OS2 World Community Forum

OS/2, eCS & ArcaOS - Technical => Setup & Installation => Topic started by: zoward on May 27, 2017, 04:11:14 pm

Title: ArcaOS - new install (and a few questions)
Post by: zoward on May 27, 2017, 04:11:14 pm
I hadn't worked with OS/2 in 25 years.  The last time I was using it, I had it running alongside DOS 6.2, WfW 3.11, and Yggdrasil linux, all booting from OS/2 boot manager, on a 486/DX2-based custom-built PC in my parents' basement.  Time marched on, OS/2 support for hardware faded, and I moved over to linux.  Anyway, I recently read a news article  about ArcaOS on Slashdot and bought a copy, hoping to tinker with it the way I did in the old days.

I downloaded it and installed it to Virtualbox on a linux desktop machine.  It installed fairly easily, and most of the hardware came up once I had the guest additions installed.  I played with it for a while, and got most of the hardware working correctly.  All well and good!

Installing it to bare hardware has proven to be more of a challenge.  I'm working with an Asus EEE 301, based off a dual core hyperthreading Atom D270, 4 GB RAM.  I have a Verbatim external DVD drive.  Linux reports the network adapters as a Realtek RTL 8111/8168/8411 rev 6 chipset, and the wireless as an Atheros 9485 rev 1 chipset.  The former has a driver in ArcaOS, the latter doesn't.

I installed ArcaOS.  i got the audio up and running using the Uniaud driver.  Graphics seem to work best using the default Panorama driver.  The Verbatim DVD drive works, and reports as drive S:.  The four front panel USB 2.0 ports work fine, but the two SS ports on the back don't.  What is annoying about this is that while the USB ports work, they won't recognize a USB stick (I'm wondering if I need to manually install a FAT32 driver?), and since networking isn't working yet either (more on that in a sec), I have to burn files to a CD to get them onto the machine.  But, 25 years later, here I am in my own basement running OS/2's descendant - it feels pretty good!  I'm starting to find my way around the system again.  I was elated to see that Hobbes is still up and running - I spent a lot of time there back in the day.  My eventual goal here is to get ArcaOS doing all the regular daily things I do on a linux machine - surf the web, read my e-mail, listen to music, read (and edit) documents, and (hopefully, eventually), use a VPN client to connect to my work.   Looking forward to doing some REXX scripting as well.

My first major stumbling block is that I can't get networking up and running.  I figured getting wireless running was going to be a laborious process, so I ran a cat5 cable from my router to the machine in my basement .  The hardware manager reports that the driver (RealTek 8168/8111 B/C/CP/D/DP/E/F/G PCIe Gigabyte Ethernet Network Adapter) is loaded and assigned IRQ 16 and a range of IO and  memory locations.  The hardware and the wire connecting it are both tested and work currently under linux.  The DHCP monitor for lan0 reports:

DDNS host name:   Not Registered
IP Address:               Not Configured
Lease remaining:    None
Status:                        Discovering DHCP servers.

It sends DISCOVER packets every 20 seconds or so (with number of options requested: 6).  It never gets a response. 

ifconfig lan0 returns:

flags-8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST,LOOPBRD>
inet 0.0.0.0 netmask 0xffffffff

I suspect that lan0 isn't really bound to the hardware, but I have no idea how to troubleshoot this.  I went looking through documentation that came with ArcaOS, but the install guide is pretty basic and doesn't cover networking in detail.  There are forum posts about networking, but they're sporadic and split across Warp 4, eComStation and ArcaOS, so it's hard to tell what's still relevant.  I thought I'd post this in case anyone can think of any obvious things I might not have configured (or might have misconfigured), maybe a parameter or two I'm not passing?   Thoughts?  I'll post a ticket later if I still can't get it working.

Meanwhile, on the wireless front, I found Martin's documentation for testing a generic Win32 wrapper with eComStation (thanks Martin!), and I thought I might give that a try with an XP driver I dug up for the Atheros chipset.  Does anyone know if it's still relevant with ArcaOS?  I noticed some of the directories the drivers are supposed to be put in for the drivers have "ECS" in them and don't currently exist in ArcaOS.  However, I noticed genmac ships with ArcaOS.  I'm not sure if the files would go in a different directory than in the guide, or if the guide is outdated and it won't work at all.  The doc is at http://www.os2world.com/wiki/index.php/Testing_an_UnSupported_Network_Driver_with_GenMAC (sorry for inlining it but I'm not sure how the url tags work in this editor).

Alternately, if I can't get either network adapter working I may end up buying a USB-based wireless dongle.  Has anyone had success with a dongle they would recommend?

If anyone has any thoughts about any of this, I would appreciate hearing them.  Thanks!


Title: Re: ArcaOS - new install (and a few questions)
Post by: Dave Yeo on May 27, 2017, 06:36:53 pm
Hi Howard, welcome back to OS/2.
About the USB sticks, problem is that OS/2 doesn't recognize the large floppy format (no partition table) that most sticks use, so they need to be wiped, partitioned and LVM info added. Easiest is to download Dfsee (dfsee.com) which has a script to make USB sticks OS/2 friendly. DFsee is shareware but fully functional, the cost gives very good support.
About the realtek network driver, someone else can walk you through it but in short, there are a few different chipsets on the realtek cards that need different drivers, you probably need a different realtek driver. Doug seems to be the expert on those cards, so hopefully he'll be along to expand on it.
Title: Re: ArcaOS - new install (and a few questions)
Post by: Ian Manners on May 27, 2017, 06:37:25 pm
Hi Howard,

Can you get ifconfig lan0 to hold the values if you manually enter something like :-
   ifconfig lan0 192.168.1.4 netmask 255.255.255.0 metric 0
from the commandline ?

