Topics

1

Setup & Installation / ArcaOS5.1 together with Debian, Win7 and OpenSuse - first UEFI & GPT impressions

« on: November 01, 2024, 08:29:18 pm »

I'm building up a new desktop system because I think it's time to replace my 4 core Intel one with a newer 8 core AMD. Bought an Asrock B550M Pro4 and a Ryzen 7 5700G. The system isn't nearly setup as I like but I think I should share some findings. This was the first time I played (have to play) with UEFI boot and GPT disks.

I have to say -
Concrates to ArcaNoae. I was surprised that handling EFI partition, UEFI boot with the AN Launcher and even creating a GPT partition on a 8TB drive works with ArcaOS5.1. Some things work even way better than with other tools/OSes.

More details - I started with a 2TB NVMe Samsung 980Pro. I partitioned this traditionally as MBR with Airboot and setup a ArcaOS partitions. But also made an EFI partition. I also reserved 3 partitions for Debian (swap, root, home). Also reserved some space for Win7 (which I didn't use later on but...). After the ArcaOS installation basically worked I installed Debian 11 in the reserved partitions. This went fine. But I can't get Debian 11 to offer more than 800x600 resolution. Some of the describes ways on the internet to use newer Ryzen with Debian 11 didn't work for me. Btw. ArcaOS supports only 2560x1440 on this system instead the desired 3840x2160 (needs a ticket and I hope David can fix this). So had to switch to Debian 12. This now works with the Ryzen integrated GPU in full 3840x2160.

I've to say ArcaOS installation went smooth but Debian was even easier to install. Debian also honors my partitioning (made with ArcaOS), means it didn't destroy anything in contrast to OpenSuse.

Now the hardest thing to install was Win7. Original W7 installation media don't work with NVMe and don't support XHCI controller. So I had to find patched ISOs prepared for newer systems. These don't wanna install on MBR disk because MS allows UEFI only on a GPT disk. So I put in another 2TB Crucial T500 NVMe. I prepared this with the ArcaOS installation stick as GPT and made the partitions for Win. As I was there I also installed onto the GPT disk another ArcaOS test installation. This time with UEFI support (extra EFI partition).

I also installed reFind cause I read it should be a good UEFI launcher. After playing a lot with all the options I have to say I like the AN Launcher better. I couldn't configure reFind to suppress unneeded ArcaOS, Win and Debian entries. In contrast the AN Launcher is easy to setup. It's also cool that with ArcaOS you usually give a drive letter to the EFI partition and so you can edit the config files there easily. For Win you need extra (time limited) software to access this TTBOMK. Probably you can do this from Linux too but I don't know Linux good enough to find out how until now.

Bad thing about all this UEFI stuff is that when installing different OSes or try to start from a stick you constantly need to go into BIOS setup and rearrange boot order. Or maybe this is a bad habit of my Asrock board. But especially Win changes things to start only Win next time. So you have to change in BIOS the right disk (EFI with your launcher) constantly.

Good thing about AN Launcher is also it seems to have some kind of fall back mode. If selected partition does not exist it shows a list of partitions on different disk you can chose to start. Needed this a few times.

OpenSuse installation destroyed the LVM information on my first disk. So one of my ArcaOS installation couldn't be started anymore. Tried with DFSee to repair but gave up. Used the ArcaOS installation stick and surprise, surprise, the disk checking tool mentioned the problem and was able to fix it. Thanks ArcaNoae. Even for me as a long time DFSee user it was way easier to let the disk checker do it's work than playing with DFsee myself.

I also put into a 8TB disk drive. At first I created a standard 2TB partition with MiniLVM. But afterwards I found out you should better use PTE.exe for that. With that you can create GPT partitions which are needed for such big drives. Luckily every ArcaOS installation has included gpt.sys in config.sys. So you can use such partitions even when added later on.

I also put into temporarily a 1TB SSD (SATA Crucial MX500) which I used to transfer data. When trying to copy a few partitions with all in all about 700GB of data ArcaOS reproducible hangs. I thought David had fixed the AHCI driver for this (I had a ticket about and lot of work went into solving this) but it seems there are some situations where it still does not work. Crucial offers firmware xx46 which should fix some very rare hangs in corner cases so I updated the SSD firmware from xx45 to xx46 (this time used Win for that cause way easier than the other options). I thought I've already updated this drive last year but not sure anymore. I'm not really sure all problems are gone now but at least I could copy my 700GB in a few 100'000 files finally.

