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Messages - Roderick Klein

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556
Applications / Re: USBLib (USBCalls, USBResmg, USBJoy) license?
« on: June 12, 2015, 05:18:37 pm »
Would it not make sense to see if Netlabs can host the sources as thats where they have been for the last decade or so. As far as I can tell from the timeline thats where all developers who work on the code check it in.

Roderick

557
Applications / Re: USBLib (USBCalls, USBResmg, USBJoy) license?
« on: June 11, 2015, 12:36:10 am »
I send you the developer his email address privately...

As I do not want to post it public.


Roderick

558
Applications / Re: SOME steps to write device drivers...
« on: June 11, 2015, 12:07:18 am »
Replying to my own post... :-)

If you wanne write a driver that talks to hardware you need to read the specifications. From what I have seen reading specs of chips in in my opinion in trade in itself.

If you can not find specs from the manufactor its down to seeing what the Linux folks did ot another platform.  This last thing is maybe also not the easiest in call cases as you need to read kernel sources of a different platform.

I can not comment on the driver libraries I linked to from David, as I said I need to make time to put the Warpsrtock Europe 2015 presenations online.. Its down to reading the redbooks from IBM how to use the kernel debugger. What I have always seen is writing a driver is not maybe the most difficult thing. But I know developers that rather stick with applications then drivers and visa versa.

The real crunch begins when you have to turn a driver in a quality code. The last 20% of labour which takes most of the time is hunting down the bugs and fixing them in a proper way.

I think thats all I could write with my more then 10 years of assisting developers with debugging device drivers for OS/2.

559
Sorry for the sharp edges on my comment. I just did a pretty extensive posting and some updates how to write device drivers for OS/2. I finaly after Warpstock during my vacation some spare time to sit down. What David Yeo pointed out was in this thread.

http://www.os2world.com/forum/index.php/topic,762.msg7147.html#msg7147
I thought you wanted to release the drivers to the genereal public.  At least that is how I think David also read it.
We are not against plans but you want to discuss them in public I guess for a reason.

Sorry for the sharp edges on my comments in your direction.  Sometimes I am to blund and other cases I use the English language incorrect. Years ago I wrote to somebody " I want to have a little chat with you". I meant that as in Dutch, discuss something briefly. But in proper English it means you wanne say somebody the truth! Anyway my spoken English is a whole lot better then my wirtten English as I make sometimes also my sentences "Dutch-English". 

560
Applications / SOME steps to write device drivers...
« on: June 10, 2015, 11:04:25 pm »
I keep claiming writing device drivers takes a certain level of skillset. If you wanne write device drivers.

You could look at the eCS CD 2 as there is a kit on it how to write device drivers (presentation from Daniela).
It also has a ZIP file with some examples. It has been on eCS CD #2 since version 12 of eCS I think.

The other thing are these libraries David. He has had them around for some time and they have been on his website.
I hope next week when I get back from vacation I can get the presentations online on the website and the video's on youtube. Then you guys can see how these libraries should make writing device drivers easier.

http://88watts.net/software.html

You do however need a DDK. As the DDK contains some libraries and a lot of header files.
I need to get David his presentations online so people can see what he said. But from what I remember of David his presentayion it should make live _easier_.  As these libraries provide a basic skeleton to write drivers.

Using device driver samples from the DDK should be done with caution. I do not know if the last version of the DDK released has for example this issue fixed. SiS and VIA released OS/2 drivers for some of its NIC chipsets.
From what I remember they would crash because they had some ISA code in it claim PCI IRQ"s via the resource manager exclusively. Sadly SiS or VIA never fixed this issue.

Writing device drivers is not maybe that difficult. What can become difficult is when a device driver causes a kernel crash. Tracing that can be a pretty time consuming job. I did plenty of does things at Mensys and some jobs took more then 40 to 60 hours to trace back (even with in my opinion very skilled develoeprs). It especialy becomes difficult when a driver for example corrupts memory and you need trace back what corrupted the memory.  Finding it and fixing it can be very time consuming job.

A lot of these problems can be prevented by commenting code properly and checking in changes into SVN frequently. So you can trace back when you introduced the defect. It takes longer, but pays itself back in gold when you run into trouble. Frequent checkings I have even seen paid developers not do this very often. Finding the broken code then only takes longer as you made more changes between the working and none working code set.

