OS2 World Community Forum

OS/2, eCS & ArcaOS - Technical => Setup & Installation => Topic started by: David Kiley on May 25, 2021, 09:46:49 am

Title: Well ArcaOS 5.0 is probably the last version for me.
Post by: David Kiley on May 25, 2021, 09:46:49 am
Iv'e decided to jettison the idea of installing on bare metal and instead decided emulating in virtualbox is the best bet (for me),
Since, I can run arcaos 5 indefinitely inside virtualbox on my suse linux host.
I don't have to worry about future hardware support or getting the right hardware.
I don't have to care about a lack of functional web browser, since I have endless options on suse.

All of my old favorite os/2 apps will continue to work in my virtualbox window, and I can share files with the host computer.

I can already hear you guys already getting worked up that I am not supporting the future of os/2 in that case..
But iv'e already spent hundreds if not thousands of dollars supporting os/2 :).
Supporting Suse, which is my favorite linux distro, which is 64 bit and hence has a more viable future, would be a better return on investment for me at this point.

The only way I can see myself buying another license is maybe if I decide I also want another os/2 instance running on virtualbox on my laptop as well as my desktop.

Which brings up another topic - that I don't really agree with the general direction of os/2 development at this point.
There is no solving the OS being stuck in 32bit- which is a ticking time bomb.
All the resources being spent developing new hardware drivers is a waste, as well as the web browser development.
It would be better to just accept emulation as the best future course of the OS for all the pros I just described.
Instead of spending endless resources trying to get the OS again functioning on yet another motherboard and developing yet another web browser just to have it get obsolete again -
Instead Arca Noa could be spending time adding new features to the OS like GUI enhancements and new productivity features, if people just accept that emulation is the best route. I mean I could probably think of all kinds of cool things Arca Noa might be doing if they were not spending time getting the os working on yet another motherboard - like maybe integrating the OS with cloud services like Google Drive.
And then, maybe I would have a reason to upgrade to future version :).
Title: Re: Well ArcaOS 5.0 is probably the last version for me.
Post by: Ibrahim Hakeem on May 25, 2021, 03:18:40 pm
I don't think anyone here's getting worked up, David.

Many of us who run OS/2 here also do a lot with other operating systems - hell, I'm active in the Haiku community myself and run Debian as a daily-driver on my desktop. Your money is your money to spend. The points you make shows that you don't understand the philosophy behind ArcaOS, much less all that has actually been achieved. None of this is anyone's prerogative to explain to you however and I hope you understand that. Arca OS was never intended to be a competitor to mainstream operating systems, it was designed to serve it's niche of modern OS/2 users and does it remarkably well.

I'll respond to a few of your points while we're here:

Quote
The only way I can see myself buying another license is maybe if I decide I also want another os/2 instance running on virtualbox on my laptop as well as my desktop.
Good, most of us already do this.

Quote
There is no solving the OS being stuck in 32bit- which is a ticking time bomb.
OS/2 has always been a 32 bit platform, for the sake of compatibility with the vast majority of the software (and hardware at times) we use, it ought to stay this way. Not to mention the plethora of other issues that would come with a 64 bit release.

Quote
All the resources being spent developing new hardware drivers is a waste, as well as the web browser development.
Perhaps for your specific use-case of virtualization. A lot of folks (myself included) are using OS/2 on modern hardware and as such, we appreciate having updates that allow us to take full advantage of those features (i.e NVME)

Quote
It would be better to just accept emulation as the best future course of the OS for all the pros I just described.
Again, nobody is stopping you and a lot of people already do this.

And finally
Quote
Arca Noa could be spending time adding new features to the OS like GUI enhancements and new productivity features
These features already exist with more coming. That is to say, one of the biggest features of the OS/2 Warp platform is the workplace shell, with the current generation of user interface optimizations/enhancements there have been few to no complaints about it.

It's your choice to use whatever operating system you want. Nobody minds  ;D
Title: Re: Well ArcaOS 5.0 is probably the last version for me.
Post by: Martin Iturbide on May 25, 2021, 04:09:36 pm
Hi David

Your opinion is respected, and I guess you want to tell us about it just to inform us, and I also guess you don't want arguments for people trying to convince you or debate your point of view.

The community has different points of view, some other are happy with ArcaOS emulated, others want bare metal and some others want to try old software with OS/2 Warp has a retro-hobbie to remember the good old days. ... and some others want all of them :)

What I agree with you is the lack of a "long term strategy" for the platform. I also used to criticized Serenity Systems with eCS, that at some point it looked that they only wanted to patch OS/2 to have the minimum necessary to run on PCs.

About ArcaOS, my opinion is that the first part of their strategy it to have a solid OS/2 running on today's hardware. They want people to be able to buy a new PC or laptop, and being able to run ArcaOS, and their OS/2 favorite app. ArcaOS 5.1 is going to be an important milestone, like modern hardware support (UEFI, GPT, NVMe ) and multilingual support. Once that is accomplished some new goals should be defined.

On the other side, I have seen the spark on Lewis' eyes (Arca Noae) when he talks about how OS/2 should be today if IBM haven't pulled the plug. I honestly think his motivation for the platform is to turn it awesome, instead of just a commercial motivation.

Yes, there is no "long term strategy" for ArcaOS yet as a platform, but the first steps to make it usable on today's hardware it is necessary. I hope that once ArcaOS 5.1 is released and stabilized, it is going to be time to move forward on what killer apps do we need and what OS/2 components needs to be updated. I wish everything can be faster, but I guess the speed is according the resources they have.

Regards
Title: Re: Well ArcaOS 5.0 is probably the last version for me.
Post by: Glazunov on May 25, 2021, 05:12:24 pm
Hi David

I use the system to play music. I use the PM123 player, which we have improved and added many features to it. Therefore, I use the system only on bare metal.
By the way, the system is very promising in this direction..
There is a great interest of users in this direction.
Title: Re: Well ArcaOS 5.0 is probably the last version for me.
Post by: Rich Walsh on May 25, 2021, 06:00:18 pm
I don't have to worry about future hardware support or getting the right hardware.

Oh ye of little faith...

Friday afternoon I went out and bought a mass-market "Windows PC" - the kind of low-end machine OS/2 users have always avoided.  In this case, a Lenovo IdeaCentre i5 with Intel i7 (8 cores), 16gb mem, and a 512gb NVMe drive formatted GPT with Win 10 Pro ($800US incl tax). The system is pure UEFI with no BIOS or CSM support.

After setup, I changed the drive order to boot USB first, then used Windows Disk Manager to shrink the Win partition. When done, I inserted my flash drive with the latest ArcaOS beta, crossed my fingers and rebooted. The installer came right up and the installation proceeded without issue. No "drama" whatsoever. I now have a fully functioning OS/2 UEFI/GPT system running on hardware that was 100% incompatible 6 months ago. No flawed emulation needed.

Now, does the integrated WiFi/Bluetooth work? Of course not - but the ethernet does and that's all I need. Does the audio work? Not with my older Uniaud build [it does work] - but I use USB audio instead because it always works. Etc, etc... Ignoring the bits and pieces that have always been a problem, I'd say AN has delivered (or is about to deliver) on its promise of OS/2 on modern hardware.

BTW... check out WSE in a few weeks - there will be a demo of installing AOS on a Windows Linux PC.

[Full disclosure: I work for AN and am actively involved in UEFI/GPT development.]
Title: Re: Well ArcaOS 5.0 is probably the last version for me.
Post by: Dariusz Piatkowski on May 25, 2021, 08:50:55 pm
Rich made an excellent point.

I just went through a purchase of a brand spankin' new PC for my son, who is away attending school. Now the machine he was using at home wasn't all that old: Asus Prime X470-Pro, AMD Ryzen7 2700 CPU, Samsung 970 Pro M.2 NVMe drive, etc.

