OS2 World Community Forum

OS/2, eCS & ArcaOS - Technical => Setup & Installation => Topic started by: lss73912 on September 13, 2018, 03:08:04 am

Title: New to ArcaOS, need some help.
Post by: lss73912 on September 13, 2018, 03:08:04 am
I just bought ArcaOS a while ago and while trying to install it on a PC that I intend to run it along with some other operating system, I'm having issues installing it, especially when partitioning disks as I'm dealing with numerous partitioning incompatibilities.

1. Is there a convenient, OS/2 complaint partitioning tool for other operating systems? I mainly use GParted live media to partition disks, but it turned out that ArcaOS would be unable to properly see them if I made the partitions there. (I also tried using DFSee/DFSANOS2 that was shipped with the ArcaOS install media, but I'm still new to it and couldn't figure out how to do it correctly, besides, if I'm just viewing partitions with DFSee, it's seeing my disks and partitions correctly)

2. For existing partitions above 512GB, is there a way to add the extended geometry to the partition table so I could use and access the whole disk on ArcaOS as well as on any other operating system? When I partition the disk myself with GParted, ArcaOS would only see 512GB and reports a "corrupt partition table", while ArcaOS could see the entire disk if I leave it unpartitioned.

3. As due to the issues above (plus the fact that I've been partitioning disks with MiB alignment which ArcaOS don't support it yet), I backed up the data on that system and wiped all the disks except the ones that I don't intend to use with ArcaOS (those are NTFS partitions and I don't know if NTFS works with ArcaOS yet), in order to rebuild a compatible partition table. I then converted the disks I don't intend to use with ArcaOS into GPT in hope it would prevent the OS from doing anything to them, but it turned out converting them to GPT (with gdisk) would prevent Logical Volume Manager from starting up at all, showing LVM ERROR 4100 (with the help screen, which appeared behind the error window and needs effort to move it to a visible area, pointing to "unsupported partition table error" suggesting removing non-MBR drives), and the text mode one saying "Couldn't start LVM engine". It seems I simply cannot have any GPT partitions (while converting them back to MBR is possible, again, I need to deal with the 512GB and MiB alignment issue).

4. Is there an easy way to change driver configuration post installation? That is, if I want to switch to another driver than the one I chose during install at a later time. At one time I wanted to switch to another sound card driver because Uniaud didn't work with my configuration, but I couldn't find a convenient way to do so anywhere.

Plus, from the looks of it ArcaOS is still developing, so maybe the issues I'm facing might as well as being feature requests.
Title: Re: New to ArcaOS, need some help.
Post by: Dave Yeo on September 13, 2018, 04:51:47 am
I just bought ArcaOS a while ago and while trying to install it on a PC that I intend to run it along with some other operating system, I'm having issues installing it, especially when partitioning disks as I'm dealing with numerous partitioning incompatibilities.

1. Is there a convenient, OS/2 complaint partitioning tool for other operating systems? I mainly use GParted live media to partition disks, but it turned out that ArcaOS would be unable to properly see them if I made the partitions there. (I also tried using DFSee/DFSANOS2 that was shipped with the ArcaOS install media, but I'm still new to it and couldn't figure out how to do it correctly, besides, if I'm just viewing partitions with DFSee, it's seeing my disks and partitions correctly)

DFSee is the best choice, the cut down version that ships with ArcaOS is probably good enough for you considering what you say later. The full one is available at www.dfsee.com (http://www.dfsee.com). It's shareware (and you get good support) but you can use it in evaluation mode with everything working.

Quote
2. For existing partitions above 512GB, is there a way to add the extended geometry to the partition table so I could use and access the whole disk on ArcaOS as well as on any other operating system? When I partition the disk myself with GParted, ArcaOS would only see 512GB and reports a "corrupt partition table", while ArcaOS could see the entire disk if I leave it unpartitioned.

Don't use GParted, as you found, it doesn't do it right. OS/2 needs partitions ending on cylinder boundaries. As you have it unpartitioned, you can create the partitions during the ArcaOS install.
If you ever want other OSes on the same disk, do the partitioning with an OS/2 tool such as DFSee and then do an advanced install to use already created partitions.

Quote
3. As due to the issues above (plus the fact that I've been partitioning disks with MiB alignment which ArcaOS don't support it yet), I backed up the data on that system and wiped all the disks except the ones that I don't intend to use with ArcaOS (those are NTFS partitions and I don't know if NTFS works with ArcaOS yet), in order to rebuild a compatible partition table. I then converted the disks I don't intend to use with ArcaOS into GPT in hope it would prevent the OS from doing anything to them, but it turned out converting them to GPT (with gdisk) would prevent Logical Volume Manager from starting up at all, showing LVM ERROR 4100 (with the help screen, which appeared behind the error window and needs effort to move it to a visible area, pointing to "unsupported partition table error" suggesting removing non-MBR drives), and the text mode one saying "Couldn't start LVM engine". It seems I simply cannot have any GPT partitions (while converting them back to MBR is possible, again, I need to deal with the 512GB and MiB alignment issue).

