Re: [Freedos-kernel] EXT3 support

[H. Peter Anvin]

On August 26, 2016 12:26:52 AM PDT, Eric Auer  wrote:
>
>Hi HPA! The boot sector takes a BIOS drive number of the
>to-be-booted drive from the MBR, which can take it from
>the BIOS. There also are patches to take the MBR item by
>pointer from the MBR, but those are not used by default.
>
>So I guess the kernel could take the drive number from a
>boot sector, which at the moment is easy because the boot
>sector stores the value from the MBR in the drive byte of
>the boot sector loaded into RAM, which is a predictable
>location in general. Might be fun for booting from 0x81.
>
>>> support for EXT3 in the kernel would indeed be large/complex.
>
>Would not do that, but would boot DOS by MEMDISK and load a
>full EXT3 driver from there later :-) Same for ISO9660, but
>there "read files from ISO root dir" might be quite small,
>so boot without MEMDISK might be interesting as well...
>
>>> Regarding the idea to have the kernel "natively boot from a
>>> RAMDISK in HIGH MEMORY which would NOT be A: or C: ... Well,
>>> on modern computers it should not be a problem to "hog" the
>>> drive letter of the A: floppy drive - you probably have at
>>> most ONE real floppy next to that ramdisk anyway and letter
>>> B: is still free :-) So in that sense, MEMDISK is ok for me.
>
>Exactly :-)
>
>> So this is a horribly stale discussion, but it seems that all that is
>> needed is the ability to hide somewhere a preferred drive letter for
>the
>> FreeDOS kernel to pick up and use.  It is trivial to add support for
>> passing such information along in MEMDISK.
>> 
>>  -hpa

Hi!

Memdisk already supports being a disk number other than 0x00 or 0x80, and the 
DL register will reflect that.  However, I was thinking of provided a more 
explicit hint, so that scripts can reply on the ramdisk being, say, R:
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Re: [Freedos-kernel] EXT3 support

[Eric Auer]

Hi HPA! The boot sector takes a BIOS drive number of the
to-be-booted drive from the MBR, which can take it from
the BIOS. There also are patches to take the MBR item by
pointer from the MBR, but those are not used by default.

So I guess the kernel could take the drive number from a
boot sector, which at the moment is easy because the boot
sector stores the value from the MBR in the drive byte of
the boot sector loaded into RAM, which is a predictable
location in general. Might be fun for booting from 0x81.

>> support for EXT3 in the kernel would indeed be large/complex.

Would not do that, but would boot DOS by MEMDISK and load a
full EXT3 driver from there later :-) Same for ISO9660, but
there "read files from ISO root dir" might be quite small,
so boot without MEMDISK might be interesting as well...

>> Regarding the idea to have the kernel "natively boot from a
>> RAMDISK in HIGH MEMORY which would NOT be A: or C: ... Well,
>> on modern computers it should not be a problem to "hog" the
>> drive letter of the A: floppy drive - you probably have at
>> most ONE real floppy next to that ramdisk anyway and letter
>> B: is still free :-) So in that sense, MEMDISK is ok for me.

Exactly :-)

> So this is a horribly stale discussion, but it seems that all that is
> needed is the ability to hide somewhere a preferred drive letter for the
> FreeDOS kernel to pick up and use.  It is trivial to add support for
> passing such information along in MEMDISK.
> 
>   -hpa



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Re: [Freedos-kernel] EXT3 support

[H. Peter Anvin]

On 01/13/16 08:33, Eric Auer wrote:
> 
> Hi HPA and Joao,
> 
> support for EXT3 in the kernel would indeed be large/complex.
> 
> Only supporting EXT3 READS already would take circa 10 kB of
> code, taking the size of the EXT2/3/4 GRUB module as example.
> 
> I like MEMDISK bootable ramdisk style: MEMDISK can be booted
> by boot loaders which are able to boot Linux, and it can use
> any diskimage accessible by such boot loaders, including an
> image on EXT3 disks. Boot loaders either pre-compute a list
> of sectors to read files or load extra driver modules, which
> only have to support reading and which are not kept in RAM.
> 
> Regarding the idea to have the kernel "natively boot from a
> RAMDISK in HIGH MEMORY which would NOT be A: or C: ... Well,
> on modern computers it should not be a problem to "hog" the
> drive letter of the A: floppy drive - you probably have at
> most ONE real floppy next to that ramdisk anyway and letter
> B: is still free :-) So in that sense, MEMDISK is ok for me.
> 

So this is a horribly stale discussion, but it seems that all that is
needed is the ability to hide somewhere a preferred drive letter for the
FreeDOS kernel to pick up and use.  It is trivial to add support for
passing such information along in MEMDISK.