Guess what...now that I have "acquired" that hardware (having easily convinced my son to "upgrade") I absolutely intend to take a shot at moving my OS/2 install into that new world.

Point being, our OS/2 still has some legs left in it...yeah, it'll take a little more care than normal/usual, but results can be achieved and this wouldn't have happened had AN not pursued the changes to AOS they did pursue.

I for one am more excited by what's been delivered over the past 6 months then the stuff I've seen over the last 5 years.
Title: Re: Well ArcaOS 5.0 is probably the last version for me.
Post by: David Kiley on May 26, 2021, 12:25:56 pm
I don't think anyone here's getting worked up, David.
The points you make shows that you don't understand the philosophy behind ArcaOS, much less all that has actually been achieved. None of this is anyone's prerogative to explain to you however and I hope you understand that. Arca OS was never intended to be a competitor to mainstream operating systems, it was designed to serve it's niche of modern OS/2 users and does it remarkably well.
Glad to see I didn't ruffle too many feathers :).
Yeah iv'e definitely seen from these responses that there are a lot of people that care about running on modern hardware.
It just seems to me a lot more could be done with the OS if that wasn't the focus, which I guess was my point.
OS/2 has always been a 32 bit platform, for the sake of compatibility with the vast majority of the software (and hardware at times) we use, it ought to stay this way. Not to mention the plethora of other issues that would come with a 64 bit release.
My understanding, if i'm not wrong, is that based on source code limitations it can't be more than a 32bit os, and that is putting a strain on the future especially in web browsers. But, if the focus is on creating the best emulated environment, then things like the web browser wouldn't be so important and could be let go - since the host would already have a suitable browser.

Title: Re: Well ArcaOS 5.0 is probably the last version for me.
Post by: andreas on May 26, 2021, 12:53:52 pm
I think AN do well the way they do.
An OS that only works in a virtual box is not really an "OS" anymore.
It would be just an interim solution for its own death.

I agree that the future might be 64bit. But to be honest, for me I don't see any need for 64bit as long as i can do all i need to do with my "old" 32bit system. I am not a programmer and using my pc mainly for writing and organizing office stuff. What I try to say is, that it always depends what you need an OS for and what you expect from it. I really enjoy OS/2 since it is so very comfortable to work with it and i wouldn't want to miss it. And i am really happy that AN is doing a great job to keep it alive as an OS....
Title: Re: Well ArcaOS 5.0 is probably the last version for me.
Post by: ivan on May 26, 2021, 02:45:21 pm
Quote
I agree that the future might be 64bit. But to be honest, for me I don't see any need for 64bit as long as i can do all i need to do with my "old" 32bit system. I am not a programmer and using my pc mainly for writing and organizing office stuff. What I try to say is, that it always depends what you need an OS for and what you expect from it. I really enjoy OS/2 since it is so very comfortable to work with it and i wouldn't want to miss it. And i am really happy that AN is doing a great job to keep it alive as an OS....

As you say a 64 bit version of OS/2 is a dream, I have to ask 'what advantage would a 64 bit OS have over a 32 bit one for everyday usage?'

Like andreas I use OS/2 tor writing and editing of manuscripts, yes, I can do that on one of my Linux boxes but not as easily and it still takes the same length of time.  Also there are times when I see memory problems because the modern motherboards and uefi bios are set up for windows only and don't play well with any other OS - since I will not use windows I have learned to live with those quirks.  Even my MSI B550-A Pro board wit a third gen Ryzen processor runs OS/2(ArcaOS) on the bare metal, just wish MSI had better memory management.
Title: Re: Well ArcaOS 5.0 is probably the last version for me.
Post by: Dariusz Piatkowski on May 26, 2021, 02:53:47 pm
...As you say a 64 bit version of OS/2 is a dream, I have to ask 'what advantage would a 64 bit OS have over a 32 bit one for everyday usage?'...

This comment right here that ivan made is the key point when I look at the future roadmap and the direction I wish to pursue.

For everyday use there really is no 64-bit requirement that I can think of. Sure, maybe if you needed to run a massive database server, or perhaps handled huge data files (OK, sometimes a massive TIFF or JPG file will cause a problem on my machine here, especialy if I already have a few days of runtime on it and the memory has been throughly chewed up), but otherwise, we should be quite alright living in 32-bit world!

Not to take a different direction here with this conversation, but once AN is done getting us the capability to run on new bare-metal I honestly wish they could spent some time on addressing the stuff that always turns out to be the weakness, shared memory...I've got to believe there is a way to technically do "garbage collection" and/or prevent the fragmentation to start off with.
Title: Re: Well ArcaOS 5.0 is probably the last version for me.
Post by: Neil Waldhauer on May 26, 2021, 03:56:58 pm
I think Darius asked the right question. Why do we need 64-bit?

The 2TB barrier for DASD can be overcome without it.
The 4 GB barrier for memory use has already been somewhat lifted with the new RAM drive.

But do not underestimate code bloat. At some point in the not-to-distant future, a simple web browser will not fit into the largest available OS/2 addressable space.

A good 64-bit API added to OS/2 could possibly make it the only 64-bit operating system that can execute compiled programs from the 1980s.
Title: Re: Well ArcaOS 5.0 is probably the last version for me.
Post by: Martin Iturbide on May 26, 2021, 04:38:38 pm
Hi

I like the theories about a OS/2 64bits kernel. Here it is the forum thread (https://www.os2world.com/forum/index.php/topic,2661.msg29174.html#msg29174) which everybody is free to continue.

OS/2 does not need a 64bits kernel, a 64bits kernel is needed if there will be a long term strategy for the platform when we want to use all the resources of new hardware. Maybe a dumb comparison will be to buy a new car, and never turn on the radio, wipers or lights. The basic use or the car is being applied (to mobilize people from one place to other), but you are not using the complete experience.

I prefer the idea of grabbing an new 64bits microkernel with market potential (Zircon?) and replace the OS/2 kernel with it. You grab the OSS kernel, create the OS/2 binary interpreter, the CPI API clone and try to run OS/2 interpreted over it (PM, SOM, WPS, Apps). Easy to say, but a lot of work and lot of little details need to be worked out.

Regards
Title: Re: Well ArcaOS 5.0 is probably the last version for me.
Post by: Dave Yeo on May 26, 2021, 05:04:23 pm
I think Darius asked the right question. Why do we need 64-bit?

The 2TB barrier for DASD can be overcome without it.
The 4 GB barrier for memory use has already been somewhat lifted with the new RAM drive.

But do not underestimate code bloat. At some point in the not-to-distant future, a simple web browser will not fit into the largest available OS/2 addressable space.

Code bloat is one of the big things. Developers generally have powerful machines and that is what they target. For commercial software, the managers want fast development, not slow optimized development. And for open source, once again the developers likely have powerful machines with lots of ram and a lack of motivation in general for optimization.
Otherwise, browsers are going to use more memory, large canvases, JavaScript engines doing more and more and the big one, sandboxing. One weak point in all operating systems is browser based malware, as we do more and more in the browser, it becomes more important to stop one tab from spying on another or otherwise affecting it.
Then there's also building this stuff. Building Mozilla for quite a while was close to the limit, I'd see compiling one file taking up over a GB of memory and linking using the whole address space. This has got worse with the QT web stuff. While still build-able, care has to be taken. Instead of taking advantage of all cores by having multiple jobs compiling, only one which slows things down to the point where a recompile can take most of a day.
Manipulating images and especially videos are another area. Cameras get more pixels creating bigger images and videos get bigger and use more memory intense compression.
Sure there's other things as well.
While software could be written to take advantage of the ram above 4GBs, it is non-trivial and unlikely to happen in a big way.

