OS2 World Community Forum

OS/2, eCS & ArcaOS - Technical => Setup & Installation => Topic started by: myrkraverk on December 24, 2020, 12:59:38 am

Title: Dual (or tripple) booting ArcaOS and FreeDOS?
Post by: myrkraverk on December 24, 2020, 12:59:38 am
Hi all,

I came across an old IBM laptop, and I want to try dual booting FreeDOS and ArcaOS; possibly even trpple boot MS-DOS if I can find media that works.  For this particual combo, I have not come across any guides; so links [if existant] will be helpful.

What works: I can boot this machine, and load FreeDOS installation from a USB stick.  I do not have any means to write CD ROM images [don't have disks] nor do I have a CD ROM drive outside the target machine.  If CD ROM is absolutely needed for something, there's a chicken and egg problem.

As I write this, I'm downloading an ArcaOS image I mean to put on a different USB stick.

For dual (or tripple) booting FreeDOS and ArcaOS, what are the steps I need to take, and in what order?  So far, I'm not familiar with Airboot, which I believe is a boot manager that comes with ArcaOS.  I am totally open to different boot managers, as long as they're relatively hassle free.  I remember having issues with eComStation and GRUB in the past; they didn't mix well.

So, again, what's the best way to partition the hard drive, verify that it's still good, and in what order do I install the various operating systems?
Title: Re: Dual (or tripple) booting ArcaOS and FreeDOS?
Post by: Dave Yeo on December 24, 2020, 03:14:40 am
Does FreeDos need to be on C:? Pretty sure MSDos does. Use ArcaOS's Disk Manager to partition, create 2 primary partitions at the beginning of the hard drive how ever big you plan for the Dos's probably 1-2GB, then an extended partition or more for AOS and perhaps another small one for sharing data.
The first 2 will be C: with only one visible to DOS, you can assign different drive letters to them for AOS and give the other partitions what ever drive letter you choose, perhaps leaving D: for your DVD drive if you have one.
Oh, install Airboot too.
Airboot should allow booting from either C: where you install a DOS as well as booting E: or where ever you install AOS.
So you end up with 2 primaries at the front of the drive for a DOS each, then some extended for AOS or sharing.
AOS can see both primaries if you give them different drive letters and either DOS can't see the other.
I'm assuming FreeDOS installs like most DOSes, on the first visible primary. If FreeDOS is happy installing elsewhere, you can adjust. The important thing is doing all partitioning with AOS.
Title: Re: Dual (or tripple) booting ArcaOS and FreeDOS?
Post by: Martin Iturbide on December 24, 2020, 04:22:45 am
Hi Johann, nice to see you around this forum.

I have zero experience with FreeDOS on real hardware, but I have tried some Windows and ArcaOS and eCS dual boot.
I have this articles that may give you some hints of the process:
- Windows 10 ArcaOS Dual Boot (https://www.os2world.com/wiki/index.php/Windows_10_ArcaOS_Dual_Boot)
- Installing eComStation 2.1 and Windows 8 with Dual Boot (https://www.os2world.com/wiki/index.php/Installing_eComStation_2.1_and_Windows_8_with_Dual_Boot)
- Centos 7 ArcaOS Dual Boot (https://www.os2world.com/wiki/index.php/Centos_7_ArcaOS_Dual_Boot)
- Installing eComStation 2.2 and Windows 10 with Dual Boot (https://www.os2world.com/wiki/index.php/Installing_eComStation_2.2_and_Windows_10_with_Dual_Boot)

I even had tried as an experiment to create a VirtualBox VM with ArcaOS and Win98 dual boot. It was successfully for me and it helped me to learn it and test the steps on a VM before trying it no real hardware.

Regards
Title: Re: Dual (or tripple) booting ArcaOS and FreeDOS?
Post by: myrkraverk on December 24, 2020, 08:42:13 pm
Ok, when I tried to create a bootable USB stick on my current system, Windows 10, I got a failure.

The full log follows.  Is there anything else I can try, such as running this inside ArcaOS VM?  Should I bring this to the Arca Noae ticket system?

Note, I am running this in an admin window.

