Author Topic: RAM disk and temp folders...what else?  (Read 41957 times)

Lars

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Re: RAM disk and temp folders...what else?
« Reply #45 on: April 20, 2018, 01:32:14 pm »
2Lars: Where to get??? On Hobbes. If the kernel is not properly work on your system, you should report that to the developers, so that they will fix it. But you don't want. So, who is guilty?

All available stuff is either on Hobbes, or at official webpage, http://gus.biysk.ru/os4/. All, who needs it, knows about it. os4apic.psd is documented in kernel readme's. At least, available command line switches. What else is needed? It is not ACPI implementation, because ACPI is separate from PSD. ACPI is available for interested testers (including me). It is a special kind of driver (a PDD, but it is loaded before PSD, and it communicates to PSD, so that PSD gets ACPI tables info from it. Alternatively, IRQ routing info can be get from MPTable). Drivers like CLOCK03c.SYS are mandatory, but they are loaded by kernel without the need to be written into CONFIG.SYS (the same way as CLOCK01.SYS. CLOCK03c.SYS is loaded instead of CLOCK01.SYS, and contains both CLOCK and TIMER drivers. Plus, it contains support for hi-res timer, based on HPET). The same for SCREEN03.SYS. There are also OEMHLP.BPD and ACPI4.BPD, which contain OEMHLP$ and ACPICA$ implementations. All these should be not written into CONFIG.SYS. Everything should be described in readme's, otherwise you can ask developers. They are responsive.

How do you know that I don't want ? In fact, I did install the OS4 kernel and along with it the OS4APIC.PSD.
The problem is that the OS4 components are spread across different places (there is no common zip, left alone an installation package). And it's unclear when and if you need ACPI4.BPD and OEMHLP.BPD.

Just to let you know: I have a 40-hour job and it has nothing to do with PC SW development. I don't have all day to find out how things work or where to find them. Then I have some own OS/2 related SW development going on. And then I have to maintain my existing OS/2 main installation and device driver development installation to ensure it is operational. Plus I have a couple of additional hobbies ...

Valery Sedletski

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Re: RAM disk and temp folders...what else?
« Reply #46 on: April 20, 2018, 02:29:41 pm »
2Lars:

> The problem is that the OS4 components are spread across different places (there is no common zip, left alone an installation package). And it's unclear when and if you need ACPI4.BPD and OEMHLP.BPD.

All required components are in kernel archive. acpi4.bpd is not yet released, because something should be fixed until the release. But it is promised to be released soon. BTW, it should work ok without acpi4.bpd (or, with ACPI.PSD older than 3.23.01)

Neil Waldhauer

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Re: RAM disk and temp folders...what else?
« Reply #47 on: April 20, 2018, 03:01:01 pm »
Pardon me for going off-topic a little bit.

Writing a good installer would supercharge the OS4 project. If I could have confidence that I could install OS4, and then uninstall it, I could be brave about trying it under various machines and tasks. I'm sure I'm not alone in feeling this way. I'd like to encourage the project, yet I have not got the time to invest to learn how it goes together.

It's not easy to write a good installer, and the skills have more to do with test engineering than software engineering. OS4 would be especially challenging because any error leaves the installation unable to boot. The target installations are diverse -- OS/2, eCS and ArcaOS.
Expert consulting for ArcaOS, OS/2 and eComStation
http://www.blondeguy.com

Dariusz Piatkowski

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Re: RAM disk and temp folders...what else?
« Reply #48 on: April 20, 2018, 04:28:33 pm »
...It's not easy to write a good installer, and the skills have more to do with test engineering than software engineering. OS4 would be especially challenging because any error leaves the installation unable to boot. The target installations are diverse -- OS/2, eCS and ArcaOS.

Neil's got a great point about the installer. Given that we now have several options available as far as picking the OS2 loader of choice, I would actually be hesitant to allow an installer to do this type of stuff.

Yeah, I know...may seem counter-intuitive, but I think there are far too many things that could go just 'wrong enough' to prevent my OS/2 machine from booting, that would make me feel comfortable doing this any other way.

Funny thing is, the request for additional info was literally my feedback to the OS4 folks in one of the other threads. But I think what I was talking about was a lot more like the stuff Lars mentioned here, that being: give me a better understanding of the internal design/implementation of the changes so that I can feel more confident in my decision to pursue this approach.