Quote
A good 64-bit API added to OS/2 could possibly make it the only 64-bit operating system that can execute compiled programs from the 1980s.

The way 64 bit mode works is incompatible with 16 bit software. OS/2 has too much 16 bit software internally. Programs from the '80's are usually 16 bit. There's a reason that even 64 bit Windows can't run old code natively, and that's the design.
Title: Re: Well ArcaOS 5.0 is probably the last version for me.
Post by: Roderick Klein on May 26, 2021, 09:45:18 pm
I think Darius asked the right question. Why do we need 64-bit?

The 2TB barrier for DASD can be overcome without it.
The 4 GB barrier for memory use has already been somewhat lifted with the new RAM drive.

But do not underestimate code bloat. At some point in the not-to-distant future, a simple web browser will not fit into the largest available OS/2 addressable space.

A good 64-bit API added to OS/2 could possibly make it the only 64-bit operating system that can execute compiled programs from the 1980s.

On large disc bigger then 2 TB GPT is supported. So tha is off the table it seems that issue.

Roderick
Title: Re: Well ArcaOS 5.0 is probably the last version for me.
Post by: Martin Iturbide on May 26, 2021, 10:23:02 pm
Hi

I remember that on the early 2000 I was expecting to see a change similar in software from 16bits to 32bits when Intel announced the 64bit Itanium. At the end Itanium was incompatible with all the 32bits software (it was a too aggressive change of instruction set), the processor flop, and the 64 bits adoption on PCs took a slower path. AMD created the x86-64 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86-64) instruction set (2003) which was retro-compatible with 16 and 32 bits, and the adoption took that path. I think that by 2010 the 64bits adoption PC was 50% (with Windows 7).
The only improvement I saw from 32bits to 64bits was the adoption of better video edition, playback and compression, maybe because of having more memory access.

The "2TB barrier DASD"  and "4 GB memory barrier" are issues of the present. For a 64bits kernel you need to think on the future, how a 64bits kernel can improve the OS experience? what extra things can be added to ArcaOS with 64bits support?
If the goal is to have the same old comfortable thing on new hardware, without any expectation of future improvement for the platform, there is no case for 64bits.

If someone wants a 64bits kernel for OS/2, it is because they want the OS to evolve, get more relevance and be able to get the full resources that the hardware provide.

Regards
Title: Re: Well ArcaOS 5.0 is probably the last version for me.
Post by: Neil Waldhauer on May 27, 2021, 03:31:06 pm

On large disc bigger then 2 TB GPT is supported. So tha is off the table it seems that issue.


No, it is not off. If you actually publish a driver to split a larger GPT drive into 2 TB logical chunks, you are still limited to 32 bits. You have at most 24 drive letters x 2 TB, so you can sort of push back to 48 TB. File objects are still limited to 2 TB, and volumes are still limited to 2 TB. It's a hack, and while it would be a welcome addition, it is not the long term fix that 64 bit support could be.

(* can network directories be larger than 2 TB?)
Title: Re: Well ArcaOS 5.0 is probably the last version for me.
Post by: Dave Yeo on May 27, 2021, 04:13:07 pm
Very large drive support is a different matter then 64 bit support, the problem there is parts of OS/2 that are still 16 bit combined with being stuck with CHS hard drive addressing. As it is, for JFS, there are parts of the file driver API that are currently 64 bits.
The drive letter limitation is also nothing to do with 64 bits, but another internal limitation.
Title: Re: Well ArcaOS 5.0 is probably the last version for me.
Post by: Paul Smedley on May 27, 2021, 11:22:49 pm
Hi Neil,

(* can network directories be larger than 2 TB?)

I believe so..... My Shared drive reports: 2,908,314,763,264 bytes (2,708GB) free :)
Title: Re: Well ArcaOS 5.0 is probably the last version for me.
Post by: David Kiley on May 28, 2021, 08:19:30 am
I think AN do well the way they do.
An OS that only works in a virtual box is not really an "OS" anymore.
It would be just an interim solution for its own death.
I guess I don't see an OS loaded into a VM as not an OS. How do you see it so?
I have windows vista in a VM for some windows programs I have. If anything it's keeping the OS alive for me :).

I agree that the future might be 64bit. But to be honest, for me I don't see any need for 64bit as long as i can do all i need to do with my "old" 32bit system. I am not a programmer and using my pc mainly for writing and organizing office stuff. What I try to say is, that it always depends what you need an OS for and what you expect from it. I really enjoy OS/2 since it is so very comfortable to work with it and i wouldn't want to miss it. And i am really happy that AN is doing a great job to keep it alive as an OS....
I could care less if the OS is 64bit per say, but my understanding is it might eventually make web browser compiling impossible - and hence that will/could kill the OS at least for people running it on bare metal and wanting to use the internet. Unless I am wrong about that?
Title: Re: Well ArcaOS 5.0 is probably the last version for me.
Post by: David Kiley on May 28, 2021, 09:03:04 am
Oh ye of little faith...

I'd say AN has delivered (or is about to deliver) on its promise of OS/2 on modern hardware.
Well to be fair I haven't tried installing the latest version on bare metal since I decided to go emulation - so from what you guys have said I stand corrected on that.

I'm not saying AN hasn't delivered on what they promised - they have done an amazing job. I'm just not sure "os/2 on modern hardware" should be the goal.
But, it seems that most people here think otherwise, which is fine :).
Title: Re: Well ArcaOS 5.0 is probably the last version for me.
Post by: Roderick Klein on May 28, 2021, 12:55:37 pm
I think AN do well the way they do.
An OS that only works in a virtual box is not really an "OS" anymore.
It would be just an interim solution for its own death.
I guess I don't see an OS loaded into a VM as not an OS. How do you see it so?
I have windows vista in a VM for some windows programs I have. If anything it's keeping the OS alive for me :).

I agree that the future might be 64bit. But to be honest, for me I don't see any need for 64bit as long as i can do all i need to do with my "old" 32bit system. I am not a programmer and using my pc mainly for writing and organizing office stuff. What I try to say is, that it always depends what you need an OS for and what you expect from it. I really enjoy OS/2 since it is so very comfortable to work with it and i wouldn't want to miss it. And i am really happy that AN is doing a great job to keep it alive as an OS....
I could care less if the OS is 64bit per say, but my understanding is it might eventually make web browser compiling impossible - and hence that will/could kill the OS at least for people running it on bare metal and wanting to use the internet. Unless I am wrong about that?

Our live as OS/2 users has never been an easy one... We always have had the same issue's. Lack of software and/or drivers.  Especially since IBM stopped active developement. For that was circa
2002 when SWC program was active.  Maybe a year earlier they stopped maybe some people consider it later or sooner. But for more then 15 years we have been self sustaining with OS/2.
That has not alays been easy!

64 bit is certainly an issue and some idea's are around how to deal with the shortage of memory. The opinions seem to vary but we might have some options. I discussed these publicly a few months ago. As for compiling large projects such as QT and the webkit engine. Some things can be done to reduce the memory consumption. How that would memory reduction that would give us I would need to know by talking to Dmitry and especially Steve Levine. These are ungoing discussions.

Roderick

Title: Re: Well ArcaOS 5.0 is probably the last version for me.
Post by: andreas on May 28, 2021, 02:27:34 pm
I think AN do well the way they do.
An OS that only works in a virtual box is not really an "OS" anymore.
It would be just an interim solution for its own death.
I guess I don't see an OS loaded into a VM as not an OS. How do you see it so?
I have windows vista in a VM for some windows programs I have. If anything it's keeping the OS alive for me :).

