aufs - please support Mr. Okajima
Aufs filesystem is a full-featured, full-fledged layered filesystem for Linux, created by Mr. Junjiro Okajima. It is an alternative to "unionfs", Unlike unionfs, however, aufs is actively developed, and actively supported. Unlike other alternative Linux layered filesystems like "overlayfs", aufs is feature rich and has a lot of options. Aufs is mature and stable software, it is about 10 years old by now.I don't know how extensive aufs is used in the field, but I have a suspicion that many "live" OS systems (with support for persistence) will use aufs in form or another. I also think that aufs would be widely deployed in the embedded world, where one needs to have "writable" rootfs while still having the base OS in ROM. What I *do* know is that aufs is used in Fatdog64, FatdogArm, Puppy Linux and its multiplicity of derivatives, Slax, AntiX, and perhaps many others.
I recently had the pleasure of working directly Mr. Okajima.
I had problems with kernel oops with FatdogArm on cubox-i. Researching the problems, I found that kernel oops was a known common problem in the official cubox-i kernel and there were some solutions - but they didn't seem to work for me. My oops symptoms were quite different, too - the kernel didn't immediately crashed; but all filesystem operation failed, which lead me to suspect that the problem may have had to do with aufs (the other popularly Linux distros on cubox-i - Arch, Ubuntu - they all don't use aufs as far as I'm aware).
I escalated the problem to Mr. Okajima through the public mailing list and to my pleasant surprise, found that he was all courtesy, and very responsive. Mr. Okajima is very knowledgeable person - not only he helped me to troubleshoot the problem, but he actually solved it. This is despite the fact this was his first time looking at problems in ARM systems (and the problem required looking at ARM code dissasembly to find the cause); and the fact that he didn't have any ARM boxes whatsoever to reproduce the problem. One rarely encounters this kind of support and talent - even in the commercial world.
I'd encourage those who beneftis from aufs - especially commercially - to support the work of Mr. Okajima in whatever means that they can. Donation link is here (this goes straight to Mr. Okajima - not to me).
Comments - Edit - Delete
Fatdog64 700 alpha1 is released
Two years after the debut of Fatdog64 600, and five (5) months in the making, Fatdog64 700 finally gets its first public release - the first alpha release.Fatdog64 700 is built from scratch, using modified build recipes from LFS (Linux From Scratch) and BLFS, version 7.5 (the latest as of today). It features a brand new base: kernel 3.15.5, glibc 2.19 and gcc 4.8.2, and the latest or at least recent libraries of all the basic libraries, bringing Fatdog64 back to the contemporary world.
Fatdog64 700 left its PET legacy package management inherited from Puppy and switch to Slackware-style packages, using the excellent slapt-get and gslapt from http://www.jaos.org.
Forum announcement: http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?p=791980#791980.
Get it from ibiblio or one of its mirrors: aarnet, uoc.gr, and nluug.nl.
Comments - Edit - Delete
Xscreenshot
Xscreenshot is a simple program to take a screenshot of a selected area in your desktop.You can run it in single-shot for multiple-shot mode; in multiple-shot mode you can use it to take successive screenshots of different area of the screen - very useful when capturing screenshots for documentation.
Xscreenshot is packaged as part of Xannotate.
Comments - Edit - Delete
Xannotate updated
If you've got the first released version of xannotate yesterday, you should get it again.The new version (dated 2014-07-27) now supports three pens, eraser, and support for alpha transparency (if you're running a compositing manager) which makes it run faster.
Comments - Edit - Delete
Xannotate, a desktop annotation tool
I like gromit, but unfortunately it is not working for me. The code itself is good, the bug is probably due to the subtle changes of GDK/GTK behaviour over the years.Anyway, I decided to write my own, and call it xannotate; because it does "annotation" and it only depends on Xlib.
Here's a shot:
More details (with download links) here.
