OS/2, eCS & ArcaOS - Technical > Setup & Installation
Re-organizaing OS/2-eCS Directories.
Martin Iturbide:
Hi
I started moving the "IBMGSK__" directories to /OS2/System and fixing the paths on the config.sys.
I really never found out what "IBMGSK" is for. According to some post from Alex Taylor some time ago they are part of MPTN and has the RSA encryption keys and are only used by IBM HTTP server . Does other programs use them? Apache? any other server software?
Update: Andy Willis told me that "IBMGSK" is also used by "IBM Personal Communication" software.
Regards
Martin Iturbide:
--- Quote from: Roderick Klein on July 21, 2014, 09:08:05 am ---About 8 years ago I looked at this and found about 4 to 5 items that would be broken. Most of the stuff does not use fixed paths. But why run the risk.
--- End quote ---
Roderick, did you documented this? did you posted somewhere? Please share the link.
Doug Bissett:
Many years ago (before eCS was ever thought of), I played with moving a few things around. The idea, at the time, was to reduce the amount of disk space that was required for multiple boot systems, by sharing some common code. I remember that I was able to move the network stuff to a common disk, and it worked okay, but it became a PITA when it came time to update. I don't think I tried much more, because it was such a problem to try to manage it.
Moving directories to other directories (IBMGS* to the \OS2\SYSTEM directory, for example), really doesn't accomplish anything, even if it does work, so why bother?
In eCS, there is now an option to move the PROGRAMS directory off of the boot drive. I highly recommend doing that (it should never have been placed on the boot drive in the first place). There is also an option, in the WarpIn installer, to put the default directories (TOOLS, and PROGRAMS) onto a different drive, and I have not, yet, seen a problem with using the same directories on multiple boot systems. I have also moved eCUPS to a common drive, with no trouble.
My main objective was to remove stuff from the boot drive, that really doesn't belong there (ie, it is not actually part of OS/2). The exercise is not complete. There are still things on the boot drive, that really shouldn't be there, but the arcihitecture of the system limits what can be done, and most of what is left is not much of a problem. The main advantage is that installing a new version of eCS, is very much simplified. The main disadvantage, is that I need to remember to do WarpIn installs from both boot systems, to keep the WarpIn databases up to date.
ivan:
Martin, I'm sorry but I just don't understand what you are trying to do.
Moving those directories around id not going to save space so why bother? The standard boot partition we use is less than 1 GB in size and that includes a few things we have added to the standard OS/2 install disk image ( cups, java, snap tools, utility and warpin ).
For us 'programs' is a different partition as is 'data'. We chose this because it makes backups very easy and by having images of the various partitions in both their 'first installed' state and 'when something changes' after that. Restoring after system or disk failure is usually less than 2 hours including replacing failed parts.
What you are trying to do has the appearance of rearranging the deck-chairs on the Titanic - may look nice but is useless in improving the OS. The examples you give in 'Recommendation #8 – Directory and File Structure', make me wonder if you have ever looked in the 'windows' directory - it is a mess much worse that anything seen on OS/2 and any flavour of Linux isn't much better. To follow the windows way and dump everything on the boot partition (I know win7 does create a hidden boot partition if you let it) is just asking for trouble, something IBM were careful to try and avoid when they designed OS/2.
My thoughts can be summed up as, 'if it is working then there is no need to fix it'.
Martin Iturbide:
It seems that we have different concepts of what "User Experience" means. While I like having the most basic directory structure on the root drive there are other people that just like to have dozen directories on the root. I disklike FHS like I told on the past, and YUM/RPM just make the root drive worst, so I want to move things a little bit.
"If it is working, don't fix it" works fine for some guys, and it is good policy for a business critical enviroment. But I want to give it a try to move the directories on my test enviroments and document it here. I'm not putting a gun on your heads to also do it or to help me with it, I'm just experimenting.
People have tried this on the past, but they haven't really documented it, where are the problems? which INI files do you have to change to make it work? What directories are unmovable? If you think that it is useless, low priority, waist of time, just move on to the next forum thread, that is not helping me to document this.
Tell me which directories do you think are un-movable and why for example.
Regards.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version