An "OS" that cannot work on its own and needs to be installed on another OS is more or less just a program or add-on for this other OS...
ok, it's just a matter of the definition. But i still think an "operating system" should be capable to operate some hardware by itself...
Title: Re: Well ArcaOS 5.0 is probably the last version for me.
Post by: Neil Waldhauer on May 28, 2021, 03:53:51 pm
Hi Neil,

(* can network directories be larger than 2 TB?)

I believe so..... My Shared drive reports: 2,908,314,763,264 bytes (2,708GB) free :)

Then there is a different limit for network drives, and that limit can be exploited to support large drive (greater than 2 TB). But large files (greater than 2TB) may be a permanent restriction given our kernel.

So there are a few ways to extend the life of the 32-bit kernel.

I'm not saying that the convenience of using the host operating system's support for WiFi, bluetooth and so on isn't worthwhile. I see Arca Noae does supply some documentation for running in Virtual Box and other environments.
Title: Re: Well ArcaOS 5.0 is probably the last version for me.
Post by: Lars on May 28, 2021, 07:28:34 pm
ADDs allow 32-bit LBA addressing. With a 512 byte Sector size, that makes up for 2 TB as Neil correctly stated. And for an ADD, the LBA is an absolute value starting from first sector of the disc (as far as I can remember). Which limits the whole disk to 2TB or am I overlooking something ?
Therefore: a 32-bit IFS can address more space (even if it addresses bytewise) then an ADD. An ADD effectively addresses 32+9= 41 bits. The 32-bit IFS can address up to 63 bits (highest bit is reserved for sign bit to support negative file offsets).
That might also explain why network drives could be bigger than 2TB: you do not need an ADD to access data on a network drive. Instead, the IFS will in some form interact with the remote system to access a byte or more. If the remote system supports bigger drives, then that can work.

Example: the Virtualbox "shared folders" support only needs an IFS (for the OS/2 guest). That IFS directly interacts with the drive support of the host OS (Windows, via some access layer, I don't know the technical details).
Title: Re: Well ArcaOS 5.0 is probably the last version for me.
Post by: Roderick Klein on May 28, 2021, 08:15:15 pm
ADDs allow 32-bit LBA addressing. With a 512 byte Sector size, that makes up for 2 TB as Neil correctly stated. And for an ADD, the LBA is an absolute value starting from first sector of the disc (as far as I can remember). Which limits the whole disk to 2TB or am I overlooking something ?
Therefore: a 32-bit IFS can address more space (even if it addresses bytewise) then an ADD. An ADD effectively addresses 32+9= 41 bits. The 32-bit IFS can address up to 63 bits (highest bit is reserved for sign bit to support negative file offsets).
That might also explain why network drives could be bigger than 2TB: you do not need an ADD to access data on a network drive. Instead, the IFS will in some form interact with the remote system to access a byte or more. If the remote system supports bigger drives, then that can work.

Example: the Virtualbox "shared folders" support only needs an IFS (for the OS/2 guest). That IFS directly interacts with the drive support of the host OS (Windows, via some access layer, I don't know the technical details).

From testing the current AN beta (I am on the AN testers list). This is what I can say:
The OS2AHCI driver version, starting at version 2.08 supports discs bigger then 2 TB.
http://trac.netlabs.org/ahci/browser/trunk/src/os2ahci/ReadMe.txt
 Changed the internal implementation of /U to accomodate gpt filter.
 Added support for 48/64 bit LBA operations.

So they have a filter driver that seems to care with this somehow. Saturday 5th of June Warpstock Europe, you can follow a presentation from Alex Taylor for more details.  Schedule to be posted tomorrow or today, check www.warpstock.eu for details.

Roderick


Title: Re: Well ArcaOS 5.0 is probably the last version for me.
Post by: Lars on May 28, 2021, 09:39:58 pm
1) you are mixing up two points: there is a filter mechanism to suppress GPT disks (instead of erroneously accessing them) and then, there is 48/64 bit LBA support

2) 48/64 bit LBA support: what that can also mean is that the newer 48/64 LBA commands of the command set are supported, simply because newer drives don't support older 32-bit LBA commands anymore. Still, in reality, only the lower 32-bit will be set, the upper bits would be zero. At least I had to do some such with USBMSD.ADD (that supported only some very old SCSI commands with 21-bit LBA support, I updated to newer commands with 32-bit LBA support, supported by the current generation of USB MSD devices). But David will know for sure.
Title: Re: Well ArcaOS 5.0 is probably the last version for me.
Post by: Roderick Klein on May 29, 2021, 12:45:43 pm
1) you are mixing up two points: there is a filter mechanism to suppress GPT disks (instead of erroneously accessing them) and then, there is 48/64 bit LBA support

2) 48/64 bit LBA support: what that can also mean is that the newer 48/64 LBA commands of the command set are supported, simply because newer drives don't support older 32-bit LBA commands anymore. Still, in reality, only the lower 32-bit will be set, the upper bits would be zero. At least I had to do some such with USBMSD.ADD (that supported only some very old SCSI commands with 21-bit LBA support, I updated to newer commands with 32-bit LBA support, supported by the current generation of USB MSD devices). But David will know for sure.

The storage driver provides 48 bit LBA addressing. And the GPT filter driver uses this interface. That way you can access a +2TB disc with ArcaOS.

Roderick
Title: Re: Well ArcaOS 5.0 is probably the last version for me.
Post by: Neil Waldhauer on May 29, 2021, 03:42:27 pm

The storage driver provides 48 bit LBA addressing. And the GPT filter driver uses this interface. That way you can access a +2TB disc with ArcaOS.


As I understand it, the GPT filter driver will split a 6 TB drive into 3 units of 2 TB each, allowing you to access a 6 TB drive as, for example, E:, F: and G:. This is different from a single drive letter with 6 TB, which is currently only possible on a network drive.
Title: Re: Well ArcaOS 5.0 is probably the last version for me.
Post by: Roderick Klein on May 29, 2021, 04:15:29 pm

The storage driver provides 48 bit LBA addressing. And the GPT filter driver uses this interface. That way you can access a +2TB disc with ArcaOS.


As I understand it, the GPT filter driver will split a 6 TB drive into 3 units of 2 TB each, allowing you to access a 6 TB drive as, for example, E:, F: and G:. This is different from a single drive letter with 6 TB, which is currently only possible on a network drive.

That is true! I think with my sleepy brainI did not read Lars his response correctly.
In my opinion this a pretty good solution. And I do not know if other OS/2 users that would object to having a JFS partition limited in size to 2 TB ?
At least we can now use discs bigger then 2 TB and with GPT without having being able to either user the hard drive or having to wipe it as GPT is not supported. It should make dual booting with Windows 10 easier then all the limitations that MBR disc layout has.

Roderick
Title: Re: Well ArcaOS 5.0 is probably the last version for me.
Post by: Fahrvenugen on May 29, 2021, 06:18:11 pm

That is true! I think with my sleepy brainI did not read Lars his response correctly.
In my opinion this a pretty good solution. And I do not know if other OS/2 users that would object to having a JFS partition limited in size to 2 TB ?
At least we can now use discs bigger then 2 TB and with GPT without having being able to either user the hard drive or having to wipe it as GPT is not supported. It should make dual booting with Windows 10 easier then all the limitations that MBR disc layout has.

Roderick

Back in the days before JFS and LVM we had a similar situation with HPFS.  If memory is correct HPFS partitions were limited to 64GB, above that you had to create another partition with an additional drive letter.

Title: Re: Well ArcaOS 5.0 is probably the last version for me.
Post by: Greg Pringle on May 30, 2021, 03:29:34 pm
So, for you "OS/2" is dead.

