Cris' eCS Tips'n'Tricks

Flash 10 on eCS 2.0

2010-08-23T09:27:00.002+02:00

eCS 2.0 is out, but Flash 10 support (still in preview) is not working anymore due to licensing problems.

I've heard so many people complaining about this on the mailing lists, so I'm adding this post to make the workaround a little bit easier to spot on the net.

The solution is simple: copy your registration file over from eCS 1.2. The file is called ecsreg.ini.

...and please Mensys, give us another beta release (solving SMP problems would be best, but we can do without for a while).

How to find Software Subscription Services downloads

2008-12-22T10:50:00.009+01:00

"Software Subcription Services" (SSS) is the name of the subscription that gives you access to the latest eComStation developments, both in terms of the base OS and the software that accompanies it.
If you subscribe to SSS, you have access to a lot of downloadable items, but it is not always easy to access them.

Here is a short tutorial with screenshots on how to access the downloads:

First of all, point your browser to the Mensys homepage.

You'll see a page like this:

Click on the highlighted link (Login) and insert your credentials, then click on the "Login" button:

You will be presented with a list of choices; click on the "Downloads" link:

Now you see a page with a list of the products you have bought that entitle you to download something. You can see mine here:

You are looking for the downloads provided by your Software Subscription Services, so you'll click on the corresponding link (red circled in the above screenshot).

You will finally be presented with the list of available downloads.

Please note two things about this listing:

- links in this list are dynamically generated, so they will expire after some time
- the link that leads to the "BetaZone" will give you more downloads with respect to accessing the BetaZone from the eComStation site, so I'd suggest giving it a try

Does anyone know where does the little "Scanning Audiofile" box comes from?

2008-11-26T08:38:00.005+01:00

This is a useful post I recently saw on the eCS mailing list.

Did you ever notice that, when you open a folder full of multimedia files (e.g. MP3s or OGGs), you get a little box saying "Scanning audiofile" for a few seconds?

I never had any grief with it, but here's how to disable it if you need or want it:

Read ?:\MMOS2\MEDIAFLD\DOC\mediafldr.inf, section "Hidden features",
"Disable audio file checking".

Here's a little how-to (courtesy of mspittel):

1) Open C:\OS2\OS2.INI with INIEDIT and set "Settings - Safe mode" to OFF
2) Select CWMM in the "Applications" (left) pane
3) Select "Key - New Key" from the menus and create
mmClsDontCheckDrive (be careful with capitalization of this key)
4) Select the newly created key in the Keys - CWMM (right) pane
5) Select "Key - Edit key" from the menus
6) Type in abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz in the edit window
7) Click the "Write changes to disk" icon (the yellow one just to the
left of the green Cancel door in the right down corner).
8) Exit INIEDIT and you are done.

Dynamically setting environment variables for a program without a .cmd script?

2008-07-19T15:25:00.002+02:00

Say you need to set a few environment variables for program x. You don't want to clutter config.sys with more environment variables, and you don't want to reboot.
You also don't want to use a .cmd script to start the program. You'd like to simply have a normal program object that starts the program with a modified environment.
You may know that Rich Walsh' DragText program gives you, as a free bonus, the enhanced DTProgram class, which enhances your program objects with an "environment" page that does exactly this (among other nice things).
What you probably don't know is that this functionality is not in DragText, but it is in OS/2 (eCS) right out of the box. What DTProgram gives you is a nice user interface for this functionality.
So, how do you use it without DragText?
A post from Paul Ratcliffe in the Warpin-User mailing list sheds light on this:

If you are creating a program object, then you can include the
environment variable(s) as part of the setup string e.g.
CREATEOBJECT="WPProgram|My Program|<WP_DESKTOP>|EXENAME=$(1)\whatever.exe;SET xxx=yyy;OBJECTID=<WP_MYPROGRAM>;"

Obviously you need to customize this for your own title, .EXE name,
object ID, folder location and environment variables.

You will need some rexx skills to make use of this suggestion, but it is indeed really nice to know!

