Hi all, I did a bit of testing... > www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/distributions/1.0-Testing > fdbasecd.iso - FreeDOS BASE diskset without sources --> tested that one
> Some new features in the ISO are: > - Powerbatch is used in some cases to make the overall experience > feel better (it will be used more for the actual 1.0 release) I did not notice... > - XDMA/XCDROM provide an open-source and reliable combination to use > a CD-ROM driver without requiring an internet connection For unknown reasons, I got a few read errors on cdrom: The fdos/doc/bwbasic and fdos/doc/bzip2 directory were broken, and xcopy /c somehow failed to handle it (the "continue after error" mode failed to continue after a disk full error). In addition, several packages got unzipping errors during install. I suggest that files which have unzip crc errors could be deleted. For example format had a crc error on unzip, and every time when you would start it anyway, you get an invalid opcode... shsucdxx, sysx, bootfixx, cmd-pl, cmd-yu, dosfsckx, fcx, formatx, grubx, helpx, undelx, keybx and movex had errors. This happened after I booted from the special installer boot disk. I could not boot from cd/dvd directly, as isolinux 2.11 simply stopped after displaying a message about loading 5 sectors from drive 9f (atapi dvd drive). An old Knoppix DVD with isolinux 2.04 boots okay for me. I suggest that the live cd mode loads one of the MKEYB layouts on user request (no need to use the full KEYB choice). > - FDPKG is more fully integrated into the package management scene, > however for this release, packages won't be able to be removed (this > will be fixed in 1.0). Also there is at least one bug in the > dependency checking scheme. Looks okay but all German messages use Windows or Latin umlauts rather than DOS ones... > - Both the stable and unstable kernels are included; the unstable > kernel being compiled with Windows 3.1 Enhanced Mode compatibility I did not notice being able to select a kernel. Installing DOS on harddisk resulted in DOS being put in c:\fdos, without asking me for confirmation, and replacing my metakern selection of DOSes with a single FreeDOS boot, again without asking, and replacing my config sys with a new one, without asking, which is annoying. It should at least have made a backup. Other issues: The GRUB menu item does not work and the "no EMS" item actually has MORE ram free than the "maximum RAM" one. My autoexec was not over- written, because the default install puts the new one at fdos/fdauto bat, which is a quite unintuitive place for people who do not know FreeDOS. DISPLAY is not loaded to UMB (it should) but XDMA and XCDROM are (they should not: They are small, and they work better when they do not have to use UMB / VDS tricks. The default cache size for my system is extreme, 30000 CDRCACHE and 30000 LBACACHE. What makes the installer think that I want such a cache size? Big caches also take more DOS memory for data structures, not only more XMS, and the amount of available UMB is limited for me. The default SHSUCDX line is wrong: It assigns drive letters to BOTH the direct XCDROM drive AND the CDRCACHE cached access to the same drive. > - FreeCOM 0.84pre2 is included with LFN's turned off by default Still has the "access empty cdrom drive from volinfxl makes freecom behave as if ctrl c was pressed" bug (0.82pl3 does not) but seems to be okay otherwise. > - All the latest released software is included to the best of my knowledge. I only checked 5 of 80 programs (btw, the base install seems to contain FEWER packages than the preinstalled live CD and ODIN) but found that you still include edit 0.7c ;-). By the way, why are there a live CD AND an ODIN directory? Many text files are outdated and describe one of the beta9 distros. You can remove some of the files instead of updating them. > - XFdisk is included as an alternate partitioning solution (for now, > it might not start from the powerbatch menu; you might have to start > in livecd mode) The menu bat system also contains several menu items for things which are not part of the BASE version of the live cd, so those should probably be removed from the menu of the base iso. > - Several games are included in this distribution None of them in the base iso :-). Mixed other issues: All file dates are 13 july! Please use the REAL file dates instead, otherwise it is VERY hard to see which packages are up to date. The crynwr directory contains a file MORE$ which is not accessible while MORESYS is loaded (file name clash with device). The base ISO contains two GEM related batch files in the root directory, one of them called SETUP. People will think that it is the batch file to install DOS. Actually the ISO has no GEM. The live CD contains the GUI installer and some update bat file which calls that, both should be removed at all places. The live CD is 4 mb docs, 3 mb setedit, 12 mb bin, by the way. The live CD and the installed BASE system contain many cdrom tools and many cpx files in the main bin directory, most of them should be moved to have a smaller (-> faster) directory. Actually the live CD bin directory has 380 files while the C: fdos directory of a base install only has 160, so I suggest to copy a lot of stuff from the live CD to harddisk during install. Actually the best way would probably be NOT to use unzip for the base CD at all, because everything is already present in unzipped form in the livecd directory anyway. You can use pre-made fdpkg status files if you want C: to look as if fdpkg would have been used to copy things to C:. Notice that I myself could not xcopy the livecd to a dir on C: smoothly, see above! You could split the copy into steps to be able to recover from read errors. Or you could make the continue-on-error option of XCOPY stronger :-). The tbl and cpx files in the livecd bin directory should be moved to another directory, see above. In either case, not having installer zips and just having the livecd on the base ISO would save at least 6 MB... The autorun and the make boot disk batch files on the cdrom use hardcoded paths, sometimes root dir based and sometimes even fixed to A:, so I could not use those batch files to create a boot disk after booting my existing DOS. Bad... The make boot disk thing uses "extract -ox" and "sys" to create a boot disk based on the 360k diskimage on the iso and the kernel / command of that. This means that people cannot create a boot disk from within Linux! Please include a zip file with a plain 1440k diskimage file for dd-ing to a diskette. In addition, freedos/setup/batch is not easy to find. Maybe a readme.1st in the root dir would help. The boot disk load-custom-drivers menu item should be removed. Instead, there should be a batch file to start the install from any existing DOS. The special installer boot diskette is still far too special. The postset batch file should store a log somewhere... There is a fdpkg log file but nothing told me that this log file would be created, so I had taken notes manually. The DELTREE "really?" message is still missing the string terminator, so it displays a bunch of garbage. It is used by some of the menu bat items, but the user is not told what and why is deleted, he just gets a scary message. Something causes invalid opcodes in the language selection, and you are not using the newest emm386 and display (the older display version crashes when no XMS driver is on). The installer clears the screen too often, so it is hard to figure out what is going on and what is going wrong. I think that's all problems which I noticed during this short test. Let me know what else I should test. Eric ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to share your opinions on IT & business topics through brief surveys -- and earn cash http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=join.php&p=sourceforge&CID=DEVDEV _______________________________________________ Freedos-devel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
