PC-BSD 1.2 - General bug report

[Amigamerlin]

Hi guys,
just using PC-BSD 1.2 ans I've got some bug that I reporting here.

1) When you remove a PBI application previously installed the Desktop Icons is not removed.

2) Mounting HD or CD or USBPENDRIVE sometime a blank windows come up with no data in it and if you try unmounting and mounting again an hard lock come up.

3) Usbpendrive icon is gone; now the USBPENDRIVE icon is the same of HD. Automount for USBPENDRIVE and CD work but no icon on desk for USBPENDRIVE.

I've have had this problems on 2 differnet PC and on a laptop too. 3 different hardware, same problem.

Now some my consideration.

As you all have seen the releasing frequency of PC-BSD is speedup. In a month we have had 2 release that were patched just after few days. IMHO we are rushing and this is not the right way to sue. :(

I really don't know to have my beloved PC-BSD transformed in another linux distro where a brunch of release come out day by day. PC-BSD is the real ONE and the real STRONGER Desktop alternatives and should be really stable.

I pray all the developer to don't rush in releasing version.
Each new release should be a milestone to go forward and not to go backward.

Guys don't get me wrong with this post; I really love PC-BSD and this is the main reason why I've opened and wrote this post. :(

Bye

[TerryP]

A good point, they don't really need to be in a hurry. This project in my humble opinon hit Version 1.0 before it was ready, and has been playing catchup with it's self. Just look at the road map, 1.2 and 1.4 practically have all the stuff we're waiting for to go full bore as a desktop OS, and 1.3 has the installer overhaul.

PS Web person road map needs updating:

1.2 Updates (July 2006)
Incorporate DBSD Network / User Toolset into Control Panel /*Done*/
Convert PC-BSD specific tools to Control Panel Modules /*seems done*/
Change default wallpaper / splash screen to something more professional Done with 1.11 Update
Update KMenu / Merge PBI with KDE Application Categories /*Waits*/
Setup Windows Key to launch K-Menu /*2 thirds done*/
Bind ctrl-alt-delete with KDE System Guard /*Thx it works*/
Improve Printing Support with CUPS
Include Zip support in default install /*Done*/
Add denyhosts to default install /*Well it's in my system after 1.2*/

[Amigamerlin]

update bugs list:
4 ) the bug related to the online update that is not working in languages other than english still there. Only english language is available.

[Amigamerlin]

Update bug report
5) I can't uncompress armyops250linux.run -Size 775.8 Mb (md5 f0ebbc449aeb6be5fcdf68885d79d57a).
This file was already used dozen of time with the previous PC-BSD release.
This is the errors log.


%cd Desktop/
%chmod +x armyops250linux.run
%md5 -q armyops250linux.run
f0ebbc449aeb6be5fcdf68885d79d57a
%su
Password:
PCBSD# ./armyops250linux.run
Verifying archive integrity... All good.
Uncompressing America's Army for GNU/Linux 2.5.0...
/tmp: write failed, filesystem is full
.
/tmp: write failed, filesystem is full
.Extraction failed.
Signal caught, cleaning up
PCBSD#

PC-BSD is in a partition of 80GB with about 10GB used. :(

[TerryP]

PC-BSD by default uses tmpmfs in rc.conf, as far as I know this basicly means the contents of /tmp go in a chuck of your RAM for more speed & not leaving stuff lieing around for people to view.

I had this problem trying to install Quake 4 (Full) when I enabled tmpmfs on PC-BSD 1.0RC2.

Disable the lines for it in rc.conf should be something like.
tmpmfs_enable="YES"
tmpmfs_size="800m"
tmpmfs_flags=""

comment them out and reboot.

try AAO again.

Now just to warn you, when I tried to install Quake4 (Full vesrion, no PBI) it locked up my computer so bad during installation that I could not kill the process or do any thing; I had to pull the plug as my system was going into double over drive and I was afrid of losing a $400 CPU in a $1600 computer. The end result was not pritty what it did to my FS, so good luck to ya if it's any thing like the Linux Installer from IDSoftware or w/e makes Quake.