And what does
 netstat -n return on the way of interfaces?
Mainly just want to make sure your Interface 0  is Ethernet and that Ethernet isnt on a different interface.

There are other things we can check but first I'd need to know what utilities are included with ArcaOS in the way of listing hardware, maybe someone else will chime in :)
Title: Re: ArcaOS - new install (and a few questions)
Post by: Pete on May 27, 2017, 11:27:27 pm
Hi Howard

I installed ArcaOS to a Dell laptop fitted with an unsupported wireless nic - an Intel 5100 [8086:4232]. As I had this nic working with eCS previously I had a set of genmac drivers handy to install after the ArcaOS install finished.

That did not work as planned as when installed the driver failed to load during boot with something like "No valid hardware found".

Knowing that the drivers actually work with this card I double checked which version of genmac I had been using with eCS - turned out to be a different version. Not sure if the ArcaoS version is limited to loading only the drivers supplied with ArcaOS but replacing the ArcaOS version with the version I had used with eCS resulted in a working wireless nic. I think the ArcaOS version may be 2.20 and the version I am using successfully is 2.21

You may want to have a look through the genmac newsgroup - news.gmane.org:gmane.org.netlabs.genmac.user - and ask questions about genmac and various driver packages available although I must admit to having no idea if the Atheros is supported - you will need the vendor:device IDs to check.

After a lot of faffing around trying different install options and discovering that xwlan did not get installed - possibly due to selecting the NULLNDIS nic - I opted for selecting a similar genmac wireless nic during ArcaOS install in order to make sure that all needed software got installed.

At the end of ArcaOS installation I used Warpin (Install/Remove folder) to uninstall the genmac package, installed genmac 2.21, then installed the wirless nic driver I needed, followed by running the Adapters and Protocols (System Setup -> Network) to *Change*  the nic.

Following a reboot all worked well  :-)


With regard to the wired nic, Realtek 8168/8111: I am running 1 of those in my eCS Desktop using the MMRE driver so have to ask which driver you picked? - and, as there seem to be problems with it, suggest you try the alternative driver by using the Change button in Adapters and Protocols.


Regards

Pete
Title: Re: ArcaOS - new install (and a few questions)
Post by: zoward on May 28, 2017, 12:53:19 pm
Thanks for the info.  If I use ifconfig to set the address of lan0, it does hold it.  I tried this with both 192.168.1.4, and 10.0.0.3/255.0.0.0 since my router is on the 192.168.1.0/16 address space.  A call to ifconfig lan0 confirms the new address, netmask and broadcast address. 

netstat -n returns device 0 as Ethernet-CSMA/CD and the device's MAC address, MTU 1500, speed 1000000000 bits/sec, broadcast packets sent 10, total bytes sent 5352, all other values 0.

netstat -arp has an extra line for the routing table based on the new address, but states: no ARP table entries present.

Title: Re: ArcaOS - new install (and a few questions)
Post by: zoward on May 28, 2017, 12:54:31 pm
Sorry, meant this as a reply to Ian's message above... 
Title: Re: ArcaOS - new install (and a few questions)
Post by: zoward on May 28, 2017, 01:20:12 pm
Pete, thanks for the info.  There are  only two RealTek RTL8111 drives in ArcaOS.  They map to  MMRE.OS2 and R8169.OS2.  I tried both.  They behave almost exactly the same with regard to the system, ie, they bind device 0 to the MAC address, but I don't get an ARP table entry and the DHCP requests go unanswered. The MMRE.OS2 has no parameters.   The 8169 driver has three parameters, all blank.  I tried setting the address to the device's MAC address, the Medium Type to 1000FULL, and the use receive chain to both Yes, then No, and nothing significant changed.

Hi Howard

I installed ArcaOS to a Dell laptop fitted with an unsupported wireless nic - an Intel 5100 [8086:4232]. As I had this nic working with eCS previously I had a set of genmac drivers handy to install after the ArcaOS install finished.

That did not work as planned as when installed the driver failed to load during boot with something like "No valid hardware found".

Knowing that the drivers actually work with this card I double checked which version of genmac I had been using with eCS - turned out to be a different version. Not sure if the ArcaoS version is limited to loading only the drivers supplied with ArcaOS but replacing the ArcaOS version with the version I had used with eCS resulted in a working wireless nic. I think the ArcaOS version may be 2.20 and the version I am using successfully is 2.21

You may want to have a look through the genmac newsgroup - news.gmane.org:gmane.org.netlabs.genmac.user - and ask questions about genmac and various driver packages available although I must admit to having no idea if the Atheros is supported - you will need the vendor:device IDs to check.

After a lot of faffing around trying different install options and discovering that xwlan did not get installed - possibly due to selecting the NULLNDIS nic - I opted for selecting a similar genmac wireless nic during ArcaOS install in order to make sure that all needed software got installed.

At the end of ArcaOS installation I used Warpin (Install/Remove folder) to uninstall the genmac package, installed genmac 2.21, then installed the wirless nic driver I needed, followed by running the Adapters and Protocols (System Setup -> Network) to *Change*  the nic.