So still under construction and will take a long way to setup a final ArcaOS main partition (probably when DE arrives) also take some time to prepare the Win7 I need it and a lot to discover with Debian and OpenSuse. But the first steps are done and ArcaOS works on bare metal here. Writing this with Seamonkey, the copied profile from the old system, and even with this long text no hang until now ;-). Six of the eight cores usually sleeps at idle. Hyperthreading is disabled although I looked nice to see OS/2 showing 16 cores. When Seamonkey is running power consumption is about 70W. Without about the half. Win uses less, Debian even less. Btw. Win7 can't handle 3840x2160 too. Such a shame AMD don't support this GPU anymore although it's a few years old anyway. If anyone knows a trick for Win7 and still read until here, please...

2

Hardware / Asrock B550M Pro4 - anyone tested this?

« on: July 09, 2024, 01:17:38 pm »

This board looks pretty good to me regarding all the interfaces I like. Anyone tested this in CSM/legacy mode with a Ryzen 7 with integrated graphic (5700G I wanna have)?
- Memory available to OS/2 > 3GB?
- Ryzen 7 graphic with Panorama and 3840x2160 working?
- M2 slots working for boot device?

I know there is a thread about the B450M Pro4 but B550M Pro4 I would like.

3

Off Topic discussions / Which Linux desktop for long time OS/2 users?

« on: July 07, 2024, 12:30:18 pm »

I've played a bit with Linux systems in the last months and I'm a bit familiar with Debian now. I've a NAS running Debian and OpenMediaFault which also serves my git repositories. I'm also running a Debian box with MATE which I connect with RDP from my main OS/2/eCS/ArcaOS system when I need a newer browser.

MATE is not a bad choice. But what I didn't find with any Linux I tried until now is, how can I convince the desktop to remember the window position of my programs. I understand there are people outside there who work on very small displays like with notebook and they 'full screen' every program the use. But I'm used to big displays. 2 times 24" at least or 42.5" are my standard displays. I need a window manager like the WPS who respect my needs. Not the needs of smartphone junkies or notebook users only. My mail window have to stay near top right. Chatzilla near bottom right (but not below or over some task bars). Browser windows near the center/bottom. Various other programs have to be placed on the different places I closed them last time.

Which Linux window manager or which setting can do that the way it was standard the last decades? Did I overlook some setting or helper program? On later Windozes I've to use a WindowManager utility for this. At least there is a solution. But on Linux?

Btw. RDP should work too. I remember that's the reason I didn't test KDE plasma and Gnome at first as I understand they use Wayland which TTBOMK does not work with RDP.

4

Programming / GCC/G++ - how to export global variable without underscore?

« on: June 30, 2024, 08:00:34 pm »

I'm trying to build a dll which should export some functions and global variables. I made this long time ago I think with our gcc3.xx but now want to do the same with our g++.exe (GCC) 9.2.0.

I think exporting symbols is disabled now by default so I added to the functions I want to export

Code: [Select]

__attribute__ ((dllexport)) which works fine. Now when I look at my dll with

Code: [Select]

lxlite /C:exp myown.dllI see the exported functions as I expected.

But my global variables still have the C naming convention leading _ which I don't like. F.i. I have -

Code: [Select]

00048 │ _NdpAttribute
00049 │ _NdpPropertiesInfo
00050 ┴ _NdpTypesbut I wanna have them without the _

The variables are defined that way -

Code: [Select]

__attribute__ ((dllexport)) extern const char *NdpTypes[];and I use g++ instead gcc. So I thought it should work the same as with the functions (they don't have the _).

Any thoughts?

5

Programming / PMPrintf package v2.80 and PMPrintf_abtrace code samples

« on: April 21, 2024, 07:43:39 pm »

I've packed together my latest code base of PMPrintf and packed it together as v2.80. See https://sourceforge.net/projects/pmprintf-os-2-debug-helper/files/

PMPrintf sends standard printf formatted debug messages into a queue. If the PM viewer application (PMPrintf.exe) or CLI logger (PmPfLog.exe) is running it will display these queued data. Otherwise they go to NULL. Log files can be written to disk in parallel too.

If you never used PMPrintf I strongly suggest looking at the code and usage samples at https://sourceforge.net/p/pmprintf-abtrace/code/ci/master/tree/. These samples loads pmprintf.dll dynamically if it is available on the target system. If not your program will normally run and your debug messages goes to NULL. There is no need to make extra release and debug builds. The small overhead will be negligible most of the time. A programmers life can be so easy :-).

