Slackware, Sid, lags + Nvidia 334.21

To make this shortish story a bit longer, let's start with that I clean-installed Slackware-current over my 14.1 ... because after last patches etc it had developed various quirks which annoyed me a bit. And when the choice is between spending x-hours hunting mysterious faults or spending some 3 hours with new and virginal install/rebuild - I'll pick the last one, period.
Install and rebuild were quite uneventful - nothing to whine over ... Maybe of the contrary - some 2-3 bugs with apps in 14.1 had resolved themselves meanwhile. And it helps to have previous install-list of apps, deps and shit.

But when attempting to install (previously used in 14.1 ) binary Nvidia driver 331.49, I had sudden 'unknown libEGL.so' problem, and no install. So I went for the latest beta - 334.21, which installed with no problems.
... Well, week before or so also smxi in my Debian Sid had got the same driver installed (after Xorg update, as the 'current nvidia'). And I had started to experience some lagging with mouse and keyboard. Sorta, occasional 1-2 seconds before slider moved, or mouse click registered or typed letter appeared. Bloody annoying, that! But, frankly, I thought that the culprit is some other critter of myriad of Sids' upgrades - and that it goes away with next bunch.
Now, after I installed the same driver to Slackware - and at once started to experience lags, I sure reconsidered. As an afterthought - it was most probably some kind of not-syncing between this Nvidia driver and Compton compositor.
Anyway, I didn't want to part with Compton, so I downgraded the Nvidia driver - and successfully, despite:

1. Slackware - previous installers' libEGL crap and no install.
I went to runlevel 3, did separate
sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-334.21.run --uninstall
without letting Nvidia to restore previous xorg.conf (no idea if that matters), then slackpkg search mesa && slackpkg reinstall mesa-9.1.7-x86_64-1 to be sure I don't have leftovers from Nvidia (as I heard, Nvidia overwrites some of mesas' files). Then:
sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-319.49.run
with 32bit support and 'yes' to overwrite xorg.conf.
Success, no whining from installer, AND - no more lags!

2. Sid. Not with smxi help this time, but manually:
telinit 1
sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-334.21.run --uninstall
That finished with installers' ominous whine about leftover symlinks. Whatever... I decided also not to bother with mesa and press on and see what happens:
sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-331.49.run
'Yes, do install' - to installers' worry about 'maybe runlevel 1 is not good...'
With 32bit support, 'Yes' to overwrite conf.
Success, and no more lags!

Simpleminded conclusion: If you experience lags (especially after pointless upgrade to latest/greatest Nvidia driver), try downgrading a bit. Beta really was Beta, in my case.

Debian Sid 64bit and adb push

Took me only couple of days after rooting and already I was craving for a mod. Decided to start restrainedly though, and downloaded Cyanogenmod (rather lean, no bloat, good tutorials, and a lot of phones supported).
... And bricked my S3 when trying to flash Cyanogen from ext-sdcard. Means, I suddenly had a phone without system (which I wiped as per instructions) AND not-functioning update zips and also, a restore nandroid with 'error - failed'.

/ Participants: Debian Sid, Galaxy S3 I9300, rooted with: Clockworkmod Recovery, Clockworks' superuser/
## What gives?
The symptoms and happenings:
I had (when I rooted) copied superuser and some jpg-s to sdcard with ordinary file manager. And I had no perceivable problems... So I did the same again - copied cm-10.2.0-i9300.zip and gapps-jb-20130813-signed.zip to sdcard via file manager.

1. Copying went super-fast, like - poof! ... err, what ... let's see:
-- From CWM-recovery - 'install from zip' - and error, and failed.
I tried (after copying whole sdcard to PC) formatting the sdcard in various ways and copying then stuff back to sdcard:
1,5 Gigs in 5 seconds! Bloody hell, quantum computing! Checked md5-s - and incredibly, they were correct...?... But the usage showed approx 300 Megs of written data in sdacrd... shit this quantum.

Let's go for correct/adviced adb route, then:
2. I installed android-tools-adb from Debian REPO. After playing around with sudo and no-sudo, and after adding file /etc/udev/rules.d/51-android.rules with content:
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTR{idVendor}=="18d1", MODE="0666"
-- idVendor number comes when you 'lsusb' and pick your probable sdcard device from output - and it's the first half of ID-number.
I got 'pushing' working ... errr, NO - it took time alright, and gave happy stats - BUT, there appeared NOTHING onto sdcard. Shit and hell...

3. So I thought that maybe Debians' adb is a bit oldish for a newish Android 4.3.1
Downloaded adt-pack - 64bit ! - from dev page, unpacked and tried to run nice new exec 'adb'. What I got was 'No such file or directory'. No error messages. Googled and googled and...:

4. Installed missing 32bit libraries. Yes, 32bit! (Shit and hell and MS!)
sudo apt-get install libc6-i386
sudo apt-get install libncurses5:i386
sudo apt-get install libstdc++6:i386

sudo adb start-server  # and for stop 'sudo adb kill-server'
(sudo) adb devices  # because I am already paranoid with all adb, and add sudo to adb-farting too...
sudo adb remount  # IF you have suspicion that sdcard is NOT -rw mounted.
sudo adb shell  # navigate to your sdcard, keep an eye on it with 'ls -la', to be sure.