[Amigamerlin]

PC-BSD by default uses tmpmfs in rc.conf, as far as I know this basicly means the contents of /tmp go in a chuck of your RAM for more speed & not leaving stuff lieing around for people to view.

I had this problem trying to install Quake 4 (Full) when I enabled tmpmfs on PC-BSD 1.0RC2.

Disable the lines for it in rc.conf should be something like.
tmpmfs_enable="YES"
tmpmfs_size="800m"
tmpmfs_flags=""

comment them out and reboot.

try AAO again.

Now just to warn you, when I tried to install Quake4 (Full vesrion, no PBI) it locked up my computer so bad during installation that I could not kill the process or do any thing; I had to pull the plug as my system was going into double over drive and I was afrid of losing a $400 CPU in a $1600 computer. The end result was not pritty what it did to my FS, so good luck to ya if it's any thing like the Linux Installer from IDSoftware or w/e makes Quake.

Thanks for your suggestion ... now It works. I'm just now installing AAO ;).
At the moment using RH8.8.0 I don't have had any lockup of the system and I've installed : UT2004, Return to castle Wolfenstainer, Doom3 Demo, Quake IV demo and now America's Army Ops ;).

Thanks again for your tips man ;).

[TerryP]

No prob:)

tmpmfs is good for security and performance I think, but it seems poor for when you need "Allot" of space in /tmp. Usually I ether make /var it's own partition and link /tmp to /var/tmp or use tmpmfs.

Just curious in doing any of that did you get some heavy heavy increase in system nose, massive surge in CPU usage, or in ability to use mouse / virtual terminals any?

[pcbsdusr]

We should have a swich implemented.

Use tempfs up to x megabytes
Use hard drive after x megabytes is surpassed.

And X should be setup according to the ammount of RAM detected on the system.

[DragnLord]

keep in mind that tmpfs changes to using swap space automatically
this is fine for people like me that allocate 4GB+ of swap space, but becomes a problem for people using the default of 1GB swap

I recommend removing tmpfs from the default installation of PC-BSD. (of course, this is only my opinion)

[TerryP]

I know I've been wondering how it made it's way into the release, a good thing yes, should be settable from the PC-BSD System tool yes, best thing for everyones box no.

It's come standard for awhile now.

[Amigamerlin]

We should have a swich implemented.

Use tempfs up to x megabytes
Use hard drive after x megabytes is surpassed.

And X should be setup according to the ammount of RAM detected on the system.

Yes, this can be a good solution.

[Amigamerlin]

Update bugs list :

6) on a mounted CD icon on then desk, if I right click on it, I can read "Eject" for ejecting it. This is not correct in my localization (italian); Should be "espelli" as it is in the System:/Media windows. In fact if I right click on a mounted CD icon in this windows I can correctly read "espelli" ;).

eheheh I'm becoming maniacal :D :D but I really love this OS and I would like to have it perfect. ;)

[antik]

We should have a swich implemented.

Use tempfs up to x megabytes
Use hard drive after x megabytes is surpassed.

And X should be setup according to the ammount of RAM detected on the system.

Yes, this can be a good solution.

This would be addressed in next installer major rewrite. You can always add more swap space and set larger tmpmfs size.

[Amigamerlin]

We should have a swich implemented.

Use tempfs up to x megabytes
Use hard drive after x megabytes is surpassed.

And X should be setup according to the ammount of RAM detected on the system.

Yes, this can be a good solution.

This would be addressed in next installer major rewrite. You can always add more swap space and set larger tmpmfs size.

Thanks :) ... but I'm wrong or should you be in vacation ? :D :D
You can't stay far away from here ... I'm wrong? :D ;).

[antik]

Thanks :) ... but I'm wrong or should you be in vacation ? :D :D
You can't stay far away from here ... I'm wrong? :D ;).

I have plenty of time to rest in coffin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffin) after I die :twisted:

[TerryP]

May you not need one of those till your old and gray with many great grand kids Antik, or bit by a vampire bat :P

How was the default size we get for tmpfs calculated Antik?? I run my desktop with a size setting of 1024 to 2048mb RAM, greater then the 1.x rc.conf that overwrote my old one before I knew tmpfs had become a standard;) (Never was int he release notes I read). But how can we possibly know how much a setting to it would be best for "Most" people.

