Puppy Linux 4.3.1 Respin 8/2017

This board posts about running linux on your webdt366
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quotaholic
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Puppy Linux 4.3.1 Respin 8/2017

Post by quotaholic »

Hello All,

To help a friend I remade Matts old work on a functional Puppy 4.3.1 image with working touch screen and hard buttons over yesterday. This post will describe two ways to install puppy linux to your webdt while linking to other peoples work on the same endeavor. Thank you to Volkswagner for keeping this resource alive all these years!!!!

Below is a link to a DD image that will need to be flashed to the DT for installation....

OR:

You can install puppy 4.3.1 to your DT via normal USB installation and then move over the pup-431.sfs, pupsave.2fs and pupswap.swp files to your installation.

Reports are that pupswap.swp file is optional however I have not tried to delete. It was automatically created by puppy during the build. Since this tablet is set to copy to ram for faster operation there is less available ram and puppy makes these swap files automatically if enough disk space exists. The swap file is 100megs. Ideal install moves .2fs and .sfs files to compact flash card freeing up room on internal flash and leaving as "read only" as possible. This may slow down your experience some as the bus speed on the tablet and cf reader are around usb 1.1 speeds. The internal flash does offer more speed so like most things the more we want to add, speed may take a hit.

The reason for such old linux is that the bios on DT366 "non upgraded" is old and has small space for loading kernel. If I tried with a newer puppy I get errors about too large of bio loop.

I use virtual clone drive on windows and when installing VCD check the box for associating to .img files. Right click on the .img and mount it. This will allow you to copy files out of the image I have made. This will make it easy to copy the needed files (pup-431.sfs - pupsave.2fs) to either your installed puppy or the installer usb or even a compact flash card. Puppy Linux is great about finding these .sfs and .2fs files on boot. In theory one can move these to a compact flash card after installation and make even more room on the internal flash.

I have two of the older DT366 GX units and one has a larger hard drive (524mb total) while one is smaller(500mg total). If you DD the smaller image to a larger hard drive you may have 20 megs of unusable space you may never claim. That being said the usb stick install to your DT may be best and it is easy as one does not need a hub. Just usb stick and a keyboard that works on DT. Tip - avoid usb3 and look for the media center mouse / keyboard combinations with rf receiver if you do not have.

I found LILI universal linux installer to make the usb better than unetbootin. So this is scavenger hunt now in that we need to find puppy-4.3.1 iso to make usb stick with and Lili universal linux installer. you should be able to find these easily. If not here are links:

Lili:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/m5msaotu97ukp ... 4.exe?dl=0

Puppy-4.3.1 ISO:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/0z21dv5xyvr8p ... 1.iso?dl=0

Now all you need is a usb stick and usb keyboard.

Once you are ready here is a download link for the puppy dd image I made with working hard buttons and touchscreen.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/92mabrrapn6xq ... 1.img?dl=0

Again, two paths to install. Install stock way following Matts post linked below and then move the needed files over OR
Boot to Puppy with IMG file on same stick and dd the image to the WebDT. Here is a link to a post on how to DD an image to the internal flash of your WebDT:
forum/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=166

In essence we need to be in a live operating system that is not writing to disk. Puppy does this. If you have img file on puppy usb that tablet was booted to the command may look like this to flash your webdt:

Code: Select all

dd if=/mnt/home/WebDT366GX-SmHD-Puppy-4.3.1.img of=/dev/sda
Bear in mind that paths may be different and looking at mount points and folder locations is recommended in order to flash correctly.

Within /root/my-applications/bin/ are the scripts that fire off the keyboard and do the suspend and wake actions. wakeandsuspend and togglekeyboard,sh
Within /root/.jwm/jwm-personal is the rc file that holds keybindings just scroll to bottom of file for the section I added.
Within /root/.Xmodmap is a conversion for keycodes to keypresses. This maps the dpad and the 4 hard buttons.

Between these three files one can adjust what the buttons are doing and what happens when pressed. I do not have the right side button at this time. If enough interest exists I can attempt to write a udev rule that will make /dev/input/event3 kick out keycodes opposed to scan codes upon button press. Xmodmap can only bind keycodes and the scancodes that result when that button is pressed currently do not have scripts in place to convert and bind to that button. After I move half way around the country next week I may have more time to put to....

Another note: Xvkbd gets finicky on live operating systems. When using xvkbd look for the focus button. This needs to be toggled in order for typing to take in to other windows.

The pupsave.2fs save file for the above image is only 32mb. Please expand this after you install if you need more save space. Do not take up the whole drive as I find buttons stop working when the drive is completely utilized. There is enough space within the save file to fit the below linked opera browser, no expansion needed to install opera. That being said upon booting you may see only 1mb of ram available an a tip to resize storage. This is done by:

Menu > Utils> Resize personal storage

A window will pop up explaining the options and will let you know what you have left for space. Upon install, even through the image is 500megabytes, there will be 200mg of free disk space. This will show on the pop up window and when resizing personal storage remember to try not to take all the space available. I choose 16mb at a time and gradually increase the size as needed. The image file I made includes this free space.

All of Matts original posts are valid for this image as not much has changed with exception to the date. Credit goes to Matt for all the work on this, I really just went line for line on his instructions. Matts original build post:

forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=300

This image is old. The kernel is 2.6 series. Wifi b is it and with that if you want to connect to the internet with this go right ahead. I would imagine that the internal browser is dated. Here is a link to a slightly newer opera browser that looks to work on the DT:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/vprh31lshjts4 ... d.pet?dl=0

I have not tested on a DT360 or a LX800 equipped 366. According to this post you should have a good experience:
viewtopic.php?f=23&t=434
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