Re: [Freedos-devel] slow FreeDOS install - was: FreeDOS 1.2-RC1 on Hyper-V 2012 R2

2016-11-16 Thread Maarten Vermeulen 
Hi,


Op woensdag 16 november 2016 heeft Jerome E. Shidel Jr. 
het volgende geschreven:
>
>
> @echo on in the batch files to the rescue. :)
>
> That would be a very painful experience.
>
> I assume you booted the the CD-ROM and on boot the installer through you
straight to the command line with a message that warned you that you should
not install it on that platform using that media.

Yes, it did that... However I also tried to boot from a floppy and it
said/did the same. Maybe that's the problem of my system.

Maarten

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Re: [Freedos-devel] slow FreeDOS install - was: FreeDOS 1.2-RC1 on Hyper-V 2012 R2

2016-11-15 Thread Jerome E. Shidel Jr. 

> 
> @echo on in the batch files to the rescue. :)

That would be a very painful experience.

> 
> On Tue, Nov 15, 2016 at 1:43 PM Maarten Vermeulen  > wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> Maybe it is good to give some extra information, if it helps:
> It hangs, the only thing it does is making the temporary folder. After it has 
> done that, it will
> sit an hour doing nothing (as far as I can see). That's why I think it hangs 
> at least.
> 
> I am using Virtualbox version 5.0.24 r108355, for if that's interesting... 
> Anyway, I tried to install it on a .vhd and a .vdi virtual harddrive it 
> happend on both. My system is just a single core CPU, with 32MB RAM and a 
> 500MiB hdd.

I assume you booted the the CD-ROM and on boot the installer through you 
straight to the command line with a message that warned you that you should not 
install it on that platform using that media.
Then you ran setup.bat manually. Then when you got to “Gathering information…” 
it froze. If you used another method, there may be an issue. Otherwise, this 
problem is known and is not a problem with the installer itself. It is a 
compatibility issue that only occurs under VirtualBox when booting FreeDOS 
using an El Torito based CD. It may not occur if the boot configuration used 
different drivers or memory managers. If you boot the floppy and just use the 
CD for packages, the problem vanishes. The issue does not occur under vmWare or 
other tested virtual machines. Beyond spending hours testing the installer to 
verify it was not a problem with it, little testing to find the exact cause has 
not been done. However, based on the behavior my best guess is it is a bug in 
VirtualBox, the Kernel, FreeCOM or one of the device drivers. 

Another symptom of the issue, boot the CD. From the command line, you can 
navigate the CD contents from the command prompt using the built-in FreeCOM 
shell internal commands (DIR, CD…). But, ANY program (Like FreeDOS Edit) that 
access the CD-ROM portion of the El Torito CD causes instant system lockup. 

I have thought about switching to the more modern HDD based boot CD format. 
But, both have problems. The El Torito spec is the original widely accepted 
method. Old machines that can boot this type may not be able to boot the later 
HDD spec version. The HDD type really wasn’t commonly used until post Pentium. 
I’ve got a functioning Pentium Pro that can not boot HDD version CDs. Now, on 
the other hand, once the HDD CD spec was long established, I doubt many vendors 
did much testing with the older spec. Maybe we could talk Jim into 2 CDs, one 
for pre-Pentium II, one post.

Maybe someday, VirtualBox will fix the problem. This is why the installer 
allows you to still launch manually.

Now, if you are having this issue when booting the Floppy or USB image in 
VirtualBox, it would be something new. But, I do a lot of testing using the 
latest version of VirtualBox on a Mac. My personal recommendation for a 
VirtualBox install is to use one of the USB stick images. It is about 10x 
faster than Floppy+CD. Basically, just create the VM like normal. Move the New 
drive to Primary/Slave. Connect Primary/Master to the USB stick. Do install. 
Swap USB Stick and HDD. Overall 30-60 second install.


> I will look if I can find a solution to this on my own.
> 
> This matches some observation by Maarten during a FreeDOS install:
> 
> The installation spends a LONG time while displaying the text
> "gathering information". Question about the installer: What
> does that step do and are there ways to optimize it?

