OS2 World Community Forum

Public Discussions => Off Topic discussions => Topic started by: Mathias on January 09, 2019, 04:51:50 pm

Title: What is this? -- ArcaOS 5.02 kidding me? - What is PlayTime?
Post by: Mathias on January 09, 2019, 04:51:50 pm
Just had a *VERY* odd situation...

Came home.. booted up my ArcaOS machine to check e-mails and then continue to translate..
When I opened the Drive C: icon in tree view, there was only half folders there, that used to be! - Opened the Drive C: view in all the other variations.. no difference...
looked on OS/2 command line with dir /ad ... and there all the directories were listed!

Okay, the directories are there.. maybe there is a filter set, for the graphical user interface... I thought, so I went straight to Drive C: - Properties and checked the "Include" tab.

*** The normal view here is:
Use ____ Attribute ____ Comparisation ____ Value ____ Class
| _______ Flags ______ is less than _______ --H- _____ File System

*** instead I saw:
Use ____ Attribute ____ Comparisation ____ Value ____ Class
| _______ Flags ______ PlayTime ________ :) <-- as graphical smily

After displaying this, the whole machine freezed, and I went CTRL + ALT + DEL --> top
just to find out that everything is normal, no unusual processes.. --> exited from there --> went back to the graphical user interface of ArcaOS
All of sudden the machine did no longer hang, but an error message was displayed "Drive C: is no longer functional" (it meant the directory listing, not the drive itself I suppose) --> I hit the close button...
XWP restarted, and everything is now back to normal:
- the directories and files are displayed normally
- the "include" tab of "Drive C:" properties looks normal now..
- everything as normal again.

WTH?!??
Should I open a ticket at ArcaNoae and send a testlog? --> there is no popuplog.os2 file on C:\
Or is this a known effect?
Should I take pictures next time, before opening a ticket, so the support sees with their own eyes?

Mhmm.. never had anything like this before, so I better ask you guys.. :o
Thanks in advance btw!

In the meanwhile trying to reproduce this..
Title: Re: What is this? -- ArcaOS 5.02 kidding me? - What is PlayTime?
Post by: Martin Iturbide on January 09, 2019, 06:11:20 pm
Hi Mathias.

I never saw that error, like you said it will be great to try to reproduce it and take some screenshots.

Regards
Title: Re: What is this?!?? -- ARCAOS 5.02 kidding me? - What is PlayTime?
Post by: Doug Clark on January 09, 2019, 06:26:40 pm
Mathias,

I had an issue of directories not showing up in the WPS - I think similar to your issue. The solution was to remove the extended attributes from a file. That thread is https://www.os2world.com/forum/index.php/topic,1273.msg11930.html#msg11930

Someone else (Dariusz) had what might be a related issue, which I don't know if he ever got fixed. That thread is https://www.os2world.com/forum/index.php/topic,1479.0.html

On the second thread you will see that Roberto had a similar issue across a network - his solution was to replace the network driver.

You will also see on the second thread that a question arose as to whether the issue was an xWorkplace issue or in the WPS itself. That question is never answered in the thread, but Rich Walsh has a posting on how to disable xWorkplace in order to try an isolate the problem. (If Dariusz reads this perhaps he can give us an update on his WPS/xWorkplace issue.)

As to your general question of has anyone else seen this issue - I don't know about your specific issue, but the WPS is an interesting, complex animal. I strongly suggest archiving your desktop periodically - right click on the desktop, select Properties, and then the Archives tab. I used to archive at every desktop start up but that turned out not to be too smart. You can only store 9 archives and I found myself needing to go back more than 9 to get to a stable archive. So I suggest manually archiving when appropriate - so maybe once a week or when you make major changes.
Title: Re: What is this? -- ArcaOS 5.02 kidding me? - What is PlayTime?
Post by: Doug Bissett on January 09, 2019, 06:40:13 pm
Quote
When I opened the Drive C: icon in tree view, there was only half folders there, that used to be! - Opened the Drive C: view in all the other variations.. no difference...
looked on OS/2 command line with dir /ad ... and there all the directories were listed!