[antik]

May you not need one of those till your old and gray with many great grand kids Antik, or bit by a vampire bat :P

How was the default size we get for tmpfs calculated Antik?? I run my desktop with a size setting of 1024 to 2048mb RAM, greater then the 1.x rc.conf that overwrote my old one before I knew tmpfs had become a standard;) (Never was int he release notes I read). But how can we possibly know how much a setting to it would be best for "Most" people.

I calculated it by average size on PC-BSD swap partition (one gigabyte) and so far 800MB is enough to "average user". For users with more disk space I`d recommend to make larger swap space but current installer won`t let you choose swap size- what is really pitty (next installer rewrite would address this problem). Proper swap size formula must be:

2xRAM+256MB=>1000MB

But you can always make new additional swap space of convert other filesystem to swap. Swap usage is fully automatic/transparent btw.

[Albright]

The update seems to have eaten the kernel file my wifi card needed. I have a funky one that's not well supported, so I had to port the Windows drivers using ndisgen. After the update (I delayed a while, under the ol' "if it ain't broke" mentality), the card wasn't showng up in ifconfig. The driver file seems to have been moved out of or deleted from /boot/kernel/. After digging out the original Windows driver installer CD and rebuilding the .ko file, I moved it back to /boot/kernel/ and kldloaded it, and was immediately back up and running (thank goodness it didn't wipe out the ifconfig settings too; those were a PITA to set up).

Please don't do that anymore. :P

Also, has anyone else noticed KDE using a new font? I don't like it -- the spacing is off. Like in "Konqueror," the "nq" and the "ue" have collided, and in "PC-BSD" the midline for the P and the B are different...

[antik]

The update seems to have eaten the kernel file my wifi card needed. I have a funky one that's not well supported, so I had to port the Windows drivers using ndisgen. After the update (I delayed a while, under the ol' "if it ain't broke" mentality), the card wasn't showng up in ifconfig. The driver file seems to have been moved out of or deleted from /boot/kernel/. After digging out the original Windows driver installer CD and rebuilding the .ko file, I moved it back to /boot/kernel/ and kldloaded it, and was immediately back up and running (thank goodness it didn't wipe out the ifconfig settings too; those were a PITA to set up).

Please don't do that anymore. :P


Place all your own drivers into /boot/modules.

[Albright]

Okay, I'll do that. BUT:

After restarting my machine, everything still worked the same, but oddly the message inviting me to install the 1.2 upgrade came back. Hm. So I started the updating process again. It downloaded the upgrade, installed it, and restarted the machine (once again fragging my .ko file).

I just checked the PC-BSD System app, and it's saying I'm still using 1.11a. So I'm guessing, once I get it online again, it's going to want to upgrade again. Weirdness.

It's past my bedtime, so I won't work on it any more tonight. Anyone have any ideas what might be going wrong here?

[Amigamerlin]

To all PC-BSD developers...

seems that starting from release 1.2 all the operation are done in a "cache" and after were wrote to the HD. I'm pretty sure of it !

Please, can anyone of the PC-BSD developer confirm what I wrote?
I suspect that this is the main reason why sometime a mounted device is not opened.

Try this: Mount an USB pendrive. opne it just for read the contenent. Unmount it and put another USB Pendrive or USB HD device; mount it and you will have only a blank screen IMO because the cache is not flushed when unmount the device.

Moreover installing a PBI in the PBItemp (that contain unpacked PBI) the contenent of the package TBZ was the previous one opened and not the current one just like I'm opening the previous one and not the current.

Can anynone explain me why this appened?
Can be this a problem tmpmfs related?

Before disable tmpmfs I want to know what I'm going to do.

Bye

[antik]

Can anynone explain me why this appened?
Can be this a problem tmpmfs related?

Before disable tmpmfs I want to know what I'm going to do.

Bye

I already explained (http://forums.pcbsd.org/viewtopic.php?p=27564#27564)possible problem solution.