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Messages - Doug Bissett

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901
Applications / Re: FF and TB not running at the same time.
« on: July 30, 2016, 12:23:43 am »
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I think I've suggested this REXX script for watching memory a few times. Direct link -
http://www.os2.org/download/file.php?id=87

Actually, I have used Above512, but the version that I have does not have the script. That does make the granularity somewhat better. Thanks...

HOWEVER. It seems that various tools show different values. See the attachment. Note that Free Shared Mem, and Above512Watch show similar numbers, while SHMemMon shows more like what I expect to see, since I had closed FF before taking the picture (about half an hour before). Both Free Shared Mem, and Above512Watch do not show the shared memory being returned to the system, while SHMemMon does.

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System Load from Vasilkin Andrey has an excellent view mode for shared memory.

Yes, it does. I will need to experiment more with that, but I don't see any way to record what it is showing. Since the system dies at the interesting point, it would be good to have some sort of log.

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You should have at least the L option if you want firefox and thunderbird to work at the same time.

E:\PROGRAMS\THUNDERBIRD\THUNDERBIRD!LK.EXE
E:\PROGRAMS\FIREFOX\FIREFOX!LK.EXE

Actually, only one of them needs the "L". Since using "L" seems to mess up sound, it is usually best to use it with Thunderbird. Or has that problem been resolved?

902
Article Discussions / Re: App Store Ranting
« on: July 29, 2016, 05:17:52 pm »
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*) Doug Bissett: ANPM is nothing like an app store, it install things from a long list of package names.
One usually have to find documentation and install/update support libraries separately.
It will change as applications will be introduced into ANPM, I'm sure.

ANPM was never meant to be either an installer, or an app store. It is meant to make it easy to use RPM/YUM (now), and (eventually) WarpIn. RPM/YUM or WarpIn (including the EXE versions of WarpIn installers) do the install, and the package management on the user's system. 

Arca Noae does have an app store of sorts, where the user can find software https://www.arcanoae.com/shop/. There isn't much there yet, but a user can go to the web site, and find what is available. What more do you really need, or want (other than more stuff listed)? There is certainly no need for a program to do that, a web site is more than sufficient.

903
Applications / Re: FF and TB not running at the same time.
« on: July 29, 2016, 03:35:18 am »
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Currently after a day of uptime, with both SM and TB loaded, I have 253 MBs of free low memory. I really should be marking some of the DLLs in @UNIXROOT\usr\lib to load high.

Since I rarely use TB, or SM, it is easy enough to stop FF first (if I don't the second one simply doesn't start). I am puzzled why you have so much more free shared memory space, although that is close to what I see on my laptops. It is my main machine that has the problem, but I haven't been able to isolate what the difference is. During boot, it is XCenter that eats the most, and that is 40 Mb (after I removed all of the DLLs that I don't actually use). I have a second XCenter, but it only uses an additional 2 Mb.

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I wonder what part of clamd is loaded high and if that could be triggering a problem?

I don't know. I used ClamD for a long time, until I started having severe low shared memory problems (about 3 years ago). After I discovered that the latest version loads high, I started using it again. It doesn't seem to use any low shared memory, but, according to Theseus, it uses about 300 Mb of shared memory space, which I assume is in high memory. I believe that most of it is the database. I don't know why that would need to be in shared memory space anyway. FWIW, I was having this problem long before I started using ClamD again.

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Are you relying mail to Win boxes? Otherwise I can't see any point in running clamd, which probably uses resources.

I do forward e-mail sometimes, and I will admit that ClamDscan rarely actually finds anything to complain about, but I don't like to expose windows users to any more problems than they already have, so I scan all incoming mail. The only resources that it seems to use (other than high shared memory) is private memory, some disk space, and a few machine cycles.

904
Applications / Re: FF and TB not running at the same time.
« on: July 29, 2016, 12:03:57 am »
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Doesn't happen here. Do you load both data and code segments high?

I do in AOO 4.12. It doesn't seem to make any difference in FF. As long as something is loaded high, it crashes on exit, most of the time. I have even tried just XUL.DLL loaded high, but it still crashes on exit. It seems that the latest CLAMD.EXE also loads high, but it is never terminated so it doesn't crash. It is possible that I missed something when I updated eCS 2.1 to use the kernel from eCS 2.2b2. Anybody got specific instructions?

