OS2 World Community Forum

OS/2, eCS & ArcaOS - Technical => Setup & Installation => Topic started by: ivan on March 04, 2018, 01:10:15 pm

Title: Installing ArcaOS on a Ryzen or A12 based computer
Post by: ivan on March 04, 2018, 01:10:15 pm
I am trying to get ArcaOS to install on a Ryzen based computer.  Yes, I know we don't have the usb 3 drivers yet but there are enough usb 2 ports for what I need.

So far all I can get to is the splash screen after the initial selection of keyboard etc. and it hangs there forever. 

If I use a disk with a working ArcaOS install on it it starts to boot but then hangs with os2aspi showing (altf2on.$$$ in boot partition).

I remember someone said they had managed to do it but there were very few details given. I that person, or anyone else that has managed to get ArcaOS / OS/2 running on a Ryzen or A12 APU could post the details it would be most appreciated. Even suggestions to try to get past the hangs will be tried and reported on.
Title: Re: Installing ArcaOS on a Ryzen or A12 based computer
Post by: Roderick Klein on March 04, 2018, 01:26:05 pm
Are you using ArcaOS 5.02 ? Just asking so we know what version of ACPI you are using.
I recently had a system where ArcaOS 5.02 would boot on duo to the fixes to OS2AHCI and MSI IRQ support.
Other versions of ArcaOS would run into trouble duo to these missing fixes.

I was not that person that has that AMD  cpu. That ArcaOS hangs on the ASPI driver is I think is a sign loading the BASEDEV drivers is not working correctly. If you would rem out the os2aspi driver, chances are big ArcaOS will hang on another BASEDEV driver. In other words something is failing. You could try and rem the driver but the boot will most likely hang on something else.
Title: Re: Installing ArcaOS on a Ryzen or A12 based computer
Post by: ivan on March 04, 2018, 04:18:05 pm
Hi Roderick,

The hard disk I used for the test was from an ArcaOS 5.02 install on an AMD 3850 APU on an ASRock AM1H-ITX motherboard. 
What I am trying to install on is a Ryzen 5 1600 on a Biostar X370GTN ITX motherboard and an AMD A10-9700 APU again on a Biostar X370GTN ITX board (I have a 'thing' about using ITX boards in small cases).

I did try remming out the driver and as you say it hangs a little later - thank goodness for SATA to USB adapters, they make editing systems on disks easy.
Title: Re: Installing ArcaOS on a Ryzen or A12 based computer
Post by: Roderick Klein on March 04, 2018, 04:54:03 pm
You can try the following things.

So you are booting from hard disc.

1.Try booting with /maxcpu=1 begind ACPI.PSD.

2. You can also try /VW and as a very last resort /PIC behind ACPI.PSD.
A very big note of caution to people. These last two switches on modern hardware will be less and less successful!
Since the proper wiring on the mainboards is simply being left out, is partly there or its not being tested by mainboard manufacturers.


Title: Re: Installing ArcaOS on a Ryzen or A12 based computer
Post by: OS4User on March 04, 2018, 05:54:03 pm
I remember someone said they had managed to do it but there were very few details given. I that person, or anyone else that has managed to get ArcaOS / OS/2 running on a Ryzen or A12 APU could post the details it would be most appreciated

https://www.os2world.com/forum/index.php/topic,1581.msg15660.html#msg15660
Title: Re: Installing ArcaOS on a Ryzen or A12 based computer
Post by: ivan on March 04, 2018, 06:45:58 pm
Thank you OS4User, that was what I remembered but couldn't find again.

Also thanks Roderick.

Testing starts tomorrow.
Title: Re: Installing ArcaOS on a Ryzen or A12 based computer
Post by: Roderick Klein on March 04, 2018, 09:39:49 pm
I you want it fixed I suggest you open a ticket at Arca Noae,
Title: Re: Installing ArcaOS on a Ryzen or A12 based computer
Post by: Dariusz Piatkowski on March 07, 2018, 05:13:35 am
I would second Roderick's suggestion...narrow things down to a single active CPU, go from there.

