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os/2 & ecs stability question

Started by os2monkey, 2007.09.29, 10:01:48

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os2monkey

I installed ecomstation 1.2R recently and planned to run it as my only OS (just emulating windows with virtual pc).
One problem I ran into is that the computer was crashing 2-3 times a day (I use the computer all day pretty much, so there is a large amount of time between crashes.).
Most of the crashes seemed to revolve around using virtual pc (v5.2), which while running causes the cpu load to run fluctuate between 30-99% cpu usage. On some occasions when it is near the 99% range, the system will suddenly freeze up, and the cpu usage stays around 99% - and is not recoverable without a reboot.
I am currently back running on windows 2000 and it isn't crashing at all really.

I was just wondering if this is normal behavior for os/2?
Since i'm totally new to os/2 i'm not sure what is normal behavior or not. I recently read another site in which a blogger wrote that os/2 was much more stable then win9x in it's day but actually less stable then 2000/xp. Just wondering if my expections are out of wack or if there was a problem with my system specifically. Anyone have specific experience using virtual pc and how stable it is for you?


os2monkey

Well iv'e decided since virtual pc seems to be the primary app causing crashes, I will just get another cheap IBM desktop pc on ebay and and will do a remote desktop connection from the os/2 machine to the windows machine.
It will be interesting to see though if the new pc is more stable with ecomstation.

Anyone know an easy way to do a "remote desktop" type connection from os/2 to a windows box?
Is it built into os/2 or is there a third party software I can use?

Andi710


RobertM

Hey os2monkey,

OS/2 crashing is not a normal occurrence. Some of the servers I have set up are hitting the year mark with no crashes (which isnt unusual).

With VPC in particular, the following may help...
(1) ensure you have installed all the VPC additions in the Guest OS.
(2) preferably run VPC (and it's Hard Drive images) from a JFS drive (speed increase)
(3) ensure that you have good, high quality memory (OS/2 does tend to stress such components) using a good memory diagnostic tool.

To give you an idea of how hardware can affect OS/2's stability, I have two machines with virtually identical software installs... one is an HP 1.1GHz Athlon based... the other is an IBM Netfinity M10 7000... the HP design was really quite a kludge (for instance, the thing only handles 2 PC-133 memory modules - even though it has a 1.1GHz CPU), has most of the PCI slots grafted on via a side-board, and support for only 120GB per HDD). The HP crashes somewhat regularly... the Netfinity has never crashed - ever.

Matching memory modules used to help way back in the day, though I dont think it is so much of an issue anymore (unless the machine is running in dual channel or not properly setting the speed). NOT overclocking the machine also helps...

-Robert


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Kirk's 5 Year Mission Continues at:
Star Trek New Voyages
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planetecs

This isn't normal behavior for OS/2 or eComStation.  One think to check is how much physical ram you have and how much is assigned to a virtual machine.  Sounds like your machine might be swapping.  I have run into this if I run one or more virtual machines and exceed the physical ram on the machine.  I typically dont install updates to OS/2 or eCS unless there is a specific need to.  I have somtimes experienced problems after installing an update similar to what you are experiencing.

I am running VPC for OS/2 V 5.1 on a pc with 512 MB ram on it.  I can run 1-2 Virtual Machines on it just fine.  I have run Linux, Windows 95, 98, 2000, XP, as well as OS/2 2.1, 3.0, 4.0 and eComstation 1.0, 1.1, 1.2 and 2.0 Beta 2.  All worked well.

You might want to try 5.1 rather than 5.2 (actually, I didnt know there was a 5.2 except the windows version by connectix).  Also try without additions and with additions on your guest pc's to see if you ca isolate the problem.

One more tip.  On any Windows Guest macines or other Windows machines on your LAN, make sure you go into regedit and search for all entries of LMANNOUNCE and change the values from 0 to 1 which will make that macine show up on the NET VIEW command or on the network browsers for both Windows and OS/2.


RobertM

Hey planetecs,

Here's a question for you... I have set up an XP box to see my OS/2 shares. I can successfully browse and access the XP box from my OS/2 machines, and vice-versa (I am using NetBIOS and WSeB).

The one problem I am still running into is that the XP box insists on trying to *ALSO* connect/talk to the OS/2 Server via TCPBeui. This sporadically causes problems with printing from the XP machine to an OS/2 connected printer. TCPBeui is disabled, and the NetBIOS protocol were installed. If you have any thoughts on the matter I would greatly appreciate your input...

Thanks,
Robert


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Kirk's 5 Year Mission Continues at:
Star Trek New Voyages
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Andi

If you think vpc causes the crashes, then it might help do disable sound for the virtual machine. (tweakvpc?) Furthermore vpc should be excluded from one of the wps enhancers (estyler?). Maybe someone with better memory can post here the correct one.

os2monkey

Hi, I was just wondering if anyone can provide more instructions on the previous comment that "vpc should be excluded from one of the wps enhancers (estyler?)"

Thanks,
David

RobertM

Hi,

I am using Styler/2 and do not exclude VPC from it (not sure if that should be different for eStyler, so someone else still needs to comment on that). BUT... one thing I did read is that you should not be using color cursors (mouse pointers) when using VPC... make sure you have selected the default black (with white) or default white (with black) mouse pointer sets... I think that may not be the case if you are using Panorama (which is supposed to support hardware mouse handling with color cursors), but I have not tested that.

-Robert


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Kirk's 5 Year Mission Continues at:
Star Trek New Voyages
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os2monkey

On my new system everything seems to be much more stable (knock on wood) - including virtual pc. I was just wondering how I would exclude from estyler generally, just to know how it is done, since I don't see that in any preferences for estyler nor specific application preferences.