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Topics - Dariusz Piatkowski

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16
I've stuck to the 9.WarpSans font all these years...but the eyes aren't what they used to be anymore...LOL and on my 1920x1200 24" screen things just started to look fuzzier and fuzzier, so a few months back I switched my WPS Desktop font to 10.WarpSans, which was a relief.

Well, back then I also considered switching the font sizing for the Drive/Folder objects as well, but ultimately it felt like even that small 9 => 10 move was robbing me of too much folder "real estate".

So today I was doing some system maintenance, and just for kicks decided to adjust the few folders I was working on (to the 10 pt size), and man, was that a good move! I honestly could fell the eye-strain ease up significantly...so one might say: the writing is on the wall, font size must go up!!!

Now here is the question: what's the correct way to implement a single change that will cascade to all the Folder objects?

I'm thinking that changing a Drive object View settings might do that, but I haven't even tried this. What complicates things a tad is that vast majority of my Drive/Folder interface is through the XWP's Xview configuration, and it does not appear that the changes to the PARENT folder propagate downward to the CHILD folders.

So I'm curious: is that different when it comes to the DRIVE objects itself?

My next step is to literally try this out, but that potentially being such a system-wide change I figured I'd ask here first.

As always, appreciate any feedback/insights on this!

Thanks!

17
Web applications / Our FF and Sync, anyone tried it?
« on: November 23, 2022, 04:43:47 pm »
Our FF has been a great browser for some time, but here at least it's finally starting to show it's age and given that some of the key sites I use (banking, etc.) are now problematic I'm looking for alternative solutions.

Until a replacement browser is up and running, and i'm talking as in PRODUCTION ready stuff, I will continue to rely on Win hosted FF that's accessible through RDP.

OK, so that works here just fine, but now I need to figure out how best to sync-up all my information: bookmarks, ID/PASS combos, etc.

So I've done a little reading on the Mozilla FF Sync process, the logic, security implementation, etc. Seems like a viable alternative to manually attempting to keep all this synchronized across multiple devices...however, none of it will mean anything if our OS/2 FF Sync functionality is so badly out of date that it's practially unusable.

Therefore, I'm curious if anyone has tried this? Does it flat-out "work", or are there some glitches?

Next step here will be to set up some test accounts and FF profiles to give this a whirl...but I figured I might as well get a little smarter on what this means for us.

Thanks!

18
Hardware / Printer - last page of print job missing...ugh?
« on: November 10, 2022, 04:34:20 am »
So this is an entirely new occurrence: the Financial Market Overview/Commentary articles that my bank publishes all of a sudden - when printed by GSView - are always dropping the last page...as in: it does NOT print! Neither does attempting to print just that SINGLE page. Printer's "receiving data" LED flashes, but nothing ever prints.

Printer in question is my Brother HL-5470DW, PostScript, I'm using the current drivers that have been adjusted with a custom PPD (to use all printer functions). Regardless, these articles have been printed numerous times before and never had this issue. Granted, they were the past articles so maybe the Bank changed something which is generating the PDFs themselves, I simply cannot tell.

Other apps seem to print fine, other PDFs, etc...but I find this really weird. I've attached a sample of such a PDF...is anyone else having a problem printing it?

No printer/GSview/system changes have occurred recently, as far as I know anyways!!!

All ears here...any ideas what to look for/at in order to debug this further?

19
Setup & Installation / MARKEXE vs EXECMODE - differences?
« on: October 15, 2022, 05:47:06 pm »
Hi everyone,

I've had a persistent problem with some apps putting a complete soft-lock of my machine. This normally happens during application start-up, but occasionally it would also happen throughout execution. I know, it sounds weird, but it's absolutely consistent and in appears to be related to an underlying component DLL, although I'm still working through pegging that detail.

Anyways, so to avoid that dreaded outcome I found that the best way to deal with this problem is to start up the "offending" app with all CPU cores but core_0 disabled. I do this with the handy setproc utiility.