Having said all of the above, the actual (manual) install of the OS4 solution is not all that hard. The READMEs included do cover it fairly well, but yeah, go through them at least a couple of times. I think most of time would be spent in adjusting the default configuration, so getting yourself multiple CONFIG.SYS instances to give you the flexibility to either boot with the OS4 loader, or the default OS2 or maybe the AOS one.

Dariusz Piatkowski

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Re: RAM disk and temp folders...what else?
« Reply #49 on: April 20, 2018, 04:49:25 pm »
Hi Lars,

OK, step by step explanation:

1) do you ONLY have HPFS386 partitions on your HD ? Or do you also have JFS partitions ?

Only using HPFS386 partitions. The only other IFSs deployed are: FAT32 & CDFS, but the CDFS is a standard these days and FAT32 is specific to just using memory cards/thumb drives.

Quote
2) have you been copying from G: to ramdisk ?

Yes, G: is my boot drive, I am copying various sized files from G: to ramdisk, which is drive Y:

Quote
3) What driveletter does your ramdisk have ? It seems that it is neither F: nor G: so what is it ?

Ramdisk is drive Y:

Quote
4) What is the switch to cache386 to explicitely turn on/off caching for a specific drive letter ?

Issuing 'cache386' @CLI shows the following:

Code: [Select]
[G:\]cache386
Valid options for CACHE386 (x is an optional drive letter):

/OPTIONS[:x]         Display current configuration
/STATS[:C|:D]        Display, clear, or dynamically display statistics
/LAZY[:x][:ON|:OFF]  Enable or disable lazy writing
/MAXAGE[:x]:n        Change msDataAge to n milliseconds
/BUFFERIDLE[:x]:n    Change msIdleBuf to n milliseconds

If no drive (x) is given, the option will apply to all HPFS drives.

Each option may be abbreviated to a single letter, for example:

CACHE386 /B:D:1000    (sets BufferIdle to 1000 for drive D)

So, to turn on the cache (lazy write really as per the option listing, but it appears to actually behave as if that controls the CACHE function) you issue 'cache386 /l:y:on', which can then be checked by issuing the following 'cache386 /o:y':

Code: [Select]
[G:\]cache386 /o:y
CACHE386 options
Cache Size    65536 KB

Drive Y:
   Lazy write:              ON   MaxAge:          15000 msec
                                 BufferIdle:       5000 msec

As best as I can tell issuing 'cache386 /l:y:off' disables or enables the HPFS386 cache:

Code: [Select]
[G:\]cache386 /o:y
CACHE386 options
Cache Size    65536 KB

Drive Y:
   Lazy write:             OFF

Therefore, the previously reported results are specific to the above method of turning on the HPFS386 cache (lazy write) for the ramdisk drive 'Y:'.

As far as I can tell there is nothing else in the HPFS386 module which allows one to explicitly control the cache function, instead I believe it is the 'LAZY write' control that actually does this.

Dariusz Piatkowski

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Re: RAM disk and temp folders...what else?
« Reply #50 on: April 20, 2018, 05:03:52 pm »
Hi Ben!

Hi Ben

My config.sys entry is a simple one; "IFS=Y:\IMB386FS\HPFS386.IFS /A:R" where "Y:" is the boot drive and "R" is the RAMDisk.


Is the "Y:\IMB386FS\" above a copy'n'paste typo?

Typo unfortunately.

I tried it on two different installations on two different machines with the same error.

I vaguely recall from the distant past, that HPFS386.IFS wouldn't load without some sort of memory restrictions... virtualmemorylimit adjustment or something like that. But I have that setting tweaked for other programs and I have no intention of changing it..

I take it that file system drivers, (*.IFS), can be loaded from anywhere not  just from config.sys path statements in the libpath, path dpath?

I guess that I have no choice but to use the basic HPFS.


So the HPFS386 module is not solely made up of the IFS and the INI files, there of course are a number of DLLs which make up the full solution.