You can tell the disk driver, whether danis506.add or os2ahci.add to ignore your GPT disk. You have to do it at the beginning of the install using the text installer accessible at the first prompt. Something like
Code: [Select]
DaniS506.ADD /I 0
to ignore the first controller. Once we know your actual hardware, we can tell you better.

Quote
4. Is there an easy way to change driver configuration post installation? That is, if I want to switch to another driver than the one I chose during install at a later time. At one time I wanted to switch to another sound card driver because Uniaud didn't work with my configuration, but I couldn't find a convenient way to do so anywhere.

Generally you can change drivers just by editing config.sys. The audio driver is a bit more complex but can be done using mininstall. When you're ready to change it, ask here.

Quote
Plus, from the looks of it ArcaOS is still developing, so maybe the issues I'm facing might as well as being feature requests.

You can always open an issue at arcanoae.com for this stuff. Some things like the trick of disabling a hard drive were only lately realized as a workaround. Most of the problems you talk about are well known problems which you seem to have a pretty good handle on already.
You might want to post your hardware here so we can be of more help or if needed, open an issue and then create a testlog which will show all your hardware etc.
Title: Re: New to ArcaOS, need some help.
Post by: lss73912 on September 13, 2018, 08:32:14 am
DFSee is the best choice, the cut down version that ships with ArcaOS is probably good enough for you considering what you say later. The full one is available at www.dfsee.com (http://www.dfsee.com). It's shareware (and you get good support) but you can use it in evaluation mode with everything working.

I'll give the full DFSee a look (in hope it provides some easier to use modes), though I'll need to find ways to create a bootable floppy or CD image with it as the PC I intend to run to is relatively older and doesn't have proper USB boot support.

Quote
Don't use GParted, as you found, it doesn't do it right. OS/2 needs partitions ending on cylinder boundaries. As you have it unpartitioned, you can create the partitions during the ArcaOS install.
If you ever want other OSes on the same disk, do the partitioning with an OS/2 tool such as DFSee and then do an advanced install to use already created partitions.

GParted could create partitions using cylinder alignments, but that alone is not enough to let ArcaOS pick my partition as I might also need to define drive letters and LVM names (different from the usual partition label, but visible to AIR-BOOT). Also, ArcaOS handles disks above 512GB in its own way, according to the manual, which GParted couldn't comply and result in ArcaOS seeing the whole disk as 512GB and could not be used (corrupt partition table).

Quote
Since the OS/2 Logical Volume Manager requires CHS-aligned partitions, and, in the case of hard disks larger than 512GB, requires this CHS alignment to use the extended geometry, such partitions cannot (easily) be created with non-OS/2-aware partitioning tools.

Is the full version of DFSee (regardless of platform) capable of creating partitions this way?

Quote
You can tell the disk driver, whether danis506.add or os2ahci.add to ignore your GPT disk. You have to do it at the beginning of the install using the text installer accessible at the first prompt. Something like
Code: [Select]
DaniS506.ADD /I 0
to ignore the first controller. Once we know your actual hardware, we can tell you better.

Apparently, the GPT disks are connected to a PCI SATA expansion card separate from the rest of the drives (which are connected to onboard IDE and SATA controllers and are the ones I intend to use with ArcaOS), so I'll need a way to find out the number of the PCI controller to disable it. For now I prefer avoiding having to physically remove the card.

Quote
Generally you can change drivers just by editing config.sys. The audio driver is a bit more complex but can be done using mininstall. When you're ready to change it, ask here.

I'll look at mininstall once I get the system up and running.

Quote
You can always open an issue at arcanoae.com for this stuff. Some things like the trick of disabling a hard drive were only lately realized as a workaround. Most of the problems you talk about are well known problems which you seem to have a pretty good handle on already.
You might want to post your hardware here so we can be of more help or if needed, open an issue and then create a testlog which will show all your hardware etc.

I'll file an issue if needed. I've read this presentation (https://www.warpstock.eu/images/2018/Lewis-Rosenthal-ArcaOS-Roadmap.pdf) and it does appear some of the features (such as GPT and UEFI) are being worked on, and I'm looking forward to it.
Title: Re: New to ArcaOS, need some help.
Post by: Dave Yeo on September 13, 2018, 04:54:10 pm
DFSee is the best choice, the cut down version that ships with ArcaOS is probably good enough for you considering what you say later. The full one is available at www.dfsee.com (http://www.dfsee.com). It's shareware (and you get good support) but you can use it in evaluation mode with everything working.

I'll give the full DFSee a look (in hope it provides some easier to use modes), though I'll need to find ways to create a bootable floppy or CD image with it as the PC I intend to run to is relatively older and doesn't have proper USB boot support.