Following a reboot all worked well  :-)


With regard to the wired nic, Realtek 8168/8111: I am running 1 of those in my eCS Desktop using the MMRE driver so have to ask which driver you picked? - and, as there seem to be problems with it, suggest you try the alternative driver by using the Change button in Adapters and Protocols.


Regards

Pete
Title: Re: ArcaOS - new install (and a few questions)
Post by: zoward on May 28, 2017, 02:43:36 pm
Thanks for the info, Dave!  Interestingly, I put my 8 GB stick into a linux machine, and used fdisk to change the partition type to 7 (HPFS/NTFS/exFAT), and it now works under both my linux desktop and ArcaOS.

Hi Howard, welcome back to OS/2.
About the USB sticks, problem is that OS/2 doesn't recognize the large floppy format (no partition table) that most sticks use, so they need to be wiped, partitioned and LVM info added. Easiest is to download Dfsee (dfsee.com) which has a script to make USB sticks OS/2 friendly. DFsee is shareware but fully functional, the cost gives very good support.
About the realtek network driver, someone else can walk you through it but in short, there are a few different chipsets on the realtek cards that need different drivers, you probably need a different realtek driver. Doug seems to be the expert on those cards, so hopefully he'll be along to expand on it.
Title: Re: ArcaOS - new install (and a few questions)
Post by: Ian Manners on May 28, 2017, 03:05:53 pm
Hi,

Just a thought, do others need to make a manual change in x:\ibmcom\protocol.ini for gigabyte cards anymore?

ie, the line with ETHERAND_TYPE I normally set to "D", MPTS sets it to "I" as a default.

Was this fixed with new drivers?
Title: Re: ArcaOS - new install (and a few questions)
Post by: Andi B. on May 28, 2017, 04:44:35 pm
Quote
...the Medium Type to 1000FULL...
You're absolutely sure you want this instead AUTO? Means your counterpart has to have the same fixed link type and speed too. With 1000Base-T ethernet (maybe even 100Base-TX, I forgot about) auto negotiation is mandatory. Forced modes when not done on both ends asks for troubles. Be warned.
Title: Re: ArcaOS - new install (and a few questions)
Post by: Dave Yeo on May 28, 2017, 06:31:56 pm
Thanks for the info, Dave!  Interestingly, I put my 8 GB stick into a linux machine, and used fdisk to change the partition type to 7 (HPFS/NTFS/exFAT), and it now works under both my linux desktop and ArcaOS.

That's interesting. Guess the important part is being partitioned rather then a large floppy.
Note that there is an alternative USB stack maintained by Lars that can handle the large floppy format. It's more of an experimental branch and unsupported by Arca Noae.
Title: Re: ArcaOS - new install (and a few questions)
Post by: zoward on May 28, 2017, 06:51:49 pm
No, I was experimenting, trying to see if ArcaOS was having trouble determining the speed of the connection.  It was one of several things I tried before setting them back to the defaults.  Thank you for the explanation though - good to know.

Quote
...the Medium Type to 1000FULL...
You're absolutely sure you want this instead AUTO? Means your counterpart has to have the same fixed link type and speed too. With 1000Base-T ethernet (maybe even 100Base-TX, I forgot about) auto negotiation is mandatory. Forced modes when not done on both ends asks for troubles. Be warned.
Title: Re: ArcaOS - new install (and a few questions)
Post by: Pete on May 28, 2017, 11:26:53 pm
Hi Howard

I seem to recall reading somewhere, possibly the genmacs users newsgroup, that whether an OS/2 Realtek driver works or not does not depend just on vendor:device IDs but also on the Revision number. This possibly ties in with different chipsets used.

I do know that the 10EC:8168 in use here shows as Revision 6 when investigating the hardware from Windows 7.


Regards

Pete
Title: Re: ArcaOS - new install (and a few questions)
Post by: zoward on May 28, 2017, 11:59:15 pm
Mine is the same - rev 6 according to Xubuntu linux, which I had on the hardware before ArcaOS.   Also, the vendor/product ID combo returned from PCI.EXE for the chipset matches one of the ones the ArcaOS MultiMac documentation says the driver supports.  Still no luck so far.

Hi Howard

I seem to recall reading somewhere, possibly the genmacs users newsgroup, that whether an OS/2 Realtek driver works or not does not depend just on vendor:device IDs but also on the Revision number. This possibly ties in with different chipsets used.

I do know that the 10EC:8168 in use here shows as Revision 6 when investigating the hardware from Windows 7.


Regards

Pete
Title: Re: ArcaOS - new install (and a few questions)
Post by: Alex Taylor on May 29, 2017, 12:23:07 am
The first thing I'd do is check in \ibmcom\lantran.log for possible error messages.  That should tell you whether the driver bound to the MAC hardware successfully or not.

You said that setting a manual address and route gets retained, but you didn't mention whether connectivity actually works if you do this.

If you get no connectivity even with no errors in LANTRAN.LOG and manual address/mask/gateway configured, you will probably need to open a ticket on the MMRE MAC driver and report as much of your MAC hardware information (especially PCI IDs and revisions) as possible.  This information should be contained in the machine.cfg file in your \sys\install\rsp directory.
Title: Re: ArcaOS - new install (and a few questions)
Post by: zoward on May 29, 2017, 02:14:37 am
Well, I'm not 100% sure it  bound successfully.  Here's the relevant  output from LANTRAN.LOG:

...
MMRE Hardware detected: RealTek 8168/8111 B/C/D/DP/E/F/G PCIe Gigabit Ethernet Adapter
MMRE PHY: driver=rlphy OUI=e04c MODEL=11 FAIL
MMRE PHY: driver=rlphy OUI=e04c MODEL=11 FAIL
MMRE PHY: driver=rgephy OUI=e04c MODEL=11 SUCCESS
MMRE Mac Address: 74:d0:2b:09:92:d3
MMRE Setup filter interrupt 16
IBM OS/2 LAN Netbind
+

and that's it.  Do all of the driver calls above need to report success, or just the last one?

