Hello,

Time to start next release iteration! The goal is to upgrade to base of 20211128, so roughly one year from current base. It will be done in few iterations updating around 2 months at a time. I plan to discover regressions in these iteration and fix them once we get to final base. You should consider any of -Dx releases as non-production - I have not checked backward compatibility with them.

First, reference ISO:

Reference https://www.axrt.org/download/aros/v0/AROS-20201110-2-pc-i386-boot-iso.zip

First iteration moves us to 20201218 code base.

https://axrt.org/development/AROS-20201218-D01-pc-i386-boot-iso.zip

The source codes included in this release change a number of things in kernel, USB and ATA so please focus on testing whether the ISO boots and installs.

If you find something that looks like a regression, please re-test it with the reference ISO first before posting it.

Here is changelog:


AROS ABIv0 20201218-D01 changes:

KNOWN ISSUES:

• Warm reboot does not work under VirtualBox and QEMU
• No mouse pointer when booting in VESA mode from AROS Live Drive ( Live USB )

Functionalities:

• Extensions to IO-APIC support in Kernel (Kalamatee)
• Allow ejecting AHCI media (Kalamatee)
• Initial work on nvme.device (Kalamatee)
• Added support for message signalled interrupts (Kalamatee)
• Rework ECAM support in pci.hidd (Kalamatee)
• Allow forcing AHCI generation via boot parameters (Kalamatee)
• processor.resource supports checking availability of AVX, HyperV, AES (Kalamatee)
• Decrease usage of C standard library functions in AROS libraries (Matthias Rustler)
• Tool for debugging AROS under HyperV (Kalamatee)
• Improved SetMem using SSE, implemented SetMem using AVX (Kalamatee)

Updates:

• BoingIconBar (20230501) (Kalamatee)
• ahci.device v0.04 (Kalamatee)
• Boot/No disk present animation (Kalamatee)
• SysExplorer v0.13 (Kalamatee)
• AROS build system (Kalamatee)
• acpi.library 20201113 (Kalamatee)

Functional fixes:

• Allow loading old-style ELF keymaps (deadwood)
• Revert to using ISO-8859-2 for polish (deadwood)
• muimaster.library (bugs: notifications issues when 'new==old' for certains attributes) (deadwood)
• Register.mui (bugs: labels don't support escape sequences) (deadwood)
• InstallAROS (bugs: windows entry not added to grub config) (deadwood)
• ahci.device (bugs: wrong total size reported) (Kalamatee)
• USB (bugs: race condition with input.device) (Kalamatee)
• datatypes.library (bugs: ASCII not recognized) (Matthias Rustler)
• i8042.hidd (bugs: direct use of hardware, lockups on HyperV, log delay on some hardware) (Kalamatee, deadwood)

Stability fixes:

• ImageAdjust.mui (arkade)
• ata.device (Kalamatee)

64-bit/68k/ARM support:

• Fix 8 byte copy for AC080 (Kalamatee)
• Support AVX context save/restore. Report availability. (Kalamatee)
• Fix building of diskimage.device for ARM targets (Kalamatee)

thanks as soon as i can i try the new iso natively

Thanks deadwood, I have tested the new build "20211128" and found no problems.

I also did a fresh install of AROS One updated with "20211128" on VMVare, tested all system apps including on AROs One and found no problems, in the coming days I will also test third party software, I will also test a live Pendrive on a PC in native mode

The only problems encountered are the known ones, i.e. Warm reboot does not work even with VMVare, corrupted 'pc105_d' and 'pc105_gb'.

@deadwood

I reformatted the changes with bullets and headers. If you use the code tag not only it still doesn't work but it truly messes up if it's not code you are pasting. See if you like the way I changed it. Additionally, you can also color code the headers to make them stand out.

@AMIGASYSTEM

Thanks, I will start working on next build then,

@amigamia

Well, I like it changed more - no question about it. The problem is different though. I keep the change log in text file and attach it to release build. I also copy-paste the change log on a number of sites using the "code" element and I this gives me acceptable formatting so I don't have to keep two versions (one with BB formatting one without). I guess we'll have to live with how "code" works for now...

That's not a closed case yet. I have tried to contact the developers on the php-fusion but so far no answer. Will continue to try and engage them in whichever way possible until I get some sort of answer.

@amigamia -

Thanks a lot!

New build is available:

https://axrt.org/development/AROS-20210112-D02-pc-i386-boot-iso.zip

Notable changes:
1) all keymaps converted to new format, so check if old bugs fixed, new bugs introduced
2) Wanderer - possible old bugs fixed
3) InstallAROS - check for regression

Full changelog:

AROS ABIv0 20210112-D02 changes:



 KNOWN ISSUES:

 Warm reboot does not work under VirtualBox and QEMU

 No mouse pointer when booting in VESA mode from AROS Live Drive ( Live USB )



 Functionalities:

 Extensions to IO-APIC support in Kernel (Kalamatee)

 Allow ejecting AHCI media (Kalamatee)

 Initial work on nvme.device (Kalamatee)

 Added support for message signalled interrupts (Kalamatee)

 Rework ECAM support in pci.hidd (Kalamatee)

 Allow forcing AHCI generation via boot parameters (Kalamatee)

 processor.resource supports checking availability of AVX, HyperV, AES (Kalamatee)

 Decrease usage of C standard library functions in AROS libraries (Matthias Rustler)

 Tool for debugging AROS under HyperV (Kalamatee)

 Improved SetMem using SSE, implemented SetMem using AVX (Kalamatee)

 Migrated keymaps to new format (Kalamatee)

 Made InstallAROS better at detecting suitable drives (Kalamatee