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Messages - Doug Bissett

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1036
Applications / Re: How to install from external USB CD/DVD?
« on: September 17, 2015, 04:31:11 pm »
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But when it starts loading it give me the message "Insert the eComStation CD....."

Perhaps a silly question, but did you try ejecting the CD, and inserting it again? I remember having to do that for some reason, a few years ago. In fact, just using <enter> might be all that it needs.

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By default it only sees 1 EHCI and the rest is on zero.

This could be correct. I have two laptops that have only two EHCI adapters. Apparently, there is an internal hub that handles USB 1.x. Of course, if they are really USB 3.0, they aren't going to work. Adding extra USB drivers doesn't hurt anything, they just don't load. I do have one machine that will NOT boot, if there are not enough of each of the required drivers defined in CONFIG.SYS, but too many are just ignored.

I noticed in 2.jpg, that you did NOT select to install from a USB CD. It isn't going to work without that.

1037
General Discussion / Re: eComStation article in El Reg
« on: September 16, 2015, 06:23:25 pm »
I haven't tried it yet, but it should be possible to use the QSINIT package to make OS/2 bootable from a USB stick.

1038
Setup & Installation / Re: Installing to a 1TB Hybrid SSD
« on: September 15, 2015, 11:34:09 pm »
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I think I have a 1 TB drive that I can wipe, to see if I can install eCS.

It is not a hybrid, but I used DFSEE to clear the front end of the drive, then I attached it (as the only drive) to my A88MX-A motherboard. Then, I booted the eCS 2.2 b2 DVD, and installed eCS. The first thing was that the disk check found nothing on the disk, and put a partition table on it (as expected, and this is probably the critical step). Then, it needed a reboot, and got to the disk setup. It found no partitions (as expected), and started miniLVM. I then added the boot manager (AirBoot 1.1.0), and made my partitions:
300 GB for windows, bootable, primary, no drive letter.
50 GB for a FAT32 drive, bootable, logical, letter D:.
2 GB for the first eCS boot drive, logical, bootable, letter C:.
2 GB for the second eCS boot drive, logical, bootable, letter M: (no good reason for the letter M:).
the rest minus about 1.5 GB, for my data/programs disk, advanced, letter W: (no good reason for the drive letter).
the rest for a bootAble maintenance partition, bootable, letter Y: (no good reason for the drive letter).
Saved, and selected C: as the install partition. Formatted that as JFS. Then, I formatted the rest of the eCS partitions as JFS. The windows partitions are left not formatted, for now.

Then, I set up eCS on the C: drive, putting all of the optional stuff (%HOME%, %PROGRAMS%, CUPS, RPM/YUM etc.) on the W: drive. A few minutes later it was all done, and works with no trouble (so far). AirBoot did require a little adjusting, which is easy enough.

As I said earlier, the drive should always appear to be a normal drive to the software. All of the speed up should be done invisibly (but, I could be wrong about that).

Some other things about the motherboard:

I had to specifically select UniAud for sound. I don't think sound works, but the driver loads (no speakers).

I also had to install the LAN with the IBM NULL adapter. The available R8168 (8110) driver will not work, and it can turn off the interface so that even windows won't turn it back on. If that happens, you need to turn the machine off, pull the plug, wait for about a minute, then plug it back in and turn it on. The ONLY driver, that I have found, that will properly run the NIC is the newly released MMRE driver, from Arca Noae. The newest R8168 driver (from Arca Noae) works for a short period of time, but then it slows to a stop. Older versions probably trap.

I am also using QSINIT so that I can use the memory above 4 GB as a RAMDISK.

1039
Setup & Installation / Re: Installing to a 1TB Hybrid SSD
« on: September 15, 2015, 06:47:22 pm »
Thanks, Greggory .... glad it works for you! Maybe I need to go back and have another hard look at the motherboard (asus a88xm-plus) and bios settings ......

I doubt if that will help. The problem is probably in the disk layout. If it was done by anything other than DFSEE, booted to OS/2, it is likely wrong for OS/2. It might work okay, if you keep all of the OS/2 partitions completely inside the first 500 Gb, but windows wants the first partition.