Connectivity is also an interesting question.  Up until a while ago, all my attempts to ping the router or any local machines gave me: No known route to host.  After setting the address to 192.168.1.xxx, ping just hangs.

Tantaliziingly, I get the following line in the ARP table (arp -a):

interface      hardware address        IP address      minutes since last use
  lan0             (incomplete)                192.168.1.1                  1


The first thing I'd do is check in \ibmcom\lantran.log for possible error messages.  That should tell you whether the driver bound to the MAC hardware successfully or not.

You said that setting a manual address and route gets retained, but you didn't mention whether connectivity actually works if you do this.

If you get no connectivity even with no errors in LANTRAN.LOG and manual address/mask/gateway configured, you will probably need to open a ticket on the MMRE MAC driver and report as much of your MAC hardware information (especially PCI IDs and revisions) as possible.  This information should be contained in the machine.cfg file in your \sys\install\rsp directory.
Title: Re: ArcaOS - new install (and a few questions)
Post by: roberto on May 29, 2017, 01:01:13 pm
Well, I'm not 100% sure it  bound successfully.  Here's the relevant  output from LANTRAN.LOG:

I have this same problem, with an RTL8169-10ech: 8169h
I attached files with the problem.
Also mention, that the text mode installation I put a short localhost, the installer omitted the data I entered, and put the localhost with another long name ARCA-XXXXX 14 digits. In os2 the maximum length were not 10 digits?
I think I remember and I'm not sure about this.
The case is that in the ibmlan.ini appears a localhost with short name of my installation text, and in other places appears a long name ARCA-xxxxxxx
All internal net is ok, but I ca not go internet out.
I have more files but I can not put it in this forum by size. ARCAOS-EE8A0FA-20170529-MMRE-0.00.6.log - inst_log.zip - NETINST.LOG
saludos

NOTE: modify localhost by hostname , sorry my bad inglish.
Title: Re: ArcaOS - new install (and a few questions)
Post by: Pete on May 29, 2017, 03:22:38 pm
Hi Howard

The lantran.log section looks right - here is mine for comparison

IBM OS/2 LANMSGDD [05/21/04] 6.00 is loaded and operational.
IBM OS/2 TCPBEUI 6.00.0
TCPBEUI: Using a 32-bit data segment.
Installing NETWKSTA.200 Version 6.0. IBM LAN Redirector ( May 25, 2005)

IBM OS/2 NETBIOS 4.0
Adapter 0 has 123 NCBs, 96 sessions, and 6 names available to NETBIOS applications.
NETBIOS 4.0 is loaded and operational.
MMRE NDIS device driver @#Arca Noae LLC:0.0.5#@##1## 4 Dec 2016 21:33:03      DAZAR1    ::::5::SVN63@@RealTek 8139C+/8169/8169S/8110S/8168/8111/8101E P
MMRE Hardware detected: RealTek 8168/8111 B/C/CP/D/DP/E/F/G PCIe Gigabit Ethernet
MMRE PHY: driver=rlphy OUI=e04c MODEL=11 FAIL
MMRE PHY: driver=rlphy OUI=e04c MODEL=11 FAIL
MMRE PHY: driver=rgephy OUI=e04c MODEL=11 SUCCESS
MMRE Mac address: fc:aa:14:2f:a1:23
MMRE Setup filter interrupt 16
V-SWITCH 1:  searching for "PSWCH00$" section.
V-SWITCH 1:  searching for "DSWCH00$" section.
V-SWITCH 1:  found section "DSWCH00$".
V-SWITCH 1:  found section "PSWCH00$".
V-SWITCH 1:  "DSWCH00$" successfull registered.
V-SWITCH 1:  "PSWCH00$" successfull registered.
IBM OS/2 LAN Netbind
V-SWITCH 1:   100 NDIS-Buffers allocated.
V-SWITCH 1:  PROTOCOL-Driver was bound to lower MAC "MMRE_NIF/RealTek 8139C+/8169/816".
V-SWITCH 1:  MAC-Driver was bound to upper PROTOCOL "TCPIP_NIF".
TCPBEUI: Logical adapter 0 is bound to TCP/IP interface lan0.

The V-SWITCH entries above are related to VirtualPC and can be ignored.

arp -a shows:-


          ARP table contents:

interface     hardware address         IP address   minutes since
                                                                                          last use
  lan0       30:91:8f:6 :21:38        192.168.1.254           12
  lan0       (incomplete)        192.168.1.255            0


You may want to post your \ibmcom\protocol.ini file contents.


