uploaded, morphix 0.3-2 is available for everyones pleasure! More fixes, more bugs, more apps, more cruft!

Note: i added the q3demo, but it doesn't start right (grmlz proprietary software), i'll upload a new game-module tomorrow :P

The changelog:

base:
- added swap,
- fstab generating,
- some cleanups. tried autofs, but couldn't get it to work, together with ipv6 todo in 0.3-3

main modules:
- heaps of gtkinstall+postinstall bugs fixed, you can now actually make a new user ;)
- added a few extra options (lilo-choices).
- Organised the install so you boot with kdm/gdm after a heavy/kde install

light:
- not much new stuff here, just 0.3-1 with the new installer

heavy:
- +gdm, +vlc

kde:
- +kdm, +quanta, +gaim, +gimp

game:
- +q3demo, -q2-files

bare:
- +pump, +installer, +lilo,
- more of a bare module with all deb's installed for hdinstall (hopefully)

optimus
02-26-2003, 03:23 AM
Has GAIM gone missing with this latest release? I can't seem to find it....

That being said, great work so far. I love it!

SaS
02-26-2003, 10:28 AM
yes! we need GAIM !

and what i must do to have WINE in Morphix |MorphixCombined-LightGUI-0.3-2.iso| ??
i must download heavy mod?

Alextreme
02-26-2003, 12:35 PM
Is Gaim missing? hmm, this is bad, i'll throw it up for the next release next week, might have accidentially removed it, sorry!

currently Wine is only in the KDE and Heavy modules, but it isn't something for light. In the future including new apps to a module will be easier (using the minimodule generator), but for now you'll have to choose...

Any more bugs / problems / feedback / flames?! :D

(oh, re-uploaded the game module 2day, the q3demo should work now!)

Stardog
02-26-2003, 03:41 PM
Great job on the new release. I am really enjoying playing with all the cool toys in the heavy GUI.
I am considering doing HD install with it but I am seeing a screen full of errors when I log out of the Live CD version.
Most of them are GTK and Nautilus errors I think but is this normal for the CD version?
I really want to do the HD install but I dont want to transfer whatever problem there is over to the HD install.
I am hoping this is normal for theh Live CD and that you meant for it to be installed on the harddrive which would get rid of those errors ? :lol:

Wishful thinking ? :cry:

Great job though ! Please advise me on this if you would

Stardog

Alextreme
02-26-2003, 11:55 PM
Thank you Stardog!

Are those errors that you see related to the mointpoints morphix uses? if not, then i would appreciate to know what errors they are.
As morphix isn't without bugs i decided not to redirect error's to /dev/null, prefering that they are known (and maybe get fixed) instead of not knowing that they are there. They might go away (maybe something is read-only for gtk?) after an install, but i can't be sure without knowing what the errors are :P

Stardog
02-27-2003, 12:48 AM
Hey Alex thanks for the reply.
I will try to give you a better description of the errors here shortly.
Just walked in the door and waiting for the nightly pot of java to brew :)

Just to make sure I was clear in my message, I am seeing these errors using the live CD and I have NOT done a HD install yet but would like to.

Now saying that I will reboot into the Morphix CD and get you a better idea on the errors.
I will check back here in a short bit

Thanks again for your help and for working so hard on Morphix.

Stardog

optimus
02-27-2003, 01:16 AM
Alextreme, you mentioned that you reupped the gamemod iso with the working quake 3 (as evidenced by the later time found in the mirror), but when I click on Quake III Arena Demo from the start menu it will not start. Am I the only one with this problem?

Stardog
02-27-2003, 04:16 AM
Ok here is some of what i am seeing in the way of errors when i log out of the Live CD version of Morphix.

(Nautilus :475) Eel-warning "nautilus-metafile.c" hash table still has 6 elements at quittime

Bonobo-warning "leaked a total of 16 refs to 16 bonobo objects"

waiting for Xserver to shut down the application "gnome panel" Lost its connection to display :0.0; application



Ok the nautilus error lists about 10 times then the other two repeat a few times.

The system shuts down fine but i am concerned before i do a HD install that i find out why i am seeing this?

Thank you for your help Alex :)

Stardog

SaS
02-27-2003, 08:02 AM
The Morphix crashes On P4 256 DDR GeForce ti4200 128ddr!
It crashes on Xfree96 graphical server detection!

SaS
02-27-2003, 11:55 AM
Please add some IRC clients thx!

Alextreme
02-27-2003, 01:22 PM
Alextreme, you mentioned that you reupped the gamemod iso with the working quake 3 (as evidenced by the later time found in the mirror), but when I click on Quake III Arena Demo from the start menu it will not start. Am I the only one with this problem?

Arg, i'm beginning to really hate ID now (and myself even more for not testing it out enough) :?

the problem is that q3demo can't find the libGL.so library in /usr/X11R6/lib, you can fix this by trying the following:

sudo ln -s /usr/X11R6/lib/libGL.so.1 /etc/libGL.so
sudo nano /etc/ld.so.conf
[add /etc to the file]
sudo ldconfig

This should fix the libGL problem, but i have yet to start it myself, got some sound problems here.

Stardog, the errors seem relativly harmless, i'll check them out myself but it won't wreak havoc on your pc after an install. Then again, after the above i'll never be sure before i try it myself ;)

SaS: i have the same problem with a GF4ti, try it out by entering at boot: morphix vga=normal
and imho light heavy have both irc clients, i did try to install ksirc for KDE, but it didn't install correctly. The next version will have kvirc or xchat2, but KDE3.1 in sid is a bit messy at the moment (the same reason why kmail and knode arn't in it), so it doesn't have everthing that i would want to :?

oh well, thanks for all the feedback, morphix isn't there yet but slowly it'll get better :D

Stardog
02-27-2003, 02:46 PM
Hey Alex thanks for the reply.

Well I went ahead and did an hd install on a test drive i have lastnight.
Installer? VERY IMPRESSIVE!!! great job on that man.

Everything went off without a hitch, I was very happy with it.

The only problem I have seen at all now, is during the hd install i chose to make a new user like it asks. After the system reboots and i tried to log in as that user it wouldnt let because it didnt make a home directory and some other files for that user evidentally. Well then root cant log in at the GDM either so i dropped out to a shell and logged in as root and created the home folder for the user account i made at install.
It still wouldnt let me log in as that user when back out at the GDM log in.
I went back out to the shell as root and tried to do a adduser but evidentally I am used to a different shell then Bash because it didnt recognized my commands :(
Keep in mind I am not a linux command genius :)

Anway I can get around all those problems i think but i would love to know what caused it to not make the user account correctly at install.
Maybe you can shed some like on this for me.

All in all you have done a GREAT job with the installer Alex and I thank you for your work here.
I would love to see you take what you have done with the installer and make a totally from the mirror install of Sid.
What an advance for Debian that would be to have a simple install like this that gave you a complete ready to apt-get distro upgrade install of Debian.