My disk is thrashing every 4-5 minutes and the system is blocked for a few seconds each time

2008-06-11T08:45:00.002+02:00

Have you ever had this happen?
I was lately remembered about this (still unfixed) problem a few days ago, and I guess this is a problem many people are experiencing, but not everyone knows how to solve.
But first a little background:
The system INI files are updated very frequently during the normal WPS operation. Since they are critical to the correct operation of the WPS, the system consolidates all the mods to disk every 4-5 minutes. When it does this, the actual amount of work depends on the size of the INIs, how much they are fragmented, how many mods are there to consolidate.
Sometimes around Warp 4 someone at IBM decided it was more secure to make the OS write to the system INI files in write-through mode. What this means is that writes to the system INI files does not go into the file system cache, but instead go directly to disk.
This may seem a good idea at first sight, but in fact it isn't so. If you think about it, this means the system doesn't optimize writes (i.e. pages that are updated, but whose content is not changed, are written nonetheless to disk), and it also generally means that the system will spend more time writing to INIs, so that the risk of a power interruption during the writes is more likely instead of less likely. Also think this: if power is interrupted while the mods are in cache but are still not written to disk, you lose the last changes you made in the WPS. But if power is interrupted while the mods are being written to disk, you get corrupted INIs and you have to restore from a backup. So it is best to minimize the time dedicated to writing the INIs to disk, instead of forcing a timely write like it was done. Using the write-back cache is the best method to ensure both data consistency and that the INIs on disk are as much up-to-date as possible.
What happens to a lot of users (and I'm sure everyone hits it sooner or later) is that this non-cached process of writing INIs back to disk starts to become a nuisance when some kind of threshold is crossed (presumably on the size of the INIs). The system suddenly blocks while the disk is thrashing, it doesn't accept input for several seconds, than it starts behaving normal for another 4-5 minutes. The it goes through the whole process again, and again, and again... you get the idea. Very irritating.
Peter Fitzsimmons found a way to (securely) patch the system so that it returns to the old behavior of using write-back caching even on INI writes. Later, Carsten Arnold packaged Peter's patch so that it can be easily installed and uninstalled.
You find it here. Note that you need a reboot after applying this.
Also note that, since this package patches PMMERGE.DLL, which is a frequently updated DLL, you might need to reapply this patch from time to time.
I have been using this patch since a lot of years, and I have never had problems with it.

Java 1.5x on eCS ???

2008-05-06T15:44:00.004+02:00

OS/2 and eCS have a few choices when it comes to running Java apps.
You can use the IBM JRE, the GoldenCode JRE, or the Innotek JRE. Unfortunately, all of these choices are far behind the state of the art when compared to the reference implementation: Sun's JRE. Innotek's JRE is the most advanced of the three, being at 1.4.2_09.
Innotek has another interesting property: it is not a port of Sun's JRE, rather it is an adaptation of the Odin toolkit (Odin is OS/2's WINE) able to run a particular incarnation of the Windows JRE.
Michael Holzapfel experimented with a few more recent JREs, and found out that you can actually run Windows' JRE v1.5.0_07 using Innotek's Odin toolkit.
There is a thread on OS2world.com regarding applications that run with this "hacked" JRE.

Firefox and Thunderbird together

2008-04-30T12:28:00.002+02:00

One of the most frequently asked questions is "why doesn't Thunderbird start when I have Firefox open?" (you can exchange Firefox and Thunderbird in the question).
The answer is that you should have installed a build of both Firefox and Thunderbird that use exactly the same DLLs, otherwise you most likely won't be able to use them together. What this really means is that the author of the port should have compiled the packages roughly at the same time, using sources that are at the same level.
Obviously, this is not something you are in control of, unless you're able to do your own port. And sometimes you may have a reason to use applications at different levels.
The most straightforward solution is to use the RUN! package by Rich Walsh, which sets up all the environment variables needed to achieve your goal.
You simply copy the run!.exe program to the directory where thunderbird.exe resides, and rename it to something like thunderbird!lk.exe. You then change your program object to point to thunderbird!lk.exe instead of the plain tunderbird.exe and you're done.
You can apply this fix to firefox.exe too, just remember you don't need to apply it to BOTH: just one of them is enough.

Installing mPlayer

2008-04-30T12:15:00.003+02:00

One of the most useful ports from the linux world is mPlayer. However, like most linux ports, it is difficult to install and configure.
Again on OS/2 World you find another interesting article by Robert Mauro. The article details how to install mPlayer in eCS, and how to use it as a plugin in SeaMonkey/Firefox to stream audio and video.
Given the number of different ports and packages you can find out there, I have often dreamed of a guide that let me install mPlayer without losing one or two hours trying to figure it out. Finally it is here!
Now if only someone could put together a WPI package... (hint, hint) :-)

VoiceType on OS/2 4.5x (or eCS)

2008-04-30T11:52:00.003+02:00

I have been following a discussion on OS/2 World regarding the possibility to run IBM's VoiceType on recent OS/2 (or eCS) releases.
The point of the discussion was that users find it seemingly impossible to run VoiceType on anything newer that Warp 4 (and thus on eCS too).
Robert posted a suggestion, saying that he has always been able to install and use VoiceType even on newer systems.
He later posted a link to a tutorial outlining all the steps to install VoiceType on OS/2 v4.5x. here you can also find a link to the latest fixes for VoiceType.
I have found this very interesting, since VoiceType was a very nice and useful dictation system, if a little memory and CPU hungry. On today's hardware it is probably even better.