Depending on some of the remaining hardware drivers you may be seeing a lock early on (display showing stuff) but the root cause maybe something else.

As I experimented with getting SMP installed on my AMD Phenom II X6 I found that running more than 5 cores would result in the WPS blue-screen hang, but that was a somewhat well known issue with SNAP video drivers not being quite SMP ready.

For my part I am very curious how you work through this issue, please continue to post updates. The Ryzen CPU is my next upgrade, probably Ryzen2 actually, still some time left.
Title: Re: Installing ArcaOS on a Ryzen or A12 based computer
Post by: Jochen Schäfer on March 07, 2018, 03:22:53 pm
I you want it fixed I suggest you open a ticket at Arca Noae,
Which had me heading into a massive CATCH-22, because when I had the issue on a laptop, I had no access to mass storage whatsoever  (and no network), so I couldn't save the ACPI log.
This is obviously not the fault of Arcanoae, but be prepared that the ticket could be leading nowhere, if you don't have the means to offload the log file.
Title: Re: Installing ArcaOS on a Ryzen or A12 based computer
Post by: ivan on March 07, 2018, 06:46:44 pm
At the moment I haven't yet been able to get it to boot let alone produce a log file.

I will also admit I'm dot doing the testing full time as there are other things that are more urgent but I do have everything setup to make changing disks easy.  The more I look at it the more I am thinking the brand of the motherboard has a lot to do with success or failure (remember I am using Mini ITX boards and there isn't a wide range available).
Title: Re: Installing ArcaOS on a Ryzen or A12 based computer
Post by: Jochen Schäfer on March 08, 2018, 10:08:12 am
I could boot the laptop up, but it took a really long time. You should definitely skip the disk test.
Title: Re: Installing ArcaOS on a Ryzen or A12 based computer
Post by: Doug Bissett on March 08, 2018, 07:52:29 pm
Quote
You should definitely skip the disk test.

No, you shouldn't.
Title: Re: Installing ArcaOS on a Ryzen or A12 based computer
Post by: Roderick Klein on March 09, 2018, 12:01:37 am
I could boot the laptop up, but it took a really long time. You should definitely skip the disk test.

You mean the disc utility ?

I know what the disc utility does and its in general a **wrong** advise to skip the disc utility in the ArcaOS installation. It fixes things the LVM from IBM can fall over (fail). If you disable the disc utility be prepared for more issue's...
If you look in the helpfile of the disc util its clear it does a whole lot of stuff that is pretty useful.
Title: Re: Installing ArcaOS on a Ryzen or A12 based computer
Post by: Sigurd Fastenrath on March 09, 2018, 07:58:39 am
Quote
You should definitely skip the disk test.

No, you shouldn't.

From my experience it is the best one can do on modern Hardware to check the box "skip the disk check" in the "Pre Boot Menue". It is better to use the Disc Tools once you passed the first stage of booting.

Yes - this is my experience and Yes, I do speak for myself  :D :D :D :D
Title: Re: Installing ArcaOS on a Ryzen or A12 based computer
Post by: Jochen Schäfer on March 09, 2018, 09:29:48 am
Quote
You should definitely skip the disk test.

No, you shouldn't.
If I have no access to the disks anyway, then, no, I don't need it.
My advice was by no means an general advice, just for the problem, discussed here.
Title: Re: Installing ArcaOS on a Ryzen or A12 based computer
Post by: ivan on March 09, 2018, 10:09:05 am
All of that is irrelevant when it won't even get to that point with the installer.

As I said, the initial dos selector works but after pressing f10 to move on all that happens is the ArcaOS splash screen appears and that is it (I left it like that when I went to do something else, 5 hours later it was still doing nothing).

I now have a boot partition image from a working AMD Sempron 3850 APU (the younger brother of the Ryzen) install on a new Seagate 1TB FireCuda disk that has been checked and tested (the boot partition is 2 GB HPFS, other partitions are for utilities, programs, data etc.).

The next thing is to edit the config.sys (the disk connected to main PC with a SATA/USB adapter) as outlined by Roderick earlier to see if it will boot or even produce ant log files that might give any indication what is happening.

