Finally, after many years of inactivity, a new release is out for Slacware 15.0.
Major changes of this release: contains the Alire; the GNATStudio is using the binary GNAT Studio Continuous Release 20220512, I failed to build it from source due to lots of dependcies and stuck in the Ada langguare server; a build script that boostrap gprbuild and build/install all the basic packages (XMLAda, GTKAda, Florist, AUnit, GNATCOLL, etc).
It is unfortunate that he do not get his share of income from the store, and now he is
I mean, I'm sitting here in a house with a giant hole in the roof, a broken door sealed with duct tape, and a failed air conditioning condenser that I can't afford to fix, my wife has been driving on a spare tire for weeks, my teeth need serious attention again, and I only just got a machine here with UEFI for the first time (bought a used machine... really out of my budget but it had to be done).
The Slackware community is eager to help and for the time being Patrick gave his PayPal account link before he could setup a proper channel for donation.
Patrick Volkerding's Paypal account: https://www.paypal.me/volkerdi
And please donate if you like Slackware and willing to help.
Patrick has a cafepress account for Official Licensed Slackware Store. Confirmed by Patrick.
The new release is at GitHub
GCC 7.1 was released on May 2.
I tried it out and recompiled all my Ada related builds, finally I got a stable GPS
that does not crash after opening a project file. It still crashed on me, maybe I should revert
to an older version?
I have updated my build scripts ada-4-slackware on gitHub. There is still some problems with ASIS 2016, some API changed for the new compiler, will update the build script once got time.
New release of Slackware and new version of GNAT GPL 2016 prompt me to update the Ada programming environment under Slackware.
First, I was trying to use the stock 5.3 compiler, but encounter gnat compiler error when compiling gprbuild. So has to use the FSF GCC 6.2 as the based.
This package contains startup scripts to setup Ada project path environment variable ADA_PROJECT_PATH and GPR_PROJECT_PATH. They will be installed into /etc/profile.d by the doinst.sh.
Also soft link of the GNAT Ada run time libraries are also created in doinst.sh.
usr/include/xmlada
|- input
|- unicode
...
usr/lib64/xmlada
|- input
| |- static
| `- relocatable
|- unicode
| |- static
| `- relocatable
...
The document build requires Sphinx, as SlackBuilds.orgprovides all necessary build scripts, it is a matter of installing the relevant packages and dependencies.
xrandr --fbmm 286x179in .xinitrc file in order to let i3 pick up the correct DPI setting. OK, now the i3 status bar display fine.
Xft.dpi : 227 Xft.antialias: false Xft.rgba: rgb URxvt.scrollstyle: xterm URxvt.background: black URxvt.foreground: gray URxvt.preeditType: Root URxvt.scrollBar_right: true URxvt.jumpScroll: true URxvt.perl-ext-common: tabbed URxvt.tabbed.tabbar-fg: 2 URxvt.tabbed.tabbar-bg: 0 URxvt.tabbed.tab-fg: 3 URxvt.tabbed.tab-bg: 0 URxvt.termName: rxvt URxvt.geometry: 83x27 urxvt.font: xft:DejaVuSansMono:size=8 Xpdf*fontList: -adobe-helvetica-bold-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1 Xpdf.initialZoom: 200 Xcursor.size: 64 With the following, the width should be $((11*COLUMNS+13)) pixels; ! in contrast, the fixed = 6x13 bitmap font is typically used on a ! low-definition screen, giving a width of $((6*COLUMNS+13)) pixels. XTerm*faceName: Monospace XTerm*faceSize: 10 ! For xterm menus. This font is large enough, but a bit ugly. XTerm*font: -adobe-helvetica-bold-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1My default terminal is rxvt-unicode, so it works fine. You may notice I have turn antialias off, the font looks sharp, you may see zigzag when looking really close, but for 227DPI, it's very clear without it already. Most of the document on line regarding GTK+3's HiDPI support is by setting
export GDK_SCALE=2 export GDK_DPI_SCALE=05I found the program behave a little strange when this kind of scaling in effect. Font is a little blur than none scale one. For the Gnat Programing Studio (GPS), with the scaling effect, the menu display strangely:
usr/include/xmlada
|- input
|- unicode
...
usr/lib64/xmlada
|- input
| |- static
| `- relocatable
|- unicode
| |- static
| `- relocatable
...