WarpIn doesn't work!

2008-01-25T22:59:00.000+01:00

A lot of people find that they cannot use WarpIn anymore, or that a WPI archive that was perfectly working, suddenly stops working.
The most common solution to these problems is to look for duplicate copies of Warpin DLLs on your libpath. Most of the time removing a DLL that was left on disk from an old WarpIn installation solves the problem.
A good and quick way of looking for duplicate DLLs on your libpath is using the "which" utility that you can find here.

Lately my USB thumbdrives have stopped working

2007-11-26T12:34:00.000+01:00

This happened to me recently, and a helpful guy at os2world solved this intricate issue.
I was experiencing growing problems with my USB thumbdrives. I couldn't understand what was happening, since everything was working perfectly before.
In the meantime however I had been regularly upgrading the ACPI drivers, and it turns out that if you have an nVidia-based (nForce4 or 5) motherboard and you have installed ACPI drivers in the 3.x version numbers, you're very likely to have this problem.
Pete solved this problem by adding the "/CD" switch to the ACPI.PSD line in config.sys, and so did I.
Don't let the docs fool you: even though they say the "/CD" switch is to be used on SMP systems only (APIC mode), it worked perfectly on my single-core box in PIC mode.
I am happily using my thumbdrives again! ;-)

I tried installing AMouse and now I don't have a mouse object anymore

2007-10-25T09:51:00.000+02:00

Some of the latest AMouse installation packages (in the 2.7x release numbers) have a problem when registering the class replacement for the mouse object. As a result, after installing AMouse you can find you don't have anymore a mouse object in the "System Setup" folder.
Paul Ratcliffe posted a simple solution to this problem: copy the following lines into a text file with the name mouseobj.cmd (or whatever.cmd), then execute the script from the command line or simply by double-clicking the icon.

/**/
call RxFuncAdd 'SysLoadFuncs', 'REXXUTIL', 'SysLoadFuncs'
call SysLoadFuncs
class = 'WPMouse'
title = 'Mouse'
location = '<WP_CONFIG>'
setup='NOCOPY=YES;NODELETE=YES;NOPRINT=YES;
DEFAULTVIEW=SETTINGS;OBJECTID=<WP_MOUSE>;'
call SysCreateObject class, title, location, setup, 'R'

Please note that the "setup=..." line, which is wrapped here due to space limits, must be joined back to form a single line of text.

Many thanks to Dario Ragazzini for the suggestion!

Trap E in windowed DOS and Win-OS2 sessions

2007-10-16T00:13:00.000+02:00

With certain video cards, you can experience a trap every time you attempt to run a windowed DOS or Win-OS2 session. Your system crashes to the black screen: Trap E, "consult your sales representative ..."

You can do something better than consulting the representative: replace file VIOTBL.DCP in the \OS2\BOOT directory by the VIOTBL.DCP from the unpatched Warp 4. Restart. The problem with DOS and Win-OS2 sessions should be gone.

When the replacing can help:

You are running Warp 4 with fixpacks or eCS.
Windowed DOS and Win-OS2 sessions always crash, full screen sessions *run normally*.
It's always Trap E.

What to do:

Get VIOTBL.DCP from the Warp 4 CD.
Go to \OS2\BOOT and rename the file VIOTBL.DCP there to something else.
Copy VIOTBL.DCP from the Warp 4 CD to \OS2\BOOT
Restart.

The DOS and Win-OS2 sessions should run now. If they don't then you can easily return to your original setup: delete the Warp 4 VIOTBL.DCP, rename the original file back to VIOTBL.DCP.

This tip was contributed by Radek. Thank you!

I am new to eComStation. Where can I find software, info, etc.?

2007-10-15T10:33:00.000+02:00

There are a lot of resources for eCS (and OS/2), but if you're used to the abundance of the Windows or Linux world you'll have a hard time finding them.

First of all: if you find infos and/or software for OS/2, you have a very high chance that the software will work correctly in eCS, and a slightly lower chance that the informations will still be valid for eCS.

The first repository of eCS and OS/2 software that you should check is Hobbes. It is by far the most used and the most complete repository. Another good repository is OS2Site.