Alright...but doing this manually is a PITA, so I have a quick SMPOFF/ON wrapper *.cmd template that I have been using for such apps.

However, it would seem to me that perhaps flagging to offending EXE as SMP-unsafe would provide a better result. Well, I tried this but with rather bleak results, or to be more precise, no results. The lock still occurs, and maybe it's because it's a DLL issue as opposed to the main EXE (therefore parent vs child execution path issue).

But...if my understanding of how these two utilities control the SMP flags is incorrect, well, that may have a key bearing on what I'm seeing.

They both enable you to flag a particular EXE as MPU unsafe, and yet for exmaple flagging a sample EXE with execmode doesn't seem to show the correct status when querying it up in markexe, so what gives?

I've got some examples here to illustarte this, but for starters I'm looking for a general understanding of what's different in terms of how these two utilities mark a EXE?

20
Programming / RUX function failure - but on multiple tries only...
« on: September 29, 2022, 03:00:21 am »
Umm...I'm scratching my head here because I wrote this script a couple of years ago and it has been rock-solid.

The purpose is to check the connectivity between my box and the NAS, which sometimes just flat-out "goes away". Re-starting the NetDrive control fixes it.

Alright, so here is what I call:

Code: [Select]
...
/* check ifthe RXU - RXU.DLL - is required */
   IF rxu_api_required = 1 THEN DO
      /* check if the DLL is already loaded */
      rxu_api = RxFuncQuery('rxuinit')
      msg_text="RXU: already in memory, RC="||rxu_api
      IF rxu_api <> 0 THEN DO
         CALL RxFuncAdd 'rxuinit','RXU','rxuinit'
         CALL rxuinit
         msg_text="RXU: loaded into memory, RC="||rxu_api
         END
      CALL debug debug_flag calling_code msg_level msg_text
     
      /* RXU version API returns a WHOLE bunch of stuff, so parse it first */
      rxu_api_info=rxuquery()
      msg_text=substr(rxu_api_info,pos(',',rxu_api_info,1)+2,pos(',',rxu_api_info,1))
      msg_text="RXU: Using version "||msg_text
      CALL debug debug_flag calling_code msg_level msg_text
      END
...

This normally gives me the following output:

Quote
DEBUG : MAIN => Initializing...
DEBUG :    ==> library_load => Initializing...
DEBUG :    ==> library_load => RXU: loaded into memory, RC=1
DEBUG :    ==> library_load => RXU: Using version v1.a
DEBUG :    ==> library_load => RXUTILEX: loaded into memory, RC=1
DEBUG :    ==> library_load => RXUTILEX: Using version 0.1.6
DEBUG :    ==> library_load => Exiting...
DEBUG : MAIN =>

During the first run I'm all good, no problems.

However, re-runing the 2nd time and aftewards causes this CLI error msg to be produced:

Quote
   282 +++         rxu_api_info = rxuquery();
REX0043: Error 43 running G:\UTIL\MISC\nas_check.cmd, line 282: Routine not
found

...and produces the following matching LOG:

Quote
DEBUG : MAIN => Initializing...
DEBUG :    ==> library_load => Initializing...
DEBUG :    ==> library_load => RXU: already in memory, RC=0
   282 +++         rxu_api_info = rxuquery();
REX0043: Error 43 running G:\UTIL\MISC\nas_check.cmd, line 282: Routine not
found
    76 +++   Call library_load;

The weird part is that this seems to have literally just started on Sep-26th...prior to that I never saw any such failures...ugghhh???

Is there anything obviously wrong that i'm doing here?

BTW - in my code I check to see if I need a particular REXX DLL, if YES, I load it and then un-load it when my script has completed running.

21
Storage / JFS - cache MIN and MAX buffer parameters
« on: September 22, 2022, 08:19:00 pm »
Can anyone explain, or has the knowledge of, the use of these parameters by the JFS drivers?