That reminds me of OS/2 1.0 which I used a few times. My roomate ran a BBS using it. Then 2.0 came out and I bought it. Soon I programmed for it and installed many applications at work that cound not be done with windows 3.1 As time went on I used virtually every varient of OS/2. All along it was being called "Dead". I even knew the people at IBM that were responsible for trying to kill OS/2. They all failed, most lost their jobs. Yet, OS/2 continued.

I use both an OS/2 machine and a virtual OS/2 machine. The normal machine is faster and has a better interface. I don't have to bother with multiple logins and odd screen views.

I develop for every operating system. OS/2 is still the best.

(by the way, the Colonial Pipeline hack would not have happened with OS/2)
Title: Re: Well ArcaOS 5.0 is probably the last version for me.
Post by: Fahrvenugen on May 30, 2021, 11:51:29 pm
So, for you "OS/2" is dead.


I can't remember who it was, but someone once said that if we had 1 additional OS/2 user for every time it was declared "dead" we'd have more users then Windows users.  Some days I think there might be some truth to this LOL!
Title: Re: Well ArcaOS 5.0 is probably the last version for me.
Post by: David McKenna on May 31, 2021, 12:20:31 am
 Hey Guys,

  According to Wikipedia (  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JFS_%28file_system%29  ) the JFS file system has a maximum file size of 4PB, and maximum volume size of 32PB. Since JFS allows 'spanning' of partitions to create large volumes, wouldn't it be possible to have 3 2TB partitions (to use Neil's example) 'spanned' as a 6TB 'drive' (that is: a non-bootable Volume)? Or do I misunderstand and Wikipedia is wrong (at least for OS/2)? I've never actually spanned partitions, so not sure how that works...

Regards,
Title: Re: Well ArcaOS 5.0 is probably the last version for me.
Post by: Doug Bissett on May 31, 2021, 07:14:15 am
You can span ADVANCED volumes (even on different physical disks), but I don't know about >2 TB volumes. Advanced volumes are not bootable.

I did it, years ago (much smaller disk, of course), with mixed results. It did work okay, but introduced some very messy maintenance challenges. Eventually, I just consolidated it all, when I got a new disk that was big enough to hold all of it.

It would be educational to know if it works with large disks, but I don't have one to play with.
Title: Re: Well ArcaOS 5.0 is probably the last version for me.
Post by: Dave Yeo on May 31, 2021, 07:58:35 am
IIRC, the JFS file and volume size limits are lower on OS/2 then on Linux.
Title: Re: Well ArcaOS 5.0 is probably the last version for me.
Post by: Lars on May 31, 2021, 09:14:30 am

The storage driver provides 48 bit LBA addressing. And the GPT filter driver uses this interface. That way you can access a +2TB disc with ArcaOS.


As I understand it, the GPT filter driver will split a 6 TB drive into 3 units of 2 TB each, allowing you to access a 6 TB drive as, for example, E:, F: and G:. This is different from a single drive letter with 6 TB, which is currently only possible on a network drive.
Ok, that pretty much explains it. The drive letter "logically" extends the 32 bit LBA address, providing additional upper bits for the 48 or 64 bits sent to the device to address a sector. At least, that is a good trick but it uses up valuable drive letters.
Title: Re: Well ArcaOS 5.0 is probably the last version for me.
Post by: Lars on May 31, 2021, 09:32:30 am
Thinking out loud: a transfer IORB for the ADD contains a 16-bit field "Blocksize". For once, that field is pretty useless as up to present day, OS/2 always expects a value of 512. But even if not, the upper say four bits could be used to extend the LBA address. But that would require to update OS2DASD.DMD accordingly. And of course, the ADD to take advantage of those 4 additional bits.
Title: Re: Well ArcaOS 5.0 is probably the last version for me.
Post by: Rich Walsh on May 31, 2021, 09:42:40 am
As I understand it, the GPT filter driver will split a 6 TB drive into 3 units of 2 TB each, allowing you to access a 6 TB drive as, for example, E:, F: and G:. This is different from a single drive letter with 6 TB, which is currently only possible on a network drive.
Ok, that pretty much explains it. The drive letter "logically" extends the 32 bit LBA address, providing additional upper bits for the 48 or 64 bits sent to the device to address a sector. At least, that is a good trick but it uses up valuable drive letters.

Sorry but none of this is correct.

GPT.FLT (which isn't really a filter, per se) creates a set of emulated MBR disks, one for each partition you want to mount. It then makes each GPT partition look like it is the only primary on that MBR disk. Because access to the underlying disk (which OS/2 knows nothing about) is through this MBR emulation, MBR limits of 2TB apply.

Also, because this is an emulation, LVM disk spanning (which requires additional on-disk LVM data) is impossible.
Title: Re: Well ArcaOS 5.0 is probably the last version for me.
Post by: Lars on May 31, 2021, 10:09:42 am
So that also means none of the real GPT partitions can be bigger than 2TB, correct?
If yes, then the sole intention of that filter is to make accessible GPT partitions and not to provide access to larger partitions, correct?
Title: Re: Well ArcaOS 5.0 is probably the last version for me.
Post by: Roderick Klein on May 31, 2021, 10:29:23 am
Is it a perfect solution ? Hmmm perhaps not. But at least people will no longer have to wipe Windows 10 if they want to maintain the Windows installation.
Also ALL associated possible headaches with MBR disk layout are a thing of the past.
For the coming years for me this would be an acceptable solution. I do not see in the next 2 to 3 years hard discs ending up in consumer PC's of 20 TB?
But I might be wrong...

Check www.warpstock.eu for a presentation from Alex Taylor demonstrating UEFI.

Roderick
Title: Re: Well ArcaOS 5.0 is probably the last version for me.
Post by: Lars on May 31, 2021, 11:04:37 am
I guess there cannot be a perfect solution as there will likely be multiple places where that 2TB limit will come into play, also thinking about the disk tools.
But it seems that with the help of GPT.FLT (that can modify the IORBs passed between OS2DASD.DMD and the ADD drivers), you can also address sectors beyond the ABSOLUTE 2TB limit and that OS2AHCI.ADD has some sort of extension to use 48 bits of LBA address. Potentially what I proposed earlier on.
What is the reason why OS2DASD.DMD cannot be modified?
License issues?
Title: Re: Well ArcaOS 5.0 is probably the last version for me.
Post by: Rich Walsh on June 01, 2021, 12:12:11 am
it seems that with the help of GPT.FLT (that can modify the IORBs passed between OS2DASD.DMD and the ADD drivers), you can also address sectors beyond the ABSOLUTE 2TB limit and that OS2AHCI.ADD has some sort of extension to use 48 bits of LBA address. Potentially what I proposed earlier on.

I didn't see your proposal so I wrote my own  :)

There are two new CommandCodes: IOCC_GEOMETRY64 (0x13) and IOCC_EXECUTE_IO64 (0x14). They signal the use of new extended IORBs, GEOMETRY64 and IORB_EXECUTEIO64. The only difference from the 32-bit IORBs is that a 64-bit field has been added at the end of the structures to hold ullTotalSectors and ullRBA, respectively. The .ADD code is unchanged except that it now looks at the CmdCode to decide whether to take the LBA from the 32-bit or 64-bit field.

Current versions of AN's 'os2ahci.add' and 'nvme.add' support this interface. It's use comes at a small cost: for requests above 2TB, GPT.FLT has to create a 64-bit version of each request before it sends it to the .ADD. Each request is less than 100 bytes, so the overhead is minimal.

BTW... IOCC_GEOMETRY64 returns the actual number of sectors on a disk - it isn't rounded down to a cylinder boundary. The call can also be used as a safe way to determine if 48/64-bit support is available.

Quote
What is the reason why OS2DASD.DMD cannot be modified? License issues?