Have fun.

6

Programming / Parameter passing to dll - difference VAC / GCC - varargs

« on: January 20, 2024, 01:50:50 pm »

I've a dll which exports functions which I wanna call from VAC, GCC (and Watcom) compiled programs.

Problem is gcc seems to pass varargs different than VAC.
I've a function in the dll something like

Code: [Select]

ULONG         _System   xPmPrintf(char *Format, ...);which works when called by programs compiled with VAC3.65 but produces garbage when called by a gcc test program (except the first arg).

I found here http://trac.netlabs.org/odin32/ticket/19 that Dmitriy noted about a problem with gcc and varargs but can't find a solution.

Any hints?

7

Comments, Suggestions & Questions / How to Set Ignore User in OS2World Forum

« on: January 16, 2024, 09:24:03 am »

Can someone please remind me where I find the ignore user setting? My KI / KNI / AI / NAI / useless non-related nonsense detector get triggered regularly.

8

Programming / Where to find Toolkit2.0 - SOM compiler .sc files....

« on: December 23, 2023, 04:58:35 pm »

I've toolkit 2.1 and probably all newer ones. Even Watcom10.6 includes some .sc files. But the project I'm working on seems to need Toolkit v2.0.

I've no clue about SOM and classes and.... but there is one .csc file in my project which constantly bothers me. There should be a way to convert this .sc file to the newer .idl form. ctoi.cmd which is included in os2tk45. But it complains about a file in toolkit21

Code: [Select]

{0}[e:\_work\pmprintf\trunk] ctoi WPSTEST.CSC
WPSTEST.CSC:
"wpobject.sc", line 440: error: Override method "somInitClass" not in base class.
"wpobject.sc", line 444: error: Override method "somNew" not in base class.
"wpobject.sc", line 448: error: Override method "somRenew" not in base class.
Number of errors: 3
error in converting WPSTEST.CSC
So I think I need toolkit20. Where can I find it? Any other ideas? Maybe I try to disable all these SOM things in pmprintf cause I guess nobody will ever use pmprintf with som classes anymore anyhow.

9

Applications / ssh and colored dir - difference between OpenSSH_5.3p1 and OpenSSH_8.4p1

« on: December 16, 2023, 01:56:35 pm »

I connect to some Linux box via SSH. After figuring out all the keys stuff it works. But now I've updated to 'OpenSSH_8.4p1, OpenSSL 1.1.1s  1 Nov 2022' and see some problems/differences. As I'm not familiar with all these SSH and Linux stuff I want to ask here before opening a ticket.

Old version 'OpenSSH_5.3p1, OpenSSL 0.9.8k 25 Mar 2009' worked fine. I've colored dir (dir, ls -la, ls -ls, ...) but with new version 'OpenSSH_8.4p1, OpenSSL 1.1.1s  1 Nov 2022' the colors are gone. I know I've setup these colors in some conf file on the Linux box (I think) but don't remember where anymore. But there must be a difference between our two ssh versions. Cause I can connect with the old version at the same time as with the new ssh.exe version. Old has colored dir, new not. I'm using the same user of course.

I also noticed that with the old version 'nano' works while with the new version nano gives an 'Error opening terminal: os2.'.

Anyone knows what this 'terminal: os2. means? Or how to change? Or how to find out why the old version works better than the new one?

Additional info - the old ssh version was installed here in /usr/local/bin. No clue from where I got it but most probably not from the netlabs repository as it would have been in /usr/bin then.

10

Applications / FreeRDP keyboard settings / host does not honor German keyboard layout

« on: December 08, 2023, 06:01:55 pm »

I've tried FreeRDP to connect to different Linux boxes. It works but using FreeRDP the Linux host uses EN keyboard layout. All my Linux boxes does have German keyboards attached and work as expected when I'm sitting in front of them. My OS/2 system has a German keyboard too. But when I connect from my OS/2 system a Linux host via FreeRDP they get the English keys instead the German ones.

I don't see any setting in our FreeRDP port to translate the keys. Is there anything I'v to adjust on Linux (host) side?

11

Applications / LarsenCommander - new test version

« on: May 19, 2023, 12:07:08 pm »

Since a while I'm working on some problems in LarsenCommander again. There is still one problem I want to resolve before I make an official release. But as I'm preparing for holiday vacation I think it may be good to spread the current version to the public.