The document build requires Sphinx, as SlackBuilds.org
provides all necessary build scripts, it is a matter of installing the relevant packages and
dependencies.gnat_util.gpr:21:09: warning: no compiler specified for language "C", ignoring all its sources gnat_util.gpr:21:09: warning: no compiler specified for language "Ada", ignoring all its sourcesFurther investigation showed that the default target for gprconfig was wrong, it was set to "Slackware" when generating gprconfig-sdefault.ads in my build script, due to not fully understand what it means. After set it to "$ARCH-slackare-linux", it still failed on linking, looking for GNAT's runtime library libgnat-5.2.so, which does not exist for a standard GCC build, as it only has libgnat-5.so. After created a soft link from libgnat-5.so, it builds and working.
gtkada-gpl-2015-src/src/lib/gtkada_gl/static/libgtkada_gl.a(gdkgl.o): undefined reference to symbol 'XFree' /usr/lib/libX11.so.6: error adding symbols: DSO missing from command lineAfter patching the testgtk.gpr with linker option to link with -lX11 -lm, it built and run fine.
<user password="manager" roles="manager-gui" username="manager"> </user>Guacamole-client needs Apache Maven to build, and SlackBuilds.org has a script for maven. After installed maven, and with the command mvn package guacamole-client was built and a war file was created in guacamole/target/guacamole-0.9.7.war. I made it install to /usr/share/lib/guacamole/guacamole-0.9.7.war and had it symbolic links to /var/lib/tomcat/webapps/guacamole.war. Now I could saw it from Tomcat's manger GUI, accessing it with url http://localhost:8080/guacamole I got a blank screen :(, that was not good. I have the impression that it should be very easy to setup, now it failed on me. After reading the documentation again, and again, I realized I failed to setup a user-mapping.xml in /etc/guacamole/. After follow the example, voila! it showed me the login page, after logged in, I was presented with the entries I had setup earlier in user-mapping.xml. Links with remote servers are working great!
location ~ \.pl$ {
root /var/www/cgi;
try_files $uri =404;
include fastcgi_params;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
fastcgi_pass unix:/tmp/cgi.sock;
}
After started the spawn-fcgi and reload nginx's config, the perl CGI works without problem.
One day, I was reading the updates from freecode.com. I noticed this small utility BASH History Suggest Box, it looks interesting from its screenshot:
I decided to give it a try. It is very useful, it reminds me the history window of 4DOS command line interpreter at the old DOS days.
I thought this tool is quite useful for some people, so I submitted the build scripts
for my favorite Linux distribution Slackware to
SlackBuilds.org. The build script is
not yet shown up on the official SlackBuilds.org, you could not search it yet.
It is just updated (2014-04-13), and you could now search from SlackBuilds.org or use sbopkg.
You could still download the build script
here.
P.S. There maybe segmentation fault on some system for the official 1.2.1 release,
a patched from upstream git tree is included in the build script (sigseg.patch), if you
are building for other system, you may need to apply the patch first before build.
P.P.S Updated to 1.3, and remove the unnecessary patch in the script. Should be in Willy's tree soon. Note the package name has changed from "hstr" to "hh".
The MacBook feels its ages after upgrading to OS X Mavericks, it is slow and I really don't have a usage of the OS X itself. So I start my journey to install my favorite Slackware to it.
There are a few helpful sites that describe the installation of Linux on a MacBook:
There are some problems that I encounter that is quite unique to this machine. I shrank the OS X partition and created a new 40G FAT partition and boot up the newly burned Slackware64 14.1 DVD. It could not boot using EFI mode, and fallback to the legacy BIOS boot mode.