Then - holy moment - I did it like that (command as long and precise as possible. Paranoid, I said)
sudo adb push filename.zip /storage/sdcard1/filename.zip
I got 'failed' and 'no permission'... fortunately I had shelled before - 'ls' showed - yes, there is a file! I decided to proceed and see what happens - I copied all files and:

## Phone-side,
(Check that /system and /sdcard are still mounted),
'install from zip'
AND, incredibly, it installed both - Cyanogenmod and GApps.
Unplug cable, unmount /system and /sdcard, reboot.
2 min wait looking at spinning Cyanogen-critter (high stroke-risk!)
and welcome to Cyanogen...
:)
The conclusion: 64bit (adb) + 64bit (debian) should equal 64bit (whatever), and IF there is some third player to take to account, then bloody, this 32bit dependency should be THE required dependency. *&^^&%$%$#%#$.

Rooting guide for Samsung Galaxy S3

... and now, something complitely different...
The point of the following - I did spend much time to find the correct way to root my Galaxy S3 (GT-I9300). So I think that one more guide is proper.

Some useful educational links:
S3 in xda,  how to root S3, how to root with Clockwork, Clockwork-recovery guide.
A bit more blah: It's my first smartphone, and no - I did not feel like more 'socializing' but I was thinking about 'little thingy with database and text editing capabilities I can carry with me'. I started thinking about tablet but dropped the idea as impractical - reaching conclusion that only thing  'always carryable' is a phone. After some reasearch into rooting I bought S3 - as certainly rootable and also currently very cheap.
And - some very basic info about rooting:
- Why? For removing bloatware and to use some apps which are unavailable/un-installable for unrooted devices.
- You loose your warranty.
- You might brick your phone.

What I did:
Installed heimdall in Sid, flashed my phone with Clockwork-recovery and installed Clockworks' superuser.

!- With a new phone, it's probably good to wait for first big system-upgrade of your phone - as after rooting you don't get them anymore.

# Meanwhile, download:
- heimdall files (has readymade debs),
- Clockwork recovery,
- superuser.zip (of Clockwork... and, I lost the link),
- and some wallpapers - which you can test-copy from your PC to phones' SD-card when first time in recovery-mode.

# Install heimdall (two debs, cli and gui frontend) to your debian (sid). I did that with simple dpkg -i. Also, heimdall is in Debians' repo too - but, naturally, those are older versions.
And do get readme from here.

# Open up heimdall: sudo heimdall-frontend. 'Sudo' is a must!

!- Do not proceed until your phone is 100% charged. That's a standard warning. Now, it's not very probable that your phone runs out of juice during those couple of seconds when replacing /RECOVERY - BUT, if it does, you get at least soft-brick. So, do charge this bloody battery.

# Insert usb cables' PC end.
- boot the phone to download-mode : Power+Voldown+Home : accept disclaimer.
- connect usb cables' phone-end.

# In heimdall:
- check 'no reboot' because afterwards you want to go to recovery-mode, not to standard reboot. DO NOT check repartition - as this formats your whole phone.
- in 'utilities' tab - 'detect' to be sure your device is detected.
- save the PIT from your phone. In the Download PIT section of the 'Utilities' tab, click the Save As button, navigate to ~/your-correct-folder-for-that-file and enter a file name such as GT-I9300.pit.
Save.
Also, maybe it's wise to check 'verbose' in 'Advanced'-menu.
- Go to 'flash' tab, browse for .pit you saved. When .pit is found, 'add' button gets activated. Press 'Add' and pick your folder to flash and file to flash with.
Correct folder is /RECOVERY and file is recovery-clockwork-6.0.4.6-i9300.img - at this moment anyway.
Click START button (I did that process twice - as the first attempt didn't do a thing). The second one was a success.

# When/if you get success-message, unplug usb and go to recovery-mode: VolUp+Home+Power
Have this super-guide open in your PC.
- Do system backup to SD-card.
- install superuser.zip (which you already copied from your PC to SD-card together with those wallpapers.
- And do whatever you want... errrr... - Don't wipe your system, but you can wipe cache - which is good thing to do, occasionally.

# Reboot normally. Install terminal emulator and do 'su' there to verify successful rooting. Then install no-bloat and clean out all shit. After that clean out 'no-bloat' too...
And then you can re-bloat your phone with all those very-important-special-apps-you-always-wanted.
I suppose that most of Samsungs' devices (phones, tablets) can be rooted with the same general procedure - if there are proper images to be found.