-hpa


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Re: [Freedos-kernel] EXT3 support

[João Jerónimo]

On 17-11-2015 05:36, H. Peter Anvin wrote:

A TSR redirector would be great for assigning an EXT3 drive to a drive
>letter for standard I/O operations.  However a kernel driver would
>allow freeDOS to boot and run from an EXT3 journaling partition, I can
>only imagine that the benefits from this would be huge.
>

You can do this anyway by using an auxiliary bootloader, e.g. Syslinux
or Grub.  The idea is that you load the basic DOS into a ramdisk from
the bootloader (e.g. via memdisk) and then you can load your TSR.

What*might*  be useful could be a way to have some way for the FreeDOS
kernel to natively boot from a ramdisk in high memory, or at least have
a way to not have the ramdisk become drive A or C.

Hello,
You are right. that's the most logical thing to do in DOS. And even 
better if, as you say, ramdisk becomes some drive letter other than A ou C.


JJ

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Re: [Freedos-kernel] EXT3 support

[Eric Auer]

Hi HPA and Joao,

support for EXT3 in the kernel would indeed be large/complex.

Only supporting EXT3 READS already would take circa 10 kB of
code, taking the size of the EXT2/3/4 GRUB module as example.

I like MEMDISK bootable ramdisk style: MEMDISK can be booted
by boot loaders which are able to boot Linux, and it can use
any diskimage accessible by such boot loaders, including an
image on EXT3 disks. Boot loaders either pre-compute a list
of sectors to read files or load extra driver modules, which
only have to support reading and which are not kept in RAM.

Regarding the idea to have the kernel "natively boot from a
RAMDISK in HIGH MEMORY which would NOT be A: or C: ... Well,
on modern computers it should not be a problem to "hog" the
drive letter of the A: floppy drive - you probably have at
most ONE real floppy next to that ramdisk anyway and letter
B: is still free :-) So in that sense, MEMDISK is ok for me.



A ramdisk is often very small in RAM, so I think the benefit
of compiling one into the kernel would be small compared to
simply using pre-existing 3rd party ramdisks like MEMDISK.

However, for the fans of really tiny settings, have a look at:

http://www.rayer.g6.cz/romos/romose.htm

This project features a "bios" version of the FreeDOS kernel,
by booting the kernel from a 63 kB virtual floppy. The module
including the floppy takes 64 kB in the option ROM area, so
you could compare it to booting FreeDOS from UMB ramdisk ;-)



In totally unrelated notes, I think it would be cool if the
FreeDOS kernel could parse GPT PARTITION TABLES and find FAT
partitions in them. And I think it might be interesting to
be able to read files from the root dir of ISO9660 media if
I/O is provided by BIOS ElTorito calls: That way, the kernel
could load config sys and a CD/DVD driver after some special
boot sector has loaded the kernel directly from CD/DVD :-)

Cheers, Eric

PS: I admit that the last idea is similar to having read-only
EXT3 support in the kernel, but I believe ISO takes << 10 kB.




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Re: [Freedos-kernel] EXT3 support

[H. Peter Anvin]

On 08/14/15 15:00, Till wrote:
> 
> Quoting João Jerónimo :
> 
>> Wouldn't it be better to use a redirector? This can be done with a TSR.
>>
>> João Jerónimo
>>
> 
> 
> A TSR redirector would be great for assigning an EXT3 drive to a drive  
> letter for standard I/O operations.  However a kernel driver would  
> allow freeDOS to boot and run from an EXT3 journaling partition, I can  
> only imagine that the benefits from this would be huge.
> 

You can do this anyway by using an auxiliary bootloader, e.g. Syslinux
or Grub.  The idea is that you load the basic DOS into a ramdisk from
the bootloader (e.g. via memdisk) and then you can load your TSR.

What *might* be useful could be a way to have some way for the FreeDOS
kernel to natively boot from a ramdisk in high memory, or at least have
a way to not have the ramdisk become drive A or C.

-hpa



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Re: [Freedos-kernel] EXT3 support

[Alain Mouette]

The basic idea is to start with a fresh install of an Ubuntu LTS server. 
Then a Script could install all the rest. I am already doing this on a 
project and it works very well, all scripts are posted on github: 
https://github.com/alainm/nfas (sorry, it's in portuguese due to local 
colaborators)


On basic script could install DOSEMU with an updated FreeDOS and maybe a 
few needed packages. I have a set of guidelines that I could translate


Another small script could create a DOSEMU instance. The default screen 
could be a FreeDOS console

Remember that dosemu can run a DOS program from de Linux command line ;-)

WHAT I DON'T KNOW is the minimum system to run graphics programs in 
FreeDOS+Dosemu+Linux, I have allways used with X


_Would you give it a try_? Just start with a plain Ubuntu 14.04 LTS 
32bits (use VirtualBox), it has a dosemu package that works prety well


Alain


Em 16-08-2015 03:09, Till escreveu:

Quoting Alain Mouette ala...@pobox.com:


Why not use all that effort to run FreeDOS over Linux? Dosemu works very
well...