Regards

Pete
Title: Re: ArcaOS - new install (and a few questions)
Post by: zoward on May 29, 2017, 05:31:08 pm
Thanks Pete!  Here's the contents of my PROTOCOL.INI:

----

[PROT_MAN]

  DRIVERNAME = PROTMAN$

[IBMLXCFG]

  TCPIP_NIF = TCPIP.NIF
  MMRE_NIF = MMRE.NIF

[TCPIP_NIF]

  DriverName = TCPIP$
  Bindings = MMRE_NIF
  IFTYPE = 6

[MMRE_NIF]

  DriverName = MMRE$

---


Hi Howard

The lantran.log section looks right - here is mine for comparison

IBM OS/2 LANMSGDD [05/21/04] 6.00 is loaded and operational.
IBM OS/2 TCPBEUI 6.00.0
TCPBEUI: Using a 32-bit data segment.
Installing NETWKSTA.200 Version 6.0. IBM LAN Redirector ( May 25, 2005)

IBM OS/2 NETBIOS 4.0
Adapter 0 has 123 NCBs, 96 sessions, and 6 names available to NETBIOS applications.
NETBIOS 4.0 is loaded and operational.
MMRE NDIS device driver @#Arca Noae LLC:0.0.5#@##1## 4 Dec 2016 21:33:03      DAZAR1    ::::5::SVN63@@RealTek 8139C+/8169/8169S/8110S/8168/8111/8101E P
MMRE Hardware detected: RealTek 8168/8111 B/C/CP/D/DP/E/F/G PCIe Gigabit Ethernet
MMRE PHY: driver=rlphy OUI=e04c MODEL=11 FAIL
MMRE PHY: driver=rlphy OUI=e04c MODEL=11 FAIL
MMRE PHY: driver=rgephy OUI=e04c MODEL=11 SUCCESS
MMRE Mac address: fc:aa:14:2f:a1:23
MMRE Setup filter interrupt 16
V-SWITCH 1:  searching for "PSWCH00$" section.
V-SWITCH 1:  searching for "DSWCH00$" section.
V-SWITCH 1:  found section "DSWCH00$".
V-SWITCH 1:  found section "PSWCH00$".
V-SWITCH 1:  "DSWCH00$" successfull registered.
V-SWITCH 1:  "PSWCH00$" successfull registered.
IBM OS/2 LAN Netbind
V-SWITCH 1:   100 NDIS-Buffers allocated.
V-SWITCH 1:  PROTOCOL-Driver was bound to lower MAC "MMRE_NIF/RealTek 8139C+/8169/816".
V-SWITCH 1:  MAC-Driver was bound to upper PROTOCOL "TCPIP_NIF".
TCPBEUI: Logical adapter 0 is bound to TCP/IP interface lan0.

The V-SWITCH entries above are related to VirtualPC and can be ignored.

arp -a shows:-


          ARP table contents:

interface     hardware address         IP address   minutes since
                                                                                          last use
  lan0       30:91:8f:6 :21:38        192.168.1.254           12
  lan0       (incomplete)        192.168.1.255            0


You may want to post your \ibmcom\protocol.ini file contents.


Regards

Pete
Title: Re: ArcaOS - new install (and a few questions)
Post by: Pete on May 29, 2017, 08:49:19 pm
Hi Howard

My protocol.ini does not have the line starting IFTYPE in the [TCPIP_NIF] section. Might be worth a try without that line as it seems that " If no value is explicitly specified, the medium type reported by the underlying network device driver is used to determine the most appropriate value. " - quote from MPTS Configuration Guide.

If you are still not getting a dhcp response

1] Is the dhcp server working? - if a router is the dhcp server enabled?

2] Try setting a static ip address - use System Setup ->Network->TCP/IP->TCP/IP Configuration


Sorry, cannot think of anything else to try at the moment - apart from following Alexs suggestion of file a bug report.


Regards

Pete

Title: Re: ArcaOS - new install (and a few questions)
Post by: Rene Hvidsoe on May 29, 2017, 10:36:49 pm
Hi Howard,

I am using the Realtek mmr driver and have no issues with my Realtek device id 10EC , 8136h. under ArcaOS.

Has your netcard been enabled and set for receiving DHCP ? Check that in TCP/IP configuration under network - tcp/ip in system setup.


René





Title: Re: ArcaOS - new install (and a few questions)
Post by: zoward on May 30, 2017, 12:48:55 am
Thank you all for the feedback!  To address a few of the questions I've gotten above:

- The "6" in PROTOCOL.INI was the interface type (Ethernet) assigned to the adapter in the Adapter settings.  I tried assigning it shortly after I found the driver didn't work.   It doesn't seem to make a difference if I have it set to 6 or leave it blank.

- I'm sure the hardware works - I booted the machine from a Linux USB drive this morning and the DHCP server assigned an address to the RealTek adapter.

- The DHCP server is my home router - it's the DHCP server for a dozen or so computers (Linux and Win10) tablets, phones, video game consoles, etc.  It's working with everything else.

- The only thing setting my card to a static IP did is stop the DHCP client requester from running.  I manually assigned the IP on the router, but was still unable to ping it.

- I finally realized why I'm getting the incomplete entries in my ARP table - when I go to ping an IP address, the TCP/IP stack is creating a temporary placeholder for the IP address of the machine in the ARP table, which never gets completed because it never gets the MAC address of the target machine back from the router.

- The adapter is very simple, it has only one parameter (interface type), and behaves no differently if I set it to Ethernet or just let the system determine the value.

- The TCP/IP configuration is mostly stock, just set to DHCP, one adapter, and one protocol (TCP/IP).  I'm not trying to run any other services on top of it.  I tried adding NetBIOS to the list of protocols just to see if anything would change, and it did: now, the system waits for the DHCP to timeout during boot and once WPS comes up, I get an error message telling me the DHCP request was unsuccessful.  If I pull up the DHCP monitor, it unsuccessfully retries every 30 seconds or so.