Code: [Select]
C:\opt\arcaos>dfsanwin.exe -q run aosboot.dfs 2

Nr   Style    Unix-device  Disk-name/description Disk size           Status
==   ======== ============ ===================== ==================  =========
 1 = MBR disk /dev/sda     SCSI      HGST HTS72  Size:   931.51 GiB
     SCSI      HGST HTS721010A9E630
 2 = MBR disk /dev/sdb     USBSTOR   Kingston D  Size:    57.62 GiB
     USBSTOR   Kingston DataTraveler 3.0

Create bootable ArcaOS USB stick on 59006 MiB disk 2 using image file arcaos-5.0.6-en-usb.imz, destroying
ALL current contents of disk 2? [Y/N] : y

 KBytes restored
 Write error on   512 sector(s) at sector 0x0000000000000000.  Aborting ...▒▒▒▒
██████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████


Msg: 5     = 0005 : Access denied


Wipe uses the repeated pattern with length 16:
-00000-  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 [................]
Wipe method used  : REAL wipe whole area, buffer   512 sect =  256 KiB

 Sectors Wiped (area)
 ██████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████

Last wiped sector : 0x0 size 0x00000001 =     0.5 KiB
  0.050 (seconds) :   Disk-sector throughput =    10.04 KiB/sec

Restoring arcaos-5.0.6-en-usb.imz to disk 2 failed! MBR has been cleared to UNLOCK it. Exit this utility, eject
stick, reinsert, then retry the operation.

 Do NOT format the stick if prompted to do so.
Press [Space-bar] to continue ...

C:\opt\arcaos>
Title: Re: Dual (or tripple) booting ArcaOS and FreeDOS?
Post by: Roderick Klein on December 24, 2020, 10:04:07 pm
Hi all,

I came across an old IBM laptop, and I want to try dual booting FreeDOS and ArcaOS; possibly even trpple boot MS-DOS if I can find media that works.  For this particual combo, I have not come across any guides; so links [if existant] will be helpful.

What works: I can boot this machine, and load FreeDOS installation from a USB stick.  I do not have any means to write CD ROM images [don't have disks] nor do I have a CD ROM drive outside the target machine.  If CD ROM is absolutely needed for something, there's a chicken and egg problem.

As I write this, I'm downloading an ArcaOS image I mean to put on a different USB stick.

For dual (or tripple) booting FreeDOS and ArcaOS, what are the steps I need to take, and in what order?  So far, I'm not familiar with Airboot, which I believe is a boot manager that comes with ArcaOS.  I am totally open to different boot managers, as long as they're relatively hassle free.  I remember having issues with eComStation and GRUB in the past; they didn't mix well.

So, again, what's the best way to partition the hard drive, verify that it's still good, and in what order do I install the various operating systems?

If you really want to install FreeDOS and MS-DOS to play with, keep into account that as far as I can remember MS-DOS needs to installed on a primary partition.

You might be better off to just install FreeDOS as this support much larger hard disc then MS-DOS 6.22. As far as I know FreeDOS is 100% compatible with MS-DOS.

Create the partition for any OS with minilvm from ArcaOS.

The key element  is that when you boot MS-DOS or FreeDOS (I am not certain about the last). The primary partitions need to be marked as hidden.
DOS enumarates driver letters based on the first primary that is found. Consult the airboot manual on how to use the Airboot.

Roderick Klein

Title: Re: Dual (or tripple) booting ArcaOS and FreeDOS?
Post by: Roderick Klein on December 24, 2020, 10:26:54 pm
Ok, when I tried to create a bootable USB stick on my current system, Windows 10, I got a failure.

The full log follows.  Is there anything else I can try, such as running this inside ArcaOS VM?  Should I bring this to the Arca Noae ticket system?

Note, I am running this in an admin window.

Code: [Select]
C:\opt\arcaos>dfsanwin.exe -q run aosboot.dfs 2

Nr   Style    Unix-device  Disk-name/description Disk size           Status
==   ======== ============ ===================== ==================  =========
 1 = MBR disk /dev/sda     SCSI      HGST HTS72  Size:   931.51 GiB
     SCSI      HGST HTS721010A9E630
 2 = MBR disk /dev/sdb     USBSTOR   Kingston D  Size:    57.62 GiB
     USBSTOR   Kingston DataTraveler 3.0

Create bootable ArcaOS USB stick on 59006 MiB disk 2 using image file arcaos-5.0.6-en-usb.imz, destroying
ALL current contents of disk 2? [Y/N] : y

 KBytes restored
 Write error on   512 sector(s) at sector 0x0000000000000000.  Aborting ...▒▒▒▒
██████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████


Msg: 5     = 0005 : Access denied


Wipe uses the repeated pattern with length 16:
-00000-  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 [................]
Wipe method used  : REAL wipe whole area, buffer   512 sect =  256 KiB

 Sectors Wiped (area)
 ██████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████

Last wiped sector : 0x0 size 0x00000001 =     0.5 KiB
  0.050 (seconds) :   Disk-sector throughput =    10.04 KiB/sec

Restoring arcaos-5.0.6-en-usb.imz to disk 2 failed! MBR has been cleared to UNLOCK it. Exit this utility, eject
stick, reinsert, then retry the operation.

