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[Arca Noae] Checked your disk lately?

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Lewis Rosenthal:
How do things get so taken out of context?

Let me see if I may set the record straight on a number of issues:


--- Quote from: Martin Iturbide on December 06, 2015, 06:14:53 am ---It is a great milestone for DFSee to support GPT, but I'm still thinking how useful will be that for OS2-eCS-BlueLion installation.

--- End quote ---

Well, we are planning GPT support in Blue Lion, and are working on that very issue right now.



--- Quote from: Martin Iturbide on December 06, 2015, 06:14:53 am ---I'm guessing that it should be useful for someone to boot from USB/CD and with DFSee try to repartition and already partitioned HDD (by Windows or Linux) and resize partition to fit OS2-eCS-BlueLion. (and of course use all the great features of DFSee on a GPT drive) But once you boot the Installer will it recognize the installation partition on GPT or after installing the OS, will it boot?

--- End quote ---

That's the plan. It's a tall order, and requires a number of things to be updated, but we are working on it (really).


--- Quote from: Martin Iturbide on December 06, 2015, 06:14:53 am ---I was told that what we are missing is to create some GPT driver like a FLT (Filter Device Driver). Will a  GPT.FLT driver will work without having UEFI support?

--- End quote ---

I don't know who told you that.


--- Quote from: Martin Iturbide on December 06, 2015, 06:14:53 am ---
--- Quote ---We at Arca Noae would like to thank ...., and OS/2 VOICE for its ongoing community support.
--- End quote ---

I really do not know the formal relationship between Arca Noae and OS2VOICE, I'm getting jealous about it  :P

--- End quote ---

Martin, you know the relationship which Arca Noae has with OS/2 VOICE. Let me run it down once again:


* OS/2 VOICE is the single largest OS/2 community group in the world
* Arca Noae handles donations for OS/2 VOICE, as OS/2 VOICE (unlike Warpstock Corporation) has no mechanism to accept online payments
* OS/2 VOICE is a valuable resource to Arca Noae as a means of communication with the community, at large

--- Quote from: Martin Iturbide on December 06, 2015, 06:14:53 am ---...super special thanks to the developers that shares their software and don't hide their source code to the public.

--- End quote ---

Is this meant as some sort of a dig at those of us who are bound by copyright and existing license not to release everything as open source?


--- Quote from: Michael Holzapfel on December 06, 2015, 01:11:37 pm ---I really get concerned about ArcaNoae's new attitude. Instead of working on their own roadmap (https://www.arcanoae.com/roadmap/), they announce a new version OS/2.

--- End quote ---

I'm sorry that our "new attitude" concerns you, Michael. Our overall roadmap does need some updating (admittedly, we spend more time developing than updating the roadmap, and often progress isn't reflected there in as timely a fashion as we'd like). However, work on Blue Lion complements our overall goal of bringing new drivers and support for current hardware to the platform; these two concepts are not at all at odds with one another.


--- Quote from: Michael Holzapfel on December 06, 2015, 01:11:37 pm ---My drivers and software package license expires soon, nearly nothing from roadmap was realized (except of pre-beta network drivers).

--- End quote ---

Do you somehow feel like you have not received a good value for your investment? Updates to ACPI, Multimac, and USB have not been useful to you? A roadmap is just that: a plan. It's not a promise. We have made progress toward many of the goals we set before us, though not all have been realized.

If you don't feel that you have received a good value for your investment, then you should feel free not to renew your subscription. Subscriptions were never intended as "support" contributions to further our own goals, but rather reasonable fees set for the products released. We have issued several updates to various components of the subscription during the year. If you have not benefited from them, then perhaps you shouldn't renew your subscription.


--- Quote from: Michael Holzapfel on December 06, 2015, 01:11:37 pm ---Important software repositories went away from netlabs (like USB-drivers, we no have two different repos, AHCI and ACPI).

--- End quote ---

Really? How about:

http://trac.netlabs.org/acpi
http://trac.netlabs.org/ahci
http://trac.netlabs.org/usb

Lars posts his USB builds to that Netlabs project as well as to Hobbes. It has been the case for some time that we have had two different branches of the USB dev tree. The only difference now is that they are maintained in two different places.

There is nobody stopping anyone from contributing to the AHCI and ACPI projects at Netlabs. Those projects are not going away. It's just so happens that the sole maintainer of them happens to be a principal in Arca Noae, so development has moved "in-house."