I believe you can create a bootable FreeDos CD.

Quote
Quote
Don't use GParted, as you found, it doesn't do it right. OS/2 needs partitions ending on cylinder boundaries. As you have it unpartitioned, you can create the partitions during the ArcaOS install.
If you ever want other OSes on the same disk, do the partitioning with an OS/2 tool such as DFSee and then do an advanced install to use already created partitions.

GParted could create partitions using cylinder alignments, but that alone is not enough to let ArcaOS pick my partition as I might also need to define drive letters and LVM names (different from the usual partition label, but visible to AIR-BOOT). Also, ArcaOS handles disks above 512GB in its own way, according to the manual, which GParted couldn't comply and result in ArcaOS seeing the whole disk as 512GB and could not be used (corrupt partition table).

Quote
Since the OS/2 Logical Volume Manager requires CHS-aligned partitions, and, in the case of hard disks larger than 512GB, requires this CHS alignment to use the extended geometry, such partitions cannot (easily) be created with non-OS/2-aware partitioning tools.

Is the full version of DFSee (regardless of platform) capable of creating partitions this way?

I believe so, though it is best to use OS/2 to add the LVM info.

Quote
Quote
You can tell the disk driver, whether danis506.add or os2ahci.add to ignore your GPT disk. You have to do it at the beginning of the install using the text installer accessible at the first prompt. Something like
Code: [Select]
DaniS506.ADD /I 0
to ignore the first controller. Once we know your actual hardware, we can tell you better.

Apparently, the GPT disks are connected to a PCI SATA expansion card separate from the rest of the drives (which are connected to onboard IDE and SATA controllers and are the ones I intend to use with ArcaOS), so I'll need a way to find out the number of the PCI controller to disable it. For now I prefer avoiding having to physically remove the card.

Booting to the system management on the bootable ArcaOS media, going to a cmd prompt and something like
Code: [Select]
COPY IBMS506$ con:
will show how the driver sees things. IIRC, there's a similar command for AHCI.
You can also run "testlog generic" there, which will gather all kinds of info on your system including the disks

Quote
Quote
Generally you can change drivers just by editing config.sys. The audio driver is a bit more complex but can be done using mininstall. When you're ready to change it, ask here.

I'll look at mininstall once I get the system up and running.

Quote
You can always open an issue at arcanoae.com for this stuff. Some things like the trick of disabling a hard drive were only lately realized as a workaround. Most of the problems you talk about are well known problems which you seem to have a pretty good handle on already.
You might want to post your hardware here so we can be of more help or if needed, open an issue and then create a testlog which will show all your hardware etc.

I'll file an issue if needed. I've read this presentation (https://www.warpstock.eu/images/2018/Lewis-Rosenthal-ArcaOS-Roadmap.pdf) and it does appear some of the features (such as GPT and UEFI) are being worked on, and I'm looking forward to it.

Unluckily they're down the list after USB3 and perhaps WiFi support. The USB3 is most important as too many systems now don't have USB2.
Title: Re: New to ArcaOS, need some help.
Post by: lss73912 on September 13, 2018, 05:32:42 pm
Finally I was able to get past the disk partitioning part thanks to DFSee, as it's able to create partitions in an OS/2 complaint way, and enables me to modify LVM information so the partitions can appear in ArcaOS as desired, which I can then continue the installation.

Guess for now one really needs to use DFSee instead of GParted to manage existing partitions when preparing to install ArcaOS.
Title: Re: New to ArcaOS, need some help.
Post by: Dave Yeo on September 13, 2018, 05:58:03 pm
Good to hear. You could get away with using the LVM manager to do the partitioning but DFSee is much nicer. In the old days, it was the OS/2 fdisk that had to be used.
Title: Re: New to ArcaOS, need some help.
Post by: lss73912 on September 13, 2018, 07:09:15 pm
It seems I still need to hide the GPT partitions in order to continue the installation, as the LVM ERROR 4100 (due to the presence of a GPT disk) would cause the installer to fail (stuck on installing base system files 2%, the error screen is, again, hidden behind the installer).

I tried "testlog generic" and confirmed the GPT disks are on controllers 4 and 5 respectively (it seems for SATA drives, each port is an independent controller). Also, on my system, it seems DANIS506 driver is the one actually active, but I don't know the correct syntax to disable those two controllers, as when I do it this way (based on the DANIS506 performance mode setting, and referring to the driver's documentations),

Code: [Select]
/A:4 /I /A:5 /I /!BIOS
Although it stopped the LVM error, the installer ended up unable to see the rest of the volumes except the first hard drive, while before this, all volumes that I've defined drive letters to in the LVM would be visible with correct size and space. Is there a guide on how to input the parameters?
Title: Re: New to ArcaOS, need some help.
Post by: Andi B. on September 13, 2018, 09:22:25 pm
I'm glad to hear you master DFSee :). A lot of people complain about it's complexity.

