Release Switch GUI: Openbox


OS upgrade didn't matter for me.

Openbox was down but I reinstalled i and all m configurations were back.

It's only some seconds to get your stuff back.
 
icMjfzg.png


New version so it isn't broken by Pandora OS upgrade.

Image above shows all the menu options. From the top:

"Programs" is the new name for PNDs. The program that generates this menu is now running as a daemon (rather than starting up every time you open the menu), so it's quicker to show up all your applications.

"Web Browser" will launch either jujamji, or midori, or Firefox, or links2 - in that order, depending on what you have.

"PND Installer" will launch PND Manager, or PND Store if you don't have it.

"Connectivity" lets you turn the relevant hardware and software on or off, depending on its current state (the screenshot is me using my wifi adapter - so USB host and network applet are both on).

"Pandora Settings" is for changing Pandora-specific setting (these entries used to be in PNDs -> Settings)

"Openbox Config" is the new name for "Config". There's a new entry called "Save / Load keybindings", which'll let you save your currently used keybinding to a file, and load a new one, because it's not always easy to find a universal one that doesn't interfere with each application own's keybindings.

"Power Off" is now a menu that lets you shutdown, or restart, or suspend.

Keybindings

(if you're upgrading, these will only apply if you say 'yes' when its asks about overwriting your rc.xml file)

These are based on Askarus's set. Bear in mind that Ctrl is also the Right Trigger and Shift is also the Left Trigger.

Ctrl + DPAD Left Go to Desktop 1

Ctrl + DPAD Right Go to Desktop 2

Ctrl + DPAD Down Scroll Down through your currently open applications (like Alt-Tab does on PCs)

Ctrl + DPAD Up Scroll Up through your currently open applications

Ctrl + 1 Show Client menu (the one you get with Alt + Space in XFCE)

Ctrl + 2 Roll current application up (minimize it so just the top bar is showing), or roll it back down again

Ctrl + 3 Minimize current application to the taskbar

Ctrl + 4 Maximize current application

Ctrl + 5 Make the current application's client area fill the whole screen

Ctrl + 6 Launch the terminal

Ctrl + 7 Launch a web browser (same rules as the "Web Browser" entry in the root menu)

Ctrl + 8 Launch the file manager

Ctrl + 9 Shows a menu listing all running application across all desktops

Ctrl + 0 Minimize all apps and show the desktop

Ctrl + q Quit the current application.

These are the main ones - there's some other ones in rc.xml (Root Menu -> Openbox Config -> Edit rc.xml). You'll probably want to change them (and are encouraged to do so, in fact). Mine are a bit limited, because my shoulder buttons are broke and my shift key is acting up a bit.

Other changes this version

There should be better mapping between Nitrogen (background chooser) and hsetroot (background setter on restarts), but it relies on you choosing 'tiled' or 'scaled' or 'centered' if you've got an image that doesn't fit the screen (don't choose 'automatic', in other words).

There's now an Openbox Removal Tool if you want to remove it completely.

If you want to have your panel at the bottom, and have the warlock bar above it (as seen in the screenshots at the repo, and as requested by Askarus ages ago), you can use the --offset switch (Root Menu -> Openbox Config -> Edit wbar-custom.cfg and add something like --offset 30) and then do Root Menu -> Openbox Config -> Reload Warlock Bar
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Looks great!

Problem though: the PND menu no longer works, it says "Invalid output from pipe-menu "cat /var/volatile/tmp/obcache/progmenu"".

I guess something must be wrong with the menu daemon.
 
you forgot to mention:

CTRL + ALT + DPAD Right/LEFT: Move application to next/previous workspace.

I think this is important as well.

Shortcuts on numbers are a nice addition.

I'll test soon.

Great to have a moveable warlock bar now.
 
Broken for me too, in more ways than one.

I installed and noticed that it was trying to download from the net. I enabled Wifi, and re-installed - wget pulled down a load of packages and then complained about not having owndership of /backup/* and quit. I tried to switch to OpenBox, and it just asked me for username and password before booting back into XFCE.

I re-installed without Wifi enabled and it works now. 

I just have no PND menu as for _wb_ above - invalid output from pipe-menu error, so it's still not usable.

D.
 
Oh. The idea was that it would install from openpandora.org/feeds if you were online, and - if not - it would install the same ipks from inside the PND if you weren't.

When you press the Pandora key for the "Programs" menu, does everyone always get an error, or just the first time? If you wait a few secs, then try again, does it still error?
 