 Do NOT format the stick if prompted to do so.
Press [Space-bar] to continue ...

C:\opt\arcaos>

Did you run this script with Admin rights under Windows ?:

This portion:
KBytes restored
 Write error on   512 sector(s) at sector 0x0000000000000000.  Aborting ...▒▒▒▒

https://www.arcanoae.com/wiki/arcaos/obtaining-arcaos/
"Run the following as Administrator from a command prompt:"

Its not by accident that sector 0 can not be written.

Roderick Klein
Title: Re: Dual (or tripple) booting ArcaOS and FreeDOS?
Post by: myrkraverk on December 25, 2020, 12:22:14 am
Yes, my cmd window is clearly labelled Administrator Command Prompt.

Title: Re: Dual (or tripple) booting ArcaOS and FreeDOS?
Post by: Roderick Klein on December 25, 2020, 01:02:51 am
Yes, my cmd window is clearly labelled Administrator Command Prompt.

Then I wonder if your USB stick is not broken or has a write protect tab. Its weird that the first sector can even be written.

Roderick Klein
Title: Re: Dual (or tripple) booting ArcaOS and FreeDOS?
Post by: Martin Iturbide on December 26, 2020, 12:15:27 am
Hi.

Ok, when I tried to create a bootable USB stick on my current system, Windows 10, I got a failure.

The full log follows.  Is there anything else I can try, such as running this inside ArcaOS VM?  Should I bring this to the Arca Noae ticket system?

Note, I am running this in an admin window.

On my experience creating the ArcaOS USB pen drive installer in Windows 10 is that you have to run the procedure to create the stick two times.

The first time will wipe the USB pen drive in some way, it asks you to unplug it and reconnect it. Windows 10 will ask you to format it, don't do it.

Run again the procedure and on the second time it will recreate the USB flash drive correctly.

Are you getting to the second time?

Regards
Title: Re: Dual (or tripple) booting ArcaOS and FreeDOS?
Post by: myrkraverk on December 26, 2020, 12:47:52 am
Third time was the charm for me.

Second time:

Code: [Select]
Create bootable ArcaOS USB stick on 59006 MiB disk 2 using image file arcaos-5.0.6-en-usb.imz,
destroying ALL current contents of disk 2? [Y/N] : y

 KBytes restored
 ████████████████████████████████████████████Write error on   512 sector(s) at sector 0x0000000000005600.  Aborting ...
██████████████████████████████████


Msg: 5     = 0005 : Access denied


Wipe uses the repeated pattern with length 16:
-00000-  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 [................]
Wipe method used  : REAL wipe whole area, buffer   512 sect =  256 KiB

 Sectors Wiped (area)
 ██████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████

Last wiped sector : 0x0 size 0x00000001 =     0.5 KiB
  0.037 (seconds) :   Disk-sector throughput =    13.48 KiB/sec

Restoring arcaos-5.0.6-en-usb.imz to disk 2 failed! MBR has been cleared to UNLOCK it. Exit this utility,
eject stick, reinsert, then retry the operation.

 Do NOT format the stick if prompted to do so.
Press [Space-bar] to continue ...

Then third time:

Code: [Select]
C:\opt\arcaos>dfsanwin.exe -q run aosboot.dfs 2

Nr   Style    Unix-device  Disk-name/description Disk size           Status
==   ======== ============ ===================== ==================  =========
 1 = MBR disk /dev/sda     SCSI      HGST HTS72  Size:   931.51 GiB
     SCSI      HGST HTS721010A9E630
 2 = MBR disk /dev/sdb     USBSTOR   Kingston D  Size:    57.62 GiB
     USBSTOR   Kingston DataTraveler 3.0

Create bootable ArcaOS USB stick on 59006 MiB disk 2 using image file arcaos-5.0.6-en-usb.imz,
destroying ALL current contents of disk 2? [Y/N] : y

 KBytes restored
 ██████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████


bootable ArcaOS USB stick install to disk 2 was successful.

Eject stick, reinsert, copy ArcaOS ISO to the ARCA_ISO directory on the stick as 'ARCAINST.ISO' to boot
from it.

Press [Space-bar] to continue ...

