Author Topic: ecs2.2 beta refresh  (Read 80397 times)

Doug Bissett

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Re: ecs2.2 beta refresh
« Reply #30 on: January 18, 2014, 06:30:39 pm »
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Everything what can be set to legacy mod is set to "legacy mode. AHCI - Compatible. All extra features for the CPU disabled.

I have a Lenovo ThinkPad L530, with UEFI BIOS. Look in the BIOS settings, under Startup. I have settings for UEFI/Legacy Boot, set to Both. Sub sections UEFI/Legacy boot Priority set to Legacy First. And, CSM support set to Yes.

Those settings make it work, for me, but the maximum memory seen was 512 meg (out of 4 meg). Have a look through the http://www.os2world.com/forum/index.php?topic=151.msg2533#msg2533 thread for a possible solution to that problem.

Of course, you may have something entirely different that is causing trouble.

kreso

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Re: ecs2.2 beta refresh
« Reply #31 on: January 18, 2014, 07:55:26 pm »
Hi Doug,

You are right. I have same setting in BIOS. And yes I tried all different combinations of that setting. No go. My opinion is that there is something wrong with virtual floppy because installer does not start. And I do not know why. May be something in memory management or security (disabled in my case). One strange think. Together with lock up eCS spalsh screen show up.
No other massage or indication. Just eCs screen and hard lock TP. I do not know where it is coming from and why it is there. Unless installer very quick and that is just before GUI. That will lead that there is a problem With Panorama (used in preset up menu). To be honest I did  not try different option. I will try it this evening. I will post result here. 

Doug Bissett

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Re: ecs2.2 beta refresh
« Reply #32 on: January 18, 2014, 09:44:43 pm »
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My opinion is that there is something wrong with virtual floppy because installer does not start. And I do not know why.

Well, it is not a virtual floppy, it is a virtual hard disk, but that should have nothing to do with the problem.

You say that the logo appears. That means that the boot did get started. It is also long before the video driver gets loaded, so Panorama likely doesn't have anything to do with it either.

At that time, ACPI is the most likely thing to cause problems. Try selecting Modern hardware, safe mode, which won't use ACPI. That works on my L530, but may not work on your machine. If it doesn't work, try adding the "/VW" parameter to ACPI (without the quotes).

When you start the install, use the Alt-F2 option, to display what gets loaded. The logo will stay until something replaces it. Usually the first thing to do that is the output from ACPI, but that happens long after ACPI loads. You should also select to NOT display the boot logo. That may hide error messages.

kreso

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Re: ecs2.2 beta refresh
« Reply #33 on: January 19, 2014, 05:25:23 pm »
Well, Your suggestions helped to determine where it stops. It stop on OS2LVM.DMD file. And yes it has to be in "Modern Hardware" Safe mode. "/VW" does not help.

Now I have to found why it stops on OS2LVM

Edit: Even the demo DVD stops on the same place
« Last Edit: January 19, 2014, 06:31:38 pm by Kresimir Buben »

Doug Bissett

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Re: ecs2.2 beta refresh
« Reply #34 on: January 19, 2014, 10:30:27 pm »
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Now I have to found why it stops on OS2LVM

Unfortunately, there could be a lot of reasons why that might happen.

How big is the hard disk?

Did you use windows (I assume it has windows), to shrink the windows partition, to leave room to install eCS?

You might be able to figure some of it out, if you get the bootable version of DFSEE, and use the Disk Analysis thing to record what is on the disk (you would likely need to send that to Jan, for interpretation).

I have also found that using windows, to shrink the windows partition, then using DFSEE to build the new partitions for eCS (being sure to leave all of the existing partitions alone), will make a usable configuration (to everything except LVM partitioning - the LVM runtime doesn't seem to care).

kreso

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Re: ecs2.2 beta refresh
« Reply #35 on: January 20, 2014, 03:48:32 pm »
OK. Here are the answers:

1. 1 TB
2. Partitions were created with eCS on another TP but later touched(expanded) with win 8 - brand new HD, now win partition before
3. DFSEE is very good suggestion. I do not have one but this will not caused any problem.

I will try that this evening and post the result
« Last Edit: January 20, 2014, 03:50:24 pm by Kresimir Buben »

Martin Iturbide

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Re: ecs2.2 beta refresh
« Reply #36 on: January 20, 2014, 04:40:40 pm »
... later touched(expanded) with win 8 - brand new HD, now win partition before

Sometimes when you modify the partitions size, from Windows, it turn the partitions unusable for eCS. I think the error that the eCS installer shows is that the geometry of the disk is wrong. The only want to correct that is erasing everything and repartitioning from eCS LVM.

It had happened to me using on Windows EASEUS Partition Master. I wonder which driver should we need to blame for this limitation? Which is the driver that need to be updated to support that kind of geometry?

Can you try running eCS installation CD, maybe on maintenance mode and check if the partition manager (LVM) gives you a geometry error?

« Last Edit: January 20, 2014, 04:52:13 pm by Martin Iturbide »
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Doug Bissett

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Re: ecs2.2 beta refresh
« Reply #37 on: January 20, 2014, 05:33:25 pm »
OK. Here are the answers:

1. 1 TB
2. Partitions were created with eCS on another TP but later touched(expanded) with win 8 - brand new HD, now win partition before
3. DFSEE is very good suggestion. I do not have one but this will not caused any problem.

I will try that this evening and post the result

The problem is probably caused by the 1 TB drive. Windows sets them up in such a way that eCS doesn't understand the geometry. You should review the section about that in QCKGUIDE.PDF (in the root of the install DVD). You may also get some useful information from: http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/download/pub/os2/doc/eCs-2-on-modern-laptop-win7-rev-1.zip and: http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/download/pub/os2/doc/TAMING_WIN7_V0_2_1.zip. Both of those may be a bit dated, but you may get some ideas from them.

