ArcaOS DVD and bootable USB stick available

[guzzi]

USB 12.6 has just been released by AN.

[Rene Hvidsoe]

To Andreas Schnellbacher,

I have in total 16 GB and aound 12 GB is set to ram disk.

Yes network and sound is working. Is a replacemetn for a 10 year old HP desktop that is showing its age.

PC is working very well.

Rene

[Andreas Schnellbacher]

Hi Rene,

I have in total 16 GB and aound 12 GB is set to ram disk.

Yes network and sound is working. Is a replacemetn for a 10 year old HP desktop that is showing its age.

PC is working very well.

thanks. I meant the RAM that's seen by OS/2, without the RAM disk. In ArcaOS, there exists the "mem" utility that shows the RAM available to the system. (I hope it's more than 2 GB.)

That mainboard has an old chipset, but is still available, what makes it so interesting.

[Pete]

Hi David

... Then add the line BASEDEV=USBXHCD.SYS to CONFIG.SYS before the other USB**CD.SYS lines (if any) but after usbd.sys. Seems to work OK so far...

Aaah!

I had added that line after usbehcd.sys - following the "traditional" order 1] uhcd, 2] ohcd, 3] ehcd.

Will try moving the line as I have experienced 2 instances of my USB3 drive not attaching - always attaches the 1st time it is used but after ejecting the drive it sometimes cannot be attached again without a reboot.


Regards

Pete



 

[Doug Bissett]

I had added that line after usbehcd.sys - following the "traditional" order 1] uhcd, 2] ohcd, 3] ehcd.

Will try moving the line as I have experienced 2 instances of my USB3 drive not attaching - always attaches the 1st time it is used but after ejecting the drive it sometimes cannot be attached again without a reboot.

Apparently, the line order doesn't matter, as long as they all come after USBD.SYS.

A USB 3 device that won't attach, is probably a flaky connector, even if you have already used it.

I see that USBXHCD PREVIEW (with all it's warts) has been released for AN subscription holders. Get it in the usual place. It should do the install properly.

If you plan to UPDATE to ArcaOS 5.0.5, it may be a good idea to install the 12.6 package first, especially if you plan to use an USB 3 controller for the UPDATE. I highly recommend  installing the 12.6 package, plus the USBXHCD Preview package if you have USB 3 hardware.

[Rene Hvidsoe]

Hi Rene,

I have in total 16 GB and aound 12 GB is set to ram disk.

Yes network and sound is working. Is a replacement for a 10 year old HP desktop that is showing its age.

PC is working very well.

thanks. I meant the RAM that's seen by OS/2, without the RAM disk. In ArcaOS, there exists the "mem" utility that shows the RAM available to the system. (I hope it's more than 2 GB.)

That mainboard has an old chipset, but is still available, what makes it so interesting.

Hi Andreas,

it shows 3.5 GB to ArcaOS.

This mb is working very well and has bought a another PC with simular HW.


Rene

[Andreas Schnellbacher]

it shows 3.5 GB to ArcaOS.

Thanks, great.

[Martin Iturbide]

Yes, every version needs its USB stick updated for it. In the case of 5.0.5, you need the USB3 support on the stick. Kind of surprised the update seems to have worked for you.

Thanks, recreating my USB stick fixed my problem and now I can load the install procedure.

Regards

[ivan]

As a matter of interest I now have all the USB ports working, the USB 3.1 and the USB 2 that hang off the USB 3 controller in the Ryzen processor as well as the USB 2 ports on the addin card - all 15 of them, though why I would need that many I don't know.

[Pete]

Hi Doug

As there is no problem with attaching/ejecting the same USB3 drive to the same hardware multiple times when booted into Windows it is not likely to be a "flaky connector".