I assume it is not a good idea to open a ticket saying 'it doesn't install or boot' without some logs to back it up.
Title: Re: Installing ArcaOS on a Ryzen or A12 based computer
Post by: Roderick Klein on March 10, 2018, 02:44:13 pm
Quote
You should definitely skip the disk test.

No, you shouldn't.

From my experience it is the best one can do on modern Hardware to check the box "skip the disk check" in the "Pre Boot Menue". It is better to use the Disc Tools once you passed the first stage of booting.

Yes - this is my experience and Yes, I do speak for myself  :D :D :D :D

Just to be 100% clear the disc checker should never be bypassed. I am bit confused what you mean with using the disc tool after the first stage of booting Sigurd.  The disc util loads in the ArcaOS installer when you selected your installer type. If you know what you are doing then disabling the disc checker can be an option. But in most cases disabling it will not help the user as minilvm will then run into an issue.

The disc utility does nothing at disc controller level. It only scans the hard discs for LVM information.

Roderick
Title: Re: Installing ArcaOS on a Ryzen or A12 based computer
Post by: Roderick Klein on March 10, 2018, 06:04:28 pm
All of that is irrelevant when it won't even get to that point with the installer.

As I said, the initial dos selector works but after pressing f10 to move on all that happens is the ArcaOS splash screen appears and that is it (I left it like that when I went to do something else, 5 hours later it was still doing nothing).

I now have a boot partition image from a working AMD Sempron 3850 APU (the younger brother of the Ryzen) install on a new Seagate 1TB FireCuda disk that has been checked and tested (the boot partition is 2 GB HPFS, other partitions are for utilities, programs, data etc.).

The next thing is to edit the config.sys (the disk connected to main PC with a SATA/USB adapter) as outlined by Roderick earlier to see if it will boot or even produce ant log files that might give any indication what is happening.

I assume it is not a good idea to open a ticket saying 'it doesn't install or boot' without some logs to back it up.

The fact that the preboot menu works before the ArcaOS splash screen is loaded makes perfect sense. That is real mode BIOS code that gets executed. Its not OS/2 loading even...

Everybody in this forum can tell an OS/2 user if OS/2 does not continue loading at startup after 3 to 5 minutes.
Hit CTRL ALT F10 twice. System then hangs ? Your toast you do not have to wait 5 hours, with every second that passes after 5 minutes is most likely a waste of your time. And if you get a booting at all it will most likely be completely useable anyway !

Did try to boot without ArcaOS Ivan without ACPI loaded ?

Ivan another very important question what version of ArcaOS are you loading ? I know ArcaOS 5.02 has more support for MSI interrupt. Pretty crucial for modern system.

Roderick
Title: Re: Installing ArcaOS on a Ryzen or A12 based computer
Post by: ivan on March 10, 2018, 07:36:08 pm
Hi Roderick,

The 5 hours was because I had to go out and I just left it running - that can happen when you have someone pounding on the door in a panic situation.

The version of ArcaOS that I was trying to install is 5.02 as is the install on the replacement disk.

The next tests will be with various settings for ACPI, including its complete removal.  I am even considering trying a disk with my standard CP2 and all fixes but with os2ahci added just to see what happens.

Another question that you appear to have more insight with.  Do you think it would be possible to get the os2ahci.add to work with the ASMedia ahci controller?  The os2ahci.add works very well with the AMD controller but has problems with the ASMedia controller (works in real mode, can read and boot from DVD but stops working the moment os2ahci takes over- the Linux ahci driver works with it without problems).
Title: Re: Installing ArcaOS on a Ryzen or A12 based computer
Post by: Roderick Klein on March 10, 2018, 09:14:59 pm
Aaah oke about the 5 hours, in my Mensys years providing eCS support I had customers that would describe standing the systems for 5 hours hoping it would boot. Oke in this case you did not wait on purpose leaving your system for 5 ours.

