Topics

16

Applications / XWP - Create New => popup sort?

« on: April 15, 2023, 11:45:09 pm »

Hi Everyone!

Can anyone tell me how XWP sorts the objects in the 'Create new => folder' pop-up menu selection?

This functionality allows you to define what types of objects you'd like to have easy access to creating. Simply RMB click anywhere and select from that pop-up menu.

I recently sorted through my Lotus 1-2-3 and AOO entries and added the AOO spreadsheet option (see attached image for 'Spreadsheet - Excel'.

However, for the life of me (and I'm guessing this may be ridiculously simple) I cannot figure out how to arrange the folder objects so that my pop-up menu is better organized.

My goal is to list the two 'Spreadsheet' options at the bottom of that menu.

Thanks!

17

Hardware / Dell KB900 keyboard - workable?

« on: March 23, 2023, 02:51:49 am »

Hi Everyone,

Dell sent me an email with a discount code...and well, all my keyboards are still wired, so this one seems like a real nice upgrade.

It is a full keyboard and the comms are done through a Wireless RF2.4GHz & Bluetooth 5.1 setups. The RF link is accomplished through 'Secure Link USB Type-A Receive', which is a little plug that connects to your USB port.

My hope is that this literally just becomes a standard USB keyboard...but...that may be wishful thinking only...LOL, so I'm curious of anyone has tried either this specific keyboard, or keyboards like this with a similar connectivity setup?

Here is the link to the Product Support Page => https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/en-ca/000208146/dell-premier-collaboration-keyboard-kb900-usage-and-troubleshooting-guide

Thanks!

BTW: This keyboard will support pairing up with 2 Bluetooth devices as well, which means this is also a nice way to get comfy typing away in front of a larger tablet, or even a laptop.

18

Programming / WebSite / HTML editor - what do we have?

« on: February 02, 2023, 04:46:28 am »

...as the title asks: what exactly do we have on our platform?

Dave Yeo ported Kompozer sometime back in 2018 I think...but tonight I just tried it and while it starts up it then completely dies. It is Mozilla based, the full set of DLLs comes with it, and well it looks like it's not quite compatible with our FF 45.9x release because I had apparently tried this before and ended up setting up a CMD that uses "SET LIBPATHSTRICT=T".

Is there anything else I can look at?

I have my VSE here, but that's all HTML code and I'd rather be lazy and do some WYSIWYG instead (I've got a couple of very simple index.html pages to build).

19

Storage / JFS - chkdsk LOG - where?

« on: January 14, 2023, 06:58:33 pm »

Hi Everyone,

Umm...something strange happened to me this morning: I was editting my RSYNC LOG file so I could archive the 2022 stuff and start new for 2023. Needless to say, the file is about 25M in size...so plain vanilla editor just takes a little extra time.

I had done this with the good ol' trusty E.exe before, but I figured I would give AE a try (v1.9.x). Editing went fine, no faster than E.exe, however once edited EA hung trying to save it back to the disk. I waited, and waited, following which I tried to kil EA, no go though. Rolled out the full gamut of kill options, still no go.

Ultimately I selected the Reboot option from CAD-Popup as EA was literally blocking WPS (nothing else worked), but even than hung. So as a final attempt to recover I did CTL-ALT-NUMLCK x2, which put me in the dump screen, and then I reset.

Now, in the past, that desparate attempt to recover has always worked. It also has NEVER caused me a JFS issue, however this time...man...upon reboot the JFS CHKDSK went to work full-time...pile of stuff scrolled by (too fast of course to see any of it) and machine came back up. INIs were corrupted, no problem, I have regular backups, so a couple of reboots later I was back up and running.

However, not liking that longish list of CHKDSK results I went fishing to learn more about it.

As it happens I have the following in my STARTUP.CMD:

Code: [Select]

...
chklgjfs g: >> g:\tmp\log\chklgjfs-g.log
...

which is done for ALL the drives.

