Hello folks I have been absent for ages because things have been going well and have had no questions which I couldn't work out on my own.

However, today I thought I had better take a fresh backup of all my partitions. I came across these problems:
* LVM could not process an NTFS disk. I had to use Partition Magic to delete all the partitions before LVM
could create a volume;
* Both Zip v 2.31 and BackAgain WorkStation 2000 could not produce a backup file greater than about 2 GB.
This made backing up my large drive E: partition awkward - having to break up the job into three parts.
With my large drive F: I just copied the files straight across;
* the 120 GB backup hard disk is currently attached via an USB port. The IDE disk is adapted to USB with one
of those small adapters you can buy now. I noticed somewhere that the eject command may leave or leaves
the disk marked "dirty". Is that right? Is there a proper way to detach the disk?

Everything is getting gigantic relative to when these software were written and it's becoming hard to handle large volumes of data

I wonder whether there are solutions to handle big data sizes?

Time moves on and hard disks have move onto the SATA interface. My mainboard an Asus K8V Deluxe is getting dated. I want to install a new mainboard with SATA disks. What is the driver situation wrt SATA?

With a new mainboard I can probably continue to use my existing ATI video card (I'm assuming I can get a board with the matching AGP socket). I can probably use the other cards. But I'm not sure I would get a built-in NIC with the same chip. What is the status with NIC drivers?

Thanks for you people's continuing interest in OS/2,

Victor Bien

--
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System: ASUS K8VSE mb, Sempron 3000+, 1028 MB DDRAM, ATI 9550 video, Soundblaster Live soundcard, on-board NIC, primary & secondary disks are IDE, LG CD burner, Tekram scsi hba uses Symbios chip, HP 5p scanner, adsl access via LAN, Lexmark laser printer. MCP2, FP5, 14.103a_W4 kernel, Scitech video, C: FAT16 540MB, D: HPFS 2.8GB, E: JFS 34.8GB, F: JFS 100 GB, G: JFS 7. GB, H: JS 7.2 GB, always run OD 1.53 Tab Launch pad with XWorkplace XPager, PM Fax 3.00.05e, some PIMs, Screen Util, Apache 2, ftpd, PMMail 2.20.2382, Firefox ver 2.0 rc2, DeScribe 5.0.6 and a couple of Win-OS2 programs. Runs 24h/d.


On Sun, 25 May 2008 09:30:03 UTC, Victor Bien <me@privacy.net> wrote:

LVM, wisely, refuses to do anything with anything that it doesn't,
completely, understand. Rather than using Partition Magic (which knows
NOTHING about LVM, and will destroy LVM information, if it exists), it
is recommended to use DFSEE, which does know about such things:

Note, that Windows VISTA has a tool to resize it's own partitions (and
that too will, likely, destry LVM information), if you use VISTA.

Of course. Neither one know anything about files larger than 2 GiB
(input, or output). The only answer is to configure them to create
files less than 2 GiB, and make multiple backups to include
everything. Another option, is to use RAR, or ARJ, which can split
output files into multiple files, of a given size. I usually use
output files of 1.5 GiB, so that three of them will fit, nicely, onto
a DVD.

Using Eject (either the command, or the menu item on the drives
object), will leave the disk clean, BUT, you must WAIT for the drive
icon to go away, before you disconnect the drive. That can take some
time, depending on a number of things.

Yes, it is...

There are, but, so far, none of them are really adapted for doing
backups, easily. I have played with ARJ, which seems to be designed
for things like backups, but, as is usual for *NIX programs, there are
a few hundred, totally useless, parameters, which hide the two, or
three, useful ones.

I am also using DSYNC, which makes a mirror image of whatever I
define, onto my 200 GiB USB drive (formatted as JFS, so it can handle
files larger than 2 GiB). DSYNC doesn't handle files larger than 2
GiB, so I copy them, from the command line, when needed. DSYNC does a
"smart", straight across, copy.

There is also RSYNC, but I have never been able to get it working
properly (I just haven't played with it enough).

Don't try RAID, unless you know that the setup will work (one, or two,
do work, but most do not). I have been using SATA disks, for a couple
of years now, with no trouble. You, probably, will need the latest
Dani driver, for the latest drives, and controlers to work.

You may find it difficult to find a new board with AGP. Most have PCI
express, with a 16 bit express socket for the video adapter. NIC
drivers can be a problem, but many are now supported by the GENMAC
wrapper driver.

but that is still very experimental, although it works pretty good,
when it works. Only a few devices are actually supported, and some of
them don't always work. Before you decide to actually BUY a new board,
it is best to ask if anyone is having success with it. I, for
instance, am using an ASUS A8N-E motherboard, but that is now a few
years old, and may not be available. Others have reported that the
Asus M2N-E board works well. I think that one is still available.

It is very likely, that you will also need, at least eCS 1.2R, to be
able to install to new hardware, and eCS 2.0 RC4 is better, but it
is still in development, although it is available, as long as you have
a Software Subscription, from Serenity Systems. You may also be wise
to actually get a new system from one of the builders who specialize
in eCS support, so it is more likely that you will get something that
will work. Many new systems just don't work properly.

Hope this helps...
--
From the eComStation 2.0 RC2 of Doug Bissett
dougb007 at telus dot net
(Please make the obvious changes, to e-mail me)

Doug Bissett wrote:
Umh, I keep my OS/2 disks _away_ from Windows stuff _after_ they have been put to such use. I have a range of customers I support which of course are all Windows (and two Mac) users. The disk I put to use as a backup disk was a cast off disk from a customer and of course it had NTFS on it. I'm flat out all the time and I wanted to get the backup done in one day, a Sunday and I had to be practical so I just used a convenient Window tool to wipe the disk for LVM to be able to process.