The other potential problem is that using anything, other than (mini)LVM or DFSEE, to mess with partitions is almost guaranteed to screw it up, "touched(expanded) with win 8" may be the biggest problem.

Martin Iturbide

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Re: ecs2.2 beta refresh
« Reply #38 on: January 20, 2014, 06:47:31 pm »
Doug,

I'm just curious, which component/driver of eCS should be updated for it to recognize the geometry that Windows sets up?

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Alex Taylor

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Re: ecs2.2 beta refresh
« Reply #39 on: January 21, 2014, 03:39:03 am »
What DASD drivers are you loading, and in what order?

The default is normally OS2AHCI --> DANIS506

I suggest you try playing around with those if you haven't already.

Doug Bissett

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Re: ecs2.2 beta refresh
« Reply #40 on: January 21, 2014, 04:40:41 am »
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I'm just curious, which component/driver of eCS should be updated for it to recognize the geometry that Windows sets up?

I am not sure if it is  OS2AHCI and DANIS506 (the source for both of them is available), or LVM. I suspect that LVM is causing a LOT of problems in eCS, on newer machines.

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I suggest you try playing around with those if you haven't already.

On my modern machines, I use nothing but AHCI. I don't think it hurts to have DANIS506 in CONFIG.SYS, but it should never be used, so I normally remove DANIS506.

Dave Yeo

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Re: ecs2.2 beta refresh
« Reply #41 on: January 21, 2014, 05:09:42 am »
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I'm just curious, which component/driver of eCS should be updated for it to recognize the geometry that Windows sets up?

I am not sure if it is  OS2AHCI and DANIS506 (the source for both of them is available), or LVM. I suspect that LVM is causing a LOT of problems in eCS, on newer machines.


I think the root of the problem is our kernel, originally designed almost 25 years ago when hard drives were much smaller and actually used the cylinders, heads, sector thing. Now hard drives are just a series of blocks which are translated into the old style but some of our data structures are too small for some of these numbers giving the 1TB limit and the need for the chs to be balanced just right. The other problem is that traditionally partitions happened on cylinder boundaries and that is no longer true as of Win Vista while LVM (and maybe the kernel) still expects it.
The reason I think it comes down to the kernel is that if it was the drivers then it would have been fixed as the source is available.
Quick overview, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cylinder-head-sector

kreso

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Re: ecs2.2 beta refresh
« Reply #42 on: January 22, 2014, 01:23:02 pm »
OK, guys. Lot of valid suggestions.
Some answers: It is AHCI. Tested AHCA->DANI, DANI->AHCI, Compatibiliti mode, etc. Basically everything what come to mine mind.
I will try with NEW untouched smaller (500 GB) HD to see if that will make any difference. But I do not still understand. Even when HD is touched by WIN, it should continue to boot after OS2LVM.DMD and later complain about HD and incorrect partition tables. But no, it fail during loading the BASEDEV, before even look to the hard disk, or I am missing something???

Edit: Even the demo5 DVD stops on the same place 
« Last Edit: January 22, 2014, 01:24:45 pm by Kresimir Buben »

Dave Yeo

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Re: ecs2.2 beta refresh
« Reply #43 on: January 22, 2014, 04:51:40 pm »
The problem is the boot process, as I understand, EBR (the boot sector) has to have enough intelligence or be hard wired to load OS2BOOT which has a micro filesystem to find and load load OS2LDR which has a mini filesystem which has enough intelligence to find \ \os2 and \os2\boot to load the kernel and basedev drivers (perhaps OS2LDR can be extended to work around some of these problems?) Also need BootManager, airboot or whatever to pass the correct drive letter to the kernel for later in the boot process.
Seems in your case the system can't find and load from \os2\boot consistently.

Doug Bissett

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Re: ecs2.2 beta refresh
« Reply #44 on: January 22, 2014, 05:58:28 pm »
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Some answers: It is AHCI. Tested AHCA->DANI, DANI->AHCI, Compatibiliti mode, etc. Basically everything what come to mine mind.

If it will use AHCI, it should work with AHCI. Since this is a new machine, I expect that all of the devices will be SATA. That should be set to AHCI, and you don't need the Dani drivers. REM them out, in case there is some conflict.

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Even the demo5 DVD stops on the same place

That would be expected. The demo uses the same setup, but the real disk (except FAT32) is hidden, somehow.

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But I do not still understand

You, and a lot of other people.

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Even when HD is touched by WIN, it should continue to boot

One of the main problems with LVM, is that it insists that it must understand everything, or it will do nothing (with no apparent way to override that). That is supposed to prevent damaging something, but in most cases, there really is no problem.

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Seems in your case the system can't find and load from \os2\boot consistently

I think that the problem is that Win sets up to use too many sectors (CHS), and eCS can only use half that many (perhaps it is only OS2BOOT that has that problem, since eCS can use those disks for data). the result is that eCS can read the first half of a logical track, but not the second half. It depends, exactly, where the files get put, whether something will work, or not. When the partitioning is done by eCS, or DFSEE, the number of sectors is set to something that eCS can understand, and windows can also use that. The "problem" is that you cannot just change the number of logical sectors, without wiping the whole disk. That gets complicated when there is a recovery partition involved (I do hope that you made the recovery DVDs, so you will be able to get back to factory defaults). The other problem, is that halving the number of sectors, doubles the number of cylinders. If that number becomes larger than what eCS understands, you still have a problem.

At the moment, I suspect that windows has set it up with too many sectors. http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/download/pub/os2/doc/TAMING_WIN7_V0_2_1.zip describes one possible way to work around the problem (and it is somewhat dated), but I have no idea if it will work, for you.