In my case, this produced the following:

Code: [Select]

____________________________________________________________________
chkdsk service log selected:  MOST RECENT

XCHKLOG P superblock is valid.


**********************************************************


CHKDSK  processing started: 1/14/2310.56.1

CHKDSK parameter detected:  AutoCheck mode

CHKDSK parameter detected:  IfDirty

CHKDSK  The current hard disk drive is:  g:

CHKDSK  DosOpen(...OPEN_SHARE_DENYREADWRITE|OPEN_ACCESS_READWRITE...) returned rc = 0

CHKDSK  DosDevIOCtl(...DSK_GETDEVICEPARAMS...) returned rc = 0

CHKDSK  Primary superblock is valid.

CHKDSK  The type of file system for the disk is JFS.

CHKDSK  The boot sector has been refreshed.

CHKDSK  Filesystem is clean.

CHKDSK  All observed inconsistencies have been repaired.

CHKDSK  Filesystem has been marked clean.

CHKDSK **** Filesystem was modified. ****

CHKDSK   LVM GetBadBlockInformation returned rc = 22

CHKDSK  processing terminated:  1/14/2310.56.1   with return code: 0.

____________________________________________________________________

The problem here is that this doesn't tell me anything about WHAT actually was detected and what JFS did to attempt to correct it.

Sure enough...as I attempted to fire up a few of my regular apps like PMMail for example, I came to discover that those directories have missing files, etc.

So clearly there is a JFS problem here, and as opposed to HPFS where the HPFS CHKDSK log viewer would at least clearly show the objects that were impacted, it would appear that JFS has no such functionality.

How can that be though? I must be missing something...

So how are you guys getting visibility into what JFS CHKDSK log has found and/or corrected?

BTW: Nothing in \lost+found directory, so no actual directories or files were recovered...

20

Web applications / Google Photos - cookie problems anyone?

« on: January 10, 2023, 02:59:57 am »

I don't frequently hit the Google Photos here, but occasionally - usually when I just took some photos of car work I'm doing and need to file-away, or share in a forum - I do. It's always been pretty easy, typically I select what I want, clinck 'Download' and off it arrives here as a ZIP file.

Well, not sure if this is another "nail" in the coffin or purely my client only problem, but as of the other day (could have happened earlier if this is a Google change that's impacting us) I am getting the following error when attempting to hit my photo collection:

Code: [Select]

We've detected a problem with your cookie settings.
Enable cookies

Make sure your cookies are enabled. To enable cookies, follow these browser-specific instructions.
Clear cache and cookies

If you have cookies enabled but are still having trouble, clear your browser's cache and cookies.
Adjust your privacy settings

If clearing your cache and cookies doesn't resolve the problem, try adjusting your browser's privacy settings.
If your settings are on high, manually add www.google.com to your list of allowed sites. Learn more

I've of course gone through the whole cache/cookies purge...strangely enough following such a purge the site becomes accessible again. However, the minute FF is re-stated I'm back to square-one.

It almost feels like the cookies Google Photos may be using either aren't being saved, or something during FF re-start is wiping them out?

I am using using uBlock and NoScript, but neither one has caused me this problem before. I'm going to test with a clean profile next...

Has anyone encountered this?

21

Setup & Installation / WPS - Drive and Folder ICON/TREE/DETAILS font size change, which way?

« on: December 31, 2022, 06:42:23 pm »

I've stuck to the 9.WarpSans font all these years...but the eyes aren't what they used to be anymore...LOL and on my 1920x1200 24" screen things just started to look fuzzier and fuzzier, so a few months back I switched my WPS Desktop font to 10.WarpSans, which was a relief.

Well, back then I also considered switching the font sizing for the Drive/Folder objects as well, but ultimately it felt like even that small 9 => 10 move was robbing me of too much folder "real estate".

So today I was doing some system maintenance, and just for kicks decided to adjust the few folders I was working on (to the 10 pt size), and man, was that a good move! I honestly could fell the eye-strain ease up significantly...so one might say: the writing is on the wall, font size must go up!!!

