OS2 World Community Forum

OS/2, eCS & ArcaOS - Technical => Setup & Installation => Topic started by: karotlopj on May 08, 2016, 09:01:56 am

Title: Booting OS/2 from USB pen drive
Post by: karotlopj on May 08, 2016, 09:01:56 am
Can anyone explain why it isn't possible to boot (or install) OS/2 from a USB pen drive?
Title: Re: Booting OS/2 from USB pen drive
Post by: Doug Bissett on May 08, 2016, 05:46:54 pm
Can anyone explain why it isn't possible to boot (or install) OS/2 from a USB pen drive?

To answer your question, you cannot get access to USB drives early enough in the boot sequence to make it work.

However, it IS possible. I have done it by hacking the bootAble project, but it is not, yet, properly documented.

Briefly, the basic setup is:
Create a small (50 meg is more than enough) FAT16 partition on the stick.
Make the remainder of the stick into either HPFS or JFS (I use JFS, and it must be large enough to contain whatever you want to include, which could be the OS/2 or eCS, installer).
Create a bootAble CD image (you need to understand how bootAble does that).
Manually modify that to remove the MEMDISK stuff (The QSINIT RAMDRIVE will be used).
ZIP that whole partition (ZDRIVE.ZIP), rather than use TAR as bootAble normally does.
Follow the instructions in the QSINIT package to be able to boot from the QSINIT PAE RAMDRIVE.
Manually put the rest of the bootAble stuff (anything that normally ends up on a CD/DVD, or in the old RAMFS RAMDISK) onto the second partition, and modify CONFIG.SYS (must be in the ZIP file) to have proper paths etc.

Now, if your computer will boot the QSINIT loader, that will unzip the file into the RAMDISK (must be FAT16), then boot from it. Note that you will have no access to the second partition until the USB driver gets loaded, and initialized (usually around the time that the GUI starts up), so anything that is needed earlier must be in the ZIP file that gets loaded to the QSINIT RAMDISK. Also remember that anything in the RAMDISK must be FAT16, with 8.3 file names.

Much experimenting is probably required, and there are a couple of variations, if you want to play with the QSINIT RAMDISK.
Title: Re: Booting OS/2 from USB pen drive
Post by: Pete on May 09, 2016, 02:57:12 am
Hi All

There was a bootable USB flash drive webpage with software and instructions... possibly a .ru website/ftp site... that I found a couple of years ago. Yes, you can boot from usb flash drive.

Aha!  Found the wiki http://os4you.org/wiki-usb-boot-en.html - check out section 9.3.1; that is what you are looking for. I can state that it does work but I seem to recall there were some limitations - cannot remember what though.


Regards

Pete


Title: Re: Booting OS/2 from USB pen drive
Post by: karotlopj on May 09, 2016, 10:26:14 am
Can anyone explain why it isn't possible to boot (or install) OS/2 from a USB pen drive?

To answer your question, you cannot get access to USB drives early enough in the boot sequence to make it work.

It seems strange that under normal circumstances OS/2 can't boot from a USB stick, whilst Linux, FreeBSD and even Windows can. I don't really understand why or where this restriction lies... I guess it would need OS2KRNL modifications....

Quote
However, it IS possible. I have done it by hacking the bootAble project, but it is not, yet, properly documented.

Briefly, the basic setup is:
Create a small (50 meg is more than enough) FAT16 partition on the stick.
Make the remainder of the stick into either HPFS or JFS (I use JFS, and it must be large enough to contain whatever you want to include, which could be the OS/2 or eCS, installer).
Create a bootAble CD image (you need to understand how bootAble does that).
Manually modify that to remove the MEMDISK stuff (The QSINIT RAMDRIVE will be used).
ZIP that whole partition (ZDRIVE.ZIP), rather than use TAR as bootAble normally does.
Follow the instructions in the QSINIT package to be able to boot from the QSINIT PAE RAMDRIVE.
Manually put the rest of the bootAble stuff (anything that normally ends up on a CD/DVD, or in the old RAMFS RAMDISK) onto the second partition, and modify CONFIG.SYS (must be in the ZIP file) to have proper paths etc.