I will try if it boots now.
Title: Re: Dual (or tripple) booting ArcaOS and FreeDOS?
Post by: myrkraverk on December 26, 2020, 01:02:34 am
Ok, it boots into a Workplace Shell window, with the following output.  [I do not know how to make a screenshot of this, and I don't want to take a picture with my phone, for reasons.]

Code: [Select]
[0 | Z:\]MAPISO R: Z:\OS2\EMPTY.ISO
R: => Z:\OS2\EMPTY.ISO

[0 | Z:\]LVM /REDISCOVERPRM
Startup has encountered a FATAL error and con not continue!

Details: "\ARCA_ISO\ARCAINST.ISO" could not be found
             This file should be on the boot disk created by AOSBoot.

Press any key to shut down the system...

What exactly is going on here?  I think I've seen a similar error, and I'll look it up on the Arca Noae tickets, where it didn't load the right CDROM driver by default.  Is that what it is?

How can it get this far and not find the .iso file?
Title: Re: Dual (or tripple) booting ArcaOS and FreeDOS?
Post by: myrkraverk on December 26, 2020, 01:25:53 am
I find nothing relevant with the search terms "arcainst" nor "iso" in the ArcaOS mantis database.
Title: Re: Dual (or tripple) booting ArcaOS and FreeDOS?
Post by: Martin Iturbide on December 26, 2020, 01:30:04 am
Hi

After producing the USB flash drive with the commands, you need to put the ARCAOS.ISO file into "\ARCA_ISO\" of the USB pen drive and rename that file "ARCAINST.ISO". Did you do that?

If it still do not find the "\ARCA_ISO\ARCAINST.ISO" when the USB pen drive boots, it may some issue with some USB driver.

Regards
Title: Re: Dual (or tripple) booting ArcaOS and FreeDOS?
Post by: myrkraverk on December 26, 2020, 01:51:08 am
Thanks, that was indeed the problem.  It's been to long and I forgot where I was reading the instructions, and huried off to try and boot.

The installer is chugging along now, and I'll see if i can partition this machine for DOSx2 + OS/2.
Title: Re: Dual (or tripple) booting ArcaOS and FreeDOS?
Post by: myrkraverk on December 26, 2020, 02:19:32 am
Ok, so I partitioned the machine in the following way.

Code: [Select]
         2,000 unformatted Primary
         2,000 unformatted Primary
->C:  5,005 unformatted Primary Startable
->F: 29,147 unformatted Logical Advanced/LVM

I hope this will work for a tripple boot system.  I am currently installing ArcaOS right now, in C: and F: as above.  Let's see how that works out.  I can do this as many times as I need.
Title: Re: Dual (or tripple) booting ArcaOS and FreeDOS?
Post by: myrkraverk on December 26, 2020, 02:22:24 am
Ok, so I hit another snag.  It seems my ArcaOS installation did not fix the MBR, which previously, and still, has GRUB.

So when I try to boot from the hard disk to continue with the installation, I get a grub error because it doesn't recognize the file system(s).

How do I fix this?
Title: Re: Dual (or tripple) booting ArcaOS and FreeDOS?
Post by: Dave Yeo on December 26, 2020, 02:33:41 am
Ok, so I partitioned the machine in the following way.

Code: [Select]
         2,000 unformatted Primary
         2,000 unformatted Primary
->C:  5,005 unformatted Primary Startable
->F: 29,147 unformatted Logical Advanced/LVM
While installing ArcaOS in the 3rd primary as C: will work, I would have made it a Logical and perhaps E: That way after booting AOS, one of the DOS partitions can be C: and from what Roderick said, even the 2nd one could have been a Logical and not C: for FreeDos. (I have no experience with FreeDos)
Who knows, maybe you will want to try one of the Dos's under AOS instead of its included DOS. You could even have all 3 running in individual VDM's on the desktop if you chose and your graphics card is happy displaying a VDM on the desktop (not all are)
I hope this will work for a tripple boot system.  I am currently installing ArcaOS right now, in C: and F: as above.  Let's see how that works out.  I can do this as many times as I need.
Title: Re: Dual (or tripple) booting ArcaOS and FreeDOS?
Post by: Dave Yeo on December 26, 2020, 02:40:34 am
Ok, so I hit another snag.  It seems my ArcaOS installation did not fix the MBR, which previously, and still, has GRUB.

So when I try to boot from the hard disk to continue with the installation, I get a grub error because it doesn't recognize the file system(s).

How do I fix this?