Now here is the question: what's the correct way to implement a single change that will cascade to all the Folder objects?

I'm thinking that changing a Drive object View settings might do that, but I haven't even tried this. What complicates things a tad is that vast majority of my Drive/Folder interface is through the XWP's Xview configuration, and it does not appear that the changes to the PARENT folder propagate downward to the CHILD folders.

So I'm curious: is that different when it comes to the DRIVE objects itself?

My next step is to literally try this out, but that potentially being such a system-wide change I figured I'd ask here first.

As always, appreciate any feedback/insights on this!

Thanks!

22

Web applications / Our FF and Sync, anyone tried it?

« on: November 23, 2022, 04:43:47 pm »

Our FF has been a great browser for some time, but here at least it's finally starting to show it's age and given that some of the key sites I use (banking, etc.) are now problematic I'm looking for alternative solutions.

Until a replacement browser is up and running, and i'm talking as in PRODUCTION ready stuff, I will continue to rely on Win hosted FF that's accessible through RDP.

OK, so that works here just fine, but now I need to figure out how best to sync-up all my information: bookmarks, ID/PASS combos, etc.

So I've done a little reading on the Mozilla FF Sync process, the logic, security implementation, etc. Seems like a viable alternative to manually attempting to keep all this synchronized across multiple devices...however, none of it will mean anything if our OS/2 FF Sync functionality is so badly out of date that it's practially unusable.

Therefore, I'm curious if anyone has tried this? Does it flat-out "work", or are there some glitches?

Next step here will be to set up some test accounts and FF profiles to give this a whirl...but I figured I might as well get a little smarter on what this means for us.

Thanks!

23

Hardware / Printer - last page of print job missing...ugh?

« on: November 10, 2022, 04:34:20 am »

So this is an entirely new occurrence: the Financial Market Overview/Commentary articles that my bank publishes all of a sudden - when printed by GSView - are always dropping the last page...as in: it does NOT print! Neither does attempting to print just that SINGLE page. Printer's "receiving data" LED flashes, but nothing ever prints.

Printer in question is my Brother HL-5470DW, PostScript, I'm using the current drivers that have been adjusted with a custom PPD (to use all printer functions). Regardless, these articles have been printed numerous times before and never had this issue. Granted, they were the past articles so maybe the Bank changed something which is generating the PDFs themselves, I simply cannot tell.

Other apps seem to print fine, other PDFs, etc...but I find this really weird. I've attached a sample of such a PDF...is anyone else having a problem printing it?

No printer/GSview/system changes have occurred recently, as far as I know anyways!!!

All ears here...any ideas what to look for/at in order to debug this further?

24

Setup & Installation / MARKEXE vs EXECMODE - differences?

« on: October 15, 2022, 05:47:06 pm »

Hi everyone,

I've had a persistent problem with some apps putting a complete soft-lock of my machine. This normally happens during application start-up, but occasionally it would also happen throughout execution. I know, it sounds weird, but it's absolutely consistent and in appears to be related to an underlying component DLL, although I'm still working through pegging that detail.

Anyways, so to avoid that dreaded outcome I found that the best way to deal with this problem is to start up the "offending" app with all CPU cores but core_0 disabled. I do this with the handy setproc utiility.

Alright...but doing this manually is a PITA, so I have a quick SMPOFF/ON wrapper *.cmd template that I have been using for such apps.

However, it would seem to me that perhaps flagging to offending EXE as SMP-unsafe would provide a better result. Well, I tried this but with rather bleak results, or to be more precise, no results. The lock still occurs, and maybe it's because it's a DLL issue as opposed to the main EXE (therefore parent vs child execution path issue).

But...if my understanding of how these two utilities control the SMP flags is incorrect, well, that may have a key bearing on what I'm seeing.

They both enable you to flag a particular EXE as MPU unsafe, and yet for exmaple flagging a sample EXE with execmode doesn't seem to show the correct status when querying it up in markexe, so what gives?

