Odin

[lmotaku]

Simple question really. I have Odin installed, but don't know how to use it. The documentation tells me all these nifty things it can do, but not how, maybe I am a bit .. slow?
I really like Mahjong.. but I'd like to do a bit "more".

[Doug Bissett]

Simple question really. I have Odin installed, but don't know how to use it. The documentation tells me all these nifty things it can do, but not how, maybe I am a bit .. slow?
I really like Mahjong.. but I'd like to do a bit "more".

Personally, the only reason I install ODIN, is because FLASH, and JAVA, require the libraries.

However, usually you can do:
PE.exe awindows .exe parameters
and it will attempt to start the awindows program. If the program is simple enough, is 32 bit, and doesn't rely on other things, it might work. Usually you will find that it needs other windows support, that is not in ODIN.

There are other commands, but that works as well as any that I ever tried. ODIN has been updated recently, but it never did work very well to run windows programs. The main use today, is that OS/2 programs can use the  libraries.

If you look around, you can find a number of games. Search for games at: http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/ You will find many other things there too.

[lmotaku]

Haha. By "more" I meant install Flash 11, Flash 5 won't run Youtube. Unless you know of a fancier way to get Youtube working? I've gotten Gnash, but I can't figure out a way to force Firefox to use it, unless of course I code my own plugin.

[melf]

You'll need a license of eCS to download Flash 11. Even though things like Flash and Open Office normally are free, it is not for eCS. It is not Adobe who makes the plugin, just allowing the development of an eCS version based on Odin. For Open Office it is development costs of our specific version (however you can compile it yourself I guess, but I think it is not an easy thing).

[lmotaku]

That just tells me I need to create a workaround for myself.

[Dave Yeo]

Haha. By "more" I meant install Flash 11, Flash 5 won't run Youtube. Unless you know of a fancier way to get Youtube working? I've gotten Gnash, but I can't figure out a way to force Firefox to use it, unless of course I code my own plugin.

Webm support works fine with Firefox and Youtube. You have to go into the experimental features youtube page to turn on webm (or at least did last time I tried)
Note that due to a bug in the OS/2 multimedia you might have to pause a video and then restart it to get sound. This is true with Flash as well.

[lmotaku]

I had forgotten all about that feature, unfortunately this version of firefox doesn't support it. Just the video tag, no webm. As far as I can tell, eCS requires work to actually use for me, at the moment. Will see if I can force Gnash in some way manually, even if I have to code my own plugin for OS/2, but probably unlikely I'll succeed. I've already read that Gnash requires GTK libraries to work as a Firefox plugin, and GTK isn't in it, otherwise there wouldn't be a discussion about porting Gimp(My favorite image editor), porting GTK with Odin will probably be even more work.

[Dave Yeo]

Update Firefox if yours is too old. ftp://ftp.netlabs.org/incoming/mozilla/ contains most of the newest ones, latest being 10.0.12ESR. Note for that version you also need the mzfntcfgft runtime.

[lmotaku]

Thank you sir, you've been very helpful. Note to anyone else who might be half retarded like me: When it says it needs libc064.dll it means it. If you did what I did, just create an ISO with libc064 in it ftp://ftp.netlabs.org/pub/gcc/libc-0.6.4-csd4.zip, mount it to the CD drive via Virtualbox, and unzip it to your mozilla folders. I did both C:\home\default\Mozilla\Firefox and C:\programs\firefox I'm thinking only one of these locations actually need it, and that would(might be) the first one.

[Doug Bissett]

Libc06x is a little unusual. You need to do the updates properly, or it will screw up. You need to use the latest set, which includes older DLL versions, but the older DLL versions are converted to "forwarder" DLLs. That is if a program was written to use Libc062.dll, it needs to find Libc062.dll. When you have Libc065.dll installed properly, there will be a Libc062.dll, that forwards any requests to Libc065.dll. The same goes for the other Libc06x dlls. When (if) Libc066 is made available, I expect that it will replace the full Libc065.dll with a forwarder dll (but there is no guarantee that the whole thing won't change - you need to read the instructions.

There is another set of common dlls for GCC. Those do not forward. If a program needs GCC433.DLL, for instance, you must have GCC433.DLL available. It does not forward requests.