Keep up the GREAT work and let me know if i can ever be of assistance with my newbie knowledge :)

Stardog

Alextreme
02-27-2003, 05:06 PM
Whoops, yet another install-bug, didn't see that one yet, thanks for reporting it! I'll throw it up for 0.3-3, stuff like that keeps me busy ;)

those bash problems might have been because root didn't have /sbin and /usr/sbin in it's path, then again you wouldn't have needed it if it also added a homedir for your user :D I'll take a look why it didnt make one, thought useradd did it automagically...

Btw, your posts are really great for my ego, nice that you found the installer that good ;)

There are a number of things that i could use a hand with:
- testing out new modules, then again you already did that :P
- working out new idea's for morphix, there is quite a lot of stuff up on the morphix-wiki...
- like trying to build your own main module! once one is built it only needs an update every now and then, just remember that the loadmod/init/installer files still contain some bugs, and this isn't something i recommend to someone that just made the jump to free software ;)
- figure out some fun stuff with mini modules maybe? like main modules, they need getting used to, but i havn't even touched the possibilities...
- i've got webspace up on sf.net, but i'm still hosting the pages on my blog-page. as my bandwidth is sortof limited, i thought about putting one up on morphix.sf.net, but my xhtml skills arn't that great. Any webdesigners in the house that wouldn't mind making something nice? (hours are irregular, wages non-existant and the pensionplan is even worse ;))
- but for a nice webpage we need nice pic's, right? well, i've gotten a company crazy enough to design some small things (logo, backgrounds, boot/splashscreens), and i'm expecting to see the first few results next week, what also would be fun are some more screenshots (could especially use some from the KDE-module)...

So enough stuff to play around with if you want to help out with morphix! For co-ordination, everyone is free to use the mailinglist :) Just remember that getting out all the bugs is imho the most important job right now, so finding and reporting them is good work (tm) :D

RockMumbles
02-27-2003, 05:12 PM
Stardog -

Does it say no job control when you enter the shell (console)?

If so you will probably have to use the full path for any console commands, such as:

/usr/sbin/adduser

HTH

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Alextreme -

I'm still playing with hd installs and I'm having console problems with the 0.3.x Morphix versions because of the shell problem, (no job control). I haven't tried your latest versions, I'll burn those today and see what happens. As far as the no job control shell, I've tried to set the PATH by changing it and exporting it but the changes are only valid for the changed session.

BTW, my second modified morphix light 0.2 hd system ROCKS, I'm running a P200MMX with 64MB of RAM, a 600mb hd as / and a 540 as /home (with /usr/share and /var/cache/apt moved to /home). It runs fast enough to be very usable for web, word processing etc. I've added KDE3.1, xfce, mozilla 1.2.1, gqview, gedit, gdm for x login, a bunch of console apps, .... and put the kernel from 0.3 in so ext3 fs is working on the / fs. The cool thing about KDE3.1 is that there is almost no noticable difference in speed as compared to xfce or icewm (except for the KDE startup) Now my second Morphix based linux loaner box is ready for action.

Thanks a bunch, what a sweet system!! :D

rock

SaS
02-27-2003, 06:10 PM
What is the root password?

Stardog
02-27-2003, 07:15 PM
Rock, I see no error when I enter the console but I will look tonight and make sure.
Thanks for your help there. I was trying to do an adduser but it just said it didnt recognize it as a bash command so that makes sense if the proper dirs are not in the path. Hmmm never made the connection :)


Alex thanks for the reply.
As far as the help with Morphix, thanks for the input there too i will see what i can do to help :)
It just so happens I am a beginning level web designer ( career change at work). I am just now working on my CIW Foundation cert and unfortunately do all my designing in windows at the moment because we use Dreamweaver and Fireworks extensively where i work. That being said I would be glad to help with a website for morphix as long as no one frowns on it being developed in windows :( there is a place for everything in the universe right ? :) even windows i guess.......

Let me know on that.


On another note for ideas for future projects. Tell me if this is even possible to do. Like i mentioned in my earlier post one of the drawbacks of Debian is the installers from the 1840s. Now i have installed Debian enough i can do it in my sleep but what really honks my hanky is the fact that you only have a choice of ext2 with the default installer.
What would be awesome would be have an iso for lets say the current Woody, Sarge and Sid that uses knoppix hardware detection and your installer to where you could install any of the 3 flavors of pure Debian with a nice pretty installer that will give you the choice of ext2, ext3, Reiser and Xfs.
That would be a very very appealing thing for Debian peoples everywhere especially if it installed a PURE copy of Debian that was ready to do a quick apt-get upgrade to bring it totally current.
Man that would be better then sliced bread!

Anway just a thought and like i said i am the newbiest of newbies here so if this is a silly dream and not possible i understand I would just be curious if it is possible.

Thanks loads and get back to me on the web page stuff, I would be glad to help however i can.

stardog765@insightbb.com

Stardog

Tekmaven
02-27-2003, 08:08 PM
Does morphix have the Java2 SDK? or does it use GTK's version?

If not, maybe you can make a module with the SDK and a few Java IDE's.

archtron
02-27-2003, 09:06 PM
Hi Alex, great job with Morphix 0.3-3.

Will include in the next Morphix, Xfree 4.3?
Version 4.3 is available. The new Xfree offers support for more video cards. For example I have a PC with a video card Intel 845G and it does not work with Knoppix/Morphix, but version 4.3 already offers support for that card.

More supported video cards means more happy Newbies :wink:

Alextreme
02-28-2003, 10:21 AM
I'm still playing with hd installs and I'm having console problems with the 0.3.x Morphix versions because of the shell problem, (no job control). I haven't tried your latest versions, I'll burn those today and see what happens. As far as the no job control shell, I've tried to set the PATH by changing it and exporting it but the changes are only valid for the changed session.

Wokay, i'm working on archiving all those bugs on the wiki, *added* :) (if you have anything to add be my guest, got all the install bugs on the MorphInstall page)



BTW, my second modified morphix light 0.2 hd system ROCKS, I'm running a P200MMX with 64MB of RAM, a 600mb hd as / and a 540 as /home (with /usr/share and /var/cache/apt moved to /home). It runs fast enough to be very usable for web, word processing etc. I've added KDE3.1, xfce, mozilla 1.2.1, gqview, gedit, gdm for x login, a bunch of console apps, .... and put the kernel from 0.3 in so ext3 fs is working on the / fs. The cool thing about KDE3.1 is that there is almost no noticable difference in speed as compared to xfce or icewm (except for the KDE startup) Now my second Morphix based linux loaner box is ready for action.