I see that problem, sometimes. It is a very OLD problem (long before eCS existed), that has never been fixed. It can happen immediately after a boot, or it may show up after months of working properly (the usual case). Restarting the WPS usually corrects the problem, for a little while, but re-boot is the only way to get a longer run. I usually clean my INI files, when I see it, and that makes it go away, for a longer period. If you try to open any other drive object, it will show as empty, until you restart the WPS, or reboot.

Quote
Should I open a ticket at ArcaNoae and send a testlog? --> there is no popuplog.os2 file on C:\

There may already be an incident, but, so far, nobody has found a way to consistently reproduce the problem, so it is probably either closed, as not reproduceable (the usual case), not fixable (no source for the WPS), or for lack of feedback. Taking pictures only shows that it happened, it isn't going to help to fix the problem.
Title: Re: What is this? -- ArcaOS 5.02 kidding me? - What is PlayTime?
Post by: roberto on January 09, 2019, 08:45:33 pm
Came home.. booted up my ArcaOS machine to check e-mails and then continue to translate..
When I opened the Drive C: icon in tree view, there was only half folders there, that used to be! - Opened the Drive C: view in all the other variations.. no difference...
looked on OS/2 command line with dir /ad ... and there all the directories were listed!
At this moment an error is detected, if you continue to use the computer after the error, you will increase the possible errors. My advice is to turn off and on again.
What I can tell you is that some teams are more sensitive than others to this problem. Static electricity??
Recently I spend with netflix, that the TV was not connected, call the support, they tell me to turn it off 20 to 30 minutes, disconnecting from the electricity, and remove the equipment connected to the usb. Turn on and all repaired.
By this I mean, if you have an error:
1- no continues
2- a restart in time will remove many problems.
Title: Re: What is this? -- ArcaOS 5.02 kidding me? - What is PlayTime?
Post by: Mathias on January 09, 2019, 09:05:25 pm
Thank you for the answers!! Very interesting!
Never had this before... but I used to only have OS/2 Warp 3 on HPFS.

When you say this issue were there already way before ECS, could this have started with Warp 4.x and JFS?

Only asking this, because when I had finished writing the above text, I shut down the ArcaOS 5.02 machine (JFS as system partition), there is the usual dialog on the lower left of the screen, showing the status of dismounting etc..
When that dialog appeared, it was there unusually long, showing an exception unmounting the JFS partition, it tried again, and worked out then!

Reboot ArcaOS 5.02 again, it went through the usual boot sequence, said drive C: filesystem okay, went on, until after the FAT32 driver... and then hung up before graphical mode started!
Pushed the reset button after a long while (since nothing was happening) resulted in chkdsk on the next boot for C:.
But chkdsk found no errors... then everything loaded just fine and was like before.

So, I suppose in my case it could have to do with an inconsistency with the JFS-filesystem.
Another thing, that brings me to that thought is, that I had transferred a file via linux mount to the very same JFS partition of ArcaOS. (had lspci > myfile) to send Lewis an overview over my hardware to debug a problem with smartmontools)
But since then I had rebooted the ArcaOS machine atleast two or three times without noticing any problems.

So.. could have to do with this, but that`s not proven yet. I will try on, and then supply screenies if it happens again!
Title: Re: What is this? -- ArcaOS 5.02 kidding me? - What is PlayTime?
Post by: Dave Yeo on January 09, 2019, 09:11:19 pm
You might want to boot to a maintenance partition or the system management thing in the ArcaOS installer and run chkdsk c: /f on the drive.
Title: Re: What is this? -- ArcaOS 5.02 kidding me? - What is PlayTime?
Post by: Doug Bissett on January 09, 2019, 09:16:30 pm
Quote
Static electricity??

While static electricity may cause intermittent problems, the symptoms are rarely the same every time, or what somebody else sees. It takes a pretty good spark, to affect a properly grounded computer.