I guess you've read the information which comes with ArcaOS. I'm pretty sure there are places where it deals with different scenarios and how to prepare partitions for multi OS environment. This all should be manageable within the ArcaOS installer. Remember it includes a stripped down version of DFSee with a graphic GUI to hide the complexity. That said I guess it should not be necessary to use the standard DFSee boot USB-Stick, CD or floppy. Although there is nothing wrong in using the full version of DFSee (I personally prefer doing so) the makers of ArcaOS tries to handle such things with their installer in a user friendly way (sort of ;) ).

To get to the point - if you follow the AcraOS documentation and still can not install then open a ticket with AN. I'm pretty sure they are interested in improving the installer and partitioning GUI. Most of the testers are long time OS/2 users and they know the workarounds and tricks to get it installed. It seems to me you're a perfect candidate for a good usability tester. Not with the straitened vision we long time users have.
Title: Re: New to ArcaOS, need some help.
Post by: Dave Yeo on September 14, 2018, 12:58:42 am
Can you post the part of the testlog output referring to the drives? Here with SATA disks, I get
Code: [Select]
----- Contents of file: ibms506$ -----------------------------------
R1.08.15     /!BIOS
            Daniela's Bus Master IDE Driver for OS/2 Version 1.08.15
Controller:0  Port:F0E0 IRQ:13  Status:OK BusMaster Scatter/Gather
  Intel ICH7 SATA host (8086:27C0 rev:01) on PCI 0:31.2#0
 Unit:0 Status:OK SMS:16 LBA NL:126 BusMaster UltraDMA6/PIO4 BPB
  Model:ST3500418AS                             CC38
   OS2:log   phys   BPB/BIOS   IDE:log   phys     Total Sectors
  C  60801  65535                65535  16383   Avail  976773168
  H    255     16        255        16     16   OS2    976768065
  S     63     63         63        63     63   % Used     99.99
 Unit:1 Status:OK SMS:16 LBA BusMaster UltraDMA6/PIO4 BPB
  Model:WDC WD10EZEX-75M2NA0                    01.01A01
   OS2:log   phys   BPB/BIOS   IDE:log   phys     Total Sectors
  C  60321  65535                65535  16383   Avail 1953525168
  H    255     16        255        16     16   OS2   1953495585
  S    127     63        127        63     63   % Used     99.99
Controller:1  Port:F0C0 IRQ:13  Status:OK BusMaster Scatter/Gather
  Intel ICH7 SATA host (8086:27C0 rev:01) on PCI 0:31.2#1
 Unit:0 Status:OK SMS:16 LBA BusMaster UltraDMA6/PIO4 BPB
  Model:ST3500414CS                             CA12
   OS2:log   phys   BPB/BIOS   IDE:log   phys     Total Sectors
  C  60801  65535                65535  16383   Avail  976773168
  H    255     16        255        16     16   OS2    976768065
  S     63     63         63        63     63   % Used     99.99
 Unit:1 Status:OK ATAPI BusMaster UltraDMA5/PIO4
  Model:TSSTcorp CDDVDW SH-S243D                SB00

As you can see, even though each drive is plugged into a SATA controller, it comes across as 2 units per controller.
You might want to quickly look at https://mantis.arcanoae.com/view.php?id=1607 (https://mantis.arcanoae.com/view.php?id=1607) where this was discussed.
Log in with your Arca Noae credentials. For user, you might need just the part of your email address to the left of the @, so no domain.
Title: Re: New to ArcaOS, need some help.
Post by: lss73912 on September 14, 2018, 02:30:00 am
I can confirm that my drives are handled by the DANIS506 driver. Maybe I'll try the workaround in the issue #0002120 (the one you provided doesn't appear to be accessible to me).

It seems the LVM engine has been made not to write any data to systems with GPT disks to avoid corrupting them. The reason I converted them to GPT from MBR was that they were large NTFS disks (2TB each) that I currently don't intend to use with ArcaOS for the time being, as I'm not confident about NTFS support with the OS (though at least a safe, read-only IFS driver would be nice), and they're also affected by the 512GB and MiB boundary issues. I'm yet to find out how to resolve the 512GB boundary issue on existing partitions with DFSee, though I can always use GParted to resize the partition using cylinder alignment to fix the MiB boundary issue.

I can always attempt to restore the drives back to MBR so I don't have to hide anything, if NTFS partitions can be safely mounted and accessible within ArcaOS. Still, the fact that LVM engine would refuse to start when a GPT disk is present would certainly cause problems with users trying to install it alongside with existing UEFI Windows/Linux installations (as UEFI utilizes GPT).
Title: Re: New to ArcaOS, need some help.
Post by: Roderick Klein on September 14, 2018, 08:14:01 am
eCS came with an NTFS driver. When I still worked at Mensys I tested it. But by default the installation is turned off and its kind of buggy driver. For example it can freeze the system when you run the IBM application installer. Lotus Smartsuite uses it, no TRAP screen, nothing.