IIRC, there is an option for installing airboot in the LVM that you can run from maintenance mode from the stick. Might be in the disk checker.
If ever want to dual boot Linux too, ideally you also create the partitions from AOS, including /boot and install grub there.
Title: Re: Dual (or tripple) booting ArcaOS and FreeDOS?
Post by: myrkraverk on December 26, 2020, 10:03:55 pm
Thank you, that did the trick.

The volume manager said nothing about Airboot, so I wasn't sure, but that's what shows up when I boot from the hard disk.  The ArcaOS installation is continuing now.  Hopefully smoothly.
Title: Re: Dual (or tripple) booting ArcaOS and FreeDOS?
Post by: myrkraverk on December 26, 2020, 10:24:24 pm
IIRC, there is an option for installing airboot in the LVM that you can run from maintenance mode from the stick. Might be in the disk checker.
If ever want to dual boot Linux too, ideally you also create the partitions from AOS, including /boot and install grub there.

I have no plans to install Linux on this machine; and given the partition layout previously, I probably can't now.  The GRUB was just a leftover from the Linux installation previously on the machine, before I got my hands on it.
Title: Re: Dual (or tripple) booting ArcaOS and FreeDOS?
Post by: myrkraverk on December 26, 2020, 10:45:21 pm
Ok, it looks like the ArcaOS installation finished successfully.

I am now trying the FreeDOS installer.  It picked up and detected one of the small partitions I'd left for DOS, at this time I don't know which one.  The installer is too newbie friendly, IMO, there didn't seem to be any way to choose partitions or partition layouts, so the advice was good, to do all the partitions with ArcaOS.
Title: Re: Dual (or tripple) booting ArcaOS and FreeDOS?
Post by: Dave Yeo on December 26, 2020, 10:51:29 pm
The main reason for doing the partitioning from ArcaOS is that it is old (actually the under laying OS/2) and needs the partitions on a cylinder boundary.
You should be able to choose which primary is active, forget if airboot allows it or you have to use the logical volume manager.
Title: Re: Dual (or tripple) booting ArcaOS and FreeDOS?
Post by: myrkraverk on December 26, 2020, 10:52:44 pm
Ok, so the first results is that the FreeDOS installer messes up the MBR, which holds Airboot.

I'm going to attempt to fix that; but I have to wonder if I get my FreeDOS boot menu back.
Title: Re: Dual (or tripple) booting ArcaOS and FreeDOS?
Post by: myrkraverk on December 26, 2020, 11:00:22 pm
The main reason for doing the partitioning from ArcaOS is that it is old (actually the under laying OS/2) and needs the partitions on a cylinder boundary.
You should be able to choose which primary is active, forget if airboot allows it or you have to use the logical volume manager.
I see.

After installing Airboot again, it automatically picks up FreeDOS [which still has its boot menu, it's not part of the MBR] and ArcaOS; both boot normally.  I do not yet know if FreeDOS will pick up the other partition if I format it, nor what OS/2 will do.

I guess the next exercise is to see if I still have working MS-DOS media and what I can do to install it on a machine with no diskette drive.
Title: Re: Dual (or tripple) booting ArcaOS and FreeDOS?
Post by: myrkraverk on December 26, 2020, 11:04:27 pm
I forgot about trying to see if I can have a logical volume to share data between MS-DOS, FreeDOS and OS/2.

In the worst case, I'll write a JFS driver for DOS [I hope it won't come to that.]
Title: Re: Dual (or tripple) booting ArcaOS and FreeDOS?
Post by: Dave Yeo on December 27, 2020, 12:15:50 am
Well, they all support FAT, some support FAT32 and there are HPFS drivers available for DOS https://hobbes.nmsu.edu/?search=HPFS&stype=any&sort=type_name&dir=%2Fpub%2Fdos (https://hobbes.nmsu.edu/?search=HPFS&stype=any&sort=type_name&dir=%2Fpub%2Fdos)
Drawbacks, FAT, 8.3 names generally under OS/2 and probably DOS 6.x along with a 2GB partition limit.
FAT32, slow, don't know if there is a driver for DOS 6.x, perhaps partition limits and 2-4GB file limit.
HPFS, limited to 64 GB partitions (actually in practice a bit smaller, like 60GB) and 2GB file size. Long chkdsk on large volumes.
Edit, quite possibly those DOS HPFS drivers have lower partition size limits, pinball.sys for NT is limited to 4.3GB or so partitions for example.

A JFS DOS driver would be interesting. The Linux JFS is a fork of the OS/2 JFS and generally handles OS/2 JFS, so that GPL code would be a start as the source is available.