--- Quote from: Michael Holzapfel on December 06, 2015, 01:11:37 pm ---So if ArcaNoae suddenly decides to drop any OS/2 Activity, we have nothing in our hands.

--- End quote ---

Hmmm... An OS/2-only company dropping OS/2 activity. That doesn't sound very realistic, now does it? Again, the maintainer of these driver projects is a human, and if you look closely at the license strings contained in your drivers, you will see that David claims copyright and Arca Noae simply licenses his work. If Arca Noae were to close up shop tomorrow (which is not very likely, especially considering the considerable sum of money we recently paid to IBM), in all likelihood, David would still continue to maintain those drivers; they're not going away.


--- Quote from: Michael Holzapfel on December 06, 2015, 01:11:37 pm ---This reminds me very much of Mensys, many announcements, no substantial progress, no transparency.

--- End quote ---

Excuse me?

We are a privately-owned company. We are not required to be transparent. That said, do you not read our blog posts? Did you not see the several Warpstock and Warpstock Europe presentations which we have given? David has often shared his progress on driver development. Steven Levine has discussed at length our plans for SNAP and the immense hurdle he has before him getting the code checked into the repository (code for which Arca Noae paid a tidy sum to license). I have discussed the Package Manager (due for release this month, free for everyone to use) and Blue Lion (which, BTW, now has a bootable image in alpha stage, with functional networking to provide across-the-LAN or across-the-WAN installation).

No substantial progress?

We have full time developers working on code - RIGHT NOW.


--- Quote from: Michael Holzapfel on December 06, 2015, 01:11:37 pm ---Bitwise is doing a much better job here, you can follow each development step easily (see Mozilla @github or vbox @ netlabs).

--- End quote ---

Do you know who provides the bulk of the financial support for Bitwise's Firefox work? Arca Noae does. The difference is that Bitwise has a current focus on Firefox, which is fully open source, and we are working with much of IBM's code, which is not. Portions of the drivers we maintain are not open source. This isn't our fault; we're just playing within the rules set before us.


--- Quote from: Michael Holzapfel on December 06, 2015, 01:11:37 pm ---I really doubt if I still want to continue to invest money in the products of ArcaNoae.

--- End quote ---

Again, if you feel that you haven't received a good value for your investment, you shouldn't renew your subscription. It's not charity. We believe in a fair price for a reasonable service. If our service has somehow fallen short in your experience, then please accept my apologies on behalf of the entire Company, and feel free not to renew your subscription.


--- Quote from: Greggory Shaw on December 06, 2015, 05:29:34 pm ---How about you actually let them have a chance first of all - and a deal with Big Blue is no small deal.

And you're right they're about the last devoplers, so again how about a little support first.

--- End quote ---

Thanks, Greggory, for recognizing what an herculean task this is.


--- Quote from: Pete on December 06, 2015, 05:44:44 pm ---Unlike Michael I am reasonably happy with my recent Arca Noae subscription - at the moment.

I have downloaded and installed updates to ACPI, AHCI, Multimac, USB, Uniaud and JFS from the driver pack and am happy with most of these updates.

--- End quote ---

Glad to hear that, Pete.


--- Quote from: Pete on December 06, 2015, 05:44:44 pm ---1] The JFS /AUTOCHECK:+* switch is no longer honoured. This means that it is impossible to *force* chkdsk on drives that are Dirty but marked as Clean. This had been reported by someone else and the result is *unsatisfactory* with the bug marked as Resolved:-

Resolution:  won't fix
Comment:  Regardless of whether you consider it a defect fix, an enhancement, or just a change in operation, this is how it works now.

I have opened a new bug about this problem and hope that Arca Noae rethink and resolve this problem. It is silly to need to boot from another device, ie CD/DVD, in order to chkdsk a Dirty but marked Clean drive.

--- End quote ---

David and I have differing views on this, but David is thoughtful and reasonable. It had not been his experience that forcing a check on an otherwise-clean-appearing volume has had any positive result. Several of us have made the case that our experience has been different.

I'm going to go out on a limb here. We have weekly staff meetings (except for this past week, due to my own inability to make the meeting). I will add this to our next meeting agenda, and we'll discuss it.


