Hi Paul, > On Mar 19, 2023, at 11:12 AM, Paul Dufresne via Freedos-devel > <freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net> wrote: > > Testing FDT2303Live.iso in QEMU. > Seems I always get: > Cute mouse loaded > then > I think the line mentioned in title does not find fdlive.dat... > So I always get the message: > FDLIVE_ERROR: Unable to load all packages (probably need more ram) ... had > given 2Gb of ram to -m 2048M of Qemu > part of A:\freedos\bin\fdlive.bat file. > > Maybe too short email... sorry. > > So what is this fdlive.dat file ... and from where should it come from?
FDLIVE.DAT is created by the batch during the boot process when certain prerequisites have been completed. Primarily, that is the existence of a RAM drive. Then the file acts as a “flag” during package extraction. As long as the file continues to exist, the boot process will continue to extract the default Live Environment packages from it’s list. If an error occurs, like there was insufficient RAM drive space for extraction, the FDLIVE.DAT file is deleted and it aborts extracting any more packages. After finishing the extraction process, it again check for FDLIVE.DAT. If it still exists, then everything was extracted successfully. Otherwise, something went wrong. There are a few uncommon reasons this could happen. But, the most likely issue is insufficient RAM disk space. Which is the reason for the message. Finally, since there is no longer a need for the flag file, it is deleted. There is a known issue regarding QEMU. For whatever reason, it does not like the primary RAM disk driver, SHSURDRV. So, the boot process does not even try to load that one. Instead, it immediately falls back to the alternate driver SRDXMS.SYS. At present when using the alternate driver, it limits the RAM DRIVE size from 32K to 8M and is intended only for temp I/O redirection storage. I do not recall the reason I limited it to 8M. Possibly there were issues on large sized RAM disks. Possibly, I just did not test anything larger because it only seems to happen on QEMU (which I rarely use). I don’t recall. So, what I will do is add a couple attempts for larger sizes to the alternative RAM disk driver for T2304. And, we will see what happens. It will require testing to insure the RAM drive functions correctly at larger sizes. 128M, 96M, 64M, 48M, 32M, 24M, 16M, 12M have been added to the existing 8M, 4M, 2M, 1M, 512K, 256K, 128K, 64K, 32K sizes already present for the alternate driver. Jerome > > _______________________________________________ > Freedos-devel mailing list > Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
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