MCP 2 is not going to work I will explain why:
You miss a whole truck load fixes in MCP2. I do not even know where to start. The OS2DASD driver for example is outdated. It boots with the _W4 kernel MCP 2 which the ACPI.PSD only supports in a very limited fashion.
https://www.arcanoae.com/arcaos-kernel-14-201-released/
I understood from David Azarewicz at Warpstock that you should either use OS/2 kernel 14.105 or the ArcaOS SMP 14.201 kernel. The SMP kernel has much further reaching  PSD support then the _W4 kernel.
Or are you going to use MCP with an SMP kernel ? Changes are you will get a trap in the OEM handler without ACPI.

Did you put a ticket in at Arca Noae ? Somehow it seems the OS2AHCI has difficulty talking to the controller.
That is why your hanging most likely  at the splash screen.

Roderick
Title: Re: Installing ArcaOS on a Ryzen or A12 based computer
Post by: Sigurd Fastenrath on March 11, 2018, 12:05:43 am
Quote
You should definitely skip the disk test.

No, you shouldn't.

From my experience it is the best one can do on modern Hardware to check the box "skip the disk check" in the "Pre Boot Menue". It is better to use the Disc Tools once you passed the first stage of booting.

Yes - this is my experience and Yes, I do speak for myself  :D :D :D :D

Just to be 100% clear the disc checker should never be bypassed. I am bit confused what you mean with using the disc tool after the first stage of booting Sigurd.  The disc util loads in the ArcaOS installer when you selected your installer type. If you know what you are doing then disabling the disc checker can be an option. But in most cases disabling it will not help the user as minilvm will then run into an issue.

The disc utility does nothing at disc controller level. It only scans the hard discs for LVM information.

Roderick

It might Sound strange for you, but that is my experience. I would not have been able to install it (ecs, arcaos) several times on modern Hardware, if I would have done it your way. Mini LVM run into Problems when I selected this Option, and I remember eCS 2.0 Beta 6 (or was it 5 or the Silver realease or the first GA...) where this lead to a damaged HDD Layout.... I can not justify what EXACTLY happend, but I never had this Problems when I disabled this Feature.

It only scans the hard discs for LVM information.

This might be a possible thing: .. it may not find LVM Information, and that lead to.....

That reminds me to the time (in 2010) where you several times said that it was impossible to install eCS next to an existing, preloaded Windows 7 System, in the end I had to build this: http://ru.ecomstation.ru/showarticle.php?id=214 (http://ru.ecomstation.ru/showarticle.php?id=214) to proof my words and you wrong. This came to my mind once I read your "Just to be 100% clear.".....

Even though, as it seems it did/does not help here, so who cares.
Title: Re: Installing ArcaOS on a Ryzen or A12 based computer
Post by: Roderick Klein on March 11, 2018, 02:42:16 pm
Quote
You should definitely skip the disk test.

No, you shouldn't.

From my experience it is the best one can do on modern Hardware to check the box "skip the disk check" in the "Pre Boot Menue". It is better to use the Disc Tools once you passed the first stage of booting.

Yes - this is my experience and Yes, I do speak for myself  :D :D :D :D

Just to be 100% clear the disc checker should never be bypassed. I am bit confused what you mean with using the disc tool after the first stage of booting Sigurd.  The disc util loads in the ArcaOS installer when you selected your installer type. If you know what you are doing then disabling the disc checker can be an option. But in most cases disabling it will not help the user as minilvm will then run into an issue.

The disc utility does nothing at disc controller level. It only scans the hard discs for LVM information.

Roderick

It might Sound strange for you, but that is my experience. I would not have been able to install it (ecs, arcaos) several times on modern Hardware, if I would have done it your way. Mini LVM run into Problems when I selected this Option, and I remember eCS 2.0 Beta 6 (or was it 5 or the Silver realease or the first GA...) where this lead to a damaged HDD Layout.... I can not justify what EXACTLY happend, but I never had this Problems when I disabled this Feature.

It only scans the hard discs for LVM information.

This might be a possible thing: .. it may not find LVM Information, and that lead to.....