Allow me to explain: I do of course understand at high level what these control, specifically I have the following entry in my CONFIG.SYS:

CALL=G:\OS2\CMD.EXE /Q /C G:\OS2\CACHEJFS.EXE /LW:32,128,8 /MINBUFFER:16000 /MAXBUFFER:32000

...however, as I continue to gather JFS runtime stats I haven't quite figured out what is the impact of the MAXBUFFER parameter in particular.

What I am trying to determine is how the BUFFERs are being allocated and how the MAX setting in particular impacts the availability of either the content or i-node metadata buffers.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

22
Folks!

Just a quick FYI, I'm seeing a trap in SCANIMAGE.EXE following the deployment of libusb1 1.0.24 RPM package.

My scanner is USB attached, latest AOS drivers and was previously successfully using 1.0.21-2 release.

I went ahead and opened a NEW Issue https://github.com/bitwiseworks/libusb1-os2/issues/4, but great GitHub functionality prevents you for actually uploading any LOG files...LOL!!!

Anyways, if you're seeing strange results/traps be aware.

23
Mail-News / PMMail and filters - this one is not working...why?
« on: June 10, 2022, 10:40:00 pm »
So my very, very old email address has gone through cycles of SPAM...but this latest hit is a prolonged one and so I've decided to cook up some extra filters to deal with that challenge.

Luckily for me the vast majority of SPAM email addresses end with a couple of string patters. Here is an example of an email HEADER:

Code: [Select]
...
Date: Fri, 10 Jun 2022 16:04:45 -0400
From: Beth Buttler <beth_buttler@bunsonlinesz.click>
To:   <BLOCKED_FOR_MY_SANITY>
Subject: Your Home Depot Verification No.  #3232007
...

You will noticed the from email address ends with ".click", I am also getting a pile of ".xyz" as well, easy enough to spot!

So to deal with this I figured that I'd just "beef up" my existing filters by adding the following;

Code: [Select]
(h.fromid.-z = "click" | h.fromid.-z = "xyz")

...alas, this does NOT work, and I cannot figure out why???

That filter is supposed to tell PMMail to simply look for a "*click" or "*xyz" in the actual email address field itself.

So I'm curious, is anything jumping out at anyone here?

Thanks!

24
Programming / Ghostscript - 9.18 build, any advice?
« on: February 09, 2022, 02:47:24 am »
 ;)

Alright, so my help ticket hasn't resulted in an answer from the official BWW channel: it sounds like Silvan is alone/himself handling these, and since it's a volunteer effort I best make plans for an alternative approach to debugging my "Failed to print with GS 9.18". Just our reality I think, no fault of his.

Soo....I downloaded BWW's GS codebase, deployed locally, I have studied the source for a couple of days now. Did my share of the official documentation review...I have GCC as well as IBMCPP available here and it looks like the OS2.MAK file can handle either one.

Therefore, before I take the plunge and run with it: any last-minute advice as to what to watch out for???

It's a big app, numerous pieces (display and print devices, etc, etc), but the makefile itself doesn't actually look all that daunting.

Thanks!

25
Applications / GSView and Ghostscript - printing, how?
« on: February 02, 2022, 03:24:14 pm »
We've got a separate discussion (Programming forum => https://www.os2world.com/forum/index.php/topic,2985.msg33707/boardseen.html) on the challenge I've encountered attempting to use GS 9.18 to faciliate printing with GSView.

As I researched this further, and discovered that perhaps some of the printing functionality is a little off in this release (as compared to earlier ones) that made me wonder about how the rest of you are printing documents that may utilize GS for rendering.

Specifically, and most often I suspect, that would apply to PDFs.

In my case, I can use Lucide to print PDFs. Occasionally I run into an issue though and the print job produces an error on the printer itself (the root cause is unknown to me, but it's some kind of a PS stack overflow and my prior investigation suggested this may be a printer driver issue, which as we all know simply isn't going to get fixed, so case closed).