It keeps producing errors. How is the daemon called? I think it's just not running. The file mentioned in the error message doesn't exist.
 
The daemon is called openbox-menu. It's started in /usr/bin/openbox-pandora-session.

If you had Openbox as your default GUI, it may be that it's not running the right file (I changed it so I wasn't over-writing files from the Openbox package at openpandora.org/feeds).

Can you check $HOME/.xinitrc, and make sure it's got DEFAULT_SESSION=/usr/bin/openbox-pandora-session ?

(not DEFAULT_SESSION=/usr/bin/openbox-session)
 
I'm using the right one, openbox-pandora-session. The problem seems to be that openbox-menu somehow crashes, at least when I manually start it with the same arguments:

 

Code:
$ openbox-menu -p -o progmenu /etc/xdg/menus/openbox-pnd.menu  


** (openbox-menu:7707): CRITICAL **: get_safe_name: assertion `name != NULL' failed
Segmentation fault

 
 
Hmm. That shouldn't happen. I'll try to make it crash, and see if it can be fixed.
 
Ok - I couldn't replicate the crash but I can see where it would segfault with a NULL name (it's the part where I added some code myself, unsurprisingly).

Please can someone try the updated version?
 
Had to run the installer twice: the first time it tried to wget stuff, which failed because wifi was down, and it said it used the ipks from inside the pnd, but it didn't.

The second time it worked, and now the PND menu works again. I don't notice a difference in speed though, it's still laggy.
 
Also: the subcategory "Others" of "Games" appears not under Games, but in the top level of "Programs" (this is not new, but I forgot to report it earlier).
 
Yep, menu is working fine here. As _wb_ says, there's still an appreciable lag between highlighting the "Programs" menu and it actually opening - about two seconds, so no real change to the responsiveness. It only happens once per menu opening operation, but it does happen every time you open the menu and navigate to the Programs option. No chance that the contents could be cached?

D.
 
I installed loads of PNDs today, trying to find the one that was causing the NULL problem. I didn't find it, but I do now see what you mean about lag.

When you click "Programs", all it's doing is "cat /tmp/obcache/progmenu" - i.e. crapping out the contents of a file that's already in memory (since /tmp is mounted on memory). The delay isn't because the data isn't cached, it's because 'progmenu' is a big file.

That said, now I've seen the lag myself, I can start working on a way to make it less noticeable.
 
Please do - the lag only exists in XFCE when the menu is first opened, usually after a re-scan of PNDs due to an SD card insertion. Thereafter it's nnot present, which is nice.

Other than that, this is a very nice UI - one other request would be to move the menu to the Pandora-icon when you press the Pandora button. I have my taskbar at the bottom of the screen, and when I press the button the menu opens at the top of the screen, kind of destroying the "anchor" effect that the Pandora icon suggests.

D.
 
I installed loads of PNDs today, trying to find the one that was causing the NULL problem. I didn't find it, but I do now see what you mean about lag.
If the problem is due to a bad PXML in a PND then it may be possible to identify it using PNDManager.

If _wb_ or someone else who experienced the problem starts PNDManager, then checks the pndrun.out file with:


grep -A7 "PXML:" /tmp/pndrun_pndmanager.out
They should get a list of any PND they have with a PXML that libpndman can't parse.

In my case it was an old version of scummvm and sdl-ball.

- Neelix
 
First thing I tried was launching the 'Set Background' utility from the 'Openbox Config' menu.

I then got:

Mounting the PND failed. The application wont start. Please have a look at /tmp/pndrun_nitrogen.out