That reminds me to the time (in 2010) where you several times said that it was impossible to install eCS next to an existing, preloaded Windows 7 System, in the end I had to build this: http://ru.ecomstation.ru/showarticle.php?id=214 (http://ru.ecomstation.ru/showarticle.php?id=214) to proof my words and you wrong. This came to my mind once I read your "Just to be 100% clear.".....

Even though, as it seems it did/does not help here, so who cares.

I think I more or less remember here what might have happened

The disc utility is nothing special. In fact! it uses a special version of the OEM Dfsee engine from Jan van Wijk to perform its work.  There was a text mode version of the tool that contained a bug that would cause the hard disc to be wiped.  This was bug *not* in the OEM engine from Jan but in the text mode program that controlled the OEM engine.  That was in eCS 2.0 beta 5 or 6. That textmode disc checker is long gone.

The second issue was indirectly triggered by the disc util. The OEM engine was writing DLAT sectors away to wrong sectors. However be warned. This was *not* caused by the OEM engine. It was caused by a bug in the OS2AHCI driver with +512 GB disc geometry. This issue has long been fixed. This issue might have also been present in the DANIS506.add but I do not remember this for certain!

So far in bugtrackers I have not seen more reports popup about hard discs the content being destroyed.

Roderick
Title: Re: Installing ArcaOS on a Ryzen or A12 based computer
Post by: Roderick Klein on March 11, 2018, 03:04:55 pm
The only reason for explaining this in more detail is I sometimes see being mentioned in forums "disable the disc checker" as it does not help people to trace the true cause of the error. Or fix the issue.

Here are some scenario's where the disc checker does work.
If you have a hard disc where one partition is created without LVM/minilvm it will not have LVM DLAT information.
Even if a partition does not have a drive letter assigned it will require a DLAT information. If this is not present LVM will back fire with a partition corrupt message. If you do not have a tool such as dfsee you are stuck.

If you have a hard disc between 512 GB and 2 TB in size and have an OS installed such as Windows it will guide you to make space in the proper way.

It can also detect if a partition is outside the boundaries of what OS/2 can handle in terms of disc geometry.
Is it perfect ? No its... I know of cases where it does detect certain disc layout errors...

Anyway that is what I remember of when Alex Taylor developed that tool. But that is some years ago...

Roderick
Title: Re: Installing ArcaOS on a Ryzen or A12 based computer
Post by: Pete on March 11, 2018, 03:12:21 pm
Hi All

My simple rules regarding the disk checker:-

1] If the hard disk in use is known to work fine and already has all necessary partitions/volumes prepared there is no need to use the disk checker during installation.

2] If there are any doubts about the hard disk then the disk checker should be used during installation.


Regards

Pete
Title: Re: Installing ArcaOS on a Ryzen or A12 based computer
Post by: Martin Vieregg on April 22, 2018, 10:13:41 am
I have managed now installing ArcaOS 5.0.2 on a AM4 board (with Bristol Ridge, but I think that makes no difference to Ryzen) from USB Stick. DVD failed, even with an additional SATA PCIe card.

The way to success is the following:
- I needed to buy a USB 2.0 PCIe card. (PCI USB 2.0 cards are cheaper, but my AM4 board has no PCI slots.)
- I needed to switch to "modern hardware, safe mode" in the ArcaOS Pre-Install Menu.

All drivers work fine; Panorama is installed, of course. At the moment, I can only use one processor, and I hope a future ACPI driver will solve the problem.
Title: Re: Installing ArcaOS on a Ryzen or A12 based computer
Post by: ivan on April 22, 2018, 11:38:48 am
That would explain why I have been unable to install ArcaOS on my Biostar X370GTN ITX board, the PCIe slot is needed for the graphics card.

The main part of the problem with the AM4 boards is the use of ASMedia chips for dedicated AHCI and some USB (I have discovered that AMD also use modified ASMedia designs in their support chipsets for Ryzen and A10 and A12 CPU/APU and until the ASMedia variant is incorporated into the ArcaOS OS2AHCI. we don't have much chance of using the Ryzen processor to the full.