Is there anything else i can do?  manually specify the PCI address of the card or something?  I'm at a loss.  The only things I can think of right now are:

1. The CONFIG.SYS file somehow got corrupted during the installation or post-installation of other software and is no longer loading something I need.

2.  Some other setting I changed while testing and subsequently forgot about is preventing the system from working as it should.

3. The driver doesn't work with this hardware, even though the product and vendor ID and rev match the doc for the driver.

If I can't solve this in the next day or two, I'll see if I can get it working from a clean reinstall.  If not, I'll enter a ticket with AN.
Title: Re: ArcaOS - new install (and a few questions)
Post by: Dave Yeo on May 30, 2017, 01:16:29 am
You could try reinstalling the driver. System Setup-->Network-->Adapters and Protocols. Basically remove it and reinstall the same driver, with a couple of reboots in between. At least it should reset everything to the defaults.
Title: Re: ArcaOS - new install (and a few questions)
Post by: Andi B. on May 30, 2017, 07:48:18 am
Does your driver read the MAC address from the NIC? IIRC one of the netstat commands should show you this.

In the past there were some cards with Realtek chips which could not read the MAC address from the hardware and you had to add it manually in NAPS - Adapter options or directly in protocol.ini. No clue if this is still true.
Title: Re: ArcaOS - new install (and a few questions)
Post by: roberto on May 30, 2017, 10:30:52 am
Hi Howard,
In my case it solved the problem, it was in the tcpip, look at the configuration, in hostnames-- name resolution --- and replace 255.255.255.0 by 192.168.1.1 or the ip of your router or dns server.
Now I have another question, I wanted to uninstall or reinstall the
Ibm files and print clien for networking. Now I have it installed but after so many failures the requester fails me and in principle it will not let me reinstall it.

saludos
Title: Re: ArcaOS - new install (and a few questions)
Post by: Rene Hvidsoe on May 30, 2017, 04:58:21 pm
Hi Howard,

One thing does your Lan card load during bootup , I have set in my config.sys the /V after my driver like this "c:\imbcom\macs\mmre.os2 /V "

Then during bootup it will show you if driver gets loaded or not.

Have you tried the pci.exe  tool that tells you what HW that you have. And check the id for the REALTEK Lan driver.

PCI tool is placed in C:\sys\install\DETECT\pci.exe

the MMRE driver supports the following ID according to the https://www.arcanoae.com/wiki/multimac/:

1186:4300, 1186:4302
10EC:8139, 10EC:8136, 10EC:8168, 10EC:8169, 10EC:8167
1259:C107, 1737:1032, 16EC:0116

If the ID match and still can get it to work raise a ticket a Arcanae

René



Title: Re: ArcaOS - new install (and a few questions)
Post by: ak120 on May 30, 2017, 07:02:25 pm
Does your driver read the MAC address from the NIC? IIRC one of the netstat commands should show you this.

In the past there were some cards with Realtek chips which could not read the MAC address from the hardware and you had to add it manually in NAPS - Adapter options or directly in protocol.ini. No clue if this is still true.
It's quite simple to run netstat -n checking for this behaviour.
Title: Re: ArcaOS - new install (and a few questions)
Post by: zoward on May 31, 2017, 01:16:02 pm
Remember when I said that I installed NetBIOS temporarily and the boot process moved the DHCP server call further up in the boot process?  Well, when I went to try removing and then restoring the RTL8111 adapter, the PC no longer boots. It just hangs at the point where it used to try to hit the DHCP server.  I tried booting it from the CD, and if I choose boot from hard disk, it hangs as well, but this time it give me an error, a crash with register values and all from PROTMAN. Booting to maintenance does not seem to give me access to the C drive,so I can't restore my backups of PROTOCOL.INI, the MMRE driver files and CONFIG.SYS.  I booted from a linux stick which recognizes the JFS drive, but throws a bad superblock error if I try to mount it.  It's an older kernel, though, so I'll try again with a modern one. 

A few questions: if I boot from the CD ROM in install mode, configure the network card, boot, and then go straight to System Management before starting the install process, should the network be up and running at that point?  I could do this, trying different drivers and parameters without wiping my hard drive.  Beyond that, is there a way to access the hard drive from the CD or a boot drive?  Booting from the CD in maintenance mode only recognizes that a C drive even exists, and will let me switch to it, but the minute I try to do a DIR it throws an error.

Anyway, for now I'm just using my working install in Virtualbox on my main machine (Ubuntu linux), which works well enough (including networking), but it would be nice to have this running on bare hardware.  I may keep an eye peeled for a good used older Thinkpad as a host for this.
Title: Re: ArcaOS - new install (and a few questions)
Post by: Andi B. on May 31, 2017, 03:21:03 pm
Quote
...that a C drive even exists, and will let me switch to it, but the minute I try to do a DIR it throws an error...
Which error? That one that says a chkdsk is required? If yes then easy enough do a 'chkdsk /F' from C:\. I suppose you do this and your 'dir' from a OS/2 command prompt or 4os2 command prompt and not from DOS.
Title: Re: ArcaOS - new install (and a few questions)
Post by: zoward on June 02, 2017, 03:10:18 am
After settling down and doing some Googling, I found I could use the jfsutils package in Ubuntu to check and mount the OS/2 drive, which I did.  I then restored my config.sys and protocol.ini files from my backup copies, and successfully rebooted my system - whew!   I also discovered that my cats had eaten one end off my 25 foot cat5e cable, so I replaced it with a shiny new cat6 ... and I'm back to square one.  Yes, I've run PCS.EXE, checked the driver against the vendor, product and rev numbers, run netstat -n to see lan0 bind successfully i tthe MAC address, set the params using ifconfig lan0 statements, tried it in both DHCP and static mode, reserved an IP on the router, and tried pretty every combination of parameter settings for the adapter(s) and TCP/IP stack. 