I have had it with severeal people and 1 company I hired at Mensys where dispite putting in the contract frequent checkins where required. They did not check in the code for months.  It took 3 project managers 2 developers after 9 months they gave up on a trap in a driver. One of the well known developers in the community traced it down and fixed it about 45 minutes....

The thing where the skillset comes in is to understand what you are doing. I have at Mensys for years try to help a lot of people to write device drivers. But seing how many people got stuck. Its certainly from what I have seen is easier to write applications then drivers. As when a driver takes down the system you are down to memory dumps or kernel debugging in some cases...

Some tools that can help and tools you have been online here for many years:
http://www.warpcave.com/
(Page of Steve Levine).

And even when you stick to these rules it can still be extremely time confusing to trace bug. In my opinion learning how to use the OS/2 kernel debugger is not learned in a few days...

And if you do release drivers a developer. But bldevels in the driver (that can be read with bldlevel.exe command). Do not be depended on date and time stamp of the driver. So that every public release can linked to the code in SVN.

Also release your driver with a so called SYM file. That makes tracing bugs for other developers eaiser.
I do not know how you create such a file but its easier for other developers if you have a SYM file to trace code in memory dump or kernel debugger. As you will see function names etc... I hope I explained this last bit correctly...

Roderick Klein
President OS/2 VOICE


561
Applications / Re: USBLib (USBCalls, USBResmg, USBJoy) license?
« on: June 10, 2015, 10:45:22 pm »
Its ages ago but when I worked at Mensys some discussion took place at one of the Warpstocks.

I can not answer your question what license USBRESMG.SYS is under.  But the fact it says copyright IBM, is weird.
Looking at how old the driver is, you could only _guess_ it was derived from the DDK. I can not realy think of another souce.  Wha did IBM Employee written software fall under if it was a device driver ?
I do not know if the orginal author can be contacted to clarify ?

I do see in the timeline the usbresmg.sys in the none public browseable version of SVN.
http://trac.netlabs.org/usb/timeline
So is it DDK license ?!

I could not find in the OS/2 github link to these sources ? How does the copyright header ? Its just says (c) IBM ?
Its weird as IBM would not release source with such headers ?

Do USBCALLS and USBRESMG.SYS have the same license ?

Roderick
(I rewrote the message to make it easier readable)

562
Oke here is a suggestion how you could maybe look if its worthwhile to compile the drivers.

Its a bit if work but if you take all the readme files of all fixpaks from Warp 4 and MCP you might be able to make some list of what fixes where made.

For the person that has a DDK, based on what ever time stamp information you can then see (I do not know how hard it would be), how many potential bugs the new drivers could contain.

Look the idea is nice but compiiling the drivers and releasing them. If you could list the *potential* defects you possibly get that fixed by working on that code that is in the DDK.

Thats why I asked why you select these drivers ? Its a free world. I just have not seen many defects in these drivers that you mention over the years.  But thats just my 1 cent.

563
Roderick, just move the next thread and ignore me if you don't like or support the idea.

Roderick, I'm not saying that IBM DDK can be open source, I'm saying that binaries created with DDK code can be freeeware.

It seems to be a status quo on driver development on the platform that when I ask something related to the IBM DDK, everybody wants to shut me up. I only suggested to built a driver for an experimental use, that's all, but it seems Taboo to a lot of people.

What is going on? Is driver development a secret mystery that is only for the "chosen one" ? Please if you don't support this move to the next thread.

I still need to know if there is interest on someone to built a freeware release of "screen01, kbdbase, clock01, print01".

Regards

You are totaly taking what I say out of content. I am just giving you pretty sound technicall advise as to why these old free drivers would not be usefull to the average users.  You can BTW already get updated screen01.sys from SNAP. The last 10 years it needed no updates.

The question is do you have a list of issue's WHAT needs to be fixed on screen01.sys, kbdase, clock01, print01 ?

As I said we have more problems with unsupported hardware then we have in these drivers. It clearly seems almost as a shot in the dark trying to update this old DDK. As I said why not have other people work on Mutlimac to get more NIC drivers ?

Its just a completely bizar priority from my point of view... There is nobody that wants to shut you down. I am just giving some advise and asking some questions to which no serious answer comes back to in my opinion.


Getting more NIC drivers out for OS/2 will most likely do more for OS/2 then fixing these drivers you mentioned.
Look with all my years of work at Mensys it where these drivers you mentioned that actualy gave the least of trouble, or better put no trouble...