Using copy usbxhcd$ xhci_after_boot.rpt gives this information:-

   XHCI: XhciGenericDone: pRBD=fb816114 DevAdr=1 EpId=0 error=12

After an attach and eject using copy usbxhcd$ xhci_after_boot.rpt gives this information:-
 
   XHCI: XhciGenericDone: pRBD=fb816114 DevAdr=1 EpId=0 error=12
   XHCI: XhciGenericDone: pRBD=fb816114 DevAdr=1 EpId=4 error=16
   XHCI: XhciGenericDone: pRBD=fb816114 DevAdr=1 EpId=4 error=16


Not sure how important the error codes are but after the 1st eject the USB3 drive cannot be attached until after a reboot usually - very occasionally it does attach a 2nd time but never a third time.


Regards

Pete



 

[Doug Bissett]

As there is no problem with attaching/ejecting the same USB3 drive to the same hardware multiple times when booted into Windows it is not likely to be a "flaky connector".

Windows is a completely different animal.  Error recovery is a lot more aggressive. Are you sure that it is connecting as USB3 in windows? Are you sure that it connects as USB 3 in OS/2? It is not easy to tell.

Not sure how important the error codes are but after the 1st eject the USB3 drive cannot be attached until after a reboot usually - very occasionally it does attach a 2nd time but never a third time.

I don't know what the error codes are trying to tell you. It appears that error 12 just means there is nothing connected. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that error 16 simply means it had some sort of communication error. I do know that USB 3 works, multiple times, when I have a good connection. It does what you describe, when there is a flaky connection. Type A connectors are horrible things, and they do cause problems. If you take time to adjust them, perfectly, they work a lot better. Even then, I have a couple of devices that just won't connect as USB 3, in one connector. That same device works okay in different connectors, and other USB 3 devices work fine in the one where it fails.

90% likely that the problem is caused by a flaky connector. From what I have heard, error recovery, in the OS/2 driver is still being worked on. It is a preview version, after all.

[Pete]

Hi All

@Doug

No idea whether it is connecting as USB3 in either Windows or OS/2.

However, the failure to attach more than once per boot only occurs with OS/2 when using a USB3 lead; no problems attaching when using a USB2 lead so I think this is a USB3 problem.

I guess it is possible that it is some kind of driver error recovery problem. As AN do not want reports on this driver I can only hope that the problem(s) is(are) fixed before the driver is given a "GA" release.


As I was trying USB3 on a 5.0.4 system I thought I'd install 5.0.5 to see if that made a difference so made a USB flash drive to perform the install with as that worked well for 5.0.4.

Both AOSBoot and DFSANOS2 claim to have successfully created the USB flash drive installation disk, I manually copied the ISO file to [USBDrive]:\ARCA_ISO\ARCAINST.ISO after running DFSANOS2.

No problems booting from the USB flash drive and completing the "Boot with Menu for own values" section but it all goes wrong shortly after when I see the same message that Martin posted an image of earlier in this discussion. That message starts with "MAPISO R: Z:\OS2\EMPTY.ISO" - not sure what EMPTY.ISO is but R: is the RESERVEDRIVELETTER - I tested this by using U: as RESERVEDRIVELETTER and the message changed from using R: to U:

It seems that the USB flash drive gets lost somewhere as "\ARCA_ISO\ARCAINST.ISO" definitely exists on the flash drive.

This was a new USB 2.0 flash drive, never used before so not a case of some older files left on the drive.

As this works for other people - and worked fine for 5.0.4 - I have to ask if I have forgotten a step somewhere?


Regards

Pete

[Rich Walsh]

No problems booting from the USB flash drive and completing the "Boot with Menu for own values" section but it all goes wrong shortly after when I see the same message that Martin posted an image of earlier in this discussion. That message starts with "MAPISO R: Z:\OS2\EMPTY.ISO" - not sure what EMPTY.ISO is but R: is the RESERVEDRIVELETTER - I tested this by using U: as RESERVEDRIVELETTER and the message changed from using R: to U:

It seems that the USB flash drive gets lost somewhere as "\ARCA_ISO\ARCAINST.ISO" definitely exists on the flash drive. This was a new USB 2.0 flash drive, never used before so not a case of some older files left on the drive.

