What existing implimentations of OS/2 are there?

[Valery Sedletski]

2Doug Bissett:

> I also have VBox 5.0.6 installed, with XP as a guest. The one on my main machine has quit working. I am not sure if it is a VBox problem, an XP problem, or something else. So far, VBox 5.0.6, with XP guest, is working well on the T510 and the L530.

Probably, the machine which has a non-working VBox installation, has wrong version of libraries, or thelibrares itself are broken/corrupted. You can try updating/reinstalling all the required libs (listed here: http://trac.netlabs.org/vbox/). Also note that some newer version of libcx causes VBox to crash, if you didn't specified LIBCX_HIGHMEM=2. So, you can try this value too.

[Joop]

2Joop: SD or USB key won't work due to size problems? What do you mean? I didn't encountered such SD or USB disks. I have a 64 GB USB flash and 128 GB microSDXC flash, both working fine with fat32.ifs (either FAT32 or exFAT).

I have four 8Gb sd's, two of them do fine, two of them are a mystery. Did format and lvm'ed with DFSee, had a lot of mail with Jan van Wijk. As far as I can see is that those two don't have all the bits and bytes on the right places. If its okay for my camera its not okay for OS/2 and if its okay for OS/2 its not okay for the camera. That kind of problems. Next that stupid bitlocker stuff. 

[Valery Sedletski]

Bitlocker? What do you mean? File system encryption? Camera can be limited to size  of 2 GB (SD), or 32 GB (SDHC). 8 GB is seen equally well by OS/2 if it's seen by camera. Or, do you mean, file sizes on FAT32 are limited to 2 or 4 GB? BTW, newer versions of fat32.ifs support files up to 4 GB, if you specify "/largefiles" on the command line. Otherwise, it supports up to 2 GB (as any 16-bit file system). Don't know which bits or bytes could be missing. Do you mean, a file system structure, or a hardware peculiarity?

[Doug Bissett]

Probably, the machine which has a non-working VBox installation, has wrong version of libraries, or thelibrares itself are broken/corrupted. You can try updating/reinstalling all the required libs (listed here: http://trac.netlabs.org/vbox/). Also note that some newer version of libcx causes VBox to crash, if you didn't specified LIBCX_HIGHMEM=2. So, you can try this value too.

It was working fine, about a month ago. It quit after doing an ANPM (RPM/YUM) update. The same updates were done to all of my systems, and I do use LIBCX_HIGHMEM=2. I just haven't had the time to try to figure it out, yet. I think there was another LIBC* update, that I haven't tried yet.

The symptom is that WinXP starts up, runs for a few seconds to about a minute, then a red and black bar appears at the top of the window. Nothing happens for another few seconds, then windows crashes (BSOD), and windows reboots.

[Caluser2000]

Sounds like XP has been owned. Had that happen on real hardware once. That was one reason for my conversion to Linux.

[Valery Sedletski]

2Doug Bissett: Looks like it's WinXP VM corruption, not of VBox itself. At least, winxp starts to load. Didn't understood about red and black bar, though.

[Greg Pringle]

Running OS/2 is only eCs and ArcaOS. In the box, 2.1, 3.0, Warp Connect, Warp 4, WSEB and maybe a few more. Up until a few fix packs of Warp Connect it was easy to take down an OS/2 machine from the internet by attacking the TCP/IP stack. As of Warp 4 those holes were closed. I have run internet servers with OS/2 and eCS on the internet without any firewalls without any successful attacks. I did have to disable the NetBEUI because it was crackable and I was being attacked. Since I don't actually need NetBEUI it did not matter. The currently running versions are both with and without firewalls.

As to the Cloud. It is cost effective for some servers if a company does not have access to local high speed internet. One problem is that many of the Cloud companies only do Windows or Linux. Also if you have more than a few servers the cost is prohibitive. The setup can be complicated it you are not running normal servers such as a web site. I have customers running at Amazon and have had to implement "double-reverse-relays" to other internet servers to allow connectivity.

[Valery Sedletski]

NetBEUI? It is not routable, so it cannot be seen from Internet. So, it is safe to use NetBEUI on a machine connected to Internets.

[Dariusz Piatkowski]

Comment regarding the CLOUD aspects.

I use OS/2 (MSI 880G-E45 mb, AMD Phenom II X6 CPU) fulltime. My kids and the wife use Win 7 Pro boxes. We also have a ZyXel 325v2 NAS box. All machiens are inter-connected, although the OS/2 box is a client only.

OK, now to the cloud....aka NAS...these really have the vast majority of functionality needed today for you to safeguard your data and keep the access very restricted. Case in point, many implement VPN tunnels between your home NAS and whatever mobile device you are using to access it. Yes, you do want to make sure your router is up-to-speed on security setups, but that's easily configured.

I am in the process of deploying a 4TB NAS setup, all of the kids' media is going on it, I am actively moving them away from storing stuff locally on their laptops (well, with the requird explanation of course as to what is suitable to be moved out to the NAS vs stored locally).

Anyways, I am thinking the OS/2 platform I use today has another 2-3 yrs of life left in it. The next biggest challenge will be to upgrade the hardware to the newer Ryzen AMD platform...some posts have appeard in our forum regarding the experience people are having with these, so it looks like that is viable move.

[Joop]

Bitlocker? What do you mean? File system encryption?

My office system works only with bitlocker due to the new European law effective from 25 may this year. So every external stick or sd card has to be encrypted. Next to that, every camera or garmin or so device is seen as a big drive and need therefore also be encrypted, only those devices can't work with bitlocker systems. I found a solution for my office system and the combination with my eCs system when it comes to exchange files between the two.

Camera can be limited to size  of 2 GB (SD), or 32 GB (SDHC). 8 GB is seen equally well by OS/2 if it's seen by camera. Or, do you mean, file sizes on FAT32 are limited to 2 or 4 GB? BTW, newer versions of fat32.ifs support files up to 4 GB, if you specify "/largefiles" on the command line. Otherwise, it supports up to 2 GB (as any 16-bit file system). Don't know which bits or bytes could be missing. Do you mean, a file system structure, or a hardware peculiarity?

I have four 8Gb sd cards. Two of them are successfully "restructured" with DFSee so that and eCS and the camera accepts them. The two other cards won't work, used same procedure as for the other two, but for some reason it will work in eCS and not in the camera or the other way around.  Its just for transport of pictures from around 10Mb each. I hope its clear now.