Quote
they tell me to turn it off 20 to 30 minutes,

While that may actually help, anything more than about 1 minute is a feeble attempt to put the problem off, until the next shift comes in. If the next shift know what was said, they will just tell you to turn it off over night, so it comes back to the guy who tried to put it off.

Quote
1- no continues

This is good, if you are working on something important, but not good, if you are attempting to find out what caused the problem. In this case (when I have seen it), it is usually possible to finish what you are doing (or save it), then address the problem (reboot, or WPS restart), before continuing.

Quote
2- a restart in time will remove many problems.

It is actually more likely, that whatever you turn off got reset properly, or it cooled down enough to work for a while. The reset will happen in less than 1 minute. Cooling down can take longer, but the problem will be back when it gets hot again. A "restart in time" is effectively a reboot, and most of the time, it will fix a problem, until it comes back again. If 1 minute doesn't do it, there is something else wrong.

Quote
You might want to boot to a maintenance partition or the system management thing in the ArcaOS installer and run chkdsk c: /f on the drive.

In this case, it won't help.
Title: Re: What is this? -- ArcaOS 5.02 kidding me? - What is PlayTime?
Post by: Pete on January 09, 2019, 09:28:48 pm
Hi Mathias

I have seen similar problems with hardware failures.

In 1 instance a SATA power lead had become partially disconnected - I had probably knocked it when closing the case a little earlier - and removing and reinserting the lead resolved the issue.

Another instance was caused by a failing power supply which was resolved by replacing the power supply.

A common problem for systems using a standard fan/heatsink for cpu cooling is that the fan and heatsink can get clogged with dust which causes the cpu to gradually overheat resulting is strange things happening onscreen. Cleaning fan and heatsink - or replacing them - resolves various system problems. Case fans also benefit from a cleanup from time to time.


Regards

Pete
Title: Re: What is this? -- ArcaOS 5.02 kidding me? - What is PlayTime?
Post by: Mathias on January 09, 2019, 10:39:30 pm
Dave, I will definitely try this out! Thanks! : )

Pete, thanks for your hints also. I am sure though, the machine is, hardware-wise, fine. Should be a software issue indeed. For the history of what has been done before with the computer, it`s likely that the file system may have been corrupted, leading to this weird issue.

Interesting though, why does the attribute dialog says ¨PlayTime¨ with a smily (see upmost (first) post)...
Title: Re: What is this? -- ArcaOS 5.02 kidding me? - What is PlayTime?
Post by: Sean Casey on January 09, 2019, 11:14:43 pm
All the posts provide good information.  A hardware fault would be my first guess.

I suspect many are running OS/2 on older machines.  It could be something as simple as needing to reapply thermal compound on the CPU, which has a limited life of about 4 years (or less).  I proactively change my power supplies at about 5 years.  You might consider reading the SMART data from your storage device to identify any errors, run memtest overnight to test your RAM, and run MPrime's torture test (Option #15) to see if you can generate any errors.  Turn off all unused mobo features in your BIOS. I normally would recommend to make sure you're current on available device drivers, but this is OS/2 :-) 
Title: Re: What is this? -- ArcaOS 5.02 kidding me? - What is PlayTime?
Post by: Sean Casey on January 09, 2019, 11:25:23 pm
DaveI am sure though, the machine is, hardware-wise, fine.

I took too long to post and didn't see your updated post.  If a software issue, hopefully it was a fluke and the last time you see it. 

If you're not using JFS, you might consider changing over to it.  JFS is extremely robust having been used on midrange AIX systems for many years and is great at recovering from unclean reboots/remounts.
Title: Re: What is this? -- ArcaOS 5.02 kidding me? - What is PlayTime?
Post by: Doug Bissett on January 10, 2019, 03:55:45 am
Quote
Interesting though, why does the attribute dialog says ¨PlayTime¨ with a smily (see upmost (first) post)...

