Author Topic: VirtualBox and ArcaOS 5.0.7  (Read 20535 times)

Martin Iturbide

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Re: VirtualBox and ArcaOS 5.0.7
« Reply #15 on: December 14, 2021, 03:01:12 pm »
Hi

Can we agreed that the specs are according the ArcaOS Wiki ?

Code: [Select]
+    { "OS2",     "IBM OS/2",          "OS2ArcaOS",          "ArcaOS",
+      VBOXOSTYPE_ArcaOS,          VBOXOSHINT_HWVIRTEX,
+        256,  4,  2 * _1G64, GraphicsControllerType_VBoxVGA, NetworkAdapterType_I82540EM, 1, StorageControllerType_IntelAhci, StorageBus_SATA,
+        StorageControllerType_IntelAhci, StorageBus_SATA, ChipsetType_PIIX3, AudioControllerType_SB16, AudioCodecType_SB16  },
+
I'm not sure what the number order means "256,  4,  2 * _1G64". Is this 1GB of RAM?

Is there a typo on line 103?
Quote
+    { ovf::CIMOSType_CIMOS_ArocaOS,                              VBOXOSTYPE_ArcaOS }
Is it ArcaOS instead of ArocaOS ?

About the icon. Lewis has accepted on the VirtualBox ticket system to use the ArcaNoe logo, but I don't think the project wants to include any official logos. Look that they had created custom logos for Windows, OS/2, Linux, etc, and all seems to be under a similar style. I guess that as a first shot it will be good to use one of OS/2 or eCS logos until some open source logo with the same style is created for ArcaOS.

But I guess we need to take just little steps, let's try first to get the ArcaOS specification approved. I'm thinking on creating a new ticket with this request.

Regards
« Last Edit: December 14, 2021, 03:14:08 pm by Martin Iturbide »
Martin Iturbide
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jailbird

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Re: VirtualBox and ArcaOS 5.0.7
« Reply #16 on: December 21, 2021, 02:17:07 am »
Hi

Can we agreed that the specs are according the ArcaOS Wiki ?

Code: [Select]
+    { "OS2",     "IBM OS/2",          "OS2ArcaOS",          "ArcaOS",
+      VBOXOSTYPE_ArcaOS,          VBOXOSHINT_HWVIRTEX,
+        256,  4,  2 * _1G64, GraphicsControllerType_VBoxVGA, NetworkAdapterType_I82540EM, 1, StorageControllerType_IntelAhci, StorageBus_SATA,
+        StorageControllerType_IntelAhci, StorageBus_SATA, ChipsetType_PIIX3, AudioControllerType_SB16, AudioCodecType_SB16  },
+
I'm not sure what the number order means "256,  4,  2 * _1G64". Is this 1GB of RAM?

https://www.virtualbox.org/browser/vbox/trunk/src/VBox/Main/include/Global.h#L69  should help. Looks like there's been changes since I wrote my patch, there should now be a "1, " added on the 3rd line, like:

+        1, 256,  4,  2 * _1G64, GraphicsControllerType_VBoxVGA, NetworkAdapterType_I82540EM, 1, StorageControllerType_IntelAhci, StorageBus_SATA,

Anyways, it means by default, 1 vCPU, 256MB RAM, 4MB video RAM, and 2GB HDD.

That's a lot lower than what I normally use (I normally do 4 vCPUs, 3072MB RAM, and 20GB HDD), but I'm no OS/2 expert, so I thought I'd match it somewhat with the eComstation values.

Is there a typo on line 103?
Quote
+    { ovf::CIMOSType_CIMOS_ArocaOS,                              VBOXOSTYPE_ArcaOS }
Is it ArcaOS instead of ArocaOS ?

About the icon. Lewis has accepted on the VirtualBox ticket system to use the ArcaNoe logo, but I don't think the project wants to include any official logos. Look that they had created custom logos for Windows, OS/2, Linux, etc, and all seems to be under a similar style. I guess that as a first shot it will be good to use one of OS/2 or eCS logos until some open source logo with the same style is created for ArcaOS.

But I guess we need to take just little steps, let's try first to get the ArcaOS specification approved. I'm thinking on creating a new ticket with this request.

Regards

Indeed, total typo :(.  When I wrote this patch it compiled tested, but obviously I missed the typo when I posted it. Sorry about that!

jailbird

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Re: VirtualBox and ArcaOS 5.0.7
« Reply #17 on: December 21, 2021, 02:45:10 am »
Okay, so I guess on the following line in the patch, they also added a field for IOMMU type, which needs to be added. So to make it easier, I'll just spin a new patch for the latest versions of VBox with the typo fixed.

jailbird

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Re: VirtualBox and ArcaOS 5.0.7
« Reply #18 on: December 21, 2021, 03:41:40 am »
Okay, here's an updated patch.

Since Lars was worried about Lewis's reaction to using os_os2ecs.png I changed it to os_os2_other.png :).

I defaulted to 1GB RAM (that seems to be what Arca Noae is recommending). It's default to SATA, and not NVMe, since:

- ArcaOS 5.0.7 still doesn't put NVME in the boot image
- VBox doesn't seem to support booting from NVMe when using legacy BIOS booting, only UEFI booting.

So maybe when 5.1 is released we can change it :).



Lars

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Re: VirtualBox and ArcaOS 5.0.7
« Reply #19 on: December 21, 2021, 12:46:06 pm »
Okay, here's an updated patch.

Since Lars was worried about Lewis's reaction to using os_os2ecs.png I changed it to os_os2_other.png :).
Good man !