I have an Asus A88XM-A motherboard (I don't know what is different on the plus), and I have a 1 TB drive (but it is not the boot drive). DFSEE is happy with it as a single partition, formatted as JFS. I think I have a 1 TB drive that I can wipe, to see if I can install eCS. It is not a hybrid, but that should be totally transparent to software. Speed variations (depending on what is in the solid state part) could cause some problems at boot time.

FWIW, I suspect that using a hybrid drive will be self defeating, unless you always run either windows, or eCS. Switching between them will tend to save parts of the disk that get used in the running OS. When you switch to the other, it will take a while for it to re-sync. Switch back, and it starts over again.

1040
Programming / Re: Desktop Weather
« on: September 09, 2015, 05:55:41 am »
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This seems to be a very unreliable way to do things. I look in the EAs on the downloaded .CMD file, and I find a number of cities (none of them seem to be anything that I would be interested in). If I strip the EAs, I get a couple of attempts to make icons, and none of them work. After killing whatever I can find, and double clicking the icon, it opens the configuration, I enter the proper data, and I get an icon that shows Lethbridge, which is 500 KM away. I cannot seem to convince it to find my real location, anything closer than Lethbridge.

Interesting. I tried again, and this time I was able to enter the coordinates, and got Sherwood park back. Very strange...

1041
Networking / Re: Samba users and groups
« on: September 08, 2015, 10:58:04 pm »
Samba is a horrible mess. It seems that the latest isn't, and some of them don't work properly.

I did a "mix and match", which seems to work as well as anything else that I tried (and, I tried a lot of combinations). From EVFSGUI-> Help-> About:

Code: [Select]
Samba Client Versions:[[BR]]
File system EVFS Version 1.002[[BR]]
Plugin file C:\ecs\dll\NDPSMB.dll[[BR]]
Plugin Vendor bww bitwise works GmbH.[[BR]]
Plugin Revision 2.01.1.5[[BR]]
Plugin Date/Time 3 Oct 2013 15:47:30[[BR]]
Plugin Build Machine ThinkCentre[[BR]]
Plugin Language Code en[[BR]]
Plugin File Version 2.1[[BR]]
Plugin Description NDPSMB - SMBFS NetDrive External Plugin Build GA-20131003[[BR]]
Plugin file C:\ecs\dll\InstallPackages\ndpsmb\ndpsmb.dll[[BR]]
Plugin Vendor bww bitwise works GmbH.[[BR]]
Plugin Revision 2.01.1.5[[BR]]
Plugin Date/Time 3 Oct 2013 15:47:30[[BR]]
Plugin Build Machine ThinkCentre[[BR]]
Plugin Language Code en[[BR]]
Plugin File Version 2.1[[BR]]
Plugin Description NDPSMB - SMBFS NetDrive External Plugin Build GA-20131003[[BR]]
Commandline utilities Version 3.6.23-eCS 1.3.0-868[[BR]]
EVFSGUIVersion 2.5.RC7-[2014-11-14][[BR]]

The server, that I use, is: ftp://ftp.netlabs.org/pub/samba/server/samba-1-1-4-804.wpi

From my experience, most of the problems exist in EVFSGUI. The server seems to work okay (within the limits of the OS/2 version), but EVFSGUI has a LOT of trouble with anything except a very simple SAMBA server.

1042
Programming / Re: Desktop Weather
« on: September 08, 2015, 10:34:11 pm »
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Please open the script and look at the services hard coded there and try them in your browser and with wGet or cURL.

What list of services? The only reference to "services" that I find is text that says "TITLE=Service Unavailable...".

FWIW, the latest incarnation now finds that I live in Bergsjoe (wherever that may be). Entering the proper information got me back to Lethbridge (don't know how), and I can't get back to Sherwood park, no matter what I try.

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Yes, it will download the files to the root as a last resort if there's no bigicons folder. Gues one could disable that part all together when there's no bigicons folder.

