Author Topic: Minimal OS/2  (Read 6879 times)

karotlopj

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Minimal OS/2
« on: May 29, 2016, 12:38:07 pm »
I've been trying to create a minimal OS/2 installation for recovery/maintenance puposes and was wondering what I actually needed to boot up to a cmd prompt. I knew that not all that many files were needed, but wasn't sure exactly which.... I knew that a basic subset of around 20 DLLs were required but wasn't sure what they did. Suspecting that MOUCALLS.DLL had something to do with mice (which is something I don't think is necessary in this scenario), I tried to find out something about it...

Surprisingly this very interesting item popped up through Google:-


https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=FC-L2faxEVkC&pg=PA301&lpg=PA301&dq=os2+moucalls.dll&source=bl&ots=sHsIR9tVHi&sig=QPTD_iK1A6NtSJgidz8zGlBCpFk&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiFjoL4h__MAhUkB8AKHZDKCa8Q6AEIKzAD#v=onepage&q=os2%20moucalls.dll&f=false

ivan

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Re: Minimal OS/2
« Reply #1 on: May 29, 2016, 02:36:59 pm »
Hi John,

Your quest reminded me that I did something like that in the days of Warp3 based on information in the docs of DFSee.  In fact I went as far as creating a bootable CD based on that - used a CD because I wanted a few other utilities as well and that made it too large for a single diskette.

Attached is the DFSee text file and somewhere in the archives I think I have the CD if you are interested.

karotlopj

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Re: Minimal OS/2
« Reply #2 on: May 29, 2016, 03:44:40 pm »
Hi John,

Your quest reminded me that I did something like that in the days of Warp3 based on information in the docs of DFSee.  In fact I went as far as creating a bootable CD based on that - used a CD because I wanted a few other utilities as well and that made it too large for a single diskette.

Attached is the DFSee text file and somewhere in the archives I think I have the CD if you are interested.

Thanks Ivan.

Use of DFSEE as prtotshell is interesting, although TSHELL is more flexible.

It's amazing how small you can make OS/2... Hobbes has an image of a bootable floppy with OS/2 TCP/IP router with FTPD & REXECD for remote control it!

Not sure how well it works though, I haven't used a floppy for years, and I don't want to use CD's any more. USB or Network installs should be the way to go.
 BMSCALL
As for the minimal OS/2 setup, the article I mentioned leads me to think I can leave out MOUCALLS.DLL and BMSCALLS.DLL if I don't need mouse support and NLS.DLL may also be left out - not sure who needs it...

Dave Yeo

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Re: Minimal OS/2
« Reply #3 on: May 29, 2016, 07:20:26 pm »
John, you might want to look at the old bootos2, employee written software (EWS). While I understand it is broken with newer OS/2 releases it used to have various options for minimal installs with the smallest being a floppy or 2 and various options from just a cmd line to the WPS.

karotlopj

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Re: Minimal OS/2
« Reply #4 on: May 29, 2016, 08:26:25 pm »
Hi Dave. I had used BOOTOS2 in the past but ISTR that there were problems with OS/2 4.52.

Incidentally I suspect we have lost access to IBM EWS, which provided to some great utilities, but fortunately BOOTOS2 is on Hobbes..

http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/download/pub/os2/util/system/bootos2.zip

Dariusz Piatkowski

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Re: Minimal OS/2
« Reply #5 on: May 30, 2016, 12:54:26 am »
Way back when I think I used bootos2 to create a maintenance partition...this partition still works for me, but it has been updated manually to account for SMP, etc, etc...very basics here, as in CMD prompt, that's it!!!

I've attached the listing of all the files on that MAINT partition...

Andreas Schnellbacher

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Martin Iturbide

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Re: Minimal OS/2
« Reply #7 on: May 30, 2016, 02:14:22 am »
Hi John.

I did some experiments on the past, but not trying to get a minimal OS/2, but with the goal of cropping OS/2 and having just the necessary to boot, load PM desktop, SOM, basic WPS and basic network functions on a VM.

It may be not focused on what you are looking but you can check the bWarp and cWarp experiments I did.

As a part of that experiments I also tried to document as much as I can find on each individual file of the OS/2 Warp 4.52. I had put that list on this category of the EDM/2 Wiki. If you want to include any more documentation about any file please let me know to improve the Wiki.

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Martin Iturbide
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karotlopj

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Re: Minimal OS/2
« Reply #8 on: May 30, 2016, 10:30:58 am »
Martin, what you've done with the EDM/2 Wiki is truly amazing - an OS/2 goldmine of useful information. I often refer to

http://www.edm2.com/index.php/The_Config.sys_Documentation_Project

although it would be even better, when describing each basedev, ifs, device etc if the date, size and source could be included. OS/2 has been around for a very long time and some of the files have many versions, and it's not always apparent which is the latest version.

Martin Iturbide

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Re: Minimal OS/2
« Reply #9 on: May 30, 2016, 03:28:19 pm »
Thanks John. What I do is only trying to consolidate information on that wiki and ask permission to republish the information.

Trying to document the version of each driver is a great idea and had been in my mind also for some time. I'm not sure if it should be on EDM/2 or on the OS2world wiki, because that it will not be a development related (or OS/2 architecture) topic for EDM/2, but to be honest it is more important to do it than thinking if it is on the right place first.

But I really need more manpower to pull that off. I have a draft idea of what can be done on the OS2world Wiki Hardware on the Device Drivers column, but I never finished it. (example)

My limitation right now is that I prefer to document/organize the OS/2 internals (Components, Files and APIs) first. But everybody is welcome to collaborate on the OS2World wiki with drivers information and hardware reports.

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Martin Iturbide
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