All the stuff involving drive "R:" is just setup for a subsequent step and not relevant here. If the ISO is where it should be (guaranteed if you use 'aosboot.cmd'), then the problem is that the flash drive you used failed to mount when the script called 'lvm /rediscoverprm'.

Every instance of this failure ever reported has been attributable to the lack of an XHCI driver on a machine that only has an XHCI controller (i.e. no EHCI/UHCI/OHCI chip). In this case, the failure might also be attributable to the problem you reported with the XHCI driver.

However... so far, in every case where someone has reported this failure when updating from 5.0.4 to 5.0.5 on an XHCI-only machine, they had failed to create a NEW copy of the flash drive and instead copied the 5.0.5 ISO to their existing 5.0.4 flash drive. This can not work because only the 5.0.5 flash drive has the new XHCI driver that you need.

Now, I know you said you used both 'aosboot.cmd' and 'dfsanos2' to create the drive (both do the same thing), but please check/double-check/retry/whatever just to confirm that the flash drive and the ISO are a matched set so we can rule that out. If that proves not to be the problem, then we can use an "undocumented feature" to diagnose this a bit further.

[Pete]

Hi Rich

The mainboard has 4 * OHCI, 3 * EHCI and 1 * XHCI controllers.

A *new* 2Gb USB 2.0 flash drive was used - DFSee was used to create a partition using the full size of the drive.
The USB 2.0 flash drive is inserted into a USB1/USB2 port for attaching or booting - XHCI driver not involved in any way.

AOSBoot, running from the ISOFS mounted 5.0.5 ISO, was used to create the bootable installation drive with the flash drive letter N: and ISO path G:\OS2\ArcaNoae\ArcaOS-5.0.5\ArcaOS-5.0.5.iso as parameters.

The drive can be attached and viewed once created, the ARCAINST.ISO can be mounted using ISOFS and files can be accessed.

Once booted to the Menu for own choices screen it looks like the USB drive becomes disconnected/unattached as the led is no longer illuminated - led is always on when attached, flashes when being accessed.

After the Menu screens, during booting, the led comes on indicating it has been attached - probably. After the call to pmshell.exe the message about the "missing" ISO file is displayed.

It seems to me that the USB drive gets lost after booting to the Menu for own choices screen and fails to reattach correctly. Wonder if it would work if I accepted "Defaults" instead of booting to the Menu...

Gave it a try but no joy.

I then had another think about this problem. At some point the USB drive gets ejected, but not removed, and fails to attach with LVM /REDISCOVERPRM about the start of install. Maybe it is necessary to physically remove the USB drive rather than just using eject.

I tested that idea on my 5.0.4 desktop: I attached the 5.0.5 USB flash drive which became drive N: in the Drives folder, accessed it then ejected it but left it in the usb port. Typed a couple of the above sentences then clicked the Refresh Removable Media icon. The icon flashed, the USB flash drive led illuminated - and no drive N: (next available drive letter) appeared in the Drives folder.


Mystery solved: the ArcaOS install script needs to issue some "Remove USB drive" and "Insert USB drive" messages, pausing the process while it waits for the physical action to complete, possibly "Press a key when ready..." added to the above messages.

Having worked out when to physically remove the usb drive and when to reinsert it again I now have a basic 5.0.5 installation - hopefully I did not miss anything too important by being a little late reinserting USB drive during Phase2 and having to restart Phase2.


Interestingly I did not have this problem on this hardware when installing 5.0.4 from a different USB flash drive.


While I seem to have worked out cause and effect what is the ""undocumented feature" to diagnose this a bit further."?


Regards

Pete

[Dave Yeo]

Hi Pete, have you tested installing 5.0.5 with the USB stick that you used for 5.0.4?