Please do so. There is no need to download that stuff anyway. It should be in the package, and there seems to be no way to stop it from downloading every time the program starts. Definitely a waste of bandwidth, if nothing else, and I really do not appreciate having a bunch of useless files in the root of whatever drive I happen to put the program on (which is NOT the boot drive).

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The script store information to:
I you have one desktop object it will save that to the EA of weather.cmd under weather...something, then next desktop object will be saved to the EA name in weather.cmd such as "newyork" in my example. It seem to overwrite that information if openweather can't detect the location right away.

This seems to be a very unreliable way to do things. I look in the EAs on the downloaded .CMD file, and I find a number of cities (none of them seem to be anything that I would be interested in). If I strip the EAs, I get a couple of attempts to make icons, and none of them work. After killing whatever I can find, and double clicking the icon, it opens the configuration, I enter the proper data, and I get an icon that shows Lethbridge, which is 500 KM away. I cannot seem to convince it to find my real location, anything closer than Lethbridge.

1043
Programming / Re: Desktop Weather
« on: September 04, 2015, 10:02:32 pm »
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HAH!, I found where the program put the .png files. They are in the root of the drive where I started the program from. That should make it easy to convert them to OS/2 icon files, but I would suggest that they should be in the folder where the program is, or in a sub folder, and not in the root. More later...

Okay, I converted the PNG files to ICO files. PMView did it in a few seconds, but I had to tweak 4 of them with the icon editor (open, and save them). ZIP file added.

Now, if we can determine why the location is not working, this thing should work with, or without, the PNG desktop support.

I am suspicious that there is a list of locations, that gets downloaded, but there isn't enough room in the list for all of the locations.

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(Doug and I have the same ISP).

That really isn't entirely true. Telus owns it, but the BC and Alberta internet access is run as two separate operations.

1044
Programming / Re: Desktop Weather
« on: September 04, 2015, 05:12:38 pm »
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Visit http://openweathermap.org and type your city name "Edmonton", select the right place (if a list with many appear) and look for the address such as http://openweathermap.org/city/5946768 and the numbers at the end (5946768), that's OpenWeathers CityID.

Interesting. Going to http://openweathermap.org/ takes me directly to my home location (Sherwood Park, CA). I did have to search to find the CityID, which doesn't seem to be required.

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Yes, it should detect the right location and that is also something that has to be corrected as the script contain links to more than one service to locate the position, but all seem to reply with slightly different JSon structures that I haven't figured out yet. Your tests and help is very much appreciated to help me find out what to change and adjust.

Okay, what can I do to help? It appears that going to the web site, using FF, takes me directly to the proper place, while your program takes me to the wrong place. How is that done? Perhaps I can spot the problem by doing it manually.

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Double click on the desktop object and the SmartGuide will open up.
Click next until you reach the tab "Symbols". Copy the link there to you web browser and add "http://" in front and "/01d.png" after. Replace "01d.png" with "01n.png" for the night version, "02d.png", "02n.png" etc. until 23, then jump to "50d.png" and "50n.png".

HAH!, I found where the program put the .png files. They are in the root of the drive where I started the program from. That should make it easy to convert them to OS/2 icon files, but I would suggest that they should be in the folder where the program is, or in a sub folder, and not in the root. More later...

1045
Programming / Re: Desktop Weather
« on: September 03, 2015, 10:44:16 pm »
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I used PMView and the OS/2 icon editor to create 3 or 4 icons that I included with weather.dll (contained within weather.zip) from the png files downloaded from the weather service you see when you use PNG Desktop.

Okay, I tried it on my test machine that has the PNG desktop support installed. It appears to be okay, but I still don't know where I can get the icons, to convert them to normal OS/2 icons. That should be a matter of opening the PNG in PMView, and save them as OS/2 icons, but where do I get the png files?.

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You can specify CityID instead of the name as OpenWeather use that to identify the city.

But what is the City ID? Where would I find that? If I just type in "Edmonton", it finds Edmonton Australia. About as far away from here as you can get, without leaving the planet.