Nice 8)
Was wondering if i should change the default windowmanager for light to XFCE4, what's your opinion on it? Great that you like it this much, i'm also slowly using morphix myself even more every day, and that for a wmaker-freak (it's weird how we lock ourselfs up in our ivory towers ;)) Also, i might be adding tasks to tasksel to easily add the packages of another module, i believe it never has been used like it ought to have been, then again i'm also working on an easy-to-use gtk2 packagemanager and that too is somewhat stalled.
Oh well, the ease of getting a GUI installed of morphix and the ease of customizing of Debian, what more could you want? (less bugs, i know, working on that ;))

Sas: there is no standard rootpassword, use sudo sh to get a root terminal

Stardog: whatever gets the job done, imho :) then again, i personally prefer to use Free Software for everything i do, but until there isn't a nice Dreamweaver-alternative i won't frown on you, thats for sure! :D

About that 3-flavour installer, i don't know... as far as i have heard the next installer will have the option of ext2/ext3/reiserfs/xfs, but as the official Debian distribution only is woody i don't think everyone will be as pleased that you could directly get Sid. Save for the fact that sid will be outdated the second you burn it on an iso, and that you have everything triple on the iso, it might look like sid actually is an 'official' distribution that always would work. It often does, but it doesn't always. What would be possible is a small net-install module, with just the installer and X. It would boot & detect hardware, bring up the installer and download the packages from the net. That way, you wouldn't have to update the packages on the iso itself, it should just have a huge THIS MIGHT BREAK YOUR SYSTEM when you select sid (then again, morphix is sid, so i should put it on the standard bootscreen too ;)).
Then again, this has already been done and works quite well, it just doesn't have a nice & flashy installer (see the netinst CD iso on debian.org) :D It's a possibility, and if more people like the idea we could try it out :)

Tekmaven:
Nope, i havn't included Java 2 yet, but throwing it in a minimodule might be a good idea. It already was on the wishlist, so i might even get to it, but it's not a personal priority (you are free to try it out yourself however, just let me know if you need help)

archtron:
thanks, i've put up Xfree 4.3 on the wishlist, i'll do my best (but i don't know what XF86Config-4 is generated for your card, could you email it to me? might have to fiddle with the Xdetection...)

anyway, more happy newbies means a more happy me ;)

Cheers,
Alex

Tekmaven
02-28-2003, 01:04 PM
Alextreme: I'll try to make the module later on today, but I have to warn you, I'm an extreme newbie when it comes to doing complicated stuff (this is complicated!).

I tried remastering my knoppix cd with Java2, but that failed horribly (thanks to everyone on IRC for the help!).

I will post my results later!

Alextreme
03-11-2003, 11:21 PM
Hey everyone! (copy from announcement on the mailinglist)

Note: the ftpmirror might be down atm, blame the isp :D

Well, been quite busy on the new release, working out bugs, playing with
minimodules and throwing in new goodies.
Light, Heavy and KDE are online, couldn't get ut2003(!) working with the
Game/nvidia module, hope to upload that one later this week. For those
interested, the changelog is shown below, most changes are not that fancy,
except maybe xfree4.3! Yes, you now have a transparent, mouseshadowed
mousecursor you either will hate or love...

What's next? Well, there still are a few (minor) install bugs, but i'm focussing
on the translucency lkm (This lets you "write" to a read-only filesystem, for
the ones willing to try it out: a minimod is on the mirror, just follow the
updated ISO Howto). This lkm should bring more flexibility to the mainmodules
(by adding new apps, changing the language, adding specialised drivers, you name
it), it's still quite untested but seems to work well enough. New graphics are
on their way, started work on a partitioner a la diskdrake, new mainmodules are
springing up and more people are checking it out and playing around with it!
Enough to keep morphix moving on :D

Cheers, and as always, keep that feedback rollin'!

Alex

---

11-03-2003 (version 0.3-3 base,main modules except for game, mini modules)
gamemodule not yet uploaded, as nvidia minimodule isn't working
yet. hope to upload later this week (when/if it actually works)

base:
- added new bootoptions screen (+wheelmouse and vga=normal)
- changed usb-loading (should be same as knoppix now)

main modules:
- updated all packages, placed most packages on hold to keep them
from breaking after an update.
- fixed autofs/automount (just not after an install)
- updated to XFree86 4.3.0
- fixed heaps of installer bugs (homedir, PATH, permissions)
- added gtkxrandr resolution changer, probably needs more
resolutions in XF86Config-4
- translucency! minimodule available! (up for testing)
- nvidia added, testing only! (is activated when using vesa,
prompts user)
- added netcardconfig (/usr/sbin/netcardconfig), no menu item as
of now
- added man-db, less

light, game:
- new icewm+theme
- added number of mplayercodecs to light and mplayer plugin, gaim

game:
- added nvidia module to game, still testing (works with
translucency)
- added ut2003 demo, fixed q3demo
- added xfrisk, enigma to game, fullscreen heroes in menu

kde:
- added mc, gaim, synaptic
- added kweather (already in 0.3-2?)
- couldn't add KMail/KNode, waiting for them to arrive in sid

heavy:
- added mc
- fixed gdm
- added gkrellm, grip, gaim
- no mplayercodecs added yet
---

tsaelee
03-12-2003, 07:53 AM
I greatly admire your ability to produce such fine mods to knoppix. Keep it rolling and things will pay off for you.

Do you consider producing Server modules? Apps such as Apache, MySQL, Postfix, smb, etc..?

Thanks again.. keep up the good work.

we'll try customizing my own Server CD.. we'll post if succesful

Alextreme
03-12-2003, 01:15 PM
Thanks, couldn't do it without you all! :D

The servermodule is made, it just needs a nice commandline/dialog/ncurses interface (and a whole lot of testing). Also has webmin, so it should turn out pretty nice! for more info, check out http://am.xs4all.nl/phpwiki/index.php/MainServer Hoping to get it out within a week, but this depends on real life ;) However, don't let this stop you from that server cd! with a number of different cd's and modules we might be able to get something together through using ideas from all of them, maybe we could even put up a sort of co-maintainership. (as getting 4+ modules up and debugging them is quite timeconsuming ;)).

Oh well, we'll see how it goes, interested in how your servercd will work out! if you encounter problems just let me know (or drop by in #knoppix on freenode).

MichielioZ
03-12-2003, 04:10 PM
Hey Alextreme,

Thanx for the 3.3 version of Morphix-KDE... it totally rocks (certainly compared to my Mandrake 9.1rc2 installation ;))
I haven't installed it to HDD yet, so no comments on that part for now...
I have (ofcourse) one little problem :
I'm on quite a large network (University) and wanted to use smb:// to look up people...
Normally this takes ages to get right under linux (for me at least), but this time the browsing went really fast !!
Only one problem : when I try to open an mp3 or video from another network-user, konquerer just states "not available" and then crashes...
If this problem can be easily resolved, I guess you can expect some feedback on HDD installation lateron then... ;)

aay
03-12-2003, 06:06 PM
Alex,

What you are doing with Morphix really is amazing. I'm really impressed to see all these new features you are working on.

I have a few questions/comments.