Roderick

564
Hello Martin,

Right now I can not find your posting back reggarding your question about the DDK license.
I did recently ask Steve Levine about the DDK and from he can remember there are no less stricter DDK licenses.
In other words the DDK to his knowlegde never contained language that would allow you to open source the DDK.

If that would have been in the DDK license Timur Tabi would have tried that at the end of the nighties when he still worked IBM. But since it was not possible Timur started the never finished open DDK project.

And yes when you get to hear you are opening a can of worms and you get such a comment for Lars, take it for granted. I consider getting new drivers out from the DDK does not benefit anybody.

It would waste the limited developer resources we have and indeed what I remember the DDK a lot of code is pretty old. So you would bring new binaries in roulation that end users would have to test as developers mostly do not have access to a lot of equipment... And yes you would run the risk with the old DDK code to break things.
From what I remember some of the code is from still from 1992 and 1994.

You know I admire your effort to get things open source but I consider the this discussion not very usefull.
Infact far from...

I think the community is much more in need of new drivers for hardware. The isuee's are certainly not with the drivers you mention! The USB drivers are also hardware related.

I think time would be better spent if people would have looked for example at Multimac.
So far most of the core work done on the mayor open source drivers was done by Steve Levine and David Azariwicz.
And not many other people.

Screen01.sys did not need updating for years. I have never seen screen01 hang on systems since the new ACPI builds from David are around.

If you would look around good you would find updated print01.sys, clock01.sys and kdbbase.sys.
The last driver, why would it need updating.

Again if you want to update these drivers have a reason to. Not just create compiled drivers if the current binaries have not been updated for years. Screen01.sys has not been updated since 2004 or 2005. And Panorama works without any updates...

Roderick Klein
President OS/2 VOICE

565
A quick read on http://trac.netlabs.org/multimac#Building reveals:

" The MiniDDK (preferred) or an updated full DDK. You need an IBM DDK license for the DDK or the MiniDDK. If you get build errors or warnings using the full DDK, then your DDK is not up-to-date. If you have a DDK license, you can contact David if you need the MiniDDK. "

Roderick

566
Well when it comes to the FreeBSD based Multimac NIC drivers Arca Noae seems to be moving forward:
http://www.arcanoae.com/new-multimac-driver-package-20150529-released/

A list of supported NIC chipsets can be found here:
https://www.arcanoae.com/wiki/multimac/

Roderick Klein
President OS/2 VOICE

567
By looking at the readme and forum postings here is just my quick take on it.

* Disc controller as long as it has an AHCI controller does not really and should work.

* When it comes to video support get an Intel or Ati chipsets. As on some of does chipsets Panorama can detect the "native resolution" of the screen and you get not to bad performance :-)

* ACPI is pretty stable and works on most systems stable. I have a computer here at home with Linux used by my partner. It just locked up on the ATI driver today (solid hang) and suspend resume with ACPI sometimes. Hangs familiar ?

* USB support is pretty good with the Arca Noae USB stack. And they have USB 3.0 listed as a planned feature.
https://www.arcanoae.com/roadmap/

* Most audio chipsets works but you do not get audio duo to different wiring. David mentioned in his Arca Noae presentation at Warpstock US he would work UNIAUD. But cleaning it up is a big job. So audio chipsets right now is not realy option to mention. And BTW do not recommend people to go back to old versions of UNIAUD. Lot of bugs fixed that prevent hangs and TRAPS.

* NIC chipsets. Arca Noae mentioned they would work on a FreeBSD ethernet and wifi drive support.
https://www.arcanoae.com/roadmap/ Lets see what they have to say at Warpstock.

* Arca Noae put out a press release they entered into a license agreement to get Scitech  SNAP.
My guess is they would hear say more at Warpstock Europe in Munich.


So in terms of hardware support and current hardware seems stuff is on the move...
And you have a pretty broad choice.  The only real trouble seems to be NIC chipsets.

Roderick Klein
President OS/2 VOICE

568
Article Discussions / Re: How to improve the installer of OS/2?
« on: May 24, 2015, 07:27:35 pm »
Quote
A yum/rpm with gui would make live easier.

I agree with that, but even if RPM/YUM will be a success after YUMIE, I still want people to talk/post what they think in a constructive way.