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There should only be one icon on the desktop with the id "<wps_weather>". If you delete it, but not the program object in the startup folder that fetch the data you'll get a new desktop object at every desktop restart.
Delete "Update WEATHER" in the startup folder to get rid of the new desktop weather object.

??? This doesn't make sense. How do you start the program if it isn't in the startup folder? I didn't put it in the startup folder, but it seems to put itself back there if I don't immediately exit the setup, and the setup pops up every time I restart the system, demanding a new configuration, or at least an Exit. The old icon is still there.

I guess I just don't understand how this works, which makes it difficult to set it up. It also doesn't help that it isn't properly detecting my location (which could change, at every update, when I use my laptop for a trip).

1046
Programming / Re: Desktop Weather
« on: September 02, 2015, 05:48:16 pm »
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I've only added a few of the required OS/2 icons (native OS/2 .ico files) to the weather.dll and it doesn't change them in the script (yet) because of that, so you'll only get the sun as it is now.

Okay, that explains it...

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Anyone who feel like it can create a full set of nice icons (native OS/2 .ico files) can send them to me. ;)

Where do I get the original icons, or do you mean the ones in Weather.zip? PMView should convert them. Those icons don't seem to be used anyway (but that could be caused by the lack of bigicon support).

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The script use some services to try to locate you. The location is often based on the nearest station that your ISP allow that service to spot, so it may be your ISPs headquarters...
OpenWeather also need to have weather information for the area you live in.

It looks like the problem is with openweather. They only seem to know about major airports (although that doesn't explain why, or how, it chose Lethbridge (500 KM, small city, not listed) over Edmonton (25 KM Capital of Alberta, listed - the airport is about 50 KM from here, and it seems to be in a completely different weather area). The ISP is based in Vancouver (different province, on the other side of a couple of mountain ranges), but the Alberta branch is in Edmonton. Other weather services seem to be able to figure it out.

I also need to know what CityID is supposed to be. Currently, it says "(not_defined" with only one bracket. I would also like to know where that information is stored (I hope it is NOT in one of the system INI files - they grow too big without help).

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Ohh, make a copy of bigicons.txt and place it in the bigicons folder in case something happen... like you restart your computer and you have 1+ desktop widget.

I can find no bigicons.txt or bigicons folder, but that could be because I don't use bigicons. I do see a new icon added to the desktop at every program restart. The new icon is always in the upper left corner, partly off screen, which causes a scroll bar to appear (including when it updates, if I don't move it). If I accidentally click the scroll bar, it moves all of my icons to the right. It also always goes through the setup, even though the data is obviously stored somewhere.

Thanks...

1047
Programming / Re: Desktop Weather
« on: September 02, 2015, 05:36:27 am »
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I've created a rexx script that should show you the current weather.
It has been designed to be used with PNG Desktop as it update the icon and desktop text to describe the current weather and temperature.

I don't use the PNG desktop (it causes way too many problems), but the script seems to almost work anyway. The location, weather description, and temperature seem to be okay, but the sun icon always shows (even at night).  When I find some time, I may see if I can modify it to use normal OS/2 icons.

The other "problem" that I had, was that the default location selected was 500 KM away from where I live. I was able to use the local coordinates to fix that problem. Is there anything that I can do to determine why it is so far off?

1048
Applications / Re: Firefox 31.8.0 Beta 5 - First Impressions
« on: August 30, 2015, 05:31:47 am »
Version 31.8.0 works correctly.
Moreover, it works above 512 MB, after markup by highmem.exe.

You also need the 106 kernel, as shipped with eCS 2.2.b2, or the system will sometimes crash when you close a program that has DLLs loaded high. In fact, I have been having the odd crash when closing Firefox, even though I have the 106 kernel, from eCS 2.2.b2. I am not 100% sure that I got all of the parts that go with the 106 kernel though. Anybody know what all of the files are?

1049
Applications / Re: Firefox 31.8.0 Beta 5 - First Impressions
« on: August 28, 2015, 05:01:53 pm »
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Yumie should be extended further to address the problems that every day users face.