At this point I'm going to document what I've tried and found, and submit a ticket to AN.  Thanks to everyone who responded with helpful suggestions - I'm still not connected, but I've learned a helluva lot about the OS/2 boot process and network subsystem in the interim!  I'm toying with the idea of picking up a not-too-expensive used Thinkpad to continue tinkering with ArcaOS on.
Title: Re: ArcaOS - new install (and a few questions)
Post by: roberto on June 02, 2017, 05:25:52 pm
Hi Hovard,
The card of realtec 8169, which I have. I have been torture for me for two days. Finally, cancel it.
The funny thing is that this card worked with the ecs22b2, without problems. I understand that with an old OS2 driver,
 because with the new Arcaos driver, the copies were made in about half the time.
The computer is a hp z400, which had a broadcom57X on motherboard , I was not able to make it work with the ecs22b2,
and buy the realtec as an option.
In the installation there were lots of errors, causing different results according to which programs I selected,
I was given a trap000e in OS2krnl when I started.
In this case of faults, what worked best for me to install it, was to reduce the programs to the basics by default,
 and to select NONE network adapter. In all cases the installer automatically selected the realtec adapter, not the broadcom adapter.
In tcpip it worked perfect and fast, but when installing Ibm file and print ... with netbios over tcp,
 strange things started. Network connections that worked for only minutes....
Just by adding two ip (192.168.1.1)(255.255.255.0)in Hostnames --- Name server addreess-- the system gave me a trap at startup.
Finally I put the broadcom57x and it is running like a rocket.
Howard, which adapter tells you the file pci.exe >c:\pc-hard.txt that you have? It has to be similar to RTL8169 - 10ech: 8169h My adapter.

saludos
Title: Re: ArcaOS - new install (and a few questions)
Post by: zoward on June 04, 2017, 12:23:23 pm
Roberto, you bring up some good points - thank you.  I know for a fact that the RTL-8111 vendor/product ID's are listed in the driver doc, so it should just work.  I've done a lot of tinkering since install, and may have changed something I shouldn't have.    Up until now I've been a little nervous about reinstalling the OS outright, so I've been testing after the fact by botting form the CD and going into System Management.  At this point I'm going to back up everything and  try a outright reinstall, with the NULL driver which the OS originally selected, and see if it installs the MMRE driver.  If it doesn't,  I'll try manually installing it on the clean system.  If still no go, I can try another reinstall, with MMRE chosen.  This will also keep me from "settling in" on the desktop I already have set up.

Based on what I saw, and what you told me, it looks like if you install only a TCP/IP protocol using DHCP with an adapter, the boot process invokes the DHCP in a certain spot, but if you install any additional network services that run over TCP/IP (like NetBIOS), it moves the DHCP driver to an earlier spot in the boot process, so the TCP/IP stack is up and running when it goes to load the additional network drivers.  Based on what you wrote above, it sounds like that's you saw as well.


Hi Hovard,
The card of realtec 8169, which I have. I have been torture for me for two days. Finally, cancel it.
The funny thing is that this card worked with the ecs22b2, without problems. I understand that with an old OS2 driver,
 because with the new Arcaos driver, the copies were made in about half the time.
The computer is a hp z400, which had a broadcom57X on motherboard , I was not able to make it work with the ecs22b2,
and buy the realtec as an option.
In the installation there were lots of errors, causing different results according to which programs I selected,
I was given a trap000e in OS2krnl when I started.
In this case of faults, what worked best for me to install it, was to reduce the programs to the basics by default,
 and to select NONE network adapter. In all cases the installer automatically selected the realtec adapter, not the broadcom adapter.
In tcpip it worked perfect and fast, but when installing Ibm file and print ... with netbios over tcp,
 strange things started. Network connections that worked for only minutes....
Just by adding two ip (192.168.1.1)(255.255.255.0)in Hostnames --- Name server addreess-- the system gave me a trap at startup.
Finally I put the broadcom57x and it is running like a rocket.
Howard, which adapter tells you the file pci.exe >c:\pc-hard.txt that you have? It has to be similar to RTL8169 - 10ech: 8169h My adapter.

saludos
Title: Re: ArcaOS - new install (and a few questions)
Post by: Pete on June 05, 2017, 01:57:53 am
Hi All

Recently i posted that I had managed to get an ArcaOS install completed almost to my satisfaction and that the Realtek nic was working fine - see last post in this thread http://www.os2world.com/forum/index.php/topic,1407.15.html

At that point I was using dhcp. A little later I switched to a static ip, rebooted and had no problems.

When I booted this morning there were no connectivity problems. A friend phoned with a Win7 question around midday so I rebooted into Win7 to check how to resolve his problem. That sorted I shutdown and went for lunch.

A couple of hours later I booted ArcaOS - and discovered I had no connectivity. Booting my laptop proved the router was working so I started looking into what was wrong with ArcaOS connectivity.