Virtually everything above the .ADD/.FLT level is tied to 32-bit LBAs. There's just too much to change.
Title: Re: Well ArcaOS 5.0 is probably the last version for me.
Post by: drjohnnyfever on June 01, 2021, 08:06:37 am
On the thought of "64-bit OS/2", mostly what we really want is utilize all of our physical RAM in a system to be able to run more applications. We don't particularly care about the virtual address space limit per process as much, although that could be a bit of a pain point for web browsers in the future.

The "easy way" of doing this (if there is such a thing) to me seems like if you could wedge a hypervisor under OS/2 (or inside of it as the case my be) so you could run multiple instances of it, as if it were on KVM of ESXi but have it be totally transparent (or mostly transparently) to the user so it is all managed by native ArcaOS / OS/2 tooling in the UI and it appears like you are running one OS (think of the way virtual DOS machines currently work in OS/2). And have some sort of driver infrastructure added in to the kernel such that IPC mechanisms from the different running instances could be bridged together so from an application perspective it seems like applications are running on the same instance, and inter process communication works as normal. Granted this may well be a difficult project. I can see proof of concepting it as running multiple instances of ArcaOS in VirtualBox on a Windows system with drivers added so IPC works between applications in the different instances.

I'm only vaguely aware of how process address space works in OS/2, most of my OS internals knowledge is from FreeBSD so I might be way off base in how practical this would be to do, but it does seem doable. The main goal here would be to do the minimum possible change required to the system itself and push all the complexity down to some lower layer. Xen or Bhyve or L4 could perhaps be repurposed to minimize the effort.

I know I'm far from the first person to come up with this idea, but I'm wondering if anyone has tried pursuing it.
Title: Re: Well ArcaOS 5.0 is probably the last version for me.
Post by: Lars on June 01, 2021, 11:35:08 am
it seems that with the help of GPT.FLT (that can modify the IORBs passed between OS2DASD.DMD and the ADD drivers), you can also address sectors beyond the ABSOLUTE 2TB limit and that OS2AHCI.ADD has some sort of extension to use 48 bits of LBA address. Potentially what I proposed earlier on.

I didn't see your proposal so I wrote my own  :)

There are two new CommandCodes: IOCC_GEOMETRY64 (0x13) and IOCC_EXECUTE_IO64 (0x14). They signal the use of new extended IORBs, GEOMETRY64 and IORB_EXECUTEIO64. The only difference from the 32-bit IORBs is that a 64-bit field has been added at the end of the structures to hold ullTotalSectors and ullRBA, respectively. The .ADD code is unchanged except that it now looks at the CmdCode to decide whether to take the LBA from the 32-bit or 64-bit field.

Current versions of AN's 'os2ahci.add' and 'nvme.add' support this interface. It's use comes at a small cost: for requests above 2TB, GPT.FLT has to create a 64-bit version of each request before it sends it to the .ADD. Each request is less than 100 bytes, so the overhead is minimal.

BTW... IOCC_GEOMETRY64 returns the actual number of sectors on a disk - it isn't rounded down to a cylinder boundary. The call can also be used as a safe way to determine if 48/64-bit support is available.

Quote
What is the reason why OS2DASD.DMD cannot be modified? License issues?

Virtually everything above the .ADD/.FLT level is tied to 32-bit LBAs. There's just too much to change.

Hi Rich,

I am always glad to help. Let me know if you need any :-)

Thanks for letting me know the new command codes. For reasons of large floppy support, I also had to add a new (internal) command code to USBMSD.ADD. Now I can check if that conflicts with the new command codes you mentioned.
Title: Re: Well ArcaOS 5.0 is probably the last version for me.
Post by: Fahrvenugen on June 01, 2021, 08:04:49 pm
I suspect I already know the answer to this, but I seem to recall reading years ago (probably 15 to 20 years ago - back when IBM still had a few people working on OS/2's kernel) that someone at IBM was looking into updates / modifications to OS/2's kernel to allow it to enable and use PAE mode - at least from the standpoint of allowing memory above the 4GB barrier to be fully used by the system.  Does anyone have any idea what might have become of this?

I'm guessing the current ramdisk option we have is using PAE to some extent to allow that memory to be accessed.  I'm just wondering if my memory of the supposed IBM work on PAE in the kernel is correct/incorrect, or if it was tried and just didn't work reliably which is why we now have the ramdisk option (as it does work well).
Title: Re: Well ArcaOS 5.0 is probably the last version for me.
Post by: Roderick Klein on June 01, 2021, 10:44:04 pm
I suspect I already know the answer to this, but I seem to recall reading years ago (probably 15 to 20 years ago - back when IBM still had a few people working on OS/2's kernel) that someone at IBM was looking into updates / modifications to OS/2's kernel to allow it to enable and use PAE mode - at least from the standpoint of allowing memory above the 4GB barrier to be fully used by the system.  Does anyone have any idea what might have become of this?

I'm guessing the current ramdisk option we have is using PAE to some extent to allow that memory to be accessed.  I'm just wondering if my memory of the supposed IBM work on PAE in the kernel is correct/incorrect, or if it was tried and just didn't work reliably which is why we now have the ramdisk option (as it does work well).

It depends on what you consider kernel development.  From my point of view most work on the OS/2 kernel was done last in WSeB (Warp Server for Ebusiness).  These kernels also later made it into the Warp 4 fixpaks starting at fixpak 13 (with single core support).  After that things went downhill best I can memory when it came to expanding the functionality of OS/2. Scott Garfunkle I think left his OS/2 kernel development in 2002.
Its hard to say how much enhancements he made to the kernel but from my point of view it was IBM's its policy to only maintain OS/2 under the SWC program. I have never heard anything about PAE support being put in by IBM.

Geting PAE into the kernel without sources based on the people I talked is a big big big job. Consider it practically speakign impossible. Some much would have to modified because you are dealing with memory allocation and memory relase rountines.... When a program wants to allocate memory such a web browser it asks the in the end the kernel for chunk of memory. In so many places adding PAE memory address range in the kernel would be a very big job.

The current PAE support for the ramdisc is depended of how the OS/2 kernel works.

It might however be possible with other technology that LIBC might be able use the memory the ram disc offers. Allocate the memory directly.
But this is still under discussion with BWW.

Roderick
Title: Re: Well ArcaOS 5.0 is probably the last version for me.
Post by: Dave Yeo on June 02, 2021, 01:57:31 am
While I never heard anything about IBM trying to support PAE, PAE I believe can have problems with device drivers, at least that is one problem on Windows.
The ramdisk does use PAE and I believe there is an API so other programs could use the memory. Those programs would need to be written to use that memory, compared to now where it is simply malloced (or similar).
Something like a disk cache using PAE might be relatively simple to implement, something like a browser likely not so much.
Title: Re: Well ArcaOS 5.0 is probably the last version for me.
Post by: Lars on June 02, 2021, 11:46:50 am
The QSINIT API allows you to ask for 512 byte sectors of memory. It can only be used by exactly one app at a time and I doubt that there is some protection against multiple users. Also, you will then lose all ability to use it as a RAM disc. The mem cannot be shared between RAM disc and other use. It's all or nothing.
Title: Re: Well ArcaOS 5.0 is probably the last version for me.
Post by: andreas on June 08, 2021, 06:44:06 pm
I know this might not be realistic (as i mentioned before, i'm not a programmer), but i just would like to know if this could be a way to get a 64-bit system:

Can there be some sort of merger between a host and a virtual machine? Maybe similar like WINOS/2 that got part of OS/2?