Will the Nvidia drivers just be in the gaming version or in all versions of Morphix.

You've got me curious about translucency lkm. Could you explain a bit more of what this does and the basics of how it works?

Finally, the inclusion of diskdrake for a partitioning tool sounds very nice. Is this intended to be used as an install tool (perhaps alongside your gtk installer) or a stand alone partition tool (or both)? Another tool that might be of help here is QTParted (http://qtparted.sourceforge.net/). It's not ready for prime time yet, but is probably worth keeping an eye on.

Thanks.

Alextreme
03-12-2003, 10:21 PM
hey MichielioZ, kewl you like it, interested in if you find any problems after an install (notably the user-changing after an install). I'll try out that windows sharing stuff on kde, been playing kolf too much :P


Alex,

What you are doing with Morphix really is amazing. I'm really impressed to see all these new features you are working on.


Keeps me busy ;)




I have a few questions/comments.

Will the Nvidia drivers just be in the gaming version or in all versions of Morphix.

It will be in a minimodule. It's time to build out that modular idea, i just plan to include it in the gamingmod iso by default.




You've got me curious about translucency lkm. Could you explain a bit more of what this does and the basics of how it works?


Was busy on a page (i expected that question ;))

http://am.xs4all.nl/phpwiki/index.php/TransMod

I plan to work some more on this and other doc's, it's pretty fun stuff!
a snippet:
the translucency kernel module makes a read-only filesystem 'writeable', by using RAM as an overlay for any changes that might occur. When you make a change to the filesystem, the translucency module 'catches' your calls and redirects them to the ramdisk. To the normal application and user, it's just as if the read-only surface is an ordinary harddisk!

Not that much atm, but it's a start :)




Finally, the inclusion of diskdrake for a partitioning tool sounds very nice. Is this intended to be used as an install tool (perhaps alongside your gtk installer) or a stand alone partition tool (or both)? Another tool that might be of help here is QTParted (http://qtparted.sourceforge.net/). It's not ready for prime time yet, but is probably worth keeping an eye on.

Thanks.

Both, it should be just as usable without the installer (would be a waste to make one for only installing ;))
Taking a look at qtparted (was looking into PartGUI and diskdrake too), got a screenshot of the PartitionMorpher-layout up at http://am.xs4all.nl/gfx/Screenshot-PM.png but morphix itself is eating up a lot of my time atm so it's starting to stagnate.

Why you make ask? i've been plugging too much, and other linux-people are starting to take notice: http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=3011&page=2
Even got a request from the Czech Republic, a reviewer asking for a morphix-cd. Maybe i'm making it a tad too good?! :D

Alextreme
03-12-2003, 10:56 PM
Well, turns out the same problem occurs here, the samba-plugin for konq is clearly broken. downloading to home and opening in koboodle or with the mp3-plugin works. Annoying bug, i'll throw it up with the rest, i'll check if it is fixed next time kde is updated :)

MichielioZ
03-13-2003, 03:13 PM
Ok, Alextreme...
You asked for feedback and you're gonna get it ;)
I've got several problems with the HDD install of the 3.3 KDE version.
First the good news :
1) I got my own userprofile and it's working like a charm.
2) My "desktop-look" before installing gets copied to the HDD...nice !
3) Other then with Knoppix 3.1, my soundcard works "out-of-the-box" :)

Unfortunately, I'm going to have to switch to "bad" news ;)
1) Easily fixed, but annoying to have 3 (!) different backgrounds when logging into KDE...
2) FSTAB still isn't copied right, had to manually adjust the file to get windows partitions.
(also a hell of a job to configure your CD-writer this way...)
3) There were no programs on the CD to make my webcam work, but this is no problem I
thought, 'cause with a HDD install I could just install xawtv or something similair...?!?!
Problem : with the CD the OV511 module gets loaded as my webcam light is on, but after
HDD install it doesn't probe USB anymore ?? (or at least different..)
I tried modprobing USB and OV511, but it doesn't seem to modprobe ?
4) Still can't get my monitor/vidcard combination working right.
Don't know if Mandrake modified they're installation, but with 9.1 I could get my monitor
displaying the "full screen".
I'm quite the n00b when it comes to this, so it could be just me... :oops:
(like : how can I get xvidtune settings to work after a restart... )

Wow, this is becoming quite the post this way..
By the way : are you sure the samba "problem" is a KDE problem ?
(As I don't have the problem with eadz remaster or with Mandrake)
Hopefully you can use this info for a later release or give me an instant fix-it-up

Alextreme
03-13-2003, 08:19 PM
Ok, Alextreme...
(snip all uninteresting good feedback ;))

Unfortunately, I'm going to have to switch to "bad" news ;)
1) Easily fixed, but annoying to have 3 (!) different backgrounds when logging into KDE...

3? i thought 2? Hmm, and one for kdm ofcourse... might be time for a morphix background, hope that logo will be worth the wait. Anyway, after there is a real background i'll just change them all ;)



2) FSTAB still isn't copied right, had to manually adjust the file to get windows partitions.
(also a hell of a job to configure your CD-writer this way...)

Weird, i'll check it out


3) There were no programs on the CD to make my webcam work, but this is no problem I
thought, 'cause with a HDD install I could just install xawtv or something similair...?!?!
Problem : with the CD the OV511 module gets loaded as my webcam light is on, but after
HDD install it doesn't probe USB anymore ?? (or at least different..)
I tried modprobing USB and OV511, but it doesn't seem to modprobe ?

I might have left out hotplug and a few usb packages. placed on the buglist :)


4) Still can't get my monitor/vidcard combination working right.
Don't know if Mandrake modified they're installation, but with 9.1 I could get my monitor
displaying the "full screen".
I'm quite the n00b when it comes to this, so it could be just me... :oops:
(like : how can I get xvidtune settings to work after a restart... )

I don't know how mandrake sets it (and i forgot to ask you which card you have). Is this working right after booting from cd?


Wow, this is becoming quite the post this way..
By the way : are you sure the samba "problem" is a KDE problem ?
(As I don't have the problem with eadz remaster or with Mandrake)
Hopefully you can use this info for a later release or give me an instant fix-it-up
Well, eadz' KDE3.1 packages probably come from the official kde3.1 site, i got lazy and waited for them to arrive in sid, so they probably are different. Mandrake's kde3.1 is probably different too. :)

MichielioZ
03-17-2003, 02:57 PM
Hello Alextreme,

Hope you still read this thread... :?:
I found out that mounting network shares wasn't the problem at all...
The new feature of autoplaying the mp3's and/or vids is crashing !
(This happens when you "hover" over such a file)
It really is a nice "plugin" if it works... it works through Komba2 as far as I now, but I don't know why it won't work during "normal" konquerer browsing.