After boot up, I partition the disk using cgdisk, remove the FAT partition and recreate one for Linux. An interesting thing shows up, after selected my target / partition and the ESP, it ask me whether to include an MSDOS partition to be mounted, with the same device number of my main Linux partition. I ignored it, and proceed to install the "A" and "AP" part only. Then when come to install Lilo, it stucks forever without progress. Google around, does not show any direct related problem. Then I found some mentioning of gpartsync tool, it seems in rEFInd (which I chose as my boot manager), there is one included name "gptsync_x64.efi", turn it on from the config and reboot, it does not work for me. Then I reboot into Linux with the DVD and use fdisk, Och, there is a FAT partition there. To play safe, I repartition the disk again in OS X and redo the installation with both GPT and MBR table matched, it seems fine, except it prompt me with 2 identical Linux partitions for my root mount point, I chose one and ignored the other and proceed. Lilo still complaining about config problem about append command, then I remove the append line use standard text mode only. It finally installed. There must be something wrong for what I have done for the partition, but I don't want to experiment and re-install again.
Since the stock kernel has EFI stub build in, I copy the huge kernel to the EFI/slackware64 and create a refind_linux.conf manually
"Boot with defaults" "root=/dev/sda4 ro"I hope rEFInd could pick it up and boot me into Linux directly from EFI. I restart the box, the rEFInd boot manager has the Linux choice show up, boot it, kernel complains about conflicting frame buffer driver between EFI VGA and nouveau and stops. I think it should be able to resolve it with the extra parameter "video=efifb"
I reboot and boot the Linux with BIOS mode and Lilo bring up the system. But I only have one CPU show up, it seems this is a known problem. I install the the rest packages from D, X, XAP, N, L, KDE, TCL, XFCE, Y, etc. Then download the 3.10.20 kernel source and config it to use nouveau driver only for frame buffer. It boots up fine and now I have the two CPU cores available.
There is a long delay (around 30 to 40 seconds) before rEFInd show its menu. This seems a known problem on certain MacBook. I tried the clearing the NVRAM entries method first, but it did not work for me. Then I tried using the fallback filename method, rename EFI/refind to EFI/BOOT and rename refind_x64.efi to bootx64.efi. It seems work, I now got around 6 seconds of delay. Not sure if that is normal, but at least its bearable.
The touch pad respond badly, almost like not working, google around, it seems the default setting of synaptics does not work well, I ended up with this settings under /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-synaptics.conf
Section "InputClass" Identifier "touchpad" Driver "synaptics" MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*" MatchIsTouchpad "on" Option "FingerLow" "10" Option "FingerHigh" "20" Option "TapButton1" "1" Option "TapButton2" "2" Option "MinSpeed" "0.65" Option "MaxSpeed" "0.85" Option "TapButton3" "3" Option "VertTwoFingerScroll" "true" EndSectionMinSpeed of 1 is still too fast when accessing some small links, 0.65 seems reasonable for me.
To handle the hotkeys, I used pommed-light, after a few tweak, I got it compile and running, the sound volume control works. Others are still testing.
The bootup sound before the boot manger is really annoying, looking around the web, seems there are lots of people complaining. I follow the advice from MacTrast, and tried the 3 methods: overwrite the nvram settings, install a control application to mute the bootup sound, and mute the sound device before power off. Mute the sound before poweroff/reboot does not work too well and it seems does not work from Linux. Set the nvram value to 0 or 80 does not work either. The StartNinja apps seems to work first, but then I drained my battery completely and lost the setting, and I thought it did not work until I try the 2nd time, consider working.
I am working in front of computer all day long, and looking at the bright screen hurt my eyes. I was relied on the plugin ToggleDocumentColors to give me a grey background and black text with browser. But it does not look good on some web sites and it only works on browser. Then I came across this Redshift program, and it has a SlackBuilds.org script. After installing it with sbopkg, found my latitude and longitude and fire up the program, instantly I could feel the stress of my eyes are reduced.