It has already been done in the past, mas it was slackware based and as
soon as released had no mantainance, so it went dead.

*) you get all the drivers to run on any hardware
*) you can run multiple FreeDOS instances, it works very well
*) disk sharing works very well
*) networking via PacketDriver woks just fine, it may just be a bit
confusing to configure

and you can have background tasks in Linux for other tasks ans remote
access.

It would be just fine to make it over Ubuntu LTS, and I am willing to help.

PS: I have some legacy system runing in Dosemu and I use that regularly
for development


This is a brilliant idea that I would love to see come to life.  I'm
interested in hearing more about this.

Till


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Re: [Freedos-kernel] EXT3 support

[Travis Siegel]

The only problem with virtual box is that it isn't accessible.  Any folks 
using screen readers are likely to need dosemu instead of virtual box.  It 
may work under orca, but I've not tested that here.
Just a point of interest for those who need/want to know.



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Re: [Freedos-kernel] EXT3 support

[Till]

Quoting Alain Mouette ala...@pobox.com:

 Why not use all that effort to run FreeDOS over Linux? Dosemu works very
 well...

 It has already been done in the past, mas it was slackware based and as
 soon as released had no mantainance, so it went dead.

 *) you get all the drivers to run on any hardware
 *) you can run multiple FreeDOS instances, it works very well
 *) disk sharing works very well
 *) networking via PacketDriver woks just fine, it may just be a bit
 confusing to configure

 and you can have background tasks in Linux for other tasks ans remote
 access.

 It would be just fine to make it over Ubuntu LTS, and I am willing to help.

 PS: I have some legacy system runing in Dosemu and I use that regularly
 for development


This is a brilliant idea that I would love to see come to life.  I'm  
interested in hearing more about this.

Till


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Re: [Freedos-kernel] EXT3 support

[Tom Ehlert]

 I am interested in writing a new driver, one that would allow you to
 boot and run dos on a EXT3 partition.

booting from EXT3 would require to make EXT3 part of the kernel.
not going to happen.

otoh there is virtually no disadvantage to have a loadable TSR to make
EXT3 available as a redirector.

 In your other message you said
 that ETX3 was a multithreaded fs.  In that case it would be wiser to
 first add multithreaded support to the FreeDOS kernel.  It will be
 hard, but well worth the time I believe.

don't wait for multithreading support from kernel.

in the good old times, when DOS was still active, disk caching
software implemented 'multithreading' by chaining into
TIMER and IDLE interrupts.

just because so far no FreeDOS disk cache supports write caching
doesn't mean it doesn't exist


Tom


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[Freedos-kernel] EXT3 support

[Daniel G.]

Greetings,

I was reading the FreeDOS development wish-list and adding ext3  
support to the FreeDOS kernel is on the list.  Is anyone working on  
this at this time?
Thank you for your time.


God Bless.

Till






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Re: [Freedos-kernel] EXT3 support

[Ralf Quint]

On 8/14/2015 12:38 AM, Daniel G. wrote:
 Greetings,

 I was reading the FreeDOS development wish-list and adding ext3
 support to the FreeDOS kernel is on the list.  Is anyone working on
 this at this time?

Doubtful. It's more likely just wishful thinking from someone who 
doesn't know what all might be involved in actually implementing this...

Ralf

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Re: [Freedos-kernel] EXT3 support

[Louis Santillan]

Hiren's BootCD has had something called Paragon Mount Everything 3.0.
Or are you interested in writing a new driver?

On Fri, Aug 14, 2015 at 1:28 PM, Ralf Quint freedos...@gmail.com wrote:
 On 8/14/2015 12:38 AM, Daniel G. wrote:
 Greetings,

 I was reading the FreeDOS development wish-list and adding ext3
 support to the FreeDOS kernel is on the list.  Is anyone working on
 this at this time?

 Doubtful. It's more likely just wishful thinking from someone who
 doesn't know what all might be involved in actually implementing this...

 Ralf

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Re: [Freedos-kernel] EXT3 support

[Louis Santillan]

Maybe, but ext3 was designed as a multithreading FS.  The
multithreading becomes single threading so performance would far
worse, and possibly even worse than FAT16/32 or ext3 over redirector.

On Fri, Aug 14, 2015 at 3:00 PM, Till oran...@mygrande.net wrote:

 Quoting João Jerónimo j_j_b_o_de...@yahoo.com:

 Wouldn't it be better to use a redirector? This can be done with a TSR.

 João Jerónimo



 A TSR redirector would be great for assigning an EXT3 drive to a drive
 letter for standard I/O operations.  However a kernel driver would
 allow freeDOS to boot and run from an EXT3 journaling partition, I can
 only imagine that the benefits from this would be huge.



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