I use Acronis True Image these days to backup Windows partitions. Being in a rush and wanting to be sure I could actually get a backup in one day I did not try to use it. Acronis probably could handle my HPFS partition for my working OS/2 ver 4.52 but not knowing whether it could handle my JFS partitions I gave it a miss. If I could've been sure Acronis would do the job I could have used it and captured everything in one fell swoop.

If you or someone here knows that Acronis _can_ handle JFS well maybe that's how I'll approach the task next time...

Ahh, OK, thanks.

I am a member of Serenity Systems although my subscriptions has expired - lack of demand on my part (another way of saying the system has gone on so well for so long). My ver 4.52 is equivalent to eCS 1.2R I think. I haven't kept up with RC4 and will have to have a look at it.

Here in Australia the number of OS/2 users are very thin on the ground. I know a few but have always got most of my intelligence from here.

I have looked at Linux and of course use Windows but this OS/2 computer plays an irreplaceable role. Yes it is getting even more difficult to maintain but if it goes off the air as it sometimes does it leaves a really big hole. I don't think running it on a VPC on Windows is really a solution. Actually I have it the other way round. I have a VPC running WinXP on my OS/2 computer! The convenience of being able to cross cut and paste between the two environments really leverages both worlds.

It does indeed, thanks for the very informative reply.


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On Mon, 26 May 2008 00:00:26 UTC, Victor Bien <me@privacy.net> wrote:

--snip--

Among others, Amazon lists nearly 30 of them (googled "asus m2n-e"):
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000FVZKV8
I got mine over here in California at Fry's about three months ago when
both my Abit KT7Es failed at almost the same time and was so pleased at
how well it works, I went back and bought a back-up one, which is now
resting safely in my temperature controlled basement (along with a spare
CPU--the other KT&E was replaced by an A8V from ebay). However it
requires a PCI-E video card (A8V uses AGP, but has only two PCI slots).
Apparently the latest (last) version of Snap, which comes with eCS 1.2r,
supports Radeon X-300 cards (PCI-E), but before buying a particular
brand or model double check by looking on
http://en.ecomstation.ru/hardware.php. I haven't tried the Panorama
driver.

--snip--

Now if could just get my Xerox Documate 510 to work using this set-up .
. . perhaps I should experiment . . .

--snip--

HTH,
Pete


--

On Mon, 26 May 2008 00:00:26 UTC, Victor Bien <me@privacy.net> wrote:

I do know, that Acronis will do HPFS, and, I am pretty sure that it
would do JFS in a compatible volume (only available with the bootable
version of JFS, which comes with eCS 2.0, unless you have retrofitted
it somehow). I am not sure what it would do with JFS in a LVM volume.
DFSEE will back them up, but restore is all, or nothing, which isn't
ideal, in most cases, but I suspect that Acronis is also that way,
with file systems that it doesn't know about.

BTW, if you didn't look, DFSEE supports Windows (2K and XP, at least),
Linux, and OS/2. It is a very powerful program, with excellent support
(after you buy), which is well worth the cost. There is a bit of a
learning curve involved, of course.

--
From the eComStation 2.0 RC2 of Doug Bissett
dougb007 at telus dot net
(Please make the obvious changes, to e-mail me)

Doug Bissett wrote:
The backup I did and wanted to do last weekend was an all or nothing type. I had a nightware that I'd lose a partition and I did not have a recent backup. The nightmare was prompted when I lost my Thunderbird inbox after a hang up followed by a freeze whereupon I had to do reset reboot. The TB inbox file must have been open when the crash happened. I was disappointed that Chkdsk was not able to recover from the journal from the JFS partition.

My JFS volumes are not compatible volumes - haven't kept up with newer developments - lack of motivation to update (up to now)...

Despite keeping the ini files as clean as I can with checkini and cleanini by running them often, if I run the uptime of the system beyond say 21 days I am pushing things. This tends to happen particularly when I'm busier than normal. So it's under the greatest stress that the system will fail on you if you run it too long without a restart. I then found my specific files backup strategy was wanting and discovered other holes in the backup. Just as well there has been no failures - I have got away with it! To make sure I have everything I needed to make a blind complete backup like Acronis or DFSEE does - mbr, partitions, WPS structures, everything! BA2kWS did that with a fresh backup of the OS/2 system partition.

I do run backups of specific files which are changing all the time and I know I can restore them but then I realised I left out my IBM Bonus Pack PIMS files when I updated my phonebook and went to check that my backup actually included it. It wasn't there! I forgot about it and did not think to check because I hadn't updated the phonebook for some time and only did check after my wife got me to put in a new entry of something "not to lose" or it will be on your head!

I have so many bits of information which have grown like topsy over the years I'm not sure that there are other things I haven't forgotten about. By doing a gross backup I'm sure to have everything and it'll remain "up-to-date" because old data I may have forgotten about won't change...

Yes I must have a new onslaught with DFSEE. I played with it many years ago but did not get the hang of it and baulked at paying. Now I'm thinking differently. How much is my data and configuration worth?!!

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Hi Victor

Victor Bien wrote:

It seems that another tool is required to rescue files that chkdsk
throws away http://en.ecomstation.ru/projects/jrescuer/


I think I read somewhere that the above software can only work if you
set "the .LONGNAME Extend Attribute (EA) as JFS doesn't keep the path
nor filename info as e.g. HPFS (partially) does."

The quote is from this thread on os2world
http://www.os2world.com/component/op...picseen,1/#new




There are 2 types of JFS volume:

Compatible is bootable - used with bootableJFS

The non-bootable JFS volumes are LVM



BA2kWS is useful as long as you remember that if it creates a >2Gb
backup it will not be able to read it to restore it :-)

Regards

Pete