It may take sometime to get used to it as the color on the screen has a little reddish tone. Unless you are working on graphics or color sensitive work, normal interaction with the web site or application has no problem at all and your eyes got some relief. Since the discovery of this little tool, I have installed it to all my systems.
It has an GUI front end gtk-redshift that comes with the package. It will display an icon on your system tray area, allow you to toggle it by a single click.
Highly recommend this little tool to anyone that need to work in front of computers.
It seems gvim is not playing nicely with tiling manager. I encountered this bug.
It seems I am not alone with this problem. To maximize and restore the window each time doesn't seem to be a good workaround. The workaround I used are from the stackexchange, add the following line into my .vimrc:
set showtabline=2It always display the tab bar. Although it wastes some spaces, it gives me a proper displayed window.
One of my home PC died (HP Pavilion Media Center m8530f), and not seeing a great need for a new one, I found my wife's old PC laying in the garage. It is a brand-less PC with an Asus motherboard P5VDC-MX (an old revision with only 2 RAM slots) couple with Pentium 4 (64-bit enbaled), 1G of DDR RAM, CD-writer and floppy drive! Oh, it has SATA support also. That is good as I could reuse the SATA components from the HP PC. It has been collecting dust for years in the garage, and I was afraid whether it could still boot.
After cleanup the dust and power up, it run without much problem, its BIOS battery run out, replaced it with the one from the HP PC. I installed the DVD, multi-card reader and hard drive from the HP PC into this old board. It seems I could not use both IDE channel when SATA is in used (long time to boot and hard drive is not recognize correctly). I have to disconnect the second IDE channel and have both old IDE drives on the first channel. Then it boots up fine, even with my previous custom made kernel for the the HP PC. The on board VGA is too weak, and I solicited an old ATI radeon 9200 SE AGP card from my friend.
After installed everything, I recompiled the kernel to match what I had on the PC, and almost everything work except for the sound. I always got something like:
hda_intel: azx_get_response timeout, switching to polling mode: last cmd=0x12345678testing with aplay gave the speaker repeating tone. After searching the net and consult the documents in kernel source, it seems switching to polling mode is not a serious problem at first glance. But I don't think it is right. Setting probe_mask=1 for the snd_hda_intel module gave no help. Then I recompiled the module with debug turn on and I saw lines indicate it has MSI turned on, after setting "enable_msi=0" to off, sound is working.
The display has some minor problem, in console, the text is quite dim and it will become dimmer if running after a mc instance. One thing is strange that if I highlight a few lines in the console with mouse, the brightness of the text will increase depends on how much line I have highlighted. In X, I have the same problem if I have an xterm on full screen, it will become dimmer, if I have a relatively bright window opened next to it, it will be fine. Well it is an old PC and usable, so I don't complaint too much ^_^
P.S. when compiling kernel, I feel the age of this PC ^_^ it took almost an hour. Running Slackware64 14.0 on this old one.
P.P.S. it seems my problem of dim text in console has gone away, it maybe related to the old radeon card/mainboard hasn't been use for years, after a few days of usage, it seems back to normal.
I have heard about tiling window manager for some time, but lack the initiative to test one. Recently I finally got fed up with resizing two windows side by side and decided to give titling manager a test.
After some research from the web, I settled on i3 tiling window manager for its simplicity. With the help from SlackBuilds, I got the window manager installed and run without hassle (I did recompile the cairo with xcb support (from current) and use the latest i3 release version 4.5.1).
It took me a while to get familiar with the key bindings. Thanks for the good documentation, I got used to it quickly and customized the configuration to suite my own needs. No longer do I need to fight with the mouse to place the window to gain the last pixel. Wow, I wish I should try it earlier. It just simply awesome! Oh, and awesome is another good tiling window manager too ^_^.
I have used various window mangers and DE during the years of using Slackware. From the beginning, it was fvwm, fvwm2, IceWM, window maker, GNOME, KDE, XFCE, LXDE, blackbox, EDE, E16, E17, fluxbox. Now I am simply sold to the tiling manager and won't go back to the normal one.