One option you could consider using is:
https://www.arcanoae.com/shop/netdrive-for-os2/
With the NTFS plugin read and write support.

If you want to use a hard disc its size beyond the 512 GB boundary you need to wipe the drive and create all partitions with OS/2/Dfsee. You can format them with Windows. Otherwhise any partitions on the +512GB drive can be made visiable by using DFsee to assign a drive letter. The partition can then be accessed if the partition is at the beginning of the hand *and* its not beyond the 512 GB disc boundary.

You can BTW use switches with the danis506.add driver to disable from accessing the drives.
The documentation should be on the ArcaOS DVD but you can also read the documentation here:
http://trac.netlabs.org/xata/export/122/ATA/trunk/doc/DaniS506.DOC

Roderick Klein
President OS/2 VOICE
Title: Re: New to ArcaOS, need some help.
Post by: Pete on September 14, 2018, 04:19:55 pm
Hi

To make a >512Gb disk work with OS/2 based systems you need to use DFSee to "wipe front of disk to 0" - or similar wording - then reboot. The disk should now show as the correct size in LVM.


Regards

Pete
Title: Re: New to ArcaOS, need some help.
Post by: lss73912 on September 14, 2018, 07:49:07 pm
It seems the installer is not showing all the configured partitions as valid "target volume". Although I've configured the drive letters and partitions in LVM using DFSee, only the partitions of the first drive is on the list.

I don't know the details but is there an exact list of conditions needed for a partition to be visible to the installer as a valid target? I intend to install it on the second drive (which was visible when I was dealing with the GPT issue, maybe all the disks would be visible, if the LVM engine was not working, which is why I could see the partitions).

EDIT: And as for the 512GB issue... yeah, it seems I'll need to get all the drives repartitioned with DFSee in order to make them OS/2 complaint, and the feature to adjust disk geometry happens to be in Expert mode.
Title: Re: New to ArcaOS, need some help.
Post by: Dave Yeo on September 15, 2018, 01:48:59 am
It seems the installer is not showing all the configured partitions as valid "target volume". Although I've configured the drive letters and partitions in LVM using DFSee, only the partitions of the first drive is on the list.

I don't know the details but is there an exact list of conditions needed for a partition to be visible to the installer as a valid target? I intend to install it on the second drive (which was visible when I was dealing with the GPT issue, maybe all the disks would be visible, if the LVM engine was not working, which is why I could see the partitions).

They should show up, I've installed to all 3 of my drives without problems. I'd suggest opening an issue at Arca Noae.
Title: Re: New to ArcaOS, need some help.
Post by: lss73912 on September 15, 2018, 03:10:51 am
They should show up, I've installed to all 3 of my drives without problems. I'd suggest opening an issue at Arca Noae.

I'm still investigating. Apparently, the only times when all my partitions showed up were ironically when there were still GPT disks present. It's very likely because the LVM engine wasn't active at that time and for that reason the installer was able to see all partitions with valid LVM regardless of geometry issues and such (the 2TB disk that I intended to use with ArcaOS also showed up correctly at that time even though the partition table was still the default 63-SPT/512GB one as I didn't know where to change the drive geometry until recently).

I've reverted those disks back to MBR now, so I don't need to hide any drive anymore, but it seemed that the parameters I previously passed to the DANIS506 driver to hide them were correct all along.

It seems it eventually came down to the point that I need to back up the rest of the drives (including the ones that I don't intend to use with ArcaOS) and start the whole system over with only ArcaOS installation disc, not even official DFSee, as I also found out that even after changing disk geometry with official DFSee, ArcaOS' DFSee engine sometimes don't agree with the official DFSee regarding the partition created at the end of the disk, reporting corrupt partition table, which could be solved by deleting the offending partition from DFSee and recreating it from ArcaOS.

It's definitely going to be a lot of effort to prepare disks for ArcaOS installation if one intends to install it alongside existing OSes, as most partitioning utilities on other operating systems are not OS/2 aware (notably in regards of LVM configurations) and can cause issues.

And a side question: When using DFSee, which geometry layout should I use with hard disks using 4K physical sectors but 512 byte logical sectors, the Big SSD/4Kb-sectors, or Huge rotating disk? Although for my 2TB drives (roughly 1863 GiB), neither option is below the physical capacity, but the performance might differ (which was why 4K alignment existed).
Title: Re: New to ArcaOS, need some help.
Post by: Dave Yeo on September 15, 2018, 04:07:36 am
They should show up, I've installed to all 3 of my drives without problems. I'd suggest opening an issue at Arca Noae.
...

It seems it eventually came down to the point that I need to back up the rest of the drives (including the ones that I don't intend to use with ArcaOS) and start the whole system over with only ArcaOS installation disc, not even official DFSee, as I also found out that even after changing disk geometry with official DFSee, ArcaOS' DFSee engine sometimes don't agree with the official DFSee regarding the partition created at the end of the disk, reporting corrupt partition table, which could be solved by deleting the offending partition from DFSee and recreating it from ArcaOS.