There is a site that is to eCS what SourceForge is to Linux: it's Netlabs. The main site may not be very functional or friendly at this stage, but its FTP repository is full of software, and you can find a lot of infos on software in development in its SVN/Trac pages.

A good (probably the best) site for eCS-related news is V.o.i.c.e, with its Voice-News mailing-list and its newsletters.

Speaking of software, you can find a good categorized compilation of OS/2-eCS software here. Each page includes informations, screenshots, tips, dependencies, etc.

If you are a developer, you can find a lot of infos in this wiki.

What is this LVM thing and how do I use it?

2007-10-11T11:06:00.001+02:00

LVM stands for Logical Volume Manager. It is the standard way of managing disks and partitions since eCS 1.0.

With LVM the user can:

assign drive letters the way he/she prefers
make eCS "see" foreign partitions even if/when there's no native IFS driver (this means that you can assign a drive letter to the partition, not that you can actually READ its contents. Why should you want to do it? For example you may want to keep the same drive lettering across multiple OSes)
make a single JFS volume spanning more than one physical disk
extend a JFS volume by adding another physical disk

With LVM you have to distinguish among partitions and volumes.

In an LVMized eCS everything on disk is a volume: there are no more partitions. Volumes are the native unit of work for LVM.

You can use HPFS, FAT or JFS to format a native volume. The only file system that can be extended btw is JFS.

If you want to access partitions created with legacy FDISK or by other OSes you have to create a "compatibility volume" and assign the old partition to it.
With LVM you can also create old-styled partitions, but then you need to assign them to a compatibility volume to be able to use them correctly (e.g. you need it to create bootable volumes).

If you want to have access to all the advanced features of JFS and LVM (jounaling file system, disk spanning, etc.) you should create an "LVM volume", that is a native volume. Then format it with JFS.

The "LVM" utility included in eCS (either the text-based or the graophcal one) is powerful, and is the only one that can harness all the power of LVM. But if you're accustomed to the classical "FDISK" approach, the LVM utility can be quite confusing.
Recent eCS releases (from 1.2 onward I believe) include the MiniLVM tool which is much easier to use for most common tasks.
You can find it in the "System Setup" folder. It is titled "Maintenance & Installation Volume Manager".

If you want to use the more complete LVM utility you can find it in the "Programs" -> "Utilities" folder, under the name "Logical Volume Manager (Advanced)". Or you can go to the "Local System" -> "Drives" folder, right click, and choose "Manage Volumes" from the popup menu.
You'll find a lot of information on LVM by using the included online help.

I want to use FAT32 on an external drive but CACHEF32 gives an error at boot

2007-10-11T10:50:00.000+02:00

The default behavior of CACHEF32 (the cache daemon for FAT32) is to abort loading if there's no FAT32 partition found at boot time. So if you're using a USB stick, and the stick is not inserted at boot time, you'll get the error message.

The error is not fatal: you will still be able to access FAT32 partitions, but you will lose some performance on reading from the device.

The solution is to add the "/F" option on the CACHEF32 line in config.sys. This will force CACHEF32 to load even if there's no FAT32 partition found at boot time.

e.g.:
CALL=X:\TOOLS\SYSTEM\BIN\CACHEF32.EXE /L:OFF /F /Q

FAT32 driver is SLOW when writing

2007-10-11T10:15:00.000+02:00

eCS FAT32 driver is somewhat slower with respect to native performance under Windows.

But some people is finding that writing to FAT32 external devices (such as most USB sticks) can be slow as a dog. This is due to a (yet unsolved) problem with the lazy writer.

The solution is to disable lazy write (this is already the default if you downloaded the package linked above).

May I access NTFS partitions from eCS?

2007-10-11T09:23:00.000+02:00

eCS 1.2 comes with an NTFS driver installed by default. You can use it to access NTFS partitions, but the driver is READ ONLY.

The driver has a switch to allow limited writing, but DON'T USE IT unless you're ready to face the possibility of losing data.

More specifically, NTFS driver development hasn't advanced since months, and it is not a priority. Better using FAT32 to exchange data with Windows.

You can find the latest FAT32 driver here.

Can't install eCSMT Utilities package

2007-10-11T09:12:00.000+02:00

eCSMT (eCS Maintenance Tool) consists of two packages: ecsmtxxxx.wpi and ecsutyyyy.wpi, where xxxx and yyyy are version numbers (not necessarily the same).

Many people try to install the "ecsut" package directly, and fail with an error that's sometimes difficult to understand.

The solution is simple: put both the "ecsmt" and "ecsut" packages in the same directory, then start installation of the "ecsmt" package. It will find the "ecsut" package, and it will install both.