It is not impossible, that some virus activity modified something that caused that. It was probably not in OS/2, but even that isn't impossible. If you see that every time, it may be interesting to use DFSEE to capture it, and see if JvW can tell what happened. You would need a subscription to DFSEE.
Title: Re: What is this? -- ArcaOS 5.02 kidding me? - What is PlayTime?
Post by: Mathias on January 10, 2019, 10:10:05 am
Sean, this is indeed quite an old machine, Athlon X2.. I suppose atleast 10 years old. It's one of the software test PCs at home. And indeed, the compound hasn't been changed for atleast 2 years, but the overheat sensor did not indicate. I'll have a look into BIOS (yes, good old BIOS, no EFI yet) to check out temperatures.

PSU.. good question. This is still the first power supply in that machine, so it's ~10 years old, nicely maintained though. It's got a new fan (1 year old) and it's clean inside. - And ontop it does not need to deliver that much power. With ArcaOS (or OS/2) It's an office machine that requires ~80 Watts at max.
I'm sure after all this time, it will not deliver the full 500 Watts peak power anymore, but should be plenty to run an office machine. ; )

I highly doubt it's the PSU, but I can check this out too: BIOS shows the lanes and which voltage is on what.

SMART data actually looking brilliant. As part of software testing for ArcaOS, I've tried the latest smartmontools, showing that the hard drive is very young and has no issues, temperature is fine also.


Sean> Run MPrime's torture test (Option #15) to see if you can generate any errors.

Uff, that is hard to do, as this test machine only has ArcaOS 5.02EN. I cannot dualboot to anything that can run "the usual stuff", besides memtest..

=---> I will check the hardware today, including memtest, after returning home, to exclude the hardware from the list of culprits.. ; )


Sean> If you're not using JFS, you might consider changing over to it.  JFS is extremely robust having been used on midrange AIX systems for many years and is great at recovering from unclean reboots/remounts.

Nope, running JFS on all ArcaOS installations. My Warp 3 though has HPFS.

____________________________________________


DougB> It is not impossible, that some virus activity modified something that caused that. It was probably not in OS/2, but even that isn't impossible.

Let me think, on this machine I've done the following things last time:
01) tried out smartmontools 7.0 beta from the ArcaNoae subscription repository
02) booted Gentoo Linux from a stick, mounted the ArcaOS-root partition "drive C:", CD'ed into /mnt/aos/install, ran "lspci > hwlist.txt", CD'ed back to /, entered "umount /mnt/aos", entered "init 6" (rebooted), removed the stick when the machine was showing POST again --> booted from C: "ArcaOS" as usual
03) continued work as normal, opened firefox to report my test results to Lewis, sent him the hwlist.txt from C:\Install, deleted C:\install\hwlist.txt via ArcaOS GUI
04) doing some translations (still everything normal, all files and directories displayed)
05) shut down the ArcaOS machine in the usual way, no exceptions, nothing unusual
06) next day turned on, some reading in the forums, translations going on, nothing unusual
07) like 6
08) yesterday turned on.. nothing special on boot or the GUI
09) opened up firefox 45.x (experimental release) to read forum entries, look around on amazon
10) opened thunderbird (current stable release) to read and answer mails
11) finished all the above and wanted to access C:\Entwicklung (Development folder for translations and to compile stuff), but it was not displayed in the ArcaOS GUI anymore, alongside some other directories that usually were there..
12) checked some other views, just to find out, the files and directories were missing there also
13) checked the OS/2 prompt --> everything is there, as usual! --> phew... ; )
14) checked the output of "ls -la C:\" to see if I might be missing the access rights to read the directories, but naw.. everything on 777 (oh yeah xD)
15) opened up properties of "Drive C:" to check the "include" tab, just to find this werid "Playtime" output, and a graphical smily, where usually the attributes would be. --> VERY odd
16) machine freezed right away (mouse was movable, but could not click anything, or ALT+TAB to any other window)
17) did CTRL + ALT + DEL in the hope it will either cleanly shut down the file system or allow me to use top
18) the text menu showed up, I chose to start top, just to see if there were any odd processes running --> none, just the usual stuff (so IF there have been modifications to the files, the binary that caused the modifications were not running anymore)
19) left top again and returned to desktop
20) after a short black screen the desktop was shown again, greeting me with an error message "Drive C:" (the window showing the contents of C:\) has crashed --> I clicked the "close" button
21) the whole XWP was gone all of sudden, showing only the desktop background image and the usual icons --> after another short while, XWP came back and looked normal again.
22) checked "Drive C:" button again in Tree Mode, just to find out, it's all back again
23) checked the "Drive C:" properties --> "include" tab --> everything as it was and should be: "display anything that has no hidden flag", no weird smilies and PlayTime anymore..
24) fired up Firefox 45.x (experimental release from ArcaOS EXP repository) to open up this thread
25) closed everything and restarted ArcaOS like usual via button --> selected normal restart --> Click on the "OK" button
26) the status box on the lower left bottom displaying messages about the shutdown, like usual, but at one point it tried to umount the root partition "C:", showing "Exception unmounting C:" --> then it tried again, and it worked out.
27) passing POST again, ArcaOS booted up, passed chkdsk (as no dirty bit was set, as it seems), passed all the driver outputs, and between the last driver and the start of the ArcaOS GUI, the machine hung up (forever.. and I needed to push the reset button)
28) booting again, dirty bit was set, so chkdsk was ran this time --> found everything to be okay, passed the drivers, and finally loaded the ArcaOS GUI again.
29) checked "Drive C:" and its properties, but everyhting was normal
30) tried to reproduce from step 8 to 11, but could not get back the "Playtime" effect.