In such cases, I would most often rely on GSView to handle the printing task, and that has been working quite fine with GS9.04, but we are at 9.18 now and GSView with GS9.04 started to show it's age (various rendering errors would show up here and there), and much slower than GS9.18.

Therefore, I am curious how you print from GSView with whatever version of GS?

With GS9.04 I use the 'pswrite' Device and have the 'PostScript Printer' check box marked given that my Brother HL-5470DW is a PS printer.

With GS9.18 I tried using 'ps2write' Device since 'pswrite' has been obsoleted, but the '\\spool\printer_name\' printer identifier no longer appears to print in GS9.18.

Thanks!

26
Programming / GSView - make complains of "No such file or directory"
« on: January 29, 2022, 04:29:49 am »
I decided to take a stab at building an updated version of GSView (because the pswrite device is no longer present in our ghostscript 9.18 release and the latest GSView verison seems to have it hard-coded instead of picking the device name up from the gvpm.ini file and using that).

Anyways...couple of small tweaks to the makefile, but I'm getting stumped by a reference to two other makefiles: one for common objects and the other is a GSView version mak (auto-updates the GSView header that contains the version info).

I've attached the makefile here, and I'm seeing the following error:

Code: [Select]
...
[G:\code\source\os2\gsview-5.0]\usr\bin\make
makefile:85: ".\src\common.mak": No such file or directory
makefile:86: ".\src\gvcver.mak": No such file or directory
makefile:174: *** missing separator (did you mean TAB instead of 8 spaces?).  St
op.
...

which is a result of the following lines in the main makefile:

Code: [Select]
...
#################################################################
# Common

include "$(SRC)common.mak"
include "$(SRC)gvcver.mak"
...

And yet, from a CLI where I am executing make from I can certainly do a "dir" and both of those files are certainly there:

Quote
[G:\code\source\os2\gsview-5.0]dir .\src\*mak

The volume label in drive G is OS2.
The Volume Serial Number is 45B6:75C3.
Directory of G:\code\source\os2\gsview-5.0\src

11-17-07  4:14p         2,409      0 a---  bzlibmsc.mak
 5-28-11 12:21p         5,677      0 a---  common.mak
 1-17-12  9:26p        23,686      0 a---  gvc.mak
 1-28-22 10:21p         1,802      0 a---  gvcver.mak

So what am I tripping over here?

Is this a OS/2 vs Linux path separator issue?

For what it's worth I tried the "/" vs "\" with no difference.

Thanks!

27
Guys!

I've had a pesky problem on my OS/2 box for a while now, that being on Samba connections Lucide takes far too long to open a PDF that's sitting out there on my NAS box. This is not just a Lucide issue, GSView as well as QPDFView show the same behaviour.

We are talking here PDF files that are about 70-150k in size that take 5-10 secs to open up.

To be clear, I am using NetDrive Samba plugin to make this work, and that could certainly be adding, I just can't tell.

What I can see is that as I open a PDF file my TCP/IP monitor shows multiple traffic spikes, they continue (back and forth) until the file is opened up. Now nearly each one of these are spikes are actually larger than the actual PDF file itself, so that's literally flooring me as I can't for the life of me understand what is causing the traffic to happen.

Alright...so how can I troubleshoot this in order to figure out what all that "overhead" is that appears to be moving back and forth?

I've got Wireshark installed, so I could capture the packets as the transactions start...but is there something a little more human-digestable? I'm thinking Samba logging perhaps?

Thanks!

28
Networking / Samba Shares - default CAPS in filenames?
« on: January 22, 2022, 05:35:38 pm »
Hi Everyone,

I've noticed this the other week: it would appear that ALL newly created documents which I am saving on my NAS (therefore using Samba client connection) are using UPPERCASE letters, this is despite the fact that within the application itself I am actualy saving with lowercase, and/or combination of the two.

Has anyone else noticed this?

I recall having a sporadic occurence of this before, but I just attributed that to "human mistake" as I rarely create a lot of NEW documents on my NAS. But recently I have been doing a bit of a re-org and moving some of my OS/2 application specific things to formats that non-OS/2 apps can read and that is how I discovered this issue.