If you can fix this and the "minor" problems I posted before, I think you'd even "outdo" the new Knoppix 3.2(alpha that is...), as it has a few probs of its own...
Thanx for listening to the people .. 8)

Alextreme
03-17-2003, 04:21 PM
Hello Alextreme,

Hope you still read this thread... :?:
I found out that mounting network shares wasn't the problem at all...
The new feature of autoplaying the mp3's and/or vids is crashing !
(This happens when you "hover" over such a file)
It really is a nice "plugin" if it works... it works through Komba2 as far as I now, but I don't know why it won't work during "normal" konquerer browsing.

If you can fix this and the "minor" problems I posted before, I think you'd even "outdo" the new Knoppix 3.2(alpha that is...), as it has a few probs of its own...
Thanx for listening to the people .. 8)

Sure, even though i don't post every day i'm still browsing knoppix.net and lurking around (more active on the irc channel, instant-support and feedback ;)) Currently slowly building up that partitioner, and of course i still havn't gotten nvidia to work...

Hmm, afaik komba and konqueror are different applications, but i'll try it out for myself to see if it is fixed in the next release. Have yet to try out the knoppix prerelease, but i must say that morphix can't outdo that nice knoppix wallpaper (at least, not yet ;))

Thank you for investigating the problem, and for the great feedback! Morphix: by the people, for the people :P

(did see a small review on pclinuxonline! http://www.pclinuxonline.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=4655&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

I think morphix is beginning to be discovered, dammit ;))

MichielioZ
03-17-2003, 04:43 PM
Just wanted to make clear something...
Although Komba deffinitely IS a different program then Konquerer, it defaults to opening mounts in Konquerer... anything played, copied or deleted :roll: after mounting, is done by Konquerer...
Somehow Komba mounts a different way then Konquerer "normally" does and makes everything work... problem with this for me is :
The university network I'm on has an internal webpage to browse the local shares of the enire network... I can open shares through this, but if I want to copy an mp3 I have to select it... after doing this, Konquerer wants to "autoplay" the file and crashes...

Alextreme
03-17-2003, 05:01 PM
wokay, updated the buglist, thanks for trying to get it through!

A. Jorge Garcia
03-17-2003, 05:33 PM
Is the game module on the ftp site anymore? I can't find it....

Thanx,

Alextreme
03-17-2003, 07:46 PM
Check the changelog, still working on that nvidia problem (should work a bit harder on it though). Don't dispair, you'll get your LAN party ;)

Alextreme
03-18-2003, 03:59 PM
And voila: (copied from the mailinglist)Hey everyone,

just uploaded the (experimental) Game iso. A huge download, but with q3a and ut2003. Changelog follows

---

18-03-2003 (version 0.3-3 game and znvidia minimodule TESTING ONLY!)
game:
- see changes from 11-03-2003
3D accelerated games only work with nvidiabased videocards (as far as i have
tested). DRI-users actually wanting to play should wait, need
someone to confirm or deny that DRI works or not. (software mesa
is available)
znvidia:
currently only working for the gamemodule (nearly usable for other
modules). Swaps the GLX libs from mesa with the ones supplied with
the nvidia driver. Uses translucency, and needs it to be loaded
first. Installs the nvidia lkm, fixes symlinks and creates
devicenodes under /dev. Seems that OpenGL games/applications only
work as root, if anyone finds out why please let me know.
Also note that this iso is getting quite bloated, i might make
seperate q3a and ut2003 modules as not everyone has an nvidia
card.
Usage:
prompts user before swapping.
This module might fry the cat. Only try it out if you know what
you are doing.


---

Wokay, it's a bit verbose this time, have fun to those still willing to test it ;)

Cheers,
Alex

A. Jorge Garcia
03-19-2003, 01:50 AM
OK, I am formally nominating Alex as a God of Linux!

First came Linus, then Klaus and now Alex!!

Alex, you are a God!!! :wink:

KNOPPIX is a major inovation, but so is MORPHIX. I'm not referring to the game CD, although that's what inspired this note, but the inovative technology you devised with your mini-module idea.

MORPHIX, a morphing of KNOPPIX I suppose, is simply a stroke of pure genius. In retrospect, as with many such strokes, it is a simple and ellegant solution based on what came before - almost obvious in retrospect....

Wasn't it Newton himself who said that, were it not for the fact that he stood upon the shoulders of giants, he would not have succeeded as well as he had? Well, Alex, you are following in that self same tradition. You are standing on the shoulders of Linus and Klaus and you have seen further still!

Reminds me of a poem by Emerson. I don't recall now how it goes, but its something about seeing as far as the human can see.... Anyone recall? BTW, it's on the inaugural plaque on the USS Voyager, if anyone watches Star Trek....

Anyway, back to the game CD, I just tried out bzflag and freecraft - this CD is great! I still have to play around with doom/quake/ut though. The only problem I found was on boot up. I'm used to seeing boot errors in grey on the ansi text boot screen. In other words, when booting KNOPPIX, the only grey lines are INIT lines. Anything else is an error. So when booting MORPHIX, I keep on thinking I've burnt a Linux Coaster as alot of the boot messages are in grey, but they're not errors as the CD works great! So, is there any way for you not to use grey for boot messages in future releases?

Humbly Submitted,

Alextreme
03-19-2003, 02:30 AM
Thinking about all the work, cdrw's and effort i put into it, i guess that nomination seems about right (or nomination for most sickest geek, but i might be overdoing it) :P

Anyway, your post just made my day, i'm off for some sleep, goodnight and have fun :D

PS. *sigh* no more scary grey lines. you know you are pushing it? ;)

RockMumbles
03-19-2003, 07:35 PM
Congratulations Alex, MORPHIX is mentioned in Debian-Planet!

Your hard work on this project is starting to get noticed! Very cool!

Thanks for everything you are doing!

rock

Alextreme
03-19-2003, 08:41 PM
Hehehe, thanks Rock! Hope that the rest of the debian community likes it as much as all the great people here that helped me out! Morphix might be my lill' baby, but without you guys it wouldn't be half as good as it is now! Thanks!

(now lets cut the PR crap and get busy, more than enough good stuff to work on ;))

archtron
03-20-2003, 12:22 AM
I have downloaded Morphix Heavy, KDE and Light. The three are excelents products. Morphix KDE I liked more than KnoppixKDE of eadz, I do not have problems with the konqueror like with the KnoppixKDE.

Translucency lkm is a great idea. I could modify some configuration files with Morphix CD version. Yess

New theme for Light (Trueblue) is very pretty, Can you install that theme in Gnome/Heavy? :wink:

But I have questions. In Morphix Heavy I have been able to mount discs from menu in the Discs option, exists easy way in KDE and Light? Ony can with the mount command?

I don't find gcc. As I can compile programs in C?
Do you can add Persistent Home of similar form like in Knoppix 3.2?

Preview of the mp3 files , works very well. Can xine to be the video player by default. The other 2 players do not have support of subs and I have movies subtitled in Spanish.