Code:
=======================================================================================
PND             : /media/Pandingen/pandora/menu/switchguiopenbox.pnd
PND_FSTYPE      : Squashfs
APPDATADIR      : /media/Pandingen/pandora/appdata/nitrogen
APPDD_FSTYPE    : ext3
PND_CPUSPEED    : <unset>
EXENAME         : nitrogen_start.sh
ARGUMENTS       : <unset>
=======================================================================================
[ START ]--- Mount the PND ----------
Found a loop (/dev/loop1), using it
WARNING /dev/loop1 already mounted on /mnt/utmp/switchguiopenbox51 /mnt/utmp/switchguiopenbox51 skipping losetup - putting link to old mount
ln: target `/mnt/utmp/nitrogen' is not a directory
Mounting the Union FS : mount -t aufs -o exec,dirs="/media/Pandingen/pandora/appdata/nitrogen=rw+nolwh":"/mnt/pnd/nitrogen=rr" none "/mnt/utmp/nitrogen"
/sbin/mount.aufs:mount.aufs.c:194: /mnt/utmp/nitrogen: No such file or directory
WARNING : mount faild, re-tring
/sbin/mount.aufs:mount.aufs.c:194: /mnt/utmp/nitrogen: No such file or directory
ERROR: The Union File-system is not mounted !
+++++++
Loopback devices :
/dev/loop1: [b301]:682287 (/media/Pandingen/pandora/menu/switchguiopenbox.pnd)
Are mounted on :
/dev/loop1 on /mnt/utmp/switchguiopenbox51 type squashfs (ro,relatime)
For these Union :
none on /mnt/utmp/switchguiopenbox51 type aufs (rw,relatime,si=36067eb5)
ERROR: The Union File-system is not mounted !
+++++++
Loopback devices :
/dev/loop1: [b301]:682287 (/media/Pandingen/pandora/menu/switchguiopenbox.pnd)
Are mounted on :
/dev/loop1 on /mnt/utmp/switchguiopenbox51 type squashfs (ro,relatime)
For these Union :
none on /mnt/utmp/switchguiopenbox51 type aufs (rw,relatime,si=36067eb5)
[ FAILED]--- Mount the PND ----------
 
Looks like the Switch Gui Openbox PND didn't unmount cleanly, but libpnd thought it was free and tried to use the same loop device anyway. The PND should load ok after a reboot. (or just do 'sudo umount /dev/loop1' at the terminal then try again.)

EDIT: Before you do that though, can you show the pndrun.out file for the openbox PND?

- Neelix
 
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First thing I tried was launching the 'Set Background' utility from the 'Openbox Config' menu.

I then got:

Mounting the PND failed. The application wont start. Please have a look at /tmp/pndrun_nitrogen.out

=======================================================================================
PND             : /media/Pandingen/pandora/menu/switchguiopenbox.pnd
PND_FSTYPE      : Squashfs
APPDATADIR      : /media/Pandingen/pandora/appdata/nitrogen
APPDD_FSTYPE    : ext3
PND_CPUSPEED    : <unset>
EXENAME         : nitrogen_start.sh
ARGUMENTS       : <unset>
=======================================================================================
[ START ]--- Mount the PND ----------
Found a loop (/dev/loop1), using it
WARNING /dev/loop1 already mounted on /mnt/utmp/switchguiopenbox51 /mnt/utmp/switchguiopenbox51 skipping losetup - putting link to old mount
ln: target `/mnt/utmp/nitrogen' is not a directory
Mounting the Union FS : mount -t aufs -o exec,dirs="/media/Pandingen/pandora/appdata/nitrogen=rw+nolwh":"/mnt/pnd/nitrogen=rr" none "/mnt/utmp/nitrogen"
/sbin/mount.aufs:mount.aufs.c:194: /mnt/utmp/nitrogen: No such file or directory
WARNING : mount faild, re-tring
/sbin/mount.aufs:mount.aufs.c:194: /mnt/utmp/nitrogen: No such file or directory
ERROR: The Union File-system is not mounted !
+++++++
Loopback devices :
/dev/loop1: [b301]:682287 (/media/Pandingen/pandora/menu/switchguiopenbox.pnd)
Are mounted on :
/dev/loop1 on /mnt/utmp/switchguiopenbox51 type squashfs (ro,relatime)
For these Union :
none on /mnt/utmp/switchguiopenbox51 type aufs (rw,relatime,si=36067eb5)
ERROR: The Union File-system is not mounted !
+++++++
Loopback devices :
/dev/loop1: [b301]:682287 (/media/Pandingen/pandora/menu/switchguiopenbox.pnd)
Are mounted on :
/dev/loop1 on /mnt/utmp/switchguiopenbox51 type squashfs (ro,relatime)
For these Union :
none on /mnt/utmp/switchguiopenbox51 type aufs (rw,relatime,si=36067eb5)
[ FAILED]--- Mount the PND ----------
Yeah - what Neelix said. The Background tool is part of the PND because it's got loads of dependencies. You just got unlucky, that the PND didn't unmount after the Installer had quit. Terminal based PNDs don't always unmount, especially if there's another terminal running. But the Installer is something you only have to run once, so you shouldn't get any more problems after manually unmounting it or rebooting.
 
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