Currently, I am using SHMEMMON (from JVW) to measure the low free shared memory, but it seems that the shortest sample time is 1 minute, which is far too long to capture what is happening in real time. After I rebooted, it showed 233.0 Mb free. I started FF 38.8.0, and it showed 115.0 Mb free (RUN! with only "!"). Now, it is showing 114.8 Mb free. Above512 is showing:
Code: [Select]
current free virtual address space in kB (private / shared):
  247360 / 113984 below 512MB line, 2293760 / 1831372 above 512MB line
Now, SHMEMMON is showing 111.7 Mb free. Since TB, and SM, use more than that, I am not overly surprised that they can't start. Even if they sneak in, anything else that needs shared memory is not going to get it.

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My run parameters are !K for firefox and !LK for Thunderbird.

Some time ago, I tried !K and discovered that doing that caused even more shared memory to be used, so I took it out again. It wasn't much, but it seems that every byte helps.

905
Applications / Re: FF and TB not running at the same time.
« on: July 28, 2016, 07:00:24 pm »
I cannot run more than one of the Mozilla derivatives at any one time. If I try to start a second one, it crashes. I cannot prove it beyond any doubt, but I am convinced that the problem is that there is not enough shared memory left, after I get the first one started. It doesn't matter what order I start them in, or whether I use RUN!, or not, the second one never even gets started.

I normally use Firefox (now 38.8.0) for browsing, PMMail for e-mail, and Pronews/2 for news groups. Most of the time I can use that combination without problems,but FF seems to consistently eat more shared memory space, and depending on what I am doing, it may crash in a couple of hours, or it may crash after a couple of days. I can watch the amount of shared memory space shrink, until it gets to about 100 meg free, then it is only a matter of time before the crash, and sometimes, the crash takes out the whole system.

I do not use upper shared memory with these programs, simply because they crash about 80% of the time, when terminated, and about 80% of the crashes, cause the whole system to crash. I do have the 106 kernel installed, which is supposed to have a fix for that problem and I have lots of upper shared memory available. Obviously, the unload problem isn't fixed.

I do use upper shared memory for AOO 4.12. That works okay as long as I also use the Quick start feature, which keeps the DLLs loaded. If I don't do that, it crashes about 80% of the time on close, and 80% of the crashes take out the whole system. Most inconvenient. If I load AOO low, it  becomes another program that must run alone, because it uses too much shared memory.

After doing a lot of experimenting, I can't seem to reduce the amount of lower shared memory that I need, and that causes me to reboot almost every day. Something needs to be done about this problem.

906
Programming / Re: OS4 question
« on: July 15, 2016, 01:26:08 am »
Hey Doug, Getting back to my problem copying files > 4gb -- I just bought a 32 gb Scandisk, used DFSee to format it jfs, but looks like that didn't work, can't make a directory - I get the error message "specified disk cannot be ascessed"!
  Do you have any good words on how I should be trying format this memory stick/USB Flash Drive?

thanks, klipp

DFSEE doesn't format as JFS. All it does is make a volume that can be formatted as JFS, using the format command. In fact, it may be better to just use the Manage Volumes tool (miniLVM) to do the volume management. It still needs to be formatted as JFS though. I suggest that you do not use an advanced volume, use a bootable volume. It can't be expanded, but it is a bit easier to use.

FAT32 is a little different. DFSEE will format as FAT32, because the format command cannot do that, and Jan built the tool to do it.

907
Programming / Re: OS4 question
« on: July 13, 2016, 11:41:51 pm »
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I always thought that distributing patched IBM files was illegal. I remember Steven, who said that patching them in memory is not. I'm not convinced that distributed eCS kernels, which include patches from Holger and Steven, can be legally distributed, because the file itself was patched.

If Steven shows up here, he may correct me, but I seem to recall that he (or somebody who can distribute such things) got the okay to distribute a patched kernel (possibly other things) with eCS. I would assume that Arca Noae can get the same permission, since they are now the distributor for OS/2.

It may be stretching the point a little, but distributing a patch is definitely legal, and what a user does with a patch is up to them. If they choose to patch a file, then use that file for their own use, it is probably not going to be questioned. That may be a way to make the OS/4 kernel legal (or at least more legal than it is now). Distributing the OS/4 kernel, as a binary, is likely illegal, but it seems that IBM is ignoring it.

908
Programming / Re: OS4 question
« on: July 13, 2016, 08:46:41 pm »
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Doug, are you accessing the Windows icons in their binary package? If so, you could probably extract them, probably with a Windows tool, convert them into OS/2 icons (winico on Hobbes) and save them in the same directory with an ico suffix. Presumably the system will just load the ico file rather then hunting through the Win binary.