Was that official DFSee on OS/2 or a different OS? I'm not an expert but it seems to me that running it from OS/2 may be best.

Quote
It's definitely going to be a lot of effort to prepare disks for ArcaOS installation if one intends to install it alongside existing OSes, as most partitioning utilities on other operating systems are not OS/2 aware (notably in regards of LVM configurations) and can cause issues.

I believe that is the official way to do it, especially with disks over 512 MB, which is the largest that OS/2 can use out of the box without getting tricky with the CHS values.

Quote
And a side question: When using DFSee, which geometry layout should I use with hard disks using 4K physical sectors but 512 byte logical sectors, the Big SSD/4Kb-sectors, or Huge rotating disk? Although for my 2TB drives (roughly 1863 GiB), neither option is below the physical capacity, but the performance might differ (which was why 4K alignment existed).

This was discussed last year on a mailing list. I'll quote a couple of the messages from Jan (DFSee author)
Quote
>If I had a 4K drive now could I use it with ArcaOS?

Most likely yes, with some restrictions.

There are some 'pure' 4K sector disks, but most of them emulate 512 bytes sectors
on the outside. For OS/2 that will limit you to the absolute maximum size of 2Tb.
(due to the 32-bit sectornumbers used).

There is another restriction in that accessing the disk sectors will use CHS addressing, and there you
have a limit on the cylinders (16 bit, hence maximum of 65535 cylinders).

The number of heads and sectors/track could each go to a maximum of 255,
however, there are some gotchas here too.

You will want to align anything on such a disk to multiples of 4 KIB, so any 'odd' value
for the sectors per track is out, it has to be a multiple of 8 (8 512 byte sectors is 4KiB)

So in theory (and reality, when being careful) you could use a geometry that has:

65535 cylinders, 255 heads and 248 sectors/track

This result in a usable size of about 1976 GiB, pretty close to that other limit of 2 TiB.

However, you will have to be very careful with LVM-DLAT placement, you may find that
the regular LVM program does not handle these strange geometry (#sectors) very well.

I have not done extensive tests, but did use a disk like this for a while, partitioned with DFSee
using this exact geometry. It DOES work, and as long as you don't use the reguar LVM
programs it will stay working.

However, all of this is mainly relevant if you are after maximum performance.
As other have said in this thread, read performance suffers a bit with mis-alignment
(10 to 20 percent perhaps) but write-performce may be hit harder perhaps halving
the maximum throughput.

If that is not THAT important, you could stick with the (LVM) defaults that will use 63 sectors/track
upto 500GB, 127 sectors per track upto 1Tb and 255 sectors/track upto 2Tb disks.

Or, if only using the start of the disk, ypu could use a geometry like 240 heads and 32 sectors/track,
giving you 250Gb to use for OS/2, with still optimal alignment.
(and use the rest for Windows/Linux).

Regards, JvW

Jan van Wijk, author of DFSee; http://www.dfsee.com
and
Quote
>
>If I partition a new (or "wiped") 4K drive with LVM, will it be
>optimally partitioned for 4K usage"?

No, because it will use either 63, 127 or 255 sectors/track (an ODD number, not aligned to 4K)

>Would DFSee partitioning be better?

Yes, since you can force it to use a specific disk-geometry for the alignment.

>How do I tell DFSee to align a partition to a sector beginning, or does
>it do that automatically?

It may work out OK automatically (depending on disk size, and current contents)

However, the best way to make sure that NEW CREATED partitions are aligned to 4K sectors,
is to set a disk geometry where the number of sectors/track is a multiple of 8

The most common of these is using 64 heads and 32 sectors per track (1 MiB cylinders)
but as said, that will restrict OS/2 usage to the first 64GiB

Alternatives could be

255 heads, 32 sectors per track (limit about 250GB)

128 heads, 128 sectors per track (limit about 500GB, cylindersize exactly 8 GiB)

255 heads, 248 sectors per track (limit pretty close to 2TB)

>In fact, the only times that LVM complains
>about partition alignment is when it was done by a Linux distro.

Well, there are other circumstances, but LVM complains pretty quick.

Using non-standard values (like more than 63 sectors per track) is bound to
trigger warnings or errors from other partitioning tools, but will often work ...

>If I keep my OS/2 bootable partitions in the allowed front of a 2BT
>drive, can OS/2 (ArcaOS) use partitions on the rest of the drive for
>data?

No, this is NOT about a 'bootable' limit, it is about accessing in general.

>What about >2TB?

Not possible at all for the moment.

Regards, JvW

I thought I remembered some discussion including using JFS, which by default uses 4k blocks and getting that aligned correctly but I can't find it and may be misremembering.
The advantage of a ticket is that we could get Jan involved as well as more info for Lewis to document all this stuff.