I just tried to compile wireshark 1.10.0 under Slackware64 14.0, using the build script from SBo.
It compiled fine, but running with segmentation fault. It seems wireshark itself try to use libnl3 but libpcap in Slackwre is using libnl (version 1). After adding configuration "--with-libnl=1" to force wireshark to use version 1 of libnl, it does not crash anymore.
But it did not use gnutls, it seems the version (3.0.23) in Slackware is too old, it required at least 3.1.10. Currently, the latest stable version is 3.2.1, but it requires update nettle to 2.7 also. I ended up update the gnutls lib to 3.1.12 to compile wireshark with tls support.
It seems Slackware-current does not update gnutls library yet, hope next version of Slackware could update the gnutls version to a newer one.
PS. seems nettle 2.7.1/gnutls 3.2.1/wireshark 1.10.0 works fine after I recompiled the 3 packages.
The GNU indent program includes in Slackware 14 has a regression bug.
After searching, it seems there is an unofficial release 2.2.11, which could be located from Debian source. The release fixed the problem.
After downloaded the source from the above URL and also the Debian tar ball (indent_2.2.11.orig.tar.gz was gunziped, renamed to indent-2.2.11.tar then xzed). Slackware's official build script was downloaded also. It was modified to compile the newer version and include patches from Debian:
#!/bin/sh
# Copyright 2008, 2009, 2010 Patrick J. Volkerding, Sebeka, MN, USA
# All rights reserved.
#
# Redistribution and use of this script, with or without modification, is
# permitted provided that the following conditions are met:
#
# 1. Redistributions of this script must retain the above copyright
# notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
#
# THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE AUTHOR ``AS IS'' AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED
# WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
# MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO
# EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL,
# SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO,
# PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS;
# OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY,
# WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR
# OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF
# ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.
VERSION=${VERSION:-2.2.11}
BUILD=${BUILD:-1}
# Automatically determine the architecture we're building on:
if [ -z "$ARCH" ]; then
case "$( uname -m )" in
i?86) export ARCH=i486 ;;
arm*) export ARCH=arm ;;
# Unless $ARCH is already set, use uname -m for all other archs:
*) export ARCH=$( uname -m ) ;;
esac
fi
if [ "$ARCH" = "i486" ]; then
SLKCFLAGS="-O2 -march=i486 -mtune=i686"
elif [ "$ARCH" = "i686" ]; then
SLKCFLAGS="-O2 -march=i686 -mtune=i686"
elif [ "$ARCH" = "s390" ]; then
SLKCFLAGS="-O2"
elif [ "$ARCH" = "x86_64" ]; then
SLKCFLAGS="-O2 -fPIC"
else
SLKCFLAGS="-O2"
fi
NUMJOBS=${NUMJOBS:-" -j7 "}
CWD=$(pwd)
TMP=${TMP:-/tmp}
PKG=$TMP/package-indent
rm -rf $PKG
mkdir -p $TMP $PKG
cd $TMP
rm -rf indent-$VERSION
tar xvf $CWD/indent-$VERSION.tar.xz || exit 1
cd indent-$VERSION
chown -R root:root .
find . \
\( -perm 777 -o -perm 775 -o -perm 711 -o -perm 555 -o -perm 511 \) \
-exec chmod 755 {} \; -o \
\( -perm 666 -o -perm 664 -o -perm 600 -o -perm 444 -o -perm 440 -o -perm 400 \) \
-exec chmod 644 {} \;