In Morphix Game could you to add emulators of GameBoy Advance and PSX???, pleaseee

true1ever
03-20-2003, 12:58 AM
Alextreme,

The game ISO is great, good job, very impressive... Thanks for sharing and spending the time to get it working.... I think you deserve the iso of the month award :)...

MichielioZ
03-20-2003, 01:49 AM
Preview of the mp3 files , works very well.

Huh ? reallly ? I haven't checked it for the CD version, but the installed version didn't do that for me... (as stated probably too much right now ;))
Today, trying the KnoppixKDE on HDD, I found the same problem and I didn't remember having it loading from CD... maybe it's just the copying process that messes things up then ?
I don't understand anymore... it's late :)

Alextreme
03-20-2003, 02:42 AM
Wow, someone actually tried out all three?! hmm, morphix was made to download less stuff, not more ;) (but thanks! :D)

Working on on-the-fly debianpackage installation. this is getting interesting at least...

TrueCurve over Keramic? Hmmm, i'll have to poll that, they both aren't bad imho, but people seem to dislike keramic. maybe ;)

for mounting disks:
mount /mnt/hda1
i'll take a look at knoppix, seems to auto-mount them at boot. should be easy enough

gcc isn't in the GUI versions of morphix (are there others? not 'officially'), nope. maybe you'll be able to morph-get install gcc soon :D
http://am.xs4all.nl/gfx and take a look at first-deb-morph.png and second-deb-morph.png
Looks like it's already in there, strange isn't it ;)

How about Persistant Filesystem? ;) yups, Persistant Home will be included soon, just don't know if it'll be in the next release (got midterms coming up, dammit)

might be able to get this subtitle thing working with mplayer? personally, i like both of them. this 'll be the second pole when the new morphix site goes online

Thrown those emulators on the wishlist, i'll see what i can do for ya :)

Oh well, great to see ya all still willing to put up with me :P

Cheers,
Alex

PS. the gameiso has the hardwaredetection and xfree86-configs of knoppix 3.2. Sssshhh, our lill' secret (would like to know if there are any strange problems though ;)

MichielioZ
03-20-2003, 12:21 PM
I tried the Game version...
This is great !! playing UT2003 out of the box is fantastic ...
Only problem I had with Quake, is that I cannot increase the brightness.

Oh, and the major problem for me was : my sound wasn't working at all...
(just a normal SB Live Value here)
Hope these comments help with building ;)

A. Jorge Garcia
03-20-2003, 05:09 PM
OK Alex, re the new (MorphixGame-test 3.3) game iso:
I tried bzflag, freecraft, doom legacy and quake 3 arena for multiplayer gaming over an intranet or on the internet and all worked great! BTW, whatever happened to freeciv. Was that any good - sort of like AOE I guess? It looks like it got vaporized before I got a working CD.... :(

I didn't need the nVidia drivers though, so can't help ya there.

However, my problem is that I can play on my PCs with bootable CDROM drives. How do I make a boot disk for most of my other PCs thta don't boot directly from the CDROM?

I see you have on the CD a boot.img file, but its 2.88MB! I can't rawrite that, can I?

Thanx in advance,

Alextreme
03-20-2003, 10:33 PM
Michielioz, had the same problem over here, wondered if it was my setup. Maybe i should stick to the knoppix 3.1 hardware detection for now, let KK work out the bugs first ;)

freeciv? wasn't it included or did it segfault? Should be in there, i'll place a note on the wiki so i'll check next time. To make a floppy, try out the floppy.img on the mirror (tsk, AJG didn't read the faq, tsk tsk tsk :P)

Oh well, a few minor bugs, pretty reasonable seeing as it's actually working now. *patshimselfonhisback* ;)

true1ever
03-20-2003, 11:06 PM
Just discovered that on the nvidia morphix, the timidity program is actually usable so you can play midi files from a web browser or the command line. I have been trying to get this to work in a lot of versions of knoppix without success, I think the knoppix timidity program is missing some components. So just wanted to say thanks for a nice surprise :D

archtron
03-20-2003, 11:07 PM
TrueCurve over Keramic? Hmmm, i'll have to poll that, they both aren't bad imho, but people seem to dislike keramic. maybe ;)

No, for KDE no, for Gnome 2.2
BlueCurve for Morphix Heavy. Is posible :?:

Alextreme
03-21-2003, 12:07 AM
wokay, it's on my todo list, i'll check it out

A. Jorge Garcia
03-21-2003, 02:35 PM
OOPs, I must have missed the FAQ, sorry. Also, freeciv is on there, I thought it was omitted in the the dpkglist.

Regards,

Alextreme
03-21-2003, 04:02 PM
no prob, just teasing ya (it's not that clear on the faq after all ;))

1001 % grep -r "freeciv" /var/www/morphix/lists/game-list
hi freeciv 1.14.0-3 Civilization turn based strategy game (serve
hi freeciv-gtk 1.14.0-3 Civilization turn based strategy game (GTK+

even got a server on there for ya, your kids will have one hell of a lanparty :D

probono
03-21-2003, 07:17 PM
KDE 3.1.1. is there - http://download.at.kde.org/pub/kde/stable/3.1.1/Debian/README

A. Jorge Garcia
03-21-2003, 11:59 PM
OK, I tried the floppy.img and got it to work in my main lab with 32 Gateway PIII 448Mhz PCs with sound and ATI Rage 128 graphics cards. So everything works fine in that lab.

BTW, I can't get ut2003 to load. How many resources does it need???

Then I went to another classroom lab with 24 Gateway PMMX 231MHZ PCs with GeForce graphics cards. But, I can't get MORPHIXGame to recognize these video cards! Isn't GeForce nVidia? Well, I tried with and without the nVidia driver and just about every cheat code there is, but I get nowhere! What do I do?

BTW, both labs work fine with KNOPPIX 2003.0101 and all PCs have at least 128MB RAM.

Oh, here's another curiosity. When I tried the games CD at home (without boot disk) everything was great. The next time I booted it up, many of the games were very slow (ie quake and bzflag). Does anyone know what causes this?

Regards,

Alextreme
03-22-2003, 03:03 AM
UT2k3 only works with nvidia videocards. Don't blame me, i didn't code it ;) (this is one of the reasons i wanted to seperate ut2003 from the mainmodule)

Hmm, with your other classroom: GeForce is nvidia, maybe the xmodule detection didnt work right? using xmodule=vesa might work, dont know if you tried it out yet...