And from then on everything was normal again. No oddities anymore.

=--> I will boot Linux from stick again, mount the ArcaOS volume again, like back then, etcetc.. to try if this acually is a file system error, resulting from writing to that partition from outside of ArcaOS.


For an infection, I see almost no potential.. maybe besides checking e-mail (containing no spam mails though..)
The only unusual thing was the test of smartmontools and the mount and umount of the ArcaOS system partition (JFS) under Gentoo Linux, which might have damaged the file system... but then again, the effect should have happened way earlier. This was days ago, and I used the machine in the meanwhile.


DougB> If you see that every time, it may be interesting to use DFSEE to capture it, and see if JvW can tell what happened. You would need a subscription to DFSEE.

Hmm.. I'd say, I'll have an eye on this, and if "the effect" comes back, we can still consider using DFSee. : ))
Title: Re: What is this? -- ArcaOS 5.02 kidding me? - What is PlayTime?
Post by: Andreas Schnellbacher on January 10, 2019, 12:36:43 pm
I haven't read the entire thread. It looks to me as if EAs got lost. I guess you've already made a chkdsk /f from another partion, as Dave wrote.

To fix this, you should restore from a backup. If you don't have one, you can try to delete EAs of a few files and folders. Note that the WPS needs EAs to work, so don't simply delete all. At first, create a new backup.

The Include setting that you describe is most-likely saved in a folder's .CLASSINFO EA. File objects like files and dirs store such info there. Abstract objects use OS2.INI, I don't remember the ini application anymore.
Title: Re: What is this? -- ArcaOS 5.02 kidding me? - What is PlayTime?
Post by: Mathias on January 10, 2019, 05:45:49 pm
re,

just checked...
- chkdsk /f on cmd.exe in the ArcaNoae Maintenance Shell --> no errors found
- BIOS for temperatures and voltages --> both OK
- if I can reproduce by repeating the mount of the ArcaOS root partition under linux, created a file, wrote data in it, umounted, rebooted, had a look on "Drive C:" and it's properties dialog --> Tab "Include" --> no problems at all, everything normal

So.. I cannot reproduce. : /
I'll run a memtest later on, overnight.

____________________________

Andreas> It looks to me as if EAs got lost.

I've read about EAs in the chkdsk translation table, but not sure what this is. Are these temporary files on the partition, to store stuff about each directory?


Andreas>[..] you can try to delete EAs of a few files and folders

How do I do this? Do I need special tools for this?


Andreas>The Include setting that you describe is most-likely saved in a folder's .CLASSINFO EA. File objects like files and dirs store such info there.

