Cannot Load Run Extension (TCL Noob)

[Drone]

Hi, This is David in Jakarta. I am running TCL for the first time from a bootable CDROM (only, no HDD or other persistent storage, for now) and wanted to try an application qucs.tcz which downloads OK from the repository including deps and I get a qucs icon on the desktop. But when I click the qucs icon nothing happens, also same (nothing) when right-click the desktop and select Applications > qucs.

Read the Wiki etc. Maybe I'm missing something. Tried OnDemand and Download + Load from the Appbrowser when installing the qucs application. Maybe I'm missing something about how TCL works. I assume a one time try for an application from LiveCD would load and install in RAM and be available(?)

Either I'm missing something obvious or the qucs.tcz app is broken? Again I'm a total Noob to TCL but familiar with SLAX and SliTaz.

Tried with an IBM T-30 Laptop (PIII Tualatin at 1.2 GHz and 1GB SDRAM) and a desktop PIII 700MHz 512kB (edit: 512MB) SDRAM. (yeah I know, ancient HW - but I like it).

Thanks for any help...

Regards, David

[tinypoodle]

512kB SDRAM. (yeah I know, ancient HW - but I like it).

That is indeed ancient, and even a bit low in RAM for DOS. 

Suspecting you might mean MB instead of kB...

[Drone]

Ya, tinypoodle, you got me. 512MB. Sorry, been dealing with uC stuff too today, so easy to mix kB/MB. But this Qucs thing even with the Qt deps should do fine IMO with what I have in terms of RAM(?)

[gerald_clark]

Works for me, so I booted base norestore.
Now I get a Segmentation Fault.

Seems to need Xvesa.

[tinypoodle]

Umm... when you boot base norestore you would indeed run Xvesa, no?

[gerald_clark]

No.
Xvesa.tcz is a separate package.
I booted TC with base norestore.
I ran 'tce-load -iw qucs'
Qucs seg faults.
I ran 'tce-load -iw Xvesa'
I entered CTRL-ALT-BACKSPACE
I ran xtartx.
Now qucs runs.

[tinypoodle]

Oh ok, gotcha now.
Had noticed myself on occasion that certain behaviours could be different between Xvesa in base and Xvesa extension.

[maro]

I had a quick look into running 'qucs' with 'strace' against first the "Core" Xvesa (resulting in the expected segfault) and 'Xvesa.tcz'. I could not easily see an obvious difference, so I ran it under 'gdb' and did a backtrace:

(gdb) bt
#0  0xb6b284fd in XInput_find_display () from /usr/lib/libXi.so.6
#1  0xb6b26c32 in XListInputDevices () from /usr/lib/libXi.so.6
#2  0xb6f3031c in qt_init_internal () from /usr/local/lib/libqt-mt.so.3
#3  0xb6f32956 in qt_init () from /usr/local/lib/libqt-mt.so.3
#4  0xb6fa4051 in QApplication::construct () from /usr/local/lib/libqt-mt.so.3
#5  0xb6fa44e4 in QApplication::QApplication ()
   from /usr/local/lib/libqt-mt.so.3
#6  0x0807f294 in ?? ()
#7  0xbffad140 in ?? ()
#8  0xbffad280 in ?? ()
#9  0xbffad324 in ?? ()
#10 0xffffffff in ?? ()
#11 0x00000000 in ?? ()

I've done the same quick test with two other extensions (i.e. 'qps.tcz' and 'cutecom-0.14.2.tcz') that depend on 'qt-3.3.8b-xorg.tcz': they all segfault with the "Core" Xvesa (in the same way as above) and work fine when using 'Xvesa.tcz'. My hunch was that 'qt-3.3.8b-xorg.tcz' was built against 'Xorg-7.4', but that might not be correct.

So, I guess this is now a "case" for those that understand these matters better than I do ...

[Drone]

So @Gerald_Clark you said, "I ran xtartx", did you mean "startx"? Thanks all for looking into this, I"m still here but a lot of this is over my head as  a TCL Noob... David

[gerald_clark]

Yes, startx.
Get a USB thumb drive and put a /tce directory on it so you can have persistent storage.
Then you can install Xvesa and qucs.
If your machine can boot USB, then that would be even better.

[Jason W]

Rebuilding qt-3.3.8b-xorg.tcz against the current Xorg did not make a difference, qps still requires the newer and more capable Xvesa.tcz extension.     Debian's qps package shows the same behavior, running with the newer Xvesa but not the one in base.  So I don't think rebuilding qps or other qt3 apps will make a difference.

This is one of the few shortcomings of the smaller Xvesa in base aside from the lack of numlock light, and for either issue using the Xvesa extension or Xorg would be the way to go.