Main difference to older releases is - I reenabled big buffers for file copy operations. The advantage is much faster copy speed especially with big files. Copy speed is still not as fast as the copy command from a 4os2 command prompt but the difference is not as dramatic than before. I had to rework and extend the original dynamic buffer adaption code for this. It seems current copy speed is the maximum you can get when copying with an PM application.

The max. copy buffer size in old releases was determined by a simple algorithm and based on the setting in Options - Various - File Copy/move tab. I had to limit the buffer in some 1.7. release to 60k cause there was a subtle bug in ndfs DAV plugin which leads to some zero bytes in large files copied with the help of big buffers. The side effect was a limited copy speed at about 30MBytes/s I just discovered a few months ago. There's an old ticket about the ndpdav bug which is resolved in newer releases I think. So I think it's save to reenable big buffers again. For convenience I include my fixed ndpdav.dll in this lcmd*zip. But you probably don't need it. Current ndfs 3.1.6 also has changed in a way that such subtle plugin bugs shouldn't show up anymore. But be warned if you use old ndfs/ndpdav versions.

Lcmd also uses high memory for the copy buffer now. So if you watch your memory consumption (f.i. with above512.cmd or theseus) you may find a bit less memory usage from the scarce lower shared mem. Unfortunately this does not fix another long standing problem - copying big trees of directories sometimes leads to eat up a lot (sometimes all) lower shared memory. This may eventually bring your system down until you kill lcmd. Finally I can reproduce this problem but unfortunately I don't have a fix for this right now. If you ever run into this bug in the past, sorry there's no fix in this release for that.

In this archive I've also included the current available translations. When you want to use lcmd with another language or make your own translation look into the locale directory.

I've also checked in all current sources at the official home of LarsenCommander - https://sourceforge.net/projects/lcmd/

Have fun :-)

12

Applications / VPN into home LAN with Injoy Firewall or something else?

« on: April 27, 2023, 01:26:39 pm »

Anyone running Injoys Firewall VPN feature?

Or how to you connect securely into your home LAN from outside world?

It seems to be possible to configure an AVM Fritzbox for this task. Is there a simple how to to get this working? I mean connection from the outside with a notebook running OS/2 (or Linux or Win) to my internal OS/2 server and ...

13

Applications / Someone succesfully running "git daemon" on OS/2? (git repository on own server)

« on: February 26, 2023, 04:53:49 pm »

I can start the daemon 'git daemon --reuseaddr --base-path=/git_repositories/ /git_rerepositories/', I can sort of connect from the other machine with 'git clone git@server:/git_repositories/test' but get

Code: [Select]

Cloning into 'test'...
fatal: Could not read from remote repository.

Please make sure you have the correct access rights
and the repository exists.
My goal is to have git repositories on my server running OS/2. At first I started with ssh which seems to be the usual way to connect to a git server. But can't get this running. See the other thread - https://www.os2world.com/forum/index.php/topic,3175.0.html

Now I tried with git daemon which is in netlabs.exp. But can't get this to work either. Seems I've to setup a linux server instead...

14

Hardware / Printer with 'HP PCL 3 GUI, HP PCL 3 Enhanced' - or better Brother MFC-J6955DW

« on: February 09, 2023, 06:07:21 pm »

I'm thinking about buying a HP OfficeJet Pro 7740 printer but it only supports 'HP PCL 3 GUI, HP PCL 3 Enhanced'. Usually I have printers with postscript and/or PCL5(+) support. No I wonder if I can use the features of this A3 printing engine. I guess scanner will work the same way as it does with my HP OfficeJet Pro 475dw (smb, ftp?, email). Working fax isn't that important. But I need high resolution print outs on A3 page sizes (11 x 17"). Color, duplex and tray selection.

I'm pretty sure ported programs will work good enough with the help of cups. But how about the standard OS/2 drivers? PCL 3 seems pretty old but back at the days when OS/2 drivers where written I fear it was limited to 300dpi and maybe even color didn't work work PCL3. Any knows?

15

Applications / OpenOffice default Font Arial -> Calibri?

« on: January 29, 2023, 10:41:37 am »

How can I set the default font to Calibri? Usually f.i. in Calc font is set to Arial. I think this is the same for all platforms. Is there a way to set the default to Arial? Do I have to change the default templates for that?