What I did notice is that the lantran.log looks very different to what I expect it to look like based on logs I have seen previously - and checking against my 2 eCS volumes on this system it is definitely different. Here is that lantran.log:-

IBM OS/2 LANMSGDD [05/21/04] 6.00 is loaded and operational.
MMRE NDIS device driver @#Arca Noae LLC:0.0.5#@##1## 4 Dec 2016 21:33:03      DAZAR1    ::::5::SVN63@@RealTek 8139C+/8169/8169S/8110S/8168/8111/8101E P
MMRE Hardware detected: RealTek 8168/8111 B/C/CP/D/DP/E/F/G PCIe Gigabit Ethernet
MMRE PHY: driver=rlphy OUI=e04c MODEL=11 FAIL
MMRE PHY: driver=rlphy OUI=e04c MODEL=11 FAIL
MMRE PHY: driver=rgephy OUI=e04c MODEL=11 SUCCESS
MMRE Mac address: fc:aa:14:2f:a1:23
MMRE Setup filter interrupt 16
IBM LANPDD is loaded and operational.
IBM OS/2 TCPBEUI 6.00.0
TCPBEUI: Using a 32-bit data segment.
Installing NETWKSTA.200 Version 6.0. IBM LAN Redirector ( May 25, 2005)

IBM OS/2 NETBIOS 4.0
Adapter 0 has 123 NCBs, 96 sessions, and 6 names available to NETBIOS applications.
NETBIOS 4.0 is loaded and operational.
IBM OS/2 LAN Netbind
TCPBEUI: Logical adapter 0 is bound to TCP/IP interface lan0.


For comparison here is lantran.log from this boot with working connectivity:-

IBM OS/2 LANMSGDD [05/21/04] 6.00 is loaded and operational.
IBM OS/2 TCPBEUI 6.00.0
TCPBEUI: Using a 32-bit data segment.
Installing NETWKSTA.200 Version 6.0. IBM LAN Redirector ( May 25, 2005)

IBM OS/2 NETBIOS 4.0
Adapter 0 has 123 NCBs, 96 sessions, and 6 names available to NETBIOS applications.
NETBIOS 4.0 is loaded and operational.
MMRE NDIS device driver @#Arca Noae LLC:0.0.5#@##1## 4 Dec 2016 21:33:03      DAZAR1    ::::5::SVN63@@RealTek 8139C+/8169/8169S/8110S/8168/8111/8101E P
MMRE Hardware detected: RealTek 8168/8111 B/C/CP/D/DP/E/F/G PCIe Gigabit Ethernet
MMRE PHY: driver=rlphy OUI=e04c MODEL=11 FAIL
MMRE PHY: driver=rlphy OUI=e04c MODEL=11 FAIL
MMRE PHY: driver=rgephy OUI=e04c MODEL=11 SUCCESS
MMRE Mac address: fc:aa:14:2f:a1:23
MMRE Setup filter interrupt 16
IBM OS/2 LAN Netbind
TCPBEUI: Logical adapter 0 is bound to TCP/IP interface lan0.


This successful log is the same as those stored from last boots of eCS2.1 and eCS2.2 on this system - and connectivity works. I suspect the failed log(top) possibly indicates nic related items in the config.sys file loading in the wrong order.

Before I tried sorting out the ArcaOS connectivity problem I booted eCS2.2b2 and discovered that was also having a connectivity problem. Very strange as I had not been using eCS for a few days and had definitely not made any configuration changes during last use.

Well, I had been running Win7 when I last connected to anything so I rebooted into Win7. No problems with Win7 connectivity although it seemed to take a little longer than usual for the nic icon on the taskbar to show as connected.

Having proven the nic working I rebooted into eCS2.1 - the only OS/2 installation not tested so far. That booted fine, no problems with connectivity.

I then rebooted into eCS2.2 and connectivity had been restored.

This looks suspiciously like a windows related problem; maybe something had glitched during Win7 shutdown affecting the nic and causing the connectivity problem. I have had hardware in the past that struggled to work with OS/2 based systems and the problems had (mainly) gone away after using the hardware in windows. I can only guess that the windows driver does some sort of initialisation or reset of the hardware.

So, I can only suggest that those people struggling with Realtek nics boot into windows, if possible, to check whether the nic works with that system. If it does it may then work with OS/2 based systems.

I must admit that I did not boot into ArcaOS until I had spent a few hours rearranging the ArcaOS config.sys file to closely resemble my eCS2.2 config.sys file especially the order of nic/networking related lines. It may not have been necessary but the lantran.log now looks like I expect it to and connectivity works - although I suspect that may be more to do with having run Win7 to check that the nic works.

I hope this is of some help to other Realtek users having connectivity problems despite all drivers loading OK.


Regards

Pete





Title: Re: ArcaOS - new install (and a few questions)
Post by: Andi B. on June 05, 2017, 09:24:25 am
Wild guess from the xwlan/genmac discussions - could it be that the Win driver put the network card in 'Energy saving' (or something similar) mode? All power related settings in Win driver for wireless (and wired) adapters should be set to 'max. performance' instead 'power saving'. Such settings often survive reboots especially on Notebooks. Maybe worth to check.
Title: Re: ArcaOS - new install (and a few questions)
Post by: Pete on June 05, 2017, 08:18:13 pm
Hi Andi

Yes, worth checking "turn off to save power" or whatever is not Enabled although that was not the case here.

I suspect Win7 glitched during shutdown although I would also guess that something went wrong with nic driver loading during the ArcaOS boot. Either way booting Win7 seems to have been the resolution.

No views on the lantran.logs shown? - Does the top log indicate a useable wired nic?


Regards

Pete