Here is what I currently have in my \IBM386FS directory:

Code: [Select]
Directory of G:\ibm386fs

10-29-17   7:07p     <DIR>           0  .
 4-19-18   1:25p     <DIR>           0  ..
 9-30-03   6:11p     25701         403  BOOTSH.EXE
 9-30-03   6:11p      1547         221  bsh.msg
 9-30-03   6:11p      3958         222  bshh.msg
 9-30-03   6:11p      3255         221  cac.msg
 9-30-03   6:11p      3497         222  cach.msg
 9-30-03   6:11p     27237         405  CACHE386.EXE
 9-30-03   6:11p     10804         224  DISKFT.SYS
 3-11-12   8:08p      2164           0  files_latest
 9-30-03   6:11p     10346         221  hfs.msg
 9-30-03   6:11p     33464         222  hfsh.msg
 9-30-03   6:11p      6845         404  HPFS386.DLL
 3-23-04  10:17a    259689           0  hpfs386.ifs
11-30-00   6:31p    259177           0  hpfs386.ifs.53_43
 9-30-03   6:11p    259691         225  hpfs386.ifs.53_44_15
 3-23-04  10:17a    259689           0  hpfs386.ifs.53_47
 4-17-18  10:49a     12232         268  hpfs386.ini
 8-30-14  10:42a      7154           0  hpfs386.log
 9-30-03   6:11p       462         225  hpfs386.txt
10-26-08  11:38a      1313          86  hpfsperf IP_8508.TXT
10-26-08  11:36a      8758          75  hpfsperf.cmd
 9-30-03   6:11p     39725         355  hva.exe
10-10-01   3:11p      7022           0  MAILSLOT.DLL
 9-30-03   6:11p      7020         405  MAILSLOT.DLL.53_43
 3-23-04   8:40p    363811          49  netapi.dll
 9-30-03   6:11p    348965         403  NETAPI.DLL.53_43
 3-23-04   8:40p    363811          49  NETAPI.DLL.53_47
 9-30-03   6:11p     23040         224  netapi.lib
 3-23-04   8:37p     63636          61  NETAPI32.DLL
 9-30-03   6:11p     63766         417  NETAPI32.DLL.53_43
 3-23-04   8:37p     63636          61  NETAPI32.DLL.53_47
10-10-01   6:44p      6588           0  NETSPOOL.DLL
 9-30-03   6:11p      6586         405  NETSPOOL.DLL.53_43
 1-01-13  10:51a     <DIR>        1037  newest
 1-01-13  10:51a     <DIR>        1144  original
 9-30-03   6:11p     26629         359  PREPACL.EXE
 9-30-03   6:11p      2081         255  readme.now
       38 file(s)    2583299 bytes used
                   3937073 K bytes free

Yeah, there are several versions listed there as a result of my previous work to narrow this configuration down to the most 'current' release.

Anyways, the IFS statement you show should be sufficient to load HPFS386. The HPFS386.INI file then brings specific controls into place, I've attached my version to the post for your review.

You certainly need the \IBM386FS to be present in your LIBPATH statement. I have it also included in the PATH and DPATH, not sure if this was necessary or not, but it seems to work fine here.

Further on, in your CONFIG.SYS you also need the following: 'CALL=G:\OS2\CMD.EXE /Q /C G:\IBM386FS\CACHE386.EXE >NUL', which will kick off the CACHE386 exec to, I believe, read in the HPFS386.INI definitions.

There are some issues you may run into, certainly the size of the HPFS386 cache has a lot to do with this. In the past, I used to run that cache as big as 500 Meg (only b/c the Win NTFS can run much bigger and I wanted to compare some things), but as more and more software piled onto my machine I had to bring this down. Currently I have this configured for 64Meg only, seems to work fine with VIRTUALADDRESSLIMIT=2560 in the CONFIG.SYS working fine. I have booted up the machine with VIRTUALADDRESSLIMIT=3072 as well w/o any problems.
« Last Edit: April 20, 2018, 05:10:01 pm by Dariusz Piatkowski »

Dariusz Piatkowski

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Re: RAM disk and temp folders...what else?
« Reply #51 on: April 20, 2018, 05:08:59 pm »
Hi Valery,

...2Dariusz Piatkowski:

> Yup, similar configuration to what I currently have. My operating partitions are all HPFS386, the nightly backup partitions are HPFS386 as well but no CACHE on them. Neither is the RAMDISK, else it defeats the purpse.

You still use HPFS386 as your main file system? Why not JFS? HPFS386 has limitation of 64 GB max partition size, like ordinary HPFS driver. So, how do you use it with modern hard disks?

I moved to JFS 17 years ago, since my partitions are all bigger than 64 GB....

Yeah, still using HPFS386 here mostly because of how long I have had a single install of my OS/2...literally since the Warp3 days, followed by Warp4 upgrade, then CP releases, move to SMP hardware and finally the ACPI stuff.

I did attempt to deploy JFS once, that caused massive data corruption, I suspect the HPFS386 and JFS simply had conflicts. It was a painfull recovery and since my hardware has remained the same (no HD changes, etc) I have not had a reason to re-do all of this.