--- Quote from: Pete on December 06, 2015, 05:44:44 pm ---2] Since installing this JFS release  my system often "loses" a drive volume at boot. I have JFS formatted volumes G: through L: with H: and L: being bootable. About 1 in 3 boots I notice that G: is not mentioned at all during the JFS chkdsk display.
Once booted I can get G: to display in the Drives folder by running LVM and then exiting using Save and Exit - with no changes made and - Voila! drive G: appears in the Drives folder.

--- End quote ---

This sounds like there is some corruption possibly fixable with a full chkdsk run after boot or a forced chkdsk as described above. I'll have a look at the ticket for this one, and see if there's anything constructive which I might be able to add.


--- Quote from: Pete on December 06, 2015, 05:44:44 pm ---This is clearly undesirable behaviour by the JFS driver and needs fixing.

How do I know this is related to JFS 1.09.06?

Simple: It does not happen with any earlier release of JFS.


I have reverted to the jfs installed by eCS2.2beta2 - JFS 1.09.05 - and suggest that anyone else having any form of hard drive problems with JFS 1.09.06 - whether local or usb attached - reverts to any earlier build to see if the problem(s) go away.

--- End quote ---

JFS 1.09.05 (and prior) has/have a serious and known defect which can cause complete loss of a JFS volume. While it may address the issue you are seeing above, it's a poor long-term solution, IMO.


--- Quote from: Pete on December 06, 2015, 05:44:44 pm ---Plugging DFSee as a disk fixer when you are supplying what in my view is a dodgy filesystem driver is a bit rich   ;-)

--- End quote ---

Hmmm... Dodgy filesystem driver? That's a bit "rich," now isn't it? DFSee doesn't address the issues here, and DFSee is a third-party tool. It's not like we developed DFSee at the expense of "fixing" our own software. DFSee is a multi-purpose, multi-platform tool; the only relationship between the two is that DFSee recognizes and can address certain JFS issues.  ;)


--- Quote from: Pete on December 06, 2015, 05:44:44 pm ---Depending on how Arca Noae resolve these problems will affect whether I stay happy with Arca Noae.

--- End quote ---

Fair enough! Let me see what we can do.


--- Quote from: Andreas Schnellbacher on December 06, 2015, 06:09:25 pm ---My technical opinion: Note that with '+*' you can't force anymore any clean-marked volume being checked at all, regardless if it's dirty or not.

When a dirty boot volume is marked clean, it's time to boot from another volume and perform the chkdsk from there. If that would happen for other volumes, you have now also to boot to another volume for that. Is that really that important? How many times happened that for you?

--- End quote ---

This is an excellent point, worth making, Andreas; thanks for stating it so succinctly.

Forcing a check on a clean volume is really a shortcut to deal with the underlying problem. There is no substitute for a good maintenance partition or rescue system (we are planning a robust rescue & recovery environment for Blue Lion, BTW, with a reasonable set of tools, networking support, and the ability to really fix things on the live system, so that even if a serious problem makes it impossible to boot from a maintenance partition, the user has a decent chance of getting up and running again, just from a CD or USB boot).


--- Quote from: Andreas Schnellbacher on December 06, 2015, 06:09:25 pm ---
--- Quote from: Pete on December 06, 2015, 05:44:44 pm ---2] Since installing this JFS release  my system often "loses" a drive volume at boot. I have JFS formatted volumes G: through L: with H: and L: being bootable. About 1 in 3 boots I notice that G: is not mentioned at all during the JFS chkdsk display.
Once booted I can get G: to display in the Drives folder by running LVM and then exiting using Save and Exit - with no changes made and - Voila! drive G: appears in the Drives folder.

--- End quote ---
I would give David at least a few weeks time to investigate this and to react to your recently posted bug.

I agree with you that this needs fixing and if it's somehow reproducible, chances are not bad to fix it.

--- End quote ---

Indeed.

Pete:
Hi

@Andreas

I have had 2 instances of needing to boot from DVD to chkdsk "Dirty but marked Clean" volumes twice since installing JFS 1.09.06 on 15 November - Uninstall happened 2 December after the umpteenth "lost volume at boot" and I lost patience with this JFS package.

Booting from another device - experience says forget trying to boot from another volume on the hard drive - should not be necessary; previous versions of JFS honoured the /AUTOCHECK:+* switch and performed chkdsk against the drives regardless of whether they were marked dirty or not.