I've got some examples here to illustarte this, but for starters I'm looking for a general understanding of what's different in terms of how these two utilities mark a EXE?

25

Programming / RUX function failure - but on multiple tries only...

« on: September 29, 2022, 03:00:21 am »

Umm...I'm scratching my head here because I wrote this script a couple of years ago and it has been rock-solid.

The purpose is to check the connectivity between my box and the NAS, which sometimes just flat-out "goes away". Re-starting the NetDrive control fixes it.

Alright, so here is what I call:

Code: [Select]

...
/* check ifthe RXU - RXU.DLL - is required */
   IF rxu_api_required = 1 THEN DO
      /* check if the DLL is already loaded */
      rxu_api = RxFuncQuery('rxuinit')
      msg_text="RXU: already in memory, RC="||rxu_api
      IF rxu_api <> 0 THEN DO
         CALL RxFuncAdd 'rxuinit','RXU','rxuinit'
         CALL rxuinit
         msg_text="RXU: loaded into memory, RC="||rxu_api
         END
      CALL debug debug_flag calling_code msg_level msg_text
     
      /* RXU version API returns a WHOLE bunch of stuff, so parse it first */
      rxu_api_info=rxuquery()
      msg_text=substr(rxu_api_info,pos(',',rxu_api_info,1)+2,pos(',',rxu_api_info,1))
      msg_text="RXU: Using version "||msg_text
      CALL debug debug_flag calling_code msg_level msg_text
      END
...

This normally gives me the following output:

DEBUG : MAIN => Initializing...
DEBUG :    ==> library_load => Initializing...
DEBUG :    ==> library_load => RXU: loaded into memory, RC=1
DEBUG :    ==> library_load => RXU: Using version v1.a
DEBUG :    ==> library_load => RXUTILEX: loaded into memory, RC=1
DEBUG :    ==> library_load => RXUTILEX: Using version 0.1.6
DEBUG :    ==> library_load => Exiting...
DEBUG : MAIN =>

During the first run I'm all good, no problems.

However, re-runing the 2nd time and aftewards causes this CLI error msg to be produced:

   282 +++         rxu_api_info = rxuquery();
REX0043: Error 43 running G:\UTIL\MISC\nas_check.cmd, line 282: Routine not
found

...and produces the following matching LOG:

DEBUG : MAIN => Initializing...
DEBUG :    ==> library_load => Initializing...
DEBUG :    ==> library_load => RXU: already in memory, RC=0
   282 +++         rxu_api_info = rxuquery();
REX0043: Error 43 running G:\UTIL\MISC\nas_check.cmd, line 282: Routine not
found
    76 +++   Call library_load;

The weird part is that this seems to have literally just started on Sep-26th...prior to that I never saw any such failures...ugghhh???

Is there anything obviously wrong that i'm doing here?

BTW - in my code I check to see if I need a particular REXX DLL, if YES, I load it and then un-load it when my script has completed running.

26

Storage / JFS - cache MIN and MAX buffer parameters

« on: September 22, 2022, 08:19:00 pm »

Can anyone explain, or has the knowledge of, the use of these parameters by the JFS drivers?

Allow me to explain: I do of course understand at high level what these control, specifically I have the following entry in my CONFIG.SYS:

CALL=G:\OS2\CMD.EXE /Q /C G:\OS2\CACHEJFS.EXE /LW:32,128,8 /MINBUFFER:16000 /MAXBUFFER:32000

...however, as I continue to gather JFS runtime stats I haven't quite figured out what is the impact of the MAXBUFFER parameter in particular.

What I am trying to determine is how the BUFFERs are being allocated and how the MAX setting in particular impacts the availability of either the content or i-node metadata buffers.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

27

Setup & Installation / libusb1 - 1.0.24-x drop => causes a trap in SCANIMAGE here

« on: September 05, 2022, 07:37:29 pm »

Folks!