Now, if your computer will boot the QSINIT loader, that will unzip the file into the RAMDISK (must be FAT16), then boot from it. Note that you will have no access to the second partition until the USB driver gets loaded, and initialized (usually around the time that the GUI starts up), so anything that is needed earlier must be in the ZIP file that gets loaded to the QSINIT RAMDISK. Also remember that anything in the RAMDISK must be FAT16, with 8.3 file names.

Much experimenting is probably required, and there are a couple of variations, if you want to play with the QSINIT RAMDISK.

This sounds very interesting...

I wonder if it's possible to script this process, as it sounds quite error prone for someone who wants to try it out.
Title: Re: Booting OS/2 from USB pen drive
Post by: Doug Bissett on May 09, 2016, 04:51:49 pm
Quote
I don't really understand why or where this restriction lies... I guess it would need OS2KRNL modifications....

It is partly that (which is basically impossible without the source code), but the main problem is that there is a period of time when there is no access to the boot drive, and everything just stops working.

Quote
I wonder if it's possible to script this process, as it sounds quite error prone for someone who wants to try it out.

It will be included in bootAble (https://hrbaan.home.xs4all.nl/bootAble/ (https://hrbaan.home.xs4all.nl/bootAble/)), when I get it properly documented, and Hayo Baan gets it properly coded. It is somewhat difficult for Hayo because he only has eCS in a virtual machine, but it does work that way.
Title: Re: Booting OS/2 from USB pen drive
Post by: karotlopj on May 10, 2016, 08:07:33 am

Briefly, the basic setup is:
Create a small (50 meg is more than enough) FAT16 partition on the stick.
Make the remainder of the stick into either HPFS or JFS (I use JFS, and it must be large enough to contain whatever you want to include, which could be the OS/2 or eCS, installer).

Hi Doug,

I bought an 8GB USB 2 Kingston Data Traveler SE9 Pen Drive yesterday with idea of trying this out.

It was an empty drive formatted as FAT32. I tried reformatting it but no option worked.

I used DFSee to delete and recreate various partitions including a 1GB FAT partition but nothing was accessible outside of DFSee.

I used DFSee to remove the partition and then recreated one. LVM sees the partition but I can't assign a drive

Only DFSee seems to be able to access the drive.

Any idea what I'm doing wrong?
Title: Re: Booting OS/2 from USB pen drive
Post by: karotlopj on May 10, 2016, 08:25:54 am
Hi All

There was a bootable USB flash drive webpage with software and instructions... possibly a .ru website/ftp site... that I found a couple of years ago. Yes, you can boot from usb flash drive.

Aha!  Found the wiki http://os4you.org/wiki-usb-boot-en.html - check out section 9.3.1; that is what you are looking for. I can state that it does work but I seem to recall there were some limitations - cannot remember what though.


Regards

Pete

Hi Pete,

Thanks for pointing out that interesting site. I find it difficult to find my way round it. Seems very much like work-in-progress or probably more realistically work abandoned.

Unfortunately the reference you provided to section 9.3.1 has a link to a downloadable file which is password protected.
Title: Re: Booting OS/2 from USB pen drive
Post by: Dave Yeo on May 10, 2016, 08:31:39 am
Hi John, in DFsee under scripts there should be options Make FAT32 Data (USB) disk >> and similar for FAT16. Use those and follow directions.
Title: Re: Booting OS/2 from USB pen drive
Post by: karotlopj on May 10, 2016, 11:05:57 am
Hi John, in DFsee under scripts there should be options Make FAT32 Data (USB) disk >> and similar for FAT16. Use those and follow directions.

Hi Dave,

The problem is I have an 8GB drive and FAT16 has a max partition size of 2GB.

I did create a 2GB FAT16 partition using DFSee but was unable to access it outside of DFSee.

Maybe the drive itself needs to be configured in some way for OS/2 to access it...

Should I completely wipe it first?
Title: Re: Booting OS/2 from USB pen drive
Post by: Dave Yeo on May 10, 2016, 04:38:51 pm
Quote
The problem is I have an 8GB drive and FAT16 has a max partition size of 2GB.

I did create a 2GB FAT16 partition using DFSee but was unable to access it outside of DFSee.

Maybe the drive itself needs to be configured in some way for OS/2 to access it...

Should I completely wipe it first?