Remember that on the first days people bashed hard on eComStation when it came out, people still wanted to use OS/2 Warp. There was good constructive criticism but also bad personal trolling directed to Bob St. John (which I dislike too).  At the end almost everyone  (in this community) is using eCS now (by necessity?). So maybe it is also a thing of the RPM/YUM maturing with time, being adopted by developers to distribute software and finally user adoption.

Regards

With new things uncertainity for some people may come. But with chance also come new possebilties. If YUM/RPM is perfect I can certainly understand the concerns!  But we need to look at the long haul for OS/2.
And also how other people, less skilled can use the platform.

Roderick Klein
President OS/2 VOICE

569
Article Discussions / Re: How to improve the installer of OS/2?
« on: May 24, 2015, 01:12:20 am »
I think its time the people in the community stop having this negative attitude towards YUM.
It makes no sense. Yeh it has issue's but problems can and should be fixed.

We already discussed this subject and I think we already have listed the good and bad about RPM/YUM. While I'm "sucking it up" with RPM/YUM because it is very good to install dependencies, I really hope that the "YUMIE thing" will be a step forward. But from what I had been told having the option to move away the FHS from the root drive is not on their plan.

Neither of us can say what the community should stop taking about, if it is your opinion is good, but it does not mean that we should stop having a positive or negative attitude towards a software on this platform and be silent about it. A community is just a bunch of people that may have different opinions and I want to keep it a free space for people to talk about this platform.

Regards

Its a free world. But certain discussions thst just revolve around issue's that in todays small community
are if little use to the community. I have heard sometimes so much bashing to RPM.
While most of gcc work is done by a hand full of people.

I think as having worked on the installer at Mensys and have given so many customers until last year (before i left Mensys). I kind of know where the problems are.

That people do not like yum. Thats fine. But so far i have not heard people that complain, work on an alternative! And maybe some of the developrs working on gcc ports have got a reason to use rpm ? Of which a lot of software is provided free of charge!

And maybe its time to consider the grand picture and not just your private hard disc.
As I said people left os/2 partly because of the application update issue.
I know also normal users are out their still using os/2 and they are not as knowledgable on os/2 as some os2world members.
A yum/rpm with gui would make live easier.
 
Roderick


570
Article Discussions / Re: How to improve the installer of OS/2?
« on: May 23, 2015, 09:01:17 pm »
Definitely NOT based on RPM thank you!

For a start it needs to be a two part installer because of the very wide range of hardware that people use.

I would think the first part would use PCI to find out what hardware was available and then give the person installing the opportunity to go with that or to tweak what is found (like excluding components that are known to cause problems).

The second part would give the opportunity to just go ahead and install (dump everything in one very large partition) or to select exactly where different components are to go including making and formatting the necessary partitions.

In other words a very upgraded version of the old IBM installer with additions to allow installing other programs as well.

Also there should be an option to boot into a very simple maintenance desktop on the DVD.
 


I think its time the people in the community stop having this negative attitude towards YUM.
It makes no sense. Yeh it has issue's but problems can and should be fixed.

One thing I can tell is that plenty of people still use OS/2 and eCS. At the last OS/2 user group meeting I bumped into 2 people who had no clue how to update Firefox. While David Yeo (thanks for doing that!), makes WPI avaliable to install the required DLL's. But they simply do not know! They wanted to ditch OS/2 because the web browser does not work.

Does issue's the community should be more concerned about instead of mentioning YUM/RPM is evil does not work. What ever negative feelings people have. Issue's are around to be fixed and resolved.

So if you do not like YUM come up with an alternative and start coding.

The current eCS installer I worked on for years at Mensys is also just house a cards.

What I mean with that is that it uses CID in the background (behind the graphical installer). But realy down below it still runs all off the seperate old IBM installers. Its a real pitty IBM never backported the installer of the power PC to the Intel based OS/2 version. From what I understood it was ONE installer backend for the WHOLE OS.

The intel version has RSPINST, MPTS, PEER, TCPINST, MINSTALL just to name a few. eCS adds on Warpin.

The eCS installer is pretty good and most problems have been taken out.  That said because of the legacy installers from IBM. No central database is around that tells the OS what files are installed.

And updates via the internet that take into account what other packages are needed YUM/RPM only provides so far. So people can wish away YUM/RPM but what can we then use as an aletrnative ?

Roderick Klein
President OS/2 VOICE

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