Hmmm. I never thought about that. Since I really don't care what icon gets displayed, i don't need to extract whatever might be in the file. I found a simple 888 byte window icon (OS/2 format), copied that into the folder, using the ico extension, and yes, it solves the problem (at least it looks like it has solved the problem). The folder also opens much faster, and I seem to have a couple of meg more free shared memory space. Free Shared Mem shows a short period where lower shared memory drops by a small amount (nothing like before), but it is far less likely to cause a problem. Now, to figure out how to get that icon copied, using the appropriate name, BEFORE I need to open the folder.

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If you are able to open the .exe with 7-Zip, it has the ability to enumerate sub-components within the executable and extract icons and other files for you, and then you can use them that way.

Never thought about that either. It works, for some files, but not others. As noted above, I really don't care what icon gets displayed, my 888 byte icon is perfect for what I need, so I don't need to worry about extracting icons.

Thanks to both of you.

909
Article Discussions / Re: App Store Ranting
« on: July 13, 2016, 05:17:38 am »
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About ANPM, I was hoping that the tool can evolve to be more like an "App Store" that masks the RPM complexity on the back, instead of being just a GUI for RPM/YUM.

Please, NO! "App stores" are one of the very worst things that have happened over the last few years.

ANPM was designed to be a GUI for RPM/YUM, since RPM/YUM is completely unusable for most people. In that capacity, it has done well. ANPM was also supposed to be a GUI for WarpIn, which has much less need for such a thing, but some sort of tracking between the two would be good. Unfortunately, the main programmer (Alex Taylor) has been far too busy with more important things. The "App Store" concept is supposed to be handled by RPM/YUM, but RPM/YUM has so many faults, that it has not actually been done. It seems that the first "product" to be made available, will be Firefox. It will be interesting to see how well that works, when/if it happens.

910
Programming / Re: OS4 question
« on: July 13, 2016, 04:59:08 am »
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I would suggest to analyze and minimize using the low shared memory in favor of using high shared memory. Some DLLs allow loading to high shared memory with no harm.

I use high shared memory for the OpenOffice DLLs, but that only works when I also use the Quick Start feature, otherwise when OO closes, the machine hangs, or crashes, about 7 times in 10. I have the same problem when trying to use high memory with Firefox, but it doesn't have a method to keep the DLLs loaded, so I use them loaded low. I have tried other things, but they just don't work when loaded high, or the machine crashes when they unload. I know that somebody has done some work on that problem, but it obviously needs more work.

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I never change DC1 to original and everything works fine. So it's hard for me to consider it a mess.

Sorry, but I can't use any unsupported software that affects normal operation. If I do, I can't tell if that causes the problem, or if the software that I am testing is causing the problem. It is not smart to cause confusion, so I don't do it.

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Please tell me what kernel could help in this case?

I have no idea, and that is one of the reasons why I don't use the OS/4 kernel. When I was playing with it, I saw no reason to even consider using it. It did nothing, at all, to improve things, so why should i compromise my system to use it? Someday, OS/4 may offer some good reason to use it, meanwhile I don't see the point in spending time messing around with it. Then, there is the legal grey area, which needs to be cleared up before OS/4 can even be considered by a lot of people.

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OS/4 may not offer much for this issue - it offers to programs approx. 512Kb more low shared than the original kernel.

512KB might help, in about 5% of the crashes, but it isn't enough to encourage me to bother with the OS/4 kernel.

911
Programming / Re: OS4 question
« on: July 12, 2016, 06:15:55 pm »
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Interesting, how did it interfere with you "normal" system ?

It was mostly having to mess with DOSCALL1.DLL, but system dumps no longer worked properly, which made it impossible to do software testing for other projects. I also use the RAMDISK that QSINIT puts into memory above the 4 GB mark, so I wouldn't use the OS/4 loader anyway. It just got to be too much effort to mess with all of that stuff, so I quit using OS/4, which never seemed to work any better, or worse, than the original kernel. Someday, when I find some spare time, I may try again, but it won't be soon.