Having said all of that, I recommend getting ftp://ftp.netlabs.org/pub/libc/libc-0_6_5-csd5.wpi and ftp://ftp.netlabs.org/pub/libc/gcc4core-1_2_1.wpi which are WarpIN installers for what you normally need. Just download the files, and double click on them (one at a time), WarpIN will offer to install them for you. All of the files should be properly installed, with no guessing. Many programs use those DLLs.

[Doug Bissett]

I should have mentioned, that the package that you installed is the older Libc064 developer package. That is not what you really want, although it probably contains the DLL that you need. I would suggest removing that stuff from the Mozilla folders. You do NOT want more than ONE each of those DLLs, or you might get into a situation known as "DLL HELL".

[lmotaku]

Wait, I didn't think it were possible to be in a worse Dll hell than Windows? You are probably referring to putting dll's in C:\ecs\dll ? or C:\OS2\dll?
Edit: sorry, it's 1am, haha. Case of the Monday.. Tuesday.. damn it. I understand now. The Library should be installed properly, but I've already installed GCC4.3.3 as a wpl. (Properly I think), it's all good. Just happened to use the first google response for libc064. Installed those two wpls and removed all dll files I manually put in.

[Dave Yeo]

Windows is worse for DLL hell due to using C++ but it can still happen with OS/2.
x:\os2\dll or x:\ecs\dll aren't too bad of choices, you can also have a dedicated directory for DLLs by adding a directory to the LIBPATH statement in config.sys. OS/2 uses LIBPATH to find DLLs. You should also put the mozfntcfgft DLLs in the same place as other things are starting to use them. Most people have one partition for the operating system and other partitions for programs etc.
Really FF 10.0.12 should depend on libc065 as that is what I linked it against, I think the libc064 dependency comes from the statically linked GCC library as GCC 4.4.6 was built with libc064.

I did both C:\home\default\Mozilla\Firefox and C:\programs\firefox I'm thinking only one of these locations actually need it, and that would(might be) the first one.

c:\programs\firefox will work if LIBPATH contains a dot (usually does), the profile directory will not work.

[Doug Bissett]

Wait, I didn't think it were possible to be in a worse Dll hell than Windows? You are probably referring to putting dll's in C:\ecs\dll ? or C:\OS2\dll?
Edit: sorry, it's 1am, haha. Case of the Monday.. Tuesday.. damn it. I understand now. The Library should be installed properly, but I've already installed GCC4.3.3 as a wpl. (Properly I think), it's all good. Just happened to use the first google response for libc064. Installed those two wpls and removed all dll files I manually put in.

Remember that windows, and OS/2 are from the same roots.

It has become customary for eCS users to put the base OS/2 DLLs into \OS2\DLL, and to put additional "system wide" DLLs into \eCS\DLL. OS/2 (non-eCS) does not have a \eCS\DLL directory, so they put additional "system wide" DLLs into \OS2\DLL. It is only a way to manage the location, and make sure that duplicates don't exist. They can be anywhere, as long as the location is in LIBPATH in CONFIG.SYS, and the location is permanently available to the system.

It is also customary, but not essential, to keep program specific DLLs somewhere in the program directory. The dot ".;" entry in LIBPATH says to look in the current path (usually the Working directory, as defined in the program icon properties), for DLLs. That way, the DLLs can be found without having to put that specific path into the LIBPATH statement. Also, be aware that some program installers include things like Libc064.DLL (the real one), and they need to be removed so you don't have duplicates.

"DLL HELL" can be the result, if you put something like Libc064.DLL (the real one, not the forwarder) into the program directory (for instance). The program will probably work okay, but that may depend on which Libc064.DLL gets loaded first. Once those things get loaded, they usually never get released, and any other program that needs them just uses what is already loaded. So, sometimes, you may be using the forwarder, and sometimes the real thing. It shouldn't make any difference in that case (but it can). It gets more complicated when you try to run Firefox, and Thunderbird, at the same time. They each have a common DLL name, but the actual DLLs are different. That requires other techniques to work around. The program RUN! is the best answer. Search for RUN! at HOBBES http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/. I think the instructions should be good. You can also look up LIBPATHSTRICT which changes the rules, but needs to be used properly, or other problems can be caused.

[Andy Willis]

Beside the Libpath there is also the beginlibpath and endlibpath which can be set (though are not technically environment variables) before launching an application.