That the games are running slow is an indication that the nvidia xdriver isn't loaded and that software mesa is being used. Maybe you didn't type 'y' on the nvidia prompt? Oh well, this is why it's a Test iso :D

thanks probono, i'll update it in the next release (hopefully somewhere next week, depending on real life)

SaS
03-22-2003, 08:36 AM
Morphix has big troble on my PC!! ;( i`m running on P4 2.0 256 DDR ABIT Siluro TI4200 128
and morphix won`t start X-server (somthing reset by peer) what i must do? or please fix it :)

SaS
03-22-2003, 09:14 AM
And i found new troble ;( morphix don`t working with my USB (wheel optical) mouse! :(:(

Alextreme
03-22-2003, 01:00 PM
Hmm, which module did you try out SaS? have you tried the vga=normal and xmodule=vesa bootoptions? I havn't seen your problem before, so i'll need a bit more information about it to fix it ;)

The problem with your usbmouse can be solved by the forceusb minimodule, it's on the mirror in the /minimod directory. follow these steps:
http://am.xs4all.nl/phpwiki/index.php/MorphHowTo
in order to add this minimodule to a cd.

Hope this helps, and hope you can find out a bit more info about the first problem. You might be able to take a look at /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 and /var/log/XFree86.0.log for more clues...

A. Jorge Garcia
03-22-2003, 05:58 PM
Hmm, with your other classroom: GeForce is nvidia, maybe the xmodule detection didnt work right? using xmodule=vesa might work, dont know if you tried it out yet...

That the games are running slow is an indication that the nvidia xdriver isn't loaded and that software mesa is being used. Maybe you didn't type 'y' on the nvidia prompt? Oh well, this is why it's a Test iso :D

OK, I don't remember if I tried "morphix xmodule=vesa," so I'll try that! BTW, I don't need "knoppix xmodule=vesa" when booting KNOPPIX CDs.

Now, I need the nvidia drivers for the games that run slow - even if I don't have an nvidia graphics card? I think the machine that's running slow has a Riva card? I'll check.

Thanx for all your help!

Regards,

probono
03-22-2003, 07:53 PM
How about Geramik for Gnome apps in the KDE version?

Alextreme
03-22-2003, 08:17 PM
Geramik has been on my todo list for a long time, too busy working on new features to worry about shiny themes ;)

AJG, i don't know for sure, but aren't the TNT cards also supported by nvidia? don't have one though... i've grabbed the newest knoppix 3.2 release, i'll throw in the new changes, maybe it'll work for your card but i can't guarentee anything :D

MichielioZ
03-23-2003, 07:27 PM
Hello Alextreme,

Yes, it's me again... 8)
I really wanna help the progress of Morphix, but I just can't seem to get a grab on it...
First of all : I cannot seem to remaster the mainmodule...
Maybe something's wrong in the HOWTO, or maybe it isn't clear enough for a dumbass like me ;)

For HDD installation it might be a really good idea to have a "Nvidia installer" application on the desktop ... maybe something to think about ?
(although the game-mod allready works for me with Nvidia, most people would probably wanna play games and stuff from a HDD installation ?!)

I looked all around the internet, but couldn't find any solution to the "SMB-browsing-mp3-preview", so I just turned of "preview SMB" in konquerer... If you can't find a solution, it might be an option for a futute version ?

Anyway, I'm babling on...
Probably wouldn't have to post so much if I could just remaster Morphix...
Thnx in advance for your reply.

ktheking
03-24-2003, 02:59 AM
WOW
Do I get it right ?
You've made a bootable cd for launching 3D games (which are located on the HD)?
I myself am in the progress of 2 remastering-projects .
One for POS purposes and another for CITRIX client/USB ADSL/Teleworking purposes.(may I say very slowly since I'm a linux newbie :oops: ,but for the POS part ,my POS app already works under knoppix 3.2 )
May I say Mr. Knopper and you all have marked a new historical breakpoint with bootable cd's (and soon bootable DVD's ?).
Greetings,
(PS. I think I will soon need your advice on remastering :wink: )

Alextreme
03-24-2003, 01:52 PM
Hello Alextreme,

Yes, it's me again... 8)

Hey MichielioZ 8)


I really wanna help the progress of Morphix, but I just can't seem to get a grab on it...
First of all : I cannot seem to remaster the mainmodule...
Maybe something's wrong in the HOWTO, or maybe it isn't clear enough for a dumbass like me ;)

Hmm, where did you get stuck? Maybe it isn't clear enough, although everyone that tried (and succeeds) always think it's way too easy! ;)
Anyway, the howto (as is morphix) is a work in progress


For HDD installation it might be a really good idea to have a "Nvidia installer" application on the desktop ... maybe something to think about ?
(although the game-mod allready works for me with Nvidia, most people would probably wanna play games and stuff from a HDD installation ?!)

Hmm, true, i'm thinking about integrating the translucency and nvidia modules into base. The ideas that i saw in the other thread were great, so i'm hoping on not having to install nvidia at all. On the downside, every mainmodule needs some finetuning (as the nvidia minimodule doesn't work for every mainmod, something very un-morphix ;))


I looked all around the internet, but couldn't find any solution to the "SMB-browsing-mp3-preview", so I just turned of "preview SMB" in konquerer... If you can't find a solution, it might be an option for a futute version ?

The next KDE mainmodule will have kde 3.1.1, i hope it'll fix the smb problem. If it wasn't ready yet i would indeed deactivate it, only sane thing to do :P


Anyway, I'm babling on...
Probably wouldn't have to post so much if I could just remaster Morphix...
Thnx in advance for your reply.
Just let me know where you stranded, it's no rocketscience ;)

ktheking, yes and no, the 3D games are located on the iso. Speed is actually quite good, good enough for a few rounds of fraggin' ;)
take a look on morphix.org (and the still-in-development website on morphix.sf.net) for more info. Nice work on your own remasterings, good to see everyone busy on their own livecd's btw! If you need a hand just ask, always have (make) time to help out :D

bloodmire
03-24-2003, 02:57 PM
alex, any idea when it would be possible to release the lan party server edition? sorry i've been disconnected given that work calls..

Alextreme
03-24-2003, 03:35 PM
Hey bloodmire, havn't been all that busy on your servers, sorry. I do have a small screenshot of the server module on http://am.xs4all.nl/gfx/server-menu.png
I hope to get to it somewhere next weekend, kinda busy atm :?

MichielioZ
03-24-2003, 04:11 PM
Ok Alex, here I go with what went wrong :

First of all : I am trying to remaster from a HDD installation of your KDE 3.1 release.
I was/am trying to make a simple bash-script to remaster the mainmod-bare...
I got the script to make a "Morphix" directory from where it is executed.
Then I got the script to download the tools.tar.gz and the cloop-utils deb from "your" FTP to that directory ... so far so good.
First I get it to install the cloop-utils deb package... gives no errors there.
Then I untar the tools.tar.gz (automatically untars to a "tools" directory in the "Morphix" directory) and after this it untars the cloop-mod and compressloop inside... seems to be no problem.
Here comes the tricky part ;) :

When I try to execute ./cloop-0.66/extract_compressed_fs MorphixMain-bare-0.3-3.mod > ./tempimage.iso
it didn't do anything, so I tried specifying the folders a bit.
I don't really know if it was right after the modification, but at least it gave an output of some sort :?
Major problem comes when I try to : mount ./tempimage.iso /mountpoint -o loop
It just states that the directory /mountpoint doesn't exists...
(may be a really dumb interpretation on my part though ;))
So I made the script to make such a directory beforehand, but it keeps on stating it doesn't exist...
This is how far I've come, maybe I should just try it manually... ?!
(really would like to make a script out of it someday though...)
Thanx again for your reply.

edit : Posting on your "own" forum with the entries of the script now...