This version requires the user to waste time booting from CD/DVD - pointless trying to boot from a different "Dirty but marked Clean" volume on the system as the problem is identical - run chkdsk to correct problems, then reboot to the hard drive.

With a JFS package that honours the /AUTOCHECK:+* switch the chkdsk is performed during boot and the system then boots with Clean volumes. How long does this take? - a lot less than the time wasted if having to boot from eCS CD/DVD to pre-boot menu, select hardware/location, boot to the Maintenance Console, open a cmd window, perform chkdsk(s), exit cmd window and then reboot to hard drive.


I am sorry but this behaviour of JFS 1.09.06 is not acceptable; the /AUTOCHECK:+* switch should be honoured and full chkdsk performed.


With regard to the "lost at boot" volume I would normally be happy to test and provide results for David when he is ready.



@Lewis

The point Andreas made is that JFS 1.09.06 does not support the /AUTOCHECK:+ switch but he does not state why, just his preference for booting from a different drive if that happens to his system.


It has been my experience, and I would expect others to agree, that forcing a full chkdsk on a volume which is Dirty but marked Clean has very Positive results: A Clean volume that can be used immediately; after chkdsk the system boots and everything works fine - I will add "usually" here as there are bound to be the odd exceptions in a group of users over a period of time.

I believe that was the original intention of the /AUTOCHECK:+ switch - up and running without fannying around with external media eg floppies, CD, DVD - and it has always worked fine for me.

If there is a/are any  good reason(s) why this behaviour has suddenly become undesirable I am interested in hearing/reading it/them.

Another thought: How many modern OS's have to be booted from CD/DVD/USB/Whatever/Floppy(?) in order to run a chkdsk? Sounds a bit 1980s to me... especially as OS/2 systems seem to have had this capability a long time.


Could the "lost volume" be a result of this chkdsk failure? Possibly...

I tend to suspect the possibility that JFS 1.09.06 does not get shutdown properly sometimes during system shutdown or reboot although all seems to work properly. I base this idea on the recurring "lost volume" plus the fact that when I have needed to perform chkdsk at boot the system had been shutdown successfully on both occasions. Worth noting is that all volumes, G: through to L: inclusive were "Dirty marked Clean" on both occasions.  Maybe this is the "underlying problem"...

This renders the idea of booting from a "Maintenance" volume or another system volume un-workable as all volumes have the same problem.


My " dodgy filesystem driver" comment was an attempt at mild humour rather than a full scale "dig" at Arca Noae - Sorry if it was misunderstood; my following comment was genuine  :-)


Regards

Pete




Sigurd Fastenrath:

--- Quote from: Martin Iturbide on December 06, 2015, 06:14:53 am ---Reference: [Arca Noae] Checked your disk lately?

It is a great milestone for DFSee to support GPT, but I'm still thinking how useful will be that for OS2-eCS-BlueLion installation.

I'm guessing that it should be useful for someone to boot from USB/CD and with DFSee try to repartition and already partitioned HDD (by Windows or Linux) and resize partition to fit OS2-eCS-BlueLion. (and of course use all the great features of DFSee on a GPT drive) But once you boot the Installer will it recognize the installation partition on GPT or after installing the OS, will it boot?


--- End quote ---

One of my plans with my "own OS/2 distribution" was to include DFSEE and QSINIT in the boot process.

QSINIT has some kind of "EFI" support included, if that could be activated with OS/2 one would need a disk partitioning tool in the next stage of the OS/2 installation process. For this DFSEE is (and was allways) for me the one and only choice - if DFSEE is able to handle GPT now - that's the best news to have in case one would like follow this road.

As I succeded with QSINIT (integrating it in the boot process of the DVD, NOT EFI!!!) I failed with adding DFSEE to the boot image.

Some time another plan came to my mind:

The best (and easiest, fastest and so on) way to install was

- NOT with Floppy Disk
- NOT from CD
- NOT from DVD

-> it was and is copying an image that has been cloned before with DFSEE on the HDD

So, If I would have a chance (and time and resources...) to produce a new OS/2 distribution I would:

- create an USB Stick that boots with QSINIT
- that includes DFSEE that is integrated in the QSINIT Menue
- that includes an "Universal OS/2 clone" (I do have one for me, that has been cloned with DFSEE, and uses QSINIT as Bootsystem/Loader)
- that can be restored then on the HDD of the PC

I tried something similar with a Linux System on USB Stick, but using DFSEE with it was really hard (for me).