Maybe we could get a basic new 64-OS with only everything that is necessary to load our 32-bit-OS/2 in some sort of virtual machine in some way that you don't even realize, that we have a virtual machine.
Then we'd also need some sort of connection between that host and the guest - also in some way, that the user wouln't even realize we have actually 2 systems.
Would that be feasible or are there any technical restrictions?
Since i know, we have virtual machines worlking on 64-bit platforms, this might work. I'm just not sure, if an interaction between both worlds can be achieved...
Title: Re: Well ArcaOS 5.0 is probably the last version for me.
Post by: Ibrahim Hakeem on June 08, 2021, 06:47:31 pm
I know this might not be realistic (as i mentioned before, i'm not a programmer), but i just would like to know if this could be a way to get a 64-bit system:

Can there be some sort of merger between a host and a virtual machine? Maybe similar like WINOS/2 that got part of OS/2?

Maybe we could get a basic new 64-OS with only everything that is necessary to load our 32-bit-OS/2 in some sort of virtual machine in some way that you don't even realize, that we have a virtual machine.
Then we'd also need some sort of connection between that host and the guest - also in some way, that the user wouln't even realize we have actually 2 systems.
Would that be feasible or are there any technical restrictions?
Since i know, we have virtual machines worlking on 64-bit platforms, this might work. I'm just not sure, if an interaction between both worlds can be achieved...

This has been spoken about quite a bit, even in the most recent Warpstock it was stated to be wishful thinking.
Title: Re: Well ArcaOS 5.0 is probably the last version for me.
Post by: andreas on June 08, 2021, 07:06:36 pm
This has been spoken about quite a bit, even in the most recent Warpstock it was stated to be wishful thinking.

i know this might be wishful thinking. i just wonder what the obstacles might be.
It was possible to run 16-bit-programs from another OS on OS/2. So i wonder what is the difference now.
Maybe we could even use an existing 64-OS like Linux and adjust it to that concept.

Have there ever been any trials to get OS/2-programs running seamless on Linux? If we achieved that, we would get out of wishful thinking towards a more realistic option. Of course i know that would still be a hard way to go from there though.
Title: Re: Well ArcaOS 5.0 is probably the last version for me.
Post by: Roderick Klein on June 08, 2021, 09:52:33 pm
I know this might not be realistic (as i mentioned before, i'm not a programmer), but i just would like to know if this could be a way to get a 64-bit system:

Can there be some sort of merger between a host and a virtual machine? Maybe similar like WINOS/2 that got part of OS/2?

Maybe we could get a basic new 64-OS with only everything that is necessary to load our 32-bit-OS/2 in some sort of virtual machine in some way that you don't even realize, that we have a virtual machine.
Then we'd also need some sort of connection between that host and the guest - also in some way, that the user wouln't even realize we have actually 2 systems.
Would that be feasible or are there any technical restrictions?
Since i know, we have virtual machines worlking on 64-bit platforms, this might work. I'm just not sure, if an interaction between both worlds can be achieved...

This has been spoken about quite a bit, even in the most recent Warpstock it was stated to be wishful thinking.

The discussion has been running for 20 years... Its nothing new the idea. The question how realistic is it and achieve critical mass...

Roderick
Title: Re: Well ArcaOS 5.0 is probably the last version for me.
Post by: Dave Yeo on June 09, 2021, 01:25:11 am
This has been spoken about quite a bit, even in the most recent Warpstock it was stated to be wishful thinking.

i know this might be wishful thinking. i just wonder what the obstacles might be.
It was possible to run 16-bit-programs from another OS on OS/2. So i wonder what is the difference now.
Maybe we could even use an existing 64-OS like Linux and adjust it to that concept.

Have there ever been any trials to get OS/2-programs running seamless on Linux? If we achieved that, we would get out of wishful thinking towards a more realistic option. Of course i know that would still be a hard way to go from there though.

There's https://www.patreon.com/posts/2ine-16-bit-exe-19337541 (https://www.patreon.com/posts/2ine-16-bit-exe-19337541) and a couple of other posts in the same thread. This is more along the way WINE works. While possible, there are a lot of differences between any *nix and OS/2. A better course would be to add an OS/2 personality to ReactOS. It is a reimplementation of the NT kernel and NT did start out as OS/2 V3 NT with NT supporting 16 bit OS/2 text apps out of the box and a 16 bit Presentation Manager add on. I also have/had a Byte magazine from the mid 90's with a news article about Microsoft getting the 32 bit Presentation Manager running on NT. The OS/2 subsystem was removed after Win2k.
I understand that at the beginning of ReactOS development, they did reach out to the OS/2 community about supporting OS/2, but didn't get a positive response. OS/2 programmers are/were like cats and herding them is not easy.
At this point, with so few users left, I can't imagine a serious attempt to support OS/2 on any other kernel.
While wishing, what is really a shame is that the OS/2 PPC source seems to be lost, there was a time when releasing it was considered, though I doubt it would have ever happened. Porting it to i386 would have been relatively easy as it was written to be portable, unlike regular OS/2. Still would have had the drivers problem.
Title: Re: Well ArcaOS 5.0 is probably the last version for me.
Post by: Martin Iturbide on June 09, 2021, 01:48:14 am
Hi
There's https://www.patreon.com/posts/2ine-16-bit-exe-19337541 (https://www.patreon.com/posts/2ine-16-bit-exe-19337541) and a couple of other posts in the same thread. ....
2ine was my 2018 feel good moment when I saw that one little document that I asked IBM permission to repost was actually used by someone.

Quote
After much head scratching about why it was trying to jump back from 16-bit land to a totally bogus 32-bit code segment, I found an ancient IBM CourseWare document on the Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/CoursewareN1740OS22.1ForSoftwareDevelopers) that explained this.
  (source (https://www.patreon.com/posts/project-2ine-16513790))

The dream will be to add "OS/2 personality" to a microkernel project. Instead of suffering for our own kernel, lets grab it from some stronger community that worries about that. Some people says the kernel made the OS, I believe that the "OS experience" is the OS.
I would prefer Zircon, based in LK (https://github.com/littlekernel/lk) (made by the same guy from HaikuOS), since it is an open source kernel where Google is investing and creating a community for it.  It will stop being OS/2, since compatibility will be interpreted over a different kernel, but it may open the doors for a better future for the platform.

Regards
Title: Re: Well ArcaOS 5.0 is probably the last version for me.
Post by: andreas on June 09, 2021, 01:33:20 pm

The dream will be to add "OS/2 personality" to a microkernel project. Instead of suffering for our own kernel, lets grab it from some stronger community that worries about that. Some people says the kernel made the OS, I believe that the "OS experience" is the OS.
I would prefer Zircon, based in LK (https://github.com/littlekernel/lk) (made by the same guy from HaikuOS), since it is an open source kernel where Google is investing and creating a community for it.  It will stop being OS/2, since compatibility will be interpreted over a different kernel, but it may open the doors for a better future for the platform.

Regards

Martin, i agree with you. I don't really care, where the kernel comes from, as long as it work and I can keep the "OS/2-feeling".
From the technical side i have no clue which kernel is the best. But having Google in the background would be a huge advantage. Maybe they could even revive OS/2 (or whatever they might call it then).
I think in the end it's just a matter of money. Google has it. The OS/2 community doesn't. And it seems ReactOS is pretty the same.
Title: Re: Well ArcaOS 5.0 is probably the last version for me.
Post by: Kékróka on June 09, 2021, 04:33:57 pm

The "easy way" of doing this (if there is such a thing) to me seems like if you could wedge a hypervisor under OS/2 (or inside of it as the case my be) so you could run multiple instances of it, as if it were on KVM of ESXi but have it be totally transparent (or mostly transparently) to the user so it is all managed by native ArcaOS / OS/2 tooling in the UI and it appears like you are running one OS (think of the way virtual DOS machines currently work in OS/2).