FWIW, lower shared memory space is now my biggest problem. Does OS/4 improve on that? The real killer seems to be large windows executable files. When the WP shell goes digging to find the icon, shared memory drops by the size of the file it is working with. If I have 100 meg of free space, and load a folder with a file that is 101 meg, it is instant death. Usually just a system hang, but often a complete system crash. At first I thought it might be the FAT32 driver, but it also happens on JFS drives. I have had a few instances when the Free Shared Mem program showed 100 meg left, and I loaded a folder with a file that is 99 meg. Free shared memory dropped to 1 meg, for about 30 seconds, then it jumped back up to 100 meg free. Of course, if anything else tries to allocate lower shared memory, at that time, it causes a crash. Using "SET NOLARGENTEXEICON=1" in CONFIG.SYS doesn't seem to make any difference, which may point to a flaw in XWorkplace. In any case, this problem is causing me to reboot a couple of times a day, although there are times when I can go for 4 days without a reboot. I have never figured out what the difference is.

912
Programming / Re: OS4 question
« on: July 12, 2016, 04:32:10 am »
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Hey Doug, How have you been? Well I hope!

Well, I have Age, and it is catching.   ;D

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it looks like I should format my memory sticks to JFS and then my copying should proceed without problems

That works okay, as long as you don't need to share the data with some other OS. I have heard that some Linux distros will use our JFS, but I never got it to work, when I tried it. Sharing very large files with other OSs can be done over a LAN, using RSYNC, or SAMBA, but you also need a file system on the other end, that can handle large files.

913
Programming / Re: OS4 question
« on: July 12, 2016, 12:09:08 am »
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Will using the OS4 kernels possibly do away with the 4gb limit for files? .vdi files, and others commonly run in excess of 4gb and up tp 8gb in many cases.

The kernel has nothing to do with file size limits. That is the file system that does that. Mentioned above, FAT32 (in OS/2) is limited to 4 GB (had a fight with that recently).

JFS is limited to something larger than the 25 GB ZIP file that I have for one of my backups (and, yes I can restore it).

I copy those files across my LAN to another eCS machine using RSYNC.

I also copy them to a couple of JFS formatted USB devices, using copy, or RSYNC.

SAMBA will also allow me to copy them to other machines over the LAN (including using win 10 as the client), but the eCS SAMBA client is pretty flaky, while the SAMBA server seems to be rock solid.

FWIW, I have quit using HPFS, which saves me some very valuable shared memory space. I use JFS for everything except sharing files with windows, which requires FAT32. JFS is noticeably faster, and far more reliable, than HPFS IMO. It is recommended to get the latest version from Arca Noae, because it fixes a rare, but very damaging, problem.

I did play with OS/4 for a while, but once it started interfering with my normal system, I quit using it, although I still have it in a virtual machine (which I haven't used for more than a year).

914
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I'm to the point now where I'm going to leave it installed on that partition, but will not use it unless I have to.

I would suggest that you fire it up after the second Tuesday of the month, to get the updates. It seems that windows can get itself tied in knots if it doesn't stay up to date. Updates will probably take about an hour, but if you let it go two months, it can take 4 hours, and eventually it can get to the point where it just won't do it.

A couple of other tips: I use AVAST! free antivirus https://www.avast.com/index, SpywareBlaster http://www.brightfort.com/spywareblaster.html, CCleaner https://www.piriform.com/CCLEANER, and MyDefrag (which is no longer maintained, but still works better than any other defragger that I know about, although Degraggler is a close second) http://download.cnet.com/MyDefrag/3000-18512_4-10701976.html. All are free, and even my nephew who likes to play some serious games (and look at porn sites) has managed to stay out of serious trouble for about 6 years, by using them.

Disclaimer: I have no interest in any of them, other than as a satisfied user.

I keep windows installed so I can help out those who get themselves in trouble by using it, and to do a few things that eCS won't do. I seem to spend more time maintaining windows, than working with eCS. If they ever get VBox for ArcaOS working properly, I will seriously consider using that to run windows.

915
I have done 8 win 10 installs (mostly free "upgrades"). Only one went well, and that was on a newly installed win 7, with nothing else installed.

Some tricks:

Early in the install sequence, they offer to set up a lot of settings for you. There is an obvious NEXT button, and an almost invisible "Customize" link. Select Customize, and turn off everything that even hints that it will send data to Microsoft (or anybody else).

When it comes time to make a user and password, DO NOT connect to Microsoft's cloud. Use a local ID and password. This will prevent a few things from working, but not enough to make it worthwhile selling your soul to Microsoft (you can change your mind later, but be sure that you understand what it does).

After you get the whole thing installed, go through ALL of the settings panels, and turn OFF anything that even stinks of sending data to anybody. When you find the panel that shows programs that run in the background, turn most (or all) of them OFF.