Use DFSee to set it up for FAT32 (it'll wipe it and put in a new MBR IIRC), then after it works, re-partition it and reformat it

Title: Re: Booting OS/2 from USB pen drive
Post by: roberto on May 10, 2016, 07:27:17 pm
But with fat32 you can not start os2. Why no use JFS?
Saludos
Title: Re: Booting OS/2 from USB pen drive
Post by: karotlopj on May 10, 2016, 10:09:04 pm
I would love to use JFS but I can't format with any filesystem.
Title: Re: Booting OS/2 from USB pen drive
Post by: karotlopj on May 10, 2016, 10:49:30 pm

Use DFSee to set it up for FAT32 (it'll wipe it and put in a new MBR IIRC), then after it works, re-partition it and reformat it

DFSee seems like a maze to me....I've been through so many options... Created partitions, deleted partions, formatted... but when exiting out of DFSee and am back to an OS/2 prompt and a drive letter is assigned to a partition on my USB stick I cannot format it.
Title: Re: Booting OS/2 from USB pen drive
Post by: karotlopj on May 10, 2016, 10:56:25 pm
The answer to my quest for booting OS/2 from USB looks to exist here:-


http://de.os2.org/forum/diskussion/index.php3?id=126256

Quote
"Booting OS/4 from USB Flash is available now.

16MB archive file with 512MB example of the boot image can be obtained here.

To restore the image to Flash, you can use DFSee.
Last Updated on Sunday, 07 March 2010 07:24


ftp://os4.su/BootUSB512/BootFlash512.rar

Unfortunately the above file is password protected.... Anyone know how to download it?


Title: Re: Booting OS/2 from USB pen drive
Post by: Pete on May 11, 2016, 06:27:36 am
Hi John

I am not sure if this contains the same os2 image file but it does look like it may be of interest

   http://en.ecomstation.ru/projects/usbboot/?action=download


Regards

Pete
Title: Re: Booting OS/2 from USB pen drive
Post by: roberto on May 11, 2016, 08:51:22 am
I would love to use JFS but I can't format with any filesystem.
In os2 command com run
C:\OS2\LVM.EXE /RediscoverPRM

Or in drives select Refresh Removeable Media
If this fail, use another usb port.

In dfsee after change any type of filesystem, you have to extract the usbkey and insert again.
Saludos
Title: Re: Booting OS/2 from USB pen drive
Post by: karotlopj on May 11, 2016, 12:04:15 pm
Hi John

I am not sure if this contains the same os2 image file but it does look like it may be of interest

   http://en.ecomstation.ru/projects/usbboot/?action=download


Regards

Pete

Thanks Pete.

I downloaded this image and installed it on a USB stick using Win32 Disk Imager (couldn't find an OS/2 equivalent) but was unable to boot from the USB stick. I did try to install a FreeBSD boot image to make sure there was nothing wrong with the USB stick and that booted OK.
Title: Re: Booting OS/2 from USB pen drive
Post by: ivan on May 11, 2016, 04:48:48 pm
Have you tried using DFSee to put it on a USB stick?  It is a DFSee disk image so I'm not sure just how a windows based program would work with it.
Title: Re: Booting OS/2 from USB pen drive
Post by: karotlopj on May 12, 2016, 09:06:55 am
Hi John

I am not sure if this contains the same os2 image file but it does look like it may be of interest

   http://en.ecomstation.ru/projects/usbboot/?action=download


Regards

Pete

Hi Pete,

Indeed the file was very much of interest. Once I finally manged to get it installed on a USB stick it did actually boot up OS/2!

The only problem was it uses a MEMDISK image and a Greek keyboard is defined, so I guess I need to find out how to build a MEMDISK image and define the keyboard and locale settings for my use.
Title: Re: Booting OS/2 from USB pen drive
Post by: karotlopj on May 13, 2016, 11:57:51 am
Can anyone explain why it isn't possible to boot (or install) OS/2 from a USB pen drive?

In answer to my own question.....

It IS possible to boot OS/2 from a USB pen drive. In fact I just tried using a 1GB SDHC card in a USB card adapter using this image:

http://en.ecomstation.ru/projects/usbboot/?action=download

There are a few things to iron out yet, but it does boot up to an OS/2 prompt, so I guess I should be able to include all the files on an OS/2 CD and install from USB.

All I need to do is get MEMDISK configured properly.