I totally agree with this approach especially as multicore machines cries out machine partitioning as well.
If legacy 32-bit OS/2 would settle in VMs as DOS now (VOM = Virtual OS/2 Machine), then such old apps can use that, and new environment can be 64-bit, so memory management can move on enabling using physical memory above 4.00 GB.

Storage capacity itself can be resolved with network drives. That way OS/2 users can use any kind of filesystems those for there are no installable filesystem solution actually - e.g. XFS, OpenZFS, etc.
     Also if you want RAID there, no problem if OS/2 does not support natively any raid device -- there you can have it underlying on the other machine. However I rather suggest LVM possibilities (on Linux) to add additional drive / copies of physical partitions when a new LV created for a filesystem. I got raid error on my home PC server once, and I could mirror / sripe on LVM layer more reliable than the risky raid stuff. In case RAID you really need a good, working backup/restore solution.
You don't need to use up many drive letters as you can mount them into directory as well. So the max. storage can be up above 48 GB that way.
 
Title: Re: Well ArcaOS 5.0 is probably the last version for me.
Post by: Dave Yeo on June 09, 2021, 05:37:03 pm
The problem is the business case. All I can do is guess at Arca Noae's business, and they're the ones with a license to resell OS/2. According to discussions here, there's only about 500 hobbyists, with not all having the money to spend but even 500 paying customers doesn't seem enough to support Arca Noae which leads to the assumption that they also have a fair number of enterprise customers. Any enterprise customers who can virtualize their environment likely already have, likely back in the eCS days without much need to upgrade. This leaves people/businesses that need real hardware which seems to be what Arca Noae is concentrating on.
There's lots of stuff that just can't be done in a virtual environment, a while back there was someone needed lots of com ports, which didn't work under a virtual machine for example.
Title: Re: Well ArcaOS 5.0 is probably the last version for me.
Post by: Roderick Klein on June 10, 2021, 12:49:18 am
The problem is the business case. All I can do is guess at Arca Noae's business, and they're the ones with a license to resell OS/2. According to discussions here, there's only about 500 hobbyists, with not all having the money to spend but even 500 paying customers doesn't seem enough to support Arca Noae which leads to the assumption that they also have a fair number of enterprise customers. Any enterprise customers who can virtualize their environment likely already have, likely back in the eCS days without much need to upgrade. This leaves people/businesses that need real hardware which seems to be what Arca Noae is concentrating on.
There's lots of stuff that just can't be done in a virtual environment, a while back there was someone needed lots of com ports, which didn't work under a virtual machine for example.

I never said that there are 500 users (if you are basing that number on my statement). I think we have a few thousand private users left in total.
I worked at Mensys until 2013 on eCS. I get the impression a lot of the private users sticked around. True users left but I get the impression more users are left based on time at Mensys. I can not imagen we are left with 500 private users.

Roderick

Roderick
Title: Re: Well ArcaOS 5.0 is probably the last version for me.
Post by: Dave Yeo on June 10, 2021, 02:32:32 am
OK, thanks for clarifying the number of users. Be interesting to know Arca Noae's numbers, especially regular users though the number of enterprise users would also be interesting.
Title: Re: Well ArcaOS 5.0 is probably the last version for me.
Post by: Roderick Klein on June 10, 2021, 03:39:13 pm
The problem is the business case. All I can do is guess at Arca Noae's business, and they're the ones with a license to resell OS/2. According to discussions here, there's only about 500 hobbyists, with not all having the money to spend but even 500 paying customers doesn't seem enough to support Arca Noae which leads to the assumption that they also have a fair number of enterprise customers. Any enterprise customers who can virtualize their environment likely already have, likely back in the eCS days without much need to upgrade. This leaves people/businesses that need real hardware which seems to be what Arca Noae is concentrating on.
There's lots of stuff that just can't be done in a virtual environment, a while back there was someone needed lots of com ports, which didn't work under a virtual machine for example.

I never said that there are 500 users (if you are basing that number on my statement). I think we have a few thousand private users left in total.
I worked at Mensys until 2013 on eCS. I get the impression a lot of the private users sticked around. True users left but I get the impression more users are left based on time at Mensys. I can not imagen we are left with 500 private users.

Roderick

Again I am looking for numbers to estimate how big our community roughly but it will always be a gamble to a large extend. It was not much different when I worked at Mensys that people want to buy OS/2/eCS after many years again.

The 500 users was based on the IP numbers from Netlabs. But how accurate that is ? But I never stated we have 500 private users left. Read the other postings for the rest of the details.

Roderick
Title: Re: Well ArcaOS 5.0 is probably the last version for me.
Post by: Dariusz Piatkowski on June 15, 2021, 02:44:07 pm
Roderick, everyone...

Again I am looking for numbers to estimate how big our community roughly but it will always be a gamble to a large extend.
...
The 500 users was based on the IP numbers from Netlabs. But how accurate that is ? But I never stated we have 500 private users left. Read the other postings for the rest of the details...

So why don't we set up a honey-pot of sorts and use a different approach to uniquely identify the hardware that's running OS/2?

My understanding is that ANPM does exactly that. They use dmidecode to pull an OEM string that identifies the hardware, my understanding is that this is the UUID field value (not 100% sure, but someone could verify).

So here is what that looks like on my machine:

Code: [Select]
Handle 0x0001, DMI type 1, 27 bytes
System Information
        Manufacturer: MSI
        Product Name: MS-7640
        Version: 1.0
        Serial Number: To Be Filled By O.E.M.
        UUID: 00000000-0000-0000-0000-6C626D50A7A8
        Wake-up Type: Power Switch
        SKU Number: To Be Filled By O.E.M.
        Family: To Be Filled By O.E.M.

Take a look at the full dmidecode dump (see attachment). What would simplify this is having a front-end web page that spells out how the end-user should do this, and we're talking literally a simple 1-5 step process, or simply accepts the UUID value that the user extracts out of the dmidecode dump.

Heck, dmidecode has an option to literally pull just the UUID, that being: "dmidecode --string system-uuid".
Title: Re: Well ArcaOS 5.0 is probably the last version for me.
Post by: Neil Waldhauer on June 15, 2021, 03:08:56 pm
Counting the number of users more or less useless. IP is better than UUID. UUID counts user's systems, not users. For instance, I prepare systems for customers by updating from NetLabs. I'm just one guy, but you will count every system I attempt to prepare.

It's better to count contributing users. It's better still to make it easier to be a contributing user.

Starting out by trying to count users to demonstrate that someone is getting NetLabs without contributing is not useful; it is a sign of mental illness. Maybe take a vacation or something if you are counting users for the purpose of finding out how many "freeloaders" there are.

If the goal is permanent full time employment for BitWise, think about selling subscriptions and publicly showing the results. I think we agreed that 300 subscribers at 10 Euro would finance them indefinitely. (I think 200 at 10 Euro and 10 at 100 Euro is more reasonable) This is a much better thing to count than IP or UUID. It would be better still if someone at BitWise was involved and running this.

Title: Re: Well ArcaOS 5.0 is probably the last version for me.
Post by: ivan on June 15, 2021, 07:21:55 pm
As it stands this whole question of the number of users should be considered as a marketing exercise.  That should provide a greater incentive for those porting programs.

The last time I looked at the Netlabs RPM repository (using one of my Linux boxes) the bulk of the items there were things I will never be interested in (programming languages and libraries) rather than the things I am interested in (example: a full QT5 runtime environment that fits in one directory like the QT4 runtime and 'just works' - the QT4 was a superb effort, the QT5 appears to have fallen apart by concentrating on parts of the runtime rather than the whole [sorry if that upsets anyone but that is the way I see it]). 

As I said, consider the whole thing as a marketing exercise, find out what 'we the users' really want, not what we have to put up with.