OS/2, eCS & ArcaOS - Technical > Storage
JFS failing in a disastrous way - without the user knowing
OS4User:
It may have a sense to convert UNICODE.SYS from "DEVICE" to "BASEDEV".
Lars:
--- Quote from: Andi B. on December 02, 2022, 10:23:21 am ---I wouldn't call it ridiculous. I would say this is another shortcoming/bug/problem/nuisance of one part/program of our platform. Of course it may be easy to improve this situation with Lars proposed changes. No clue if David will implement it when Lars creates a ticket.
It's good that Lars shares his experience here to tell others about some problems and how to circumvent it. That's what a forum is good for.
But I also see a lot of other shortcomings. And when I were in the position to give priorities, this one would have a low priority. We only can wait and see what David says about this. Or is there any chance to get access to the latest JFS sources?
--- Quote ---display a warning message and even force the user to hit Return to continue boot process
--- End quote ---
I fear this can be a problem with USB keyboards. The systems I have do not serve USB keyboards (with OS/2) until the end of the boot process. Every such "hit return to continue" condition while booting (while loading all the drivers from config.sys) needs the old PS/2 keyboard which luckily is also attached to step over. Here there is no chance to respond to such messages with the USB keyboard.
--- End quote ---
There are device drivers that do not continue silently in case of error (I think MAC drivers often expect user confirmation to continue). So this is a general shortcoming and can hit you on all sorts of other occasions.
Does your system no longer have "legacy USB" support ? I can use the USB keyboard before OS/2 takes over the USB host
controllers ...
By the way: I cannot create a ticket as I am no paying AN customer. Somebody with an AN license would need to do that.
Lars:
--- Quote from: OS4User on December 02, 2022, 10:33:37 am ---It may have a sense to convert UNICODE.SYS from "DEVICE" to "BASEDEV".
--- End quote ---
That is only going to remove the ordering dependency (UNICODE.SYS has to come before JFS.IFS). I can live with that ordering dependency but I cannot live with data loss because a vital driver wasn't loaded.
Andi B.:
--- Quote ---There are device drivers that do not continue silently in case of error (I think MAC drivers often expect user confirmation to continue). So this is a general shortcoming and can hit you on all sorts of other occasions.
--- End quote ---
Yes it is a problem with other drivers too. That's why I'm think about. Specifically with ethernet drivers I often observed this when f.i. they do not find the correct chip. But other drivers too. I think PAUSEONERROR (or similar) can prevent stop the boot process. But using this is no good solution too because you probably wouldn't recognize the error message then as it flies away much to fast on current (< 10 years :-) ) hardware.
--- Quote ---Does your system no longer have "legacy USB" support ? I can use the USB keyboard before OS/2 takes over the USB host
controllers ...
--- End quote ---
It does as long as something (ACPI, USB, ...?) very early in the boot process takes over control until the time when all the USB stuff, including usbhid is initialized (very late). In any case there is a big window during boot where USB keyboards do not work. From all what I understand and all the discussions about that (testers list, AN tickets) this window (non working usb keyboard) can not be eliminated. I never figured out how to sort config.sys to make this window as small a possible. But I got the impression it's impossible to cover all these places where device drivers may fire up this "hit return" message. We have to life with this when we want (or have) to use USB keyboards instead PS/2.
Martin Iturbide:
--- Quote from: Lars on December 02, 2022, 07:10:45 am ---...
If that attach fails you know that UNICODE.SYS is not loaded, display a warning message and even force the user to hit Return to continue boot process.
...
--- End quote ---
Hi
I agree that it should be very useful for JFS.IFS to display a warning message if UNICODE.SYS is not loaded. For what I know UNICODE is very important for JFS. But I'm not complete sure about if had to pause the boot process forcing the user to hit "return".
But I think I can open the ticket and let the implementation decisions to Arca Noae, since it is their product.
By the way, as far as it was discussed AN JFS.IFS is closed source and they treat the IBM source code base of it as the IBM DDK license.
Regards
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