The only thing that actually happens while the “Gathering information….” screen 
is displayed at present is locating installation package install media. (i.e., 
CD-ROM/USB Stick's drive & path).
That usually happens instantly when using a USB stick and usually under a 
second for the CD-ROM. But, I inserted a couple second delay so the message 
just would not flash on past. On a very slow system with lots of drives it 
could take a couple seconds to locate the packages. If they are not found, the 
system doesn’t see them and you get an error message.

Maybe, future versions will do more at “Gathering information.” But, for now 
that is all that happens there. The temp directory is made prior to the “GI” 
message.


> I could
> imagine that it tries to compare existing file versions to
> the to-be-installed versions. This could be made faster by
> making a directory listing of the old DOS installation once,
> then keeping it in RAM (or in a file) while checking which
> packages are up to date and which are not. Educated guesses.

The installer does not do version checking on files. 

Later on, during the install. It attempts to removes all packages that it will 
be installing. Then it saves the remaining installed package meta data files. 
Purges the DOS directory of any remaining files. Installs all fresh packages 
and restores the preserved package

Re: [Freedos-devel] slow FreeDOS install - was: FreeDOS 1.2-RC1 on Hyper-V 2012 R2

2016-11-15 Thread Maarten Vermeulen 
Hi all,

Maybe it is good to give some extra information, if it helps:
It hangs, the only thing it does is making the temporary folder. After it
has done that, it will
sit an hour doing nothing (as far as I can see). That's why I think it
hangs at least.

I am using Virtualbox version 5.0.24 r108355, for if that's interesting...
Anyway, I tried to install it on a .vhd and a .vdi virtual harddrive it
happend on both. My system is just a single core CPU, with 32MB RAM and a
500MiB hdd.


I will look if I can find a solution to this on my own.

Maarten

2016-11-15 19:33 GMT+01:00 Eric Auer :

>
> Hi everybody, update on the 2 Nov mail by Matthew:
>
> > The release candidate announcement encouraged people to try FreeDOS out
> > and report any problems, so here I am to say that I successfully booted
> > and installed 1.2-RC1 in a generation-1 Hyper-V 2012 R2 virtual machine
> > using the ISO image.  I pretty much took the defaults for everything
> > except RAM, which I set to 32 MB (the minimum allowed by Hyper-V), and
> > storage, which I set to 40 GB.  The installation took a long
> > time---several hours, although I didn't measure it carefully.
>
> This matches some observation by Maarten during a FreeDOS install:
>
> The installation spends a LONG time while displaying the text
> "gathering information". Question about the installer: What
> does that step do and are there ways to optimize it? I could
> imagine that it tries to compare existing file versions to
> the to-be-installed versions. This could be made faster by
> making a directory listing of the old DOS installation once,
> then keeping it in RAM (or in a file) while checking which
> packages are up to date and which are not. Educated guesses.
>
> Cheers, Eric
>
>
>
> 
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>



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[Freedos-devel] slow FreeDOS install - was: FreeDOS 1.2-RC1 on Hyper-V 2012 R2

2016-11-15 Thread Eric Auer 

Hi everybody, update on the 2 Nov mail by Matthew:

> The release candidate announcement encouraged people to try FreeDOS out
> and report any problems, so here I am to say that I successfully booted
> and installed 1.2-RC1 in a generation-1 Hyper-V 2012 R2 virtual machine
> using the ISO image.  I pretty much took the defaults for everything
> except RAM, which I set to 32 MB (the minimum allowed by Hyper-V), and
> storage, which I set to 40 GB.  The installation took a long
> time---several hours, although I didn't measure it carefully.

This matches some observation by Maarten during a FreeDOS install:

The installation spends a LONG time while displaying the text
"gathering information". Question about the installer: What
does that step do and are there ways to optimize it? I could
imagine that it tries to compare existing file versions to
the to-be-installed versions. This could be made faster by
making a directory listing of the old DOS installation once,
then keeping it in RAM (or in a file) while checking which
packages are up to date and which are not. Educated guesses.

Cheers, Eric



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