Some things that I found:

Code: [Select]
Turn off forced updates

If you're anything like us, you set up previous Windows releases so that
they wouldn't install updates automatically - one forced reboot is one
too many. To be fair to Microsoft, Windows 10 handles post-update
reboots much more elegantly, but we'd still rather be in control from
the outset.

There is a workaround for users running Windows 10 Pro: from the Start
Menu, search for 'gpedit' and run the Group Policy Editor. Expand
Computer Configuration in the left-hand pane, and navigate to
Administrative Templates\Windows Components\Windows Update. Double-click
Configure Automatic Updates in the list, select the Enabled radio
button, and in the left-hand box select 2 - Notify for download and
notify for install. Now click OK, and you'll be notified whenever there
are updates - unfortunately, they'll be a daily irritation if you're
using Windows Defender.

The Group Policy Editor isn't available on Windows 10 Home, but we'd
recommend you at least open Windows Update, click Advanced options and
select Notify to schedule restart from the Choose how updates are
installed list. While you're here, all Windows 10 users might want to
click Choose how updates are delivered, and ensure that Updates from
more than one place is either off, or set to PCs on my local network.

Where's Safe Mode when you need it?

Nothing gets you out of Windows trouble like Safe Mode, which is why
it's inexplicable that you can no longer enter it by pressing F8 or
Shift+F8 at boot. Although it's still available in Windows 10, you have
to boot into Windows first, then either restart holding the left Shift
key or via an option within Update & Security in the Settings app.
Neither method is helpful if your PC can't boot into Windows in the
first place.

You can't get around this, which is why it's helpful to create a boot
time Safe Mode option before trouble arrives. Hit Win+x and select
Command Prompt (Admin), then type bcdedit /copy {current} /d "Windows 10
Safe Mode" and hit Enter. From the Start Menu type msconfig, run System
Configuration in the results, and navigate to the Boot tab. Highlight
the Windows 10 Safe Mode option you just created, tick Safe boot and
select Minimal under Boot options and - if necessary - reduce the
Timeout value so you won't be inconvenienced - the minimum is three
seconds. Tick Make all boot settings permanent (in fact you can simply
return here to delete the Safe Mode entry) and click OK.

Enable System Restore

Another inexplicable choice in Windows 10 is that System Restore isn't
enabled by default; we wouldn't hesitate to turn it on. Search for
'Create a restore point' in the Start Menu and select it in the results,
then highlight the system drive, click the Configure button and select
Turn on system protection. Use the slider to set an appropriate amount
of maximum disk space - about 5GB ought to be enough. Note that,
annoyingly, the upgrade to Windows 10 version 10586 turns this off again
- you'll need to turn it back on.

Fix slow boot times

Like Windows 8 before it, Windows 10 uses a hybrid boot to enable fast
boot times. When you shut the system down, apps and app processes are
terminated, but the Windows kernel itself is hibernated to allow for a
faster restart. In theory it's great, but it seems to still be very slow
for some Windows 10 users.

Disable it by searching for Power Options in the Start Menu and running
the matching Control Panel applet, then in the left-hand pane click
Choose what the power buttons do. Click Change settings that are
currently unavailable, scroll down and un-tick Turn on fast start-up,
then click Save changes. This should prevent very slow starts on
affected PCs. Some users report that if they subsequently reboot,
re-trace their steps and re-enable fast start-up the problem remains cured.

If you're dual-booting between Windows 10 and Windows 7, switching fast
start-up off will also fix the problem where Windows 7 checks the disks
each time you boot it: With fast start-up enabled, the earlier operating
system doesn't recognise that the disks have been properly shut down by
Windows 10.

The lock screen gets in the way

Return to a locked Windows 10 device and you'll see a pretty picture.
That's nice, but it's a needless obstacle in the way of logging in. If
you're as impatient as we are, disable the lock screen by searching the
Start Menu for regedit, and running the Registry editor.

Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows. If
you don't already see a key named 'Personalization', select the Windows
key, right-click it, choose New>Key and rename this new key to
Personalization (sic). Right-click the Personalization key, choose New
again then select DWORD (32-bit) Value. Select New Value #1 in the
right-hand pane and use F2 to rename it NoLockScreen, then double-click
it, change the value data to 1 and click OK. After a reboot, the lock
screen will be gone.

There are many more tips out there, but doing all of this seems to make win 10 work almost as well as win 7 does, and it keeps your data on your own machine. Especially important when sharing a FAT32 drive between win 10 and OS/2 (eCS), is to turn OFF Fast start.

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