Martin Iturbide

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Re: VirtualBox and ArcaOS 5.0.7
« Reply #20 on: December 21, 2021, 01:50:02 pm »
Hi

I opened ticket 20741 to see what happens.

Regards 
Martin Iturbide
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Eugene Tucker

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Re: VirtualBox and ArcaOS 5.0.7
« Reply #21 on: December 21, 2021, 02:51:15 pm »
Okay, so I guess on the following line in the patch, they also added a field for IOMMU type, which needs to be added. So to make it easier, I'll just spin a new patch for the latest versions of VBox with the typo fixed.

You have to use a USB stick and copy the driver to the USB stick and then use the install in the pre boot install menu. ( I am not usre of the correct name but detailed directions are here https://www.arcanoae.com/wiki/nvme/.

jailbird

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Re: VirtualBox and ArcaOS 5.0.7
« Reply #22 on: December 21, 2021, 09:41:58 pm »
Okay, so I guess on the following line in the patch, they also added a field for IOMMU type, which needs to be added. So to make it easier, I'll just spin a new patch for the latest versions of VBox with the typo fixed.

You have to use a USB stick and copy the driver to the USB stick and then use the install in the pre boot install menu. ( I am not usre of the correct name but detailed directions are here https://www.arcanoae.com/wiki/nvme/.

Yep. I figured since the idea was to make it easier for people, however, defaulting to a setting where they have to do that isn't exactly user friendly :).  That and since VBox won't be able to boot it in BIOS (CSM) mode anyways..

Eugene Tucker

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Re: VirtualBox and ArcaOS 5.0.7
« Reply #23 on: December 22, 2021, 02:54:30 pm »
They have decided to release this feature in Arca OS 5.1.

ivan

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Re: VirtualBox and ArcaOS 5.0.7
« Reply #24 on: December 22, 2021, 08:23:05 pm »
These comments are interesting but the big question is will we ever get a VBox that actually works using ArcaOS as the host, by that I mean one that does not require fiddling with to get things like USB, large screen monitors, etc working.

Martin Iturbide

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Re: VirtualBox and ArcaOS 5.0.7
« Reply #25 on: December 22, 2021, 11:13:41 pm »
Hi Ivan

These comments are interesting but the big question is will we ever get a VBox that actually works using ArcaOS as the host...

I think that is another subject, porting the latest VirtualBox to ArcaOS, I guess it was discussed in the past but I don't remember which was the stopper that does not allows us to have VirtualBox 5.2 or 6 ported to our platform.

Regards
« Last Edit: December 22, 2021, 11:18:24 pm by Martin Iturbide »
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Dave Yeo

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Re: VirtualBox and ArcaOS 5.0.7
« Reply #26 on: December 23, 2021, 06:01:41 am »
I think the latest VirtualBox is basically 64 bit only. Looking on their site, it is claimed that VirtualBox can run in as little as 512MB's of ram but in reality, 4GB's is considered not enough with the minimum recommendation being 8GB's.
We're moving more and more into a 64bit world, developers have tons of ram, most users are now on 64 bit systems, usually with 8GB's minimum, even my old computer has 12 GB's.
It was what I found running VirtualBox on OS/2, kept running out of memory with most guests wanting 2GB's or more. Considering just running SeaMonkey, Thunderbird and a couple of other things, I'm currently using 1.7Gb's of ram, that 1.6GB left over doesn't go very far, especially with our low/high memory division.

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Re: VirtualBox and ArcaOS 5.0.7
« Reply #27 on: December 23, 2021, 02:37:11 pm »
Hi Dave,

I have to agree with you about 64 bitness - all my Ryzen systems are 64 bit units.  So it seems that for any form of OS/2 to go forward we need to convert it to 64 bit.

Not being a programmer I don't know what that would involve but I think the dumping of the 16 bit programs wouldn't be missed by most people.

Andreas Schnellbacher

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Re: VirtualBox and ArcaOS 5.0.7
« Reply #28 on: December 23, 2021, 06:20:15 pm »
Not being a programmer
Me neither. Here's how I understand it:

First you need a compiler that's able to produce code that can address
64 bit of RAM. When that works, you have to rewrite the memory management.
At least the system has to support 64 bit addressable RAM to be able to
assign that to apps. (Guess that part is in the kernel.) Quite a challenge
when you don't have the source code. ;-)

About 16 bit code: OS/2 itself contains much 16 bit code: Almost all drivers,
except ACPI.PSD and CMD.EXE are still 16 bit code. Much fun without the
sources. ;-)

The next step won't be to raise evrything to 64 bit. It is to support PAE
(Physical Address Extension). Then the 4 GB limit would apply for each
process, not, as it is now, for the entire system.

About 16 bit apps: Except some few system apps, I don't use 16 bit apps.
I don't understand why 64 bit code can't support 16 bit code, but that seems
to be the case. Note that for systems with 64 bit addressable RAM
virtualization is always an option.

jailbird

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Re: VirtualBox and ArcaOS 5.0.7
« Reply #29 on: December 23, 2021, 11:43:01 pm »
About 16 bit apps: Except some few system apps, I don't use 16 bit apps.
I don't understand why 64 bit code can't support 16 bit code, but that seems
to be the case. Note that for systems with 64 bit addressable RAM
virtualization is always an option.

When AMD designed AMD64, they figured nobody would want segmented addressing and VM86 while in “long mode” (64-bit mode), so they took it out of that mode. They’re both still there in non-long mode (32-bit mode) for backwards compatibility, of course.

I think AMD-V / VT-x work around that by letting you run a virtual 32-bit environment within your 64-world and use those features in there.