Comments - Edit - Delete
FatdogArm on Cubox-i - update
FatdogArm now runs with Cubox-i i2w and i4p; supporting all features of FatdogArm plus i.MX6-specific hardware acceleration (vivante video driver, VPU, gstreamer, ALSA hardware resampler). Cubox-i is the *the only* ARM platform I have where you xrandr works correctly and you can change resolution on the fly. Kudos to Freescale to make this happen.On the other hand, the only thing currently not working on Cubox-i is the GPU (OpenGLES stuff). I have an open thread in the forum here: http://www.solid-run.com/community/post9713.html#p9713. All my other ARM platforms have their GPUs running, this is the only platform which it isn't (you've got Xorg hard lockups when trying to run any OpenGLES programs with GPU acceleration).
Comments - Edit - Delete
Woof-CE Next Generation
Woof-CE is the Community Edition (CE) of Woof build system. Woof build system (currently at version 2, so often called as Woof2) is the meta-distribution of Puppy Linux. It enables one to build a fully customised Puppy Linux distribution from many parent distros.I have been working on the next generation of Woof build system. It initially started as a tool running on top of Woof2 infrastructure (original blog post here and here; the original branch holding the code is called "deb-build" on my github Woof-CE fork) - and now I have modified them to *replace* the Woof2 infrastructure and completely run on its own.
Front-ends have been added, so deb-build is now only one of many (future) builders to build Puppy Linux from different parent distros (deb-build builds from Debian-like distros, like Debian, Ubuntu, and possibly even Mint - I haven't tried that, though).
The main premise of the new build system is that puppy adapts to the parent distro, rather than the other way around. Doing this means the original parent distro is kept as close to its original design (including the use of its original package management system) and thus making more of the parent distro packages usable in Puppy derived from it - because as far as I can see, that is the reason for having Puppy as a derivative anyway (if you're not interested in using parent distro packages, then may as well build Puppy from scratch where you control everything and can optimise everything).
The links section of this blog points you to the most recent and experimental version of this build system ("woof-next-james" branch on my github fork of Woof-CE - this branch supersedes the original "deb-build" branch posted in my earlier blog posts). As they mature they will be posted to the official Woof-CE repository under the same name; and finally the most stable code would be merged to "woof-next" branch of Woof-CE (note that "woof-next" is an integration branch and contains changes and contributions from others too)
"woof-next" currently builds an ISO capable of booting to Xorg. There are some little modifications I have not yet ported from deb-build, but they will be soon.
In the experimental branch, you will find builder for building Slackware-based puppy too. The builder works but the resulting ISO will not boot because of it is missing puppy-specific packages that are not available from standard Slackware repository (e.g. busybox, mingetty, etc).
Note that this woof-next is still in its early phase. It lacks both the diversity (not many distros supported as parents yet) and versatility (it will only build x86 puppies, x86_64 being experimental and arm is completely unsupported yet) compared to the Woof2 build system. In time, I hope to address all of these.
Comments - Edit - Delete
FatdogArm on Cubox-i
As part of an on-going project that I'm doing with someone, I have received Cubox-i devices and is currently porting FatdogArm to them. It is still early days, but I've got FatdogArm running on Cubox-i i4p.
Comments - Edit - Delete
Updated links
I have updated my links with some of the projects that I maintain. They are mainly small, old projects that use GTK2. Some of them have disappeared completely from the web, so I suppose I just publish them so people can grab the source if needed.The one I've just worked on recently is Xarchiver. I have fixed on the bugs that cause crashing when command line parameters are used, I've also updated the rar module to work with the new unrar 5.x.
Comments - Edit - Delete
End of the road for Fatdog64 600 series
Today I have switched to an early build of Fatdog64 700, in the interest of testing early and iron out all the obvious bugs. I still have 631 installed for emergency purposes, but I will not boot it up unless absolutely necessary.It also marks the end of the development for Fatdog64 600 series, as from now on I will be concentrating fully to make 700 stable and feature-complete. The last of the 600 series, 631, will probably live for quite a few while, but there will be no further development on it. I will be depending on the community to provide support for those users who choose to remain on 631.
Comments - Edit - Delete