Title: Re: New to ArcaOS, need some help.
Post by: lss73912 on September 15, 2018, 04:27:53 am
Was that official DFSee on OS/2 or a different OS? I'm not an expert but it seems to me that running it from OS/2 may be best.

I'm using the official DFSee bootable media, which uses FreeDOS. The problem is, after I set the geometry to Big SSD/4Kb-sectors (255/240) and created a primary partition then a logical partition (and properly configured the LVM information), when booting to ArcaOS installer, the volume manager complained about corrupt partition table and could not see the logical partition that was at the end of the disk. Removing the offending logical partition from DFSee would remove the corrupt partition table error and I can then create a logical partition that looks correct to ArcaOS, but according to what you quoted from the mailing list, I don't know if the newly created "correct" partition would still honor the geometry setting (that is, whether ArcaOS' DFSee engine can be used just fine, or it should be considered a "regular LVM program" that should be avoided).
Title: Re: New to ArcaOS, need some help.
Post by: Dave Yeo on September 15, 2018, 04:52:48 am
ArcaOS's DFSee is just a cut down version of DFSee licensed for installing ArcaOS. Once installed, you'll find 2 LVM programs (only one under older versions of ArcaOS) under System Setup, a graphical one and a textmode one. These are the ones that'll probably complain about bad partitioning info.
If deleting and recreating the partition during the install works, that should be good enough. You just may not be able to use the regular LVM programs.
Title: Re: New to ArcaOS, need some help.
Post by: xynixme on September 15, 2018, 12:27:16 pm
What are negative surprises or disadvantages of ArcaOS, compared to Warp 4 or eCS 1.x? You may assume the use of unspecified hardware with more than one CPU core, but do keep Warp 4 or eCS 1.x (e.g. also no USB 3-support) in mind.

I wouldn't rate having to select a slower generic eCS video driver to keep full DOS-windows support as a disadvantage, but it's nice to know that a newer, faster, default video driver is an implied "negative surprise". One may not like to fully install a system, and then find out that Excel doesn't work in s windowed session anymore.

Please no positive surprises nor hardware-specific negative surprises. I'm wondering about generic changes.
Title: Re: New to ArcaOS, need some help.
Post by: Neil Waldhauer on September 15, 2018, 10:04:20 pm
On a new machine, the hardware is different.

With Warp4 or eCS, it doesn't boot. With ArcaOS, it boots, but Excel for DOS from 1994 does not run.

On a slightly older machine Warp4 does not boot, eCS and ArcaOS does, but Excel for DOS runs with defects.

On a much older machine, all three operating systems boot, and Excel for DOS runs perfectly.

I'm sure other variants exist, but Excel for DOS generally does not fail because of a difference between Warp4, eCS and ArcaOS.

I hope this helps.
Title: Re: New to ArcaOS, need some help.
Post by: lss73912 on September 16, 2018, 09:30:48 am
ArcaOS's DFSee is just a cut down version of DFSee licensed for installing ArcaOS. Once installed, you'll find 2 LVM programs (only one under older versions of ArcaOS) under System Setup, a graphical one and a textmode one. These are the ones that'll probably complain about bad partitioning info.
If deleting and recreating the partition during the install works, that should be good enough. You just may not be able to use the regular LVM programs.

After some testing it turned out the DFSee I got from the official page (15.3) might be having bugs with creating logical paritions. For some reasons, it's not creating the logical partition correctly (EBR errors).

As for the disks not visible to the installer, I'm thinking about reading the installer log (INSTALL.LOG) to see if I can find something (that whether it detected some problems in some of the drives and aborted listing the rest), but it seems the installer is holding the log file constantly (even during System Management) and it's not directly accessible (showing only 1 byte in DIR and trying to open/copy it results in "file in use" error).
Title: Re: New to ArcaOS, need some help.
Post by: Andi B. on September 16, 2018, 11:00:54 am
Quote
After some testing it turned out the DFSee I got from the official page (15.3) might be having bugs with creating logical paritions.
I fear the problem is that everything running under OS/2 does see disks sometimes a bit different than looking at it from f.i. FreeDOS or Linux. That's why lot of people suggest doing all partitioning with DFSee running under OS/2 (booting from ArcaOS stick and running from the installer is fine).

Otherwise Jan would fix the problem immediately if there's really a bug in it. But he needs to know about. DFSee usually logs all activities and Jan is quit responsive when you discuss this at the DFSee support list or AN issue tracker.
Title: Re: New to ArcaOS, need some help.
Post by: Roderick Klein on September 16, 2018, 12:05:47 pm
Hi

To make a >512Gb disk work with OS/2 based systems you need to use DFSee to "wipe front of disk to 0" - or similar wording - then reboot. The disk should now show as the correct size in LVM.


Regards

Pete

I thought I had posted a reply, but I think I did not see my reply, possibly did not hit the Post button.