AlpineLinux install etc

Visiting fringes (chapter 1) or,
to put it diplomatically - trying out distros outside of top twenty.
The point - looking for a new pet when Debian goes systemd, or - God forbid - the same happens to my home - beloved Slackware. Also, seeking some cheap thrill.

Somewhere I noticed that AlpineLinux is a distro with busybox and open-rc. It also has its' own package manager - apk, which has dependency-check. And the distro was mentioned as lean alternative desktop (despite it being officially oriented "for x86 Routers, Firewalls, VPNs, VoIP and servers"). Desktops are: XFCE, Gnome, Openbox, Fluxbox - at least. Slim and lxdm are display managers.
What follows here is: a) A short description of various installs up to desktop; b) At the end there is also short list of apps that are not available in this distro - for pre-consideration, because install certainly takes some time.

# Install (to sda7, without grub)
I dd-d ISO to usb-stick and booted without any problems.
It lands to console, where you login as root (enter). Then:
mount -t ext4 /dev/sda7 /mnt
setup-timezone
setup-alpine -q
setup-sshd
setup-ntp
setup-disk -m sys /mnt
And it should be installed (it was mind-bogglingly fast procedure).
umount && reboot

Then I went and fixed my master-grub in wheezy, added into
/boot/grub/grub.cfg:
menuentry "Alpine Linux, sda7" {
 set root=(hd0,7)
 linux /boot/vmlinuz-grsec root=UUID=ba5767878-4a8c-40ed-b710-c4e2b42d6b7a modules=sd-mod,usb-storage,ext4 quiet
 initrd /boot/initramfs-grsec
}
Rebooted to Alpine.

# Post-install. There is a lot to do - nothing got installed but pure system.
Comment first line  - /media/usb/apks - in your /etc/apk/repositories
or apk will whine warnings all the time.
setup-apkcache  # enable local cache, store packs locally. I am not sure it's needed witk hdd-install, but I did it anyway.
apk update  # update package-list.
apk upgrade  # upgrade what's installed.

And here we go with adding shit and all:
apk add nano  # trying to avoid vim :)
apk add bash bash-doc  # default shell is ash. In /etc/passwd , changed shell to /bin/bash
adduser myusername
nano /etc/group and I added my fresh user to groups: lp, audio, video, cdrom, plugdev, netdev, power, wheel (and whatever).
nano /etc/sudoers and uncommented 'allow wheel members whatever sudo thingy' at near files' end.

Back to adding things:
apk add perl automake cmake build-base qt sudo
setup-xorg-base  # this one is script
apk add xorg-server
Evdev, mouse and keyboard came automatically. But not video:
apk search xf86-video   # to find what drivers there are. For me it was
apk add xf86-video-nouveau
NB! It seems that it's impossible to install Nvidia binary, so, nouveau it has to be.
I did not 'Xorg -configure' - it started without that.

apk add udev  # Manual says that you should do the following below. I forgot, and then I discovered that it was already automagically done ... but whatever:
/etc/init.d/udev start && /etc/init.d/udev-postmount start
rc-update add udev sysinit
rc-update add udev-postmount default

apk add xfce4-terminal xarchiver
First one brought a pile of good things (cairo, pango, hicolor...)
apk add openbox
touch ~/.xinitrc && echo "exec openbox-session" >> ~/.xinitrc

# startx
Now, I suppose that whomever installs Alpine, already has a bunch of confs hoarded - and now it's time to copy-and-fix them for Alpine. From .config/openbox/* to .bashrc and gtk.
After that I installed fonts (search 'font' in alpinelinux.org 'Packages' for suitable ones), gtk+2.0, gtkmm, gtkmm-dev (and with gtk's there will be enormous pile of nice addons), gtk-engines, coreutils, py-gtk, firefox, pcmanfm, geany, feh, conky, alsa.
Alsa wants also something like that:
alsactl init
rc-update add alsa
rc-service alsa start

# What is not there, of my favourite basics:
obconf, lxappearance, spacefm, medit, nitrogen, tint2, compton, smplayer, volumeicon, wmctrl, xdotool...
Wmctrl I made from from source, it needs libxmu-dev.
It's not possible to make spacefm and udevil (in reasonable way) - and that is quite a showstopper for me.
Volumeicon - it compiled, through some wrestling, but didn't work anyway.
That is the point I reached currently.
To mention more not-there-apps-and-shit: LXDE, Mate, lxpanel, leafpad, gedit, libreoffice, meld, gcolor2, qeeqie, chromium ... etc.

# Conclusion
Desktop on AlpineLinux is definitely possible. IF available stuff is of your taste. I am missing some 80% of what I prefere... Compiling in Alpine is ...errr ... hit and miss.
So, despite that I kinda like Alpine - and it's fast alright - it looks, I am on the road again.
Also see - the second round of Alpines' install - Lenovo laptop.