Just a quick FYI, I'm seeing a trap in SCANIMAGE.EXE following the deployment of libusb1 1.0.24 RPM package.

My scanner is USB attached, latest AOS drivers and was previously successfully using 1.0.21-2 release.

I went ahead and opened a NEW Issue https://github.com/bitwiseworks/libusb1-os2/issues/4, but great GitHub functionality prevents you for actually uploading any LOG files...LOL!!!

Anyways, if you're seeing strange results/traps be aware.

28

Mail-News / PMMail and filters - this one is not working...why?

« on: June 10, 2022, 10:40:00 pm »

So my very, very old email address has gone through cycles of SPAM...but this latest hit is a prolonged one and so I've decided to cook up some extra filters to deal with that challenge.

Luckily for me the vast majority of SPAM email addresses end with a couple of string patters. Here is an example of an email HEADER:

Code: [Select]

...
Date: Fri, 10 Jun 2022 16:04:45 -0400
From: Beth Buttler <beth_buttler@bunsonlinesz.click>
To:   <BLOCKED_FOR_MY_SANITY>
Subject: Your Home Depot Verification No.  #3232007
...

You will noticed the from email address ends with ".click", I am also getting a pile of ".xyz" as well, easy enough to spot!

So to deal with this I figured that I'd just "beef up" my existing filters by adding the following;

Code: [Select]

(h.fromid.-z = "click" | h.fromid.-z = "xyz")

...alas, this does NOT work, and I cannot figure out why???

That filter is supposed to tell PMMail to simply look for a "*click" or "*xyz" in the actual email address field itself.

So I'm curious, is anything jumping out at anyone here?

Thanks!

29

Programming / Ghostscript - 9.18 build, any advice?

« on: February 09, 2022, 02:47:24 am »

 

Alright, so my help ticket hasn't resulted in an answer from the official BWW channel: it sounds like Silvan is alone/himself handling these, and since it's a volunteer effort I best make plans for an alternative approach to debugging my "Failed to print with GS 9.18". Just our reality I think, no fault of his.

Soo....I downloaded BWW's GS codebase, deployed locally, I have studied the source for a couple of days now. Did my share of the official documentation review...I have GCC as well as IBMCPP available here and it looks like the OS2.MAK file can handle either one.

Therefore, before I take the plunge and run with it: any last-minute advice as to what to watch out for???

It's a big app, numerous pieces (display and print devices, etc, etc), but the makefile itself doesn't actually look all that daunting.

Thanks!

30

Applications / GSView and Ghostscript - printing, how?

« on: February 02, 2022, 03:24:14 pm »

We've got a separate discussion (Programming forum => https://www.os2world.com/forum/index.php/topic,2985.msg33707/boardseen.html) on the challenge I've encountered attempting to use GS 9.18 to faciliate printing with GSView.

As I researched this further, and discovered that perhaps some of the printing functionality is a little off in this release (as compared to earlier ones) that made me wonder about how the rest of you are printing documents that may utilize GS for rendering.

Specifically, and most often I suspect, that would apply to PDFs.

In my case, I can use Lucide to print PDFs. Occasionally I run into an issue though and the print job produces an error on the printer itself (the root cause is unknown to me, but it's some kind of a PS stack overflow and my prior investigation suggested this may be a printer driver issue, which as we all know simply isn't going to get fixed, so case closed).

In such cases, I would most often rely on GSView to handle the printing task, and that has been working quite fine with GS9.04, but we are at 9.18 now and GSView with GS9.04 started to show it's age (various rendering errors would show up here and there), and much slower than GS9.18.

Therefore, I am curious how you print from GSView with whatever version of GS?

With GS9.04 I use the 'pswrite' Device and have the 'PostScript Printer' check box marked given that my Brother HL-5470DW is a PS printer.

With GS9.18 I tried using 'ps2write' Device since 'pswrite' has been obsoleted, but the '\\spool\printer_name\' printer identifier no longer appears to print in GS9.18.

Thanks!