Now, this may change very soon. I have a Samsung SSD (850 Evo) standing by and as soon as I off-load a bunch of the stuff from my DATA partitions onto the LAN NAS I will be deploying it. At that time it would make sense to take a stab at the JFS thing again.

David Graser

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Re: RAM disk and temp folders...what else?
« Reply #52 on: April 21, 2018, 07:34:37 am »
...It's not easy to write a good installer, and the skills have more to do with test engineering than software engineering. OS4 would be especially challenging because any error leaves the installation unable to boot. The target installations are diverse -- OS/2, eCS and ArcaOS.
.

Having said all of the above, the actual (manual) install of the OS4 solution is not all that hard. The READMEs included do cover it fairly well, but yeah, go through them at least a couple of times. I think most of time would be spent in adjusting the default configuration, so getting yourself multiple CONFIG.SYS instances to give you the flexibility to either boot with the OS4 loader, or the default OS2 or maybe the AOS one.

Having just recently moved to the OS4 kernel, it is pretty straight forward unless one is using a RAM drive utilizing QSINIT.  The one thing to remember is that when updating to the latest OS4 kernel, do not replace the QSINIT loader with the latest OS4 kernel loader.

gamba

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Re: RAM disk and temp folders...what else?
« Reply #53 on: April 24, 2018, 12:18:17 pm »
Having just recently moved to the OS4 kernel, it is pretty straight forward unless one is using a RAM drive utilizing QSINIT.  The one thing to remember is that when updating to the latest OS4 kernel, do not replace the QSINIT loader with the latest OS4 kernel loader.

I quote David. For me, this time installing OS/4 was easy: unzipped the files - except OS2LDR - from OS/4 package, replaced ArcaOS OS2LDR with the one from QSINIT, and then everything went as expected; just ACPI is not working, but I guess I just have to study a bit more the existing threads to find the answer :-)

Lars

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Re: RAM disk and temp folders...what else?
« Reply #54 on: April 24, 2018, 12:33:57 pm »
The answer is that for the OS4 kernel there currently only exist an experimental driver for ACPI called ACPI4.BPD (I seem to remember).
However that does not necessarily mean that you cannot use multiple cores.
OS4 comes with OS4APIC.PSD which allows to use multiple cores if your system still has the old style Intel Multiprocessor tables (Intel MP spec version 1.4) along with the newer ACPI tables.
Have you tried just using OS4APIC.PSD (preferrably with the /APIC switch) or are you forced to using ACPI on the system that you have ?

gamba

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Re: RAM disk and temp folders...what else?
« Reply #55 on: April 24, 2018, 12:43:47 pm »
...
Have you tried just using OS4APIC.PSD (preferrably with the /APIC switch) or are you forced to using ACPI on the system that you have ?

Hi Lars,

I have PSD=OS4APIC.PSD /APIC in CONFIG.OS4, but I just get one core instead of 4 (and of course I see the "acpi4.bpd not found or corrupted" message during bootup :-)

I should patch ACPI.PSD, I think, but I have ver. 3.23.04 installed, not 3.23.01.

Dave Yeo

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Re: RAM disk and temp folders...what else?
« Reply #56 on: April 24, 2018, 04:45:49 pm »
When I experimented, I also only had one core working until I went through the readme and set up a config.os4 exactly as described. Seems one of the other drivers was required to get both cores working.
I should test on this weird machine I'm using.

Martin Vieregg

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Re: RAM disk and temp folders...what else?
« Reply #57 on: May 02, 2018, 11:13:26 pm »
I have got here a new ArcaOS 5.0.2 installation and I know that the USB stick stating mechanism uses a Ramdisk. But how can I implement a Ramdisk via Config.sys and orStartup folder? I have only found a program named HIDISK.EXE, there comes only a small dialog form with some settings, and the procedure to setup is not explained.

Dave Yeo

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Re: RAM disk and temp folders...what else?
« Reply #58 on: May 03, 2018, 01:08:53 am »
Go into System Setup and open the Ram Disk object.

Rich Walsh

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Re: RAM disk and temp folders...what else?
« Reply #59 on: May 04, 2018, 12:31:40 am »
I have only found a program named HIDISK.EXE, there comes only a small dialog form with some settings, and the procedure to setup is not explained.

That dialog _is_ the setup procedure. You don't have to do anything except check a box, select a drive letter, then press "OK" (and reboot). If in doubt, you may want to press the "Help" button - read the "Overview" section first.