Doing that is why Yumie is still not available. Remember that Yumie simply operates YUM, and YUM does not always return intelligent information when it fails, which means that Yumie would need to implement a lot of artificial intelligence to figure out what went wrong. A few of the more common failures are handled, but even then, it seems to be impossible to fix some problems. For example, all of my test systems complain that the RPM database is corrupted, every time I download something. There is really no problem, whatever it is gets properly installed, and all of the suggestions about how to fix the database don't fix the problem (which is probably not a database error anyway). It looks like the only answer is for Yumie to ignore the error, but doing that may miss a legitimate error.

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Please tell me how the script should search the system to determine what should be left and what should be renamed. Feel free to provide functions to take care of whatever has to be taken care of and I'll try to glue it all together.

That is somewhat difficult. There are two major divisions. One is using RPM/YUM (with, or without, Yumie). The second is not using it (and there are many good reasons not to use it, but the main problem can still exist). Then there is a minor division, where a user has eComStation, or not. Less common, is where a user has made their own location to contain all of the RPM supplied DLLs (and that doesn't need to be on the boot drive). So, your script needs to determine if RPM/YUM is actually installed, and USED. Then, it needs to make the YUM stuff the first choice (if it is actually used), accounting for the user preference of the order of @UNIXROOT\usr\local\lib and @UNIXROOT\usr\lib (and they don't need to be on the boot drive). followed by what is in <bootdrive>:\OS2\DLL and <bootdrive>:\eCS\DLL (assuming that a user hasn't moved them around). All duplicates in any of those locations need to be resolved (there should be only ONE, and it should be the latest, but you can't depend on file size, or date, to determine that, and there is no bldlevel information, which should be easy to add, if those who supply the files would just do it. Then, you need to scan the rest of the system (ignoring alternate boot drives), and eliminate anything that is in any of those (call them "master") directories. Of course, you need to ASK the user what to do about duplicates because they may have a reason to keep something (which is okay, as long as they understand the consequences).

I want to emphasize a previous post about uninstalling the RPM/YUM WarpIn installer (using WarpIn), after running the initial YUM INSTALL YUM command. That command actually installs RPM/YUM, using a temporary, very down level, version of RPM/YUM. If you continue to use the "console", you will be using that very down level version, and it doesn't work very well. You need to use the standard command line window, or Yumie (when available) to use the updated stuff.

1050
Applications / Re: Firefox 31.8.0 Beta 5 - First Impressions
« on: August 28, 2015, 05:50:27 am »
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Yumie that Alex Taylor is working on should take care of it all.

I hate to say it, but no, it won't.

Yumie makes using RPM/YUM possible, for the average user. It does not perform miracles. It does not eliminate all extra DLLs that programmers have kindly supplied with their work, which makes it all too easy to have duplicate, down level, copies, and they don't even need to be in LIBPATH to cause problems (remember the '.' dot entry). A quick look at dllCleanOut.cmd indicates that it only checks LIBPATH for duplicates (it appears to do nothing on my systems, but I already took steps to eliminate what I could find). It needs to check the whole file system, but that is complicated because a user may have a second (third...) boot drive, where it may be correct to have duplicate (even down level) files. The user may also have some place where they store those things, and that may be okay (as long as nothing actually uses them). Even starting with a clean eCS 2.2.b2 install, which includes RPM/YUM support, leaves junk behind, that shouldn't be there. Starting to use RPM/YUM after using a system for a while is even more complicated. Yumie also has trouble when YUM screws up (and it does that all too often). Usually, the user will need to do some manual repair when that happens.

Yumie works great, when YUM works, and after a user has cleaned out what shouldn't be there, but it certainly won't take care of it all.

dllCleanOut.cmd seems to be a good start, but I think it needs to go deeper to find all of the duplicates (which are usually down level). Speed of operation is not very important, since it should be a one time run, but it is important to get all of the files (and not take out the ones that a user wants to keep for one reason or another).

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