Just a genereal peace of advise, the disc util has wipe option for GPT systems. And it uses Dfsee in the background.
I also sometimes see people to disable the discutil. Especially this last advise is in *most* cases not usefull as minilvm will run into trouble any if the discutil finds an error.
Especially for new users, depending on there skillset DFsee might a bit of complicated software package.

Roderick
Title: Re: New to ArcaOS, need some help.
Post by: lss73912 on September 16, 2018, 01:02:51 pm
I fear the problem is that everything running under OS/2 does see disks sometimes a bit different than looking at it from f.i. FreeDOS or Linux. That's why lot of people suggest doing all partitioning with DFSee running under OS/2 (booting from ArcaOS stick and running from the installer is fine).

Otherwise Jan would fix the problem immediately if there's really a bug in it. But he needs to know about. DFSee usually logs all activities and Jan is quit responsive when you discuss this at the DFSee support list or AN issue tracker.

It seems even after I create the partition using ArcaOS, DFSee still reports error, something like that that "MBR 0x00000000, cyl:0, entry 1 points to an invalid EBR at 0x80004f30, cyl:33958, no aa55 sig, no valid table" (NOTE: the first partition on that disk is about 1TB in size). Back then the issue is, after I created the primary partition, creating the next partition (roughly 850GB) as logical partition resulted in the appearance of an erroneous 1TB partition in the partition table (and resulted in EBR-related errors).

On the other hand, I'm still looking for a possibility to take a look at ArcaOS installation log as the file is being constantly locked and not accessible even exiting to System Management.

EDIT: I was able to get the log accessible by killing the INSTALL while ignoring the shutdown prompt... but I found nothing (maybe I need to increase verbosity somewhere), and the underlying DFSee engine isn't telling me anything about why the rest of the partitions aren't visible to the installer. No matter what I do I can still only see the first partition of the first drive (only one entry in the installer, where there should list all accessible partitions).
Title: Re: New to ArcaOS, need some help.
Post by: Dave Yeo on September 16, 2018, 05:51:39 pm
Open an issue. The people there are friendly and want to improve the install process. Jan will probably be able to tell you the exact procedure you need to follow.
Title: Re: New to ArcaOS, need some help.
Post by: xynixme on September 16, 2018, 11:35:25 pm
Quote
Quote
What are negative surprises or disadvantages of ArcaOS, compared to Warp 4 or eCS 1.x?


I'm sure other variants exist, but Excel for DOS generally does not fail because of a difference between Warp4, eCS and ArcaOS.
In what way does Excel for DOS represent negative surprises, disadvantages (i.e. unexpected bad differences) of "ArcaOS", compared to e.g. Warp 4!?

The other day I've read about a video driver-related issue releated to windows DOS/Win-OS/2 sessions, and after a full install of OS and all apps it would be a negative surprise that e.g. a DOS window would stop working. I'm not familiar with ArcaOS at all, but it would be nice to know that e.g. not selecting a default faster Panorama video driver takes care of that.

Just preparing... Excel for Windows 3.x is just an example of an app which users may want to see working in a windowed session (not full screen), which happens to be the default setup here. Unchanged apps may outrank faster video; I'm not collectig disadvantages as such.
Title: Re: New to ArcaOS, need some help.
Post by: Dave Yeo on September 17, 2018, 12:15:08 am
The problem is VSVGA.SYS IIRC and newer video bioses being incompatible with it. This will be a problem on OS/2, eCS and ArcaOS.
Even my 8 year old computer has problems, WinOS2 does work in a window but I get a popup about the resolution not being supported and a DOS window comes up with about one line and the same message as well the window title saying it is suspended. What does work is starting it full screen and then using Alt-HOME to switch to a window.
I repeat, this is a problem with all versions of OS/2 and newer computers. An old video card should work fine.
Title: Re: New to ArcaOS, need some help.
Post by: xynixme on September 19, 2018, 09:48:29 pm
Quote
this is a problem with all versions of OS/2 and newer computers. An old video card should work fine.
Thanks, no experience with eCS 1.x hardware <= 8 years. Apparently it's related to hardware, and not to e.g. newer drivers or ArcaOS. The work-around is both nice-to-have and a negative surprise. The latter depending on where you're coming from.
Title: Re: New to ArcaOS, need some help.
Post by: lss73912 on September 20, 2018, 11:14:29 am
I got a reply from the issue regarding the installer only showing the first partition of the first disk. Turned out I need to install AirBoot manually, while I originally thought ArcaOS would have it installed for me. The installer actually checks whether there's a boot manager installed (such as AirBoot), and only when such boot manager is present would the installer enable installation to other partitions.

Before all the repartitioning I did have AirBoot installed, as it's a really powerful utility for multi-booting.

As for the EBR issue... it's relatively minor as I'm not having issues with it elsewhere for now (DOS, ArcaOS, Windows, Linux, etc.).