[Sussex] Knoppix 3.9 / pen drive test - volunteers wanted

[Stephen Williams]

Frances,

I've tried Knoppix 3.9 on my Dell Precision M50 and had no problems
writing to a USB pen drive.

Can't get it to reproduce your problems at all.

Steve Williams.



On Mon, 2005-07-11 at 01:03 +0100, Frances Fleming wrote:
> Knoppix 3.9 hangs or errors when saving to my pen drive - so  had no pro
> calling for volunteers to test drive it.
> 
> As most of you will know, I help man our stand at the BCF Worthing,
> where we promote and sell the live Knoppix disk. I take my laptop
> along and give demonstrations of some of the applications, including
> saving to and opening from the pen drive.
> 
> So the workings of any new Knoppix are of interest to me.
> If any of you can get hold of the Knoppix 3.9 live disk, could I
> please ask you to do a test drive for me? The five tests are listed
> at the foot of this posting.
> The tests are specifically related to use of a USB pen drive.
> 
> I have been using the live Knoppix disks for OpenOffice trials of
> Writer, Calc and Impress, and for Gimp.
> My laptop is a Dell Latitude C640 with 256MB RAM.
> My friend's laptop is a Toshiba Tecra, unsure what RAM.
> One of my PCs is a Packard Bell with 256MB RAM.
> The pen drive is a Kingston DataTraveler USB 2.0.
> All above machines recognise the pen drive automatically and
> display its icon on the desktop.
> I then go into its properties, change it to be writable and remount.
> The pen drive holds several files created on my various Linux
> machines and some Windows files.
> 
> With the Knoppix 3.8 I had no problems saving GIMP or OOo 1.4 files
> to my Kingston pen drive and reopening files located on the same
> pen drive either via the pen drive icon or via the application's
> File > Open menu.
> 
> The Knoppix 3.9 disk features OOo 2.0 (or I think really 1.9??) and
> the GIMP 2.2.7. Both suites work really well at the create stage..
> 
> But with 3.9 on either laptop it hangs on any of the following
> operations:
> Test 3:
> - From File > Save, browse to the pen drive and save the file.
>   - obviously requires browsing to the pen drive mount point:
>     just trying to open /mnt mostly locks dialog up completely
>     requiring Knoppix restart. At least this can be done via
>     the GUI log out button.
>     So wasn't able to save a GIMP or OOo file for first time.
> Test 4:
> - From File > Open, browse to the pen drive and repoen the file.
>   - In my case this has to be a file saved by the earlier 3.8 disk.
>     Same problem with browsing via dialog, so no success.
> Test 5:
> - Repoen the file via the pen drive icon on the desktop.
>   - Again I only had files saved by the earlier 3.8 disk.
>     Has never succeeded. Yes, it launches OpenOffice. Yes, the
>     file progress bar displays. But ends with blank, grey screen.
>     Which will not close via any of the GUI methods. Requires GUI
>     machine restart, otherwise won't launch any other OOo app.
> However, if by much patience and restarting the disk, I manage
> to save a file (I did it in GIMP), it will reopen it fine (but only from
> the pen
> drive icon on the desktop, not through the application's
> File > Open menu).
> 
> There is a slight difference in performance on my desktop:
> Test 3:
> - From File > Save, browse to the pen drive and save the file.
>   - browsing to the pen drive mount point was no problem.
>     Trying to save a Writer file resulted in this message:
>     Error saving the document Untitled1:
>     /mnt/uba1/fay_test_writer.odt does not exist.
>     Clicking OK resulted in a second message:
>     Error saving the document Untitled1:
>     General Error.
>     General input/output error.
> Test 6:
> - Repeat using a floppy if you have one.
>   - my desktop has a floppy drive, and I couldn't even save
>     to that. I couln't even save a plain editor file.
> 
> This is obviously a big issue, not only because I demonstrate
> the disk at the Worthing BCF but because we also sell them.
> Last Sunday, I switched back from the troublesome new 3.9 disk
> to the tried and trusted 3.8 disk. After the fair I tried a
> different disk with the same result.
> 
> I naturally want all our customers to have the best possible
> experience with the live Knoppix disk, whether they use a
> desktop or laptop, or do or don't use a pen drive.
> 
> So could I please ask for volunteers to test drive the 3.9
> version (or 4 if we're going to start selling that)?
> It doesn't matter what sort of laptop or desktop you have,
> but please specify both the machine and the pen drive.
> 
> Please test with both GIMP and OpenOffice.
> The tests are:
> 1. Mount your USB pen drive write enabled.
> 2. Open GIMP or OpenOffice application and create a file.
> 3. From File > Save, browse to the pen drive and save the file.
> 4. From File > Open, browse to the pen drive and repoen the file.
> 5. Repoen the file via the pen drive icon on the desktop.
> 6. Repeat using a floppy if you have one.
> 
> Thanks in advance.
> P.S. Please remember that this test is on behalf of users
> who may never have heard of the CLI :)
> 
> P.P.S. If 3.9 won't save easily to any pen drive or floppy,
> we will know to warn our customers, or better, give them a
> choice between the earlier 3.8 and the newer 3.9.
> 
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