Alextreme
03-24-2003, 04:45 PM
Wow, nice script! Havn't really looked into all those scripts that were made for Knoppix, but you are nearly there :)

first: /mountpoint was an example :D you can use any directory to mount the uncompressed iso on
second: you should further make sure you aren't using a '/' before some of the directories, i don't think people will be pleased to find directories made in their root dir! ;)
Anyway, you're nearly there, just make sure you are using the right directories!

A. Jorge Garcia
03-24-2003, 07:44 PM
Alex,

OK, as per usual, you were right about my "slow" PC at home. I just had to say "y" to the nvidia drivers and everything sped up again. I thought that I hadn't done that the first time I booted MORPHIX, but I guess not!

As to the GeForce PCs at school, morphix xmodule=vesa with or without nvidia doesn't work. I've tried every graphics related cheat code with and without nvidia always with the same result: xfree returns no screen found!

Arrggghhhh! What's going on here?? BTW, KNOPPIX (2003.0101) autodetects the video on these machines no problem, so why not MORPHIX???

What irks me is that MORPHIX works fine on every over machine I've tried (my PCs at home and in 2 other labs), just not in this one lab!

Sorry to bother you so much about this, but I really would like to figure out this problem!

TIA,

Alextreme
03-24-2003, 09:32 PM
same here, weird problems, the recent knoppix 3.2 hardware detection seems to break a few things :?
i could really use the /var/log/XFree86.0.log and /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 files. You _could_ try out the newest knoppix 3.2 iso's on the same computer and see if that works, but only try this if you can't get to the two files, as they would really help ;)

In other news, morphix.sf.net is up and running, morphix.org should point to it soon. Also, MichielioZ has made a nice new mainmodule-unpack script, take a look at http://morphix.sourceforge.net/modules/mydownloads and try it out! :D

RockMumbles
03-25-2003, 01:02 AM
So far the only machine I've ran MorphixKDE-3.3 on is goofed up because of the transparent cursor. At times posting on this forum the cursor disapears in the text box, whole words become invisible with cut and paste, and in mozilla and konqueror there are orphan dialog box pieces left on top of the browser window where the transparent cursor was.

It's fine if I don't use the mouse, but we all know how far that'll get you nowdays.

rock

Alextreme
03-25-2003, 01:24 AM
Hmm, remark noted, i'll take a look if i can deactivate it. Personally, i've gotten pretty used to it, but i havn't seen those problems you describe. Then again, having a transparent cursor is pretty useless imho...

Oh, and if the newest gameiso doesn't seem to work you might want to try xvrefresh=60, i think knopper tried to boost the refreshrate, not sure it this will work though...

A. Jorge Garcia
03-25-2003, 01:43 AM
Oh, and if the newest gameiso doesn't seem to work you might want to try xvrefresh=60, i think knopper tried to boost the refreshrate, not sure it this will work though...

OK, I'm wondering if maybe I'm inputting the cheat codes wrong.

I've tried "morphix xvrefresh=60" is that right or is it just "xvrefresh=60" on the boot line? Also, if I use "morphix xmodule=fbdev" do I also have to specify "fb800x600" or whatever res I need? BTW, if I'm putting more than one cheat code on the boot line, do I say morphix each time, do I use spaces or commas too?t

BTW, I see in your dpkg for the MORPHIXgame iso that you have kde and gnome games? How do I run these when using icewm?

Thanx,

RockMumbles
03-25-2003, 02:06 AM
Alex,
EDITED
Regarding the transparent cursor problem, it's only on the computers at school, edit which have i740 AGP graphic cards.

I'm home now and everything is OK here with my tnt vanta card! So it may not be a problem worth dealing with.

Thought I should let you know,

rock

Alextreme
03-25-2003, 03:38 AM
OK, I'm wondering if maybe I'm inputting the cheat codes wrong.

I've tried "morphix xvrefresh=60" is that right or is it just "xvrefresh=60" on the boot line? Also, if I use "morphix xmodule=fbdev" do I also have to specify "fb800x600" or whatever res I need? BTW, if I'm putting more than one cheat code on the boot line, do I say morphix each time, do I use spaces or commas too?

BTW, I see in your dpkg for the MORPHIXgame iso that you have kde and gnome games? How do I run these when using icewm?

It's always first the label (morphix) then zero or more arguments like xvrefresh=60 and xmodule=fbdev seperated by a space, like: morphix xvrefresh=60 xmodule=nv
don't know if the kde/gnome games have been added to the menu, otherwise you'll have to use 'em good ol commandline. Restructuring the menu's isn't high on my todolist, want to have it all crystalised out first...

Oh well, keeps ya busy ;)

kay, thanks for letting me know rock, if it does cause problems it can be turned off...

A. Jorge Garcia
03-25-2003, 04:30 AM
I guess my question is, can you run kde and gnome games without kde and gnome? I seem to remember some gnome games in the menu that don't run....

Regards,

Alextreme
03-25-2003, 03:34 PM
As always, if something doesn't work i would like to hear what isn't, but most games should work (kde and gnome arn't installed, a lot of lib's are)

A. Jorge Garcia
03-26-2003, 02:58 PM
OK, we've got the MORPHIX-game CD working in one lab (ati rage128) and at home (riva?) without a problem with the multiplayer games I want working well. This suits my needs for now. I just can't figure out the GeForce lab for my life!

However, I'll have to get back to you about which games don't start-up. If memory serves, all the x games work, some of the kde games work and few of the gnome games work. By working I mean, just start up. What happens is, when I click on a "non-working" game, the CD starts up like we're decompressing the program and the load graph on the task bar spikes and then everything stops and the game never comes up. I can still start other games after that. I'll have to do a systematic test to make you a list of the problem games....

Regards,

Alextreme
03-26-2003, 04:41 PM
you are not the only one with that problem, seems as if there are a number of things 'different' in knoppix 3.2. I'll try to update them in the next release to the official knoppix 3.2, if that doesn't work we can always fall back on the old knoppix 3.1 hardware detection files ;)

Trying out a few gnome/gtk games now, they seem to work pretty well. Just note that there are a few servers inbetween the games. Wouldn't need a systematic test of everything (bah, too much work :D) but if something doesn't work try it in a terminal first to check what is happening.

user unknown
03-10-2004, 08:56 PM
Yes, you now have a transparent, mouseshadowed
mousecursor you either will hate or love...
---

Hi Alex,
How should you hate it, if you don't see it?

Can you tell me, how to change it, because it's nearly invisble, if you don't know where it is exactly.