The NAS confirmation has not changes at all and so far I haven't spent much time researching the Samba config side of it, that'll be my next step though. In the meantime I was curious if anyone else has been encountering this behaviour?

Thanks!

29
Applications / LIBC panic errors anyone?
« on: January 09, 2022, 02:18:56 am »
I am running the following LIBC RPM packages:

1) libc.pentium4                            1:0.1.9-1.oc00
2) libc-devel.pentium4                      1:0.1.9-1.oc00
3) libcurl.pentium4                         7.75.0-2.oc00
4) libcx.pentium4                           0.7.2-1.oc00
5) libcx-devel.pentium4                     0.7.2-1.oc00

...and at some point in time (along the upgrade path) I started to notice the following "LIBC PANIC" errors in my trp directory:

Quote
LIBC PANIC!! _um_free_maybe_lock: Tried to free block twice - block=37013a00 lo
...
Call Stack
______________________________________________________________________
   EBP     Address    Module     Obj:Offset    Nearest Public Symbol
 --------  ---------  --------  -------------  -----------------------
 Trap  ->  1FE4B89E   LIBCN0    0001:000FB89E
 0013EAF8  1FE4C0A8   LIBCN0    0001:000FC0A8
 0013EB18  1FDE4B69   LIBCN0    0001:00094B69
 0013EB68  1FDC4D69   LIBCN0    0001:00074D69
 0013EB88  7B395268   XUL       0001:03565268  between js::gc::Arena::finalize + 228 and js::gc::ArenaLists::backgroundFinalize - 3678  (both in Unified_cpp_js_src23.cpp)
 34734D20  344B0538   *Unknown*
 Lost Stack chain - new EBP below previous
...

This one was actually generated by FF following my upgrade to the latest NSPR and NSS runtimes.

However, I've seen this error repeatedly with other applications, such as:

CRON/2:
Quote
LIBC PANIC!! _um_free_maybe_lock: Tried to free block twice - block=20030035 lo
...
 Call Stack
_____________________________________________________________________
   EBP     Address    Module     Obj:Offset    Nearest Public Symbol
 --------  ---------  --------  -------------  -----------------------
 Trap  ->  1FE4B89E   LIBCN0    0001:000FB89E
 0012FF14  1FE4C0A8   LIBCN0    0001:000FC0A8
 0012FF34  1FDE4B69   LIBCN0    0001:00094B69
 0012FF84  1FDC4D69   LIBCN0    0001:00074D69
 0012FFA4  000100E0   CRON2     0001:000000E0
 0012FFC4  00014238   CRON2     0001:00004238
 0012FFF4  1FFECE38   DOSCALL1  0004:0000CE38  DOS32R3EXITADDR
...

...or PMMail and AOO.

So I'm curious if anyone is seeing this too?

I can't quite peg this to a particular release, but it would have happened within the last couple of drops I think?

30
Applications / Apache OpenOffice - OOWpsWizard anyone?
« on: January 08, 2022, 03:09:49 am »
Alright, so way back when (circa OO3.2) there was a handy little WPS class utility (OOWPSWizard) that defined multiple WPS classes that directly mapped to various AOO program objects.

I have had this installed for a long time now...but having just upgraded from AOO 4.1.7 to 4.1.11 I am trying to clean the place up a tad, you know?

So this begs the question: is anyone still using this OOWPSWizard thing?

I can't quite for the life of me remember what use I got out of it back then...clearly I thought there was value in having it installed though..LOL, so maybe the old memory is getting a little shaky???

Come to think of it, the benefit I think we got back then was to map all the AOO program objects to a particular WPS class, which then allowed one to manage those classes and assign WPS associations accordingly.

....yeah, it's been a while, and I really would rather keep the AOO install clean to avoid any problems in the future...which makes me think I should un-install OOWPSWizard...

Thanks!

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