Anyway, I am really looking forward to see what Arca Noae will present us during the next year, and If I can be of any help I would appreciate to do so. I am happy that there are people moving on and pushing things forward - and do have a plan. And this is exactly the other way round compared to what Mensys did during the last 5 years.

When it comes to JFS I would like to add: I am working with HPFS386 as the file system of the Boot partition (the clone) for years now.

When it comes to OS/2 Voice I would like to add that I (even if this is the largest OS/2 User group in the world) have no other point of contact than knowing that this organisation organizes Warpstock Europe (as Roderick Klein do now at OS/2 Voice what he has done before at Mensys) and that they sponsor some things. When it comes to "daily business" I personally do benefit much more from the person Martin mentioned, in addition to himself and those running the german os2.de forum. Loosing the forums here at OS2world or OS2.de or the "OS/2 Warp News and rumours" of Steve Wendt or hobbes (and all the other OS/2 Sites around) would hit me really.




Lewis Rosenthal:

--- Quote from: Pete on December 06, 2015, 08:58:58 pm ---Another thought: How many modern OS's have to be booted from CD/DVD/USB/Whatever/Floppy(?) in order to run a chkdsk? Sounds a bit 1980s to me... especially as OS/2 systems seem to have had this capability a long time.

--- End quote ---

When there is a serious error, many OSes need to be booted from alternative media, actually. The fact that the OSes generally do not state the requirement doesn't mean that they should not be handled in this fashion. I've dealt with more than my share of broken Windows systems where NTFS needed to be checked from something other than the boot partition because, well, they wouldn't boot. I've also had *nix systems (running JFS, Reiser, XFS, and EXT4, though not BTRFS - yet) need to get up and running fully and then have to go back and run a manual check against the disk. The difference is that *nix systems don't normally put so much data on the boot partition and what is there doesn't change as often as on other systems.


--- Quote from: Pete on December 06, 2015, 08:58:58 pm ---I tend to suspect the possibility that JFS 1.09.06 does not get shutdown properly sometimes during system shutdown or reboot although all seems to work properly. I base this idea on the recurring "lost volume" plus the fact that when I have needed to perform chkdsk at boot the system had been shutdown successfully on both occasions. Worth noting is that all volumes, G: through to L: inclusive were "Dirty marked Clean" on both occasions.  Maybe this is the "underlying problem"...

--- End quote ---

This is certainly possible, and if so, we'll want to get some low level data to see what's happening so we can do something about it (assuming it's not something specific to only one machine, of course; resources are spread thin as it is, so time tracking down elusive errors should be spent wisely).


--- Quote from: Pete on December 06, 2015, 08:58:58 pm ---This renders the idea of booting from a "Maintenance" volume or another system volume un-workable as all volumes have the same problem.

--- End quote ---

Understood.

I keep my maintenance partition running 16-bit HPFS just for that reason (it gives me something else which is JFS-aware but not JFS-dependent to use for recovery).


--- Quote from: Pete on December 06, 2015, 08:58:58 pm ---My " dodgy filesystem driver" comment was an attempt at mild humour rather than a full scale "dig" at Arca Noae - Sorry if it was misunderstood; my following comment was genuine  :-)

--- End quote ---

Apologies if I came on too strong with my reply, Pete; it was unintentional. I know you better than that, and the irony isn't lost on me, considering your lack of success with the updated JFS driver!

Let's see what we can do to address your issues. Forced chkdsk functionality aside, we certainly shouldn't be creating errors, and we want to make sure that's not the case.

Cheers

Doug Bissett:

--- Quote ---I tend to suspect the possibility that JFS 1.09.06 does not get shutdown properly sometimes during system shutdown or reboot although all seems to work properly.
--- End quote ---

This is probably the reason why there is a shutdown option to delay the actual power off. It has been in eCS for quite a while, I think it is really part of X(e)Workplace. Desktop properties-> X(e) Shutdown, near the bottom. It never hurts to use it, but it may hurt if you don't, when you need it (It is definitely a possibility). I am not sure why it is optional, it should always do the delay, to let the system finish what needs to be done before the power is cut.

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