# GCC4 fix
#sed -i -e 's#extern FILE \*output#static FILE *output#' src/indent.h || exit 1
#apply patches from Debian
for file in $CWD/patches/* ; do
patch -p1 < $file
done
CFLAGS="$SLKCFLAGS" \
CXXFLAGS="$SLKCFLAGS" \
./configure \
--prefix=/usr \
--sysconfdir=/etc \
--localstatedir=/var \
--mandir=/usr/man \
--infodir=/usr/info \
--build=$ARCH-slackware-linux
make $NUMJOBS || make || exit 1
make install DESTDIR=$PKG
# I'm not sure why this man page fails, but...
if find $PKG -type f -size 0c -name indent.1 ; then
( cd man
./texinfo2man ./indent.1.in ./../doc/indent.texinfo > indent.1
cat indent.1 > $PKG/usr/man/man1/indent.1
)
fi
# Strip binaries and libraries:
find $PKG | xargs file | grep -e "executable" -e "shared object" \
| grep ELF | cut -f 1 -d : | xargs strip --strip-unneeded 2> /dev/null
# Compress man pages:
( cd $PKG/usr/man
find . -type f -exec gzip -9 {} \;
for i in $( find . -type l ) ; do
ln -s $( readlink $i ).gz $i.gz ; rm $i
done
)
# Compress info pages and remove the package's dir file:
rm -f $PKG/usr/info/dir
gzip -9 $PKG/usr/info/*.info*
# Copy program documentation into the package:
mkdir -p $PKG/usr/doc/indent-$VERSION
cp -a \
AUTHORS COPYING* NEWS README \
$PKG/usr/doc/indent-$VERSION
chmod 644 $PKG/usr/doc/indent-$VERSION/*
mkdir -p $PKG/install
cat $CWD/slack-desc > $PKG/install/slack-desc
# Build the package:
cd $PKG
/sbin/makepkg -l y -c n $TMP/indent-$VERSION-$ARCH-$BUILD.txz
As I have installed texlive 2012 in stead of tetex from the stock Slackware, the newer version of texi2html program does not support the -number option anymore, it has changed to two separate options --number-footnotes and --number-sections.
A patched is developed for it to compile with the new texi2html:
--- indent-2.2.11/doc/Makefile.in 2010-01-31 08:25:21.000000000 -0800
+++ indent-2.2.11.new/doc/Makefile.in 2012-12-05 11:40:30.130229271 -0800
@@ -663,14 +663,14 @@
html-split: @PACKAGE@_toc.html
@PACKAGE@.html: version.texi $(@PACKAGE@_TEXINFOS)
- $(TEXI2HTML) -expandinfo -number -monolithic `if test -f @PACKAGE@.texinfo; then echo @PACKAGE@.texinfo; else echo $(srcdir)/@PACKAGE@.texinfo; fi`
+ $(TEXI2HTML) -expandinfo --number-sections --number-footnotes -monolithic `if test -f @PACKAGE@.texinfo; then echo @PACKAGE@.texinfo; else echo $(srcdir)/@PACKAGE@.texinfo; fi`
@PACKAGE@_toc.html: version.texi $(@PACKAGE@_TEXINFOS)
case "$(TEXI2HTML)" in \
*"/missing texi2html") \
- $(TEXI2HTML) -expand info -number -nomenu -split section `if test -f @PACKAGE@.texinfo; then echo @PACKAGE@.texinfo; else echo $(srcdir)/@PACKAGE@.texinfo; fi` || exit 0 ;; \
+ $(TEXI2HTML) -expand info --number-sections --number-footnotes -nomenu -split section `if test -f @PACKAGE@.texinfo; then echo @PACKAGE@.texinfo; else echo $(srcdir)/@PACKAGE@.texinfo; fi` || exit 0 ;; \
*) $(RM) @PACKAGE@_*.html ; \
- $(TEXI2HTML) -expand info -number -nomenu -split section `if test -f @PACKAGE@.texinfo; then echo @PACKAGE@.texinfo; else echo $(srcdir)/@PACKAGE@.texinfo; fi` ;; \
+ $(TEXI2HTML) -expand info --number-sections --number-footnotes -nomenu -split section `if test -f @PACKAGE@.texinfo; then echo @PACKAGE@.texinfo; else echo $(srcdir)/@PACKAGE@.texinfo; fi` ;; \
esac
install-html-monolithic: @PACKAGE@.html
The compilation went smoothly after applying all the patches and the regression is fixed.