How can I see these files? Are they indeed stored in each directory? Do I need to mount this JFS partition in another non-OS/2ish operating system to see them?
Sorry to ask no0bish questions, but NOT asking would be even more nO0bish.. ; )
Title: Re: What is this? -- ArcaOS 5.02 kidding me? - What is PlayTime?
Post by: Dave Yeo on January 10, 2019, 06:10:22 pm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_file_attributes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_file_attributes) is a good start.
Personally at this point, I wouldn't worry too much. Probably a bit got flipped, the smiley face was just a coincidence and hopefully it won't happen again. JFS does use Unicode and the smiley is a Unicode character.
Keep an eye on the partition in case any similar errors appear. Hard drives can deteriorate without triggering smart. You can also have things like cosmic rays cause one time errors.
Title: Re: What is this? -- ArcaOS 5.02 kidding me? - What is PlayTime?
Post by: Sean Casey on January 10, 2019, 06:30:43 pm
From what you describe, CPU temp isn't the problem.  As a note, the BIOS often times uses a sensor that has nothing to do with the on-die sensors.  I have had stability issues due to a single core overheating on a large multi core chip.  Using something like lm-sensors while loading all cores with mprime is good way to read the temps across each core to detect how evenly each is getting cooled.  A large difference in temps would have me reapplying compound.

Booting from a Linux live CD will give you access to a variety of utilities for testing.

I can be pretty lazy and would wait for the problem to happen again before spending the time to diagnose the problem.  It's good there was no file corruption.
Title: Re: What is this? -- ArcaOS 5.02 kidding me? - What is PlayTime?
Post by: Andreas Schnellbacher on January 10, 2019, 07:20:38 pm
Tools for EAs:

I think Rich already wrote a few days ago almost the same in another thread.

1. Henk Kelder's EA Browser (EABROWSE.EXE, file selection is a bit cumbersome)
2. FM/2's EA Viewer (EAS.EXE, can also add and delete)
3. lxLite's noEA.exe (only deletion)
4. XWP's second File properties page of file sytem objects (only viewing)
Title: Re: What is this? -- ArcaOS 5.02 kidding me? - What is PlayTime?
Post by: Mathias on January 10, 2019, 10:27:21 pm
Good news: Memtest went fine and without errors.

Dave, okay, the smily could be an unicode character, but how about the string ¨PlayTime¨ instead of the other string, that is usually there?
But I do agree, I will keep an eye on the partition, and monitor its condition, also the running tasks, config.sys and co.

I might also try out some of the tools, that Andreas has posted.. but that maybe in a virtual machine, to practice the usage of these tools.. : )

Thanks to you all, for your great ideas!! \o/
When there is something new, I will keep you posted here.
Title: Re: What is this? -- ArcaOS 5.02 kidding me? - What is PlayTime?
Post by: Pete on January 11, 2019, 02:28:56 am
Hi

Just wondering if ¨PlayTime¨ could be metadata from a media file that has somehow been transposed to the C: drive - maybe during a drive glitch.


Regards

Pete
Title: Re: What is this? -- ArcaOS 5.02 kidding me? - What is PlayTime?
Post by: roberto on January 11, 2019, 04:25:32 pm
I am not sure that this procedure can help you in your problem, but as it is very simple
I would tell you to try it.
This procedure is valid to solve graphical problems, in the manhjon, true spectra,
and virtualbox (refresh the screen)

Select the xcenter properties, and in the *view* windows, you remove the *Open xcenter automatically* mark.
Close the xcenter
Restart the system.

When you show the desktop, you start the FREEMEM.exe application, wait 30 seconds, close it if you want,
this is not necessary.

Everything is ready.

The xcenter should not be opened, if you want another application similar to the xcenter,
 you can use the SB2_TWS.exe
I attached the links you may need:
Fremem.exe:
https://archive.org/download/OS2PresentationManagerProgrammingCharlesPetzold_201703/PMOS2-Ziff.zip
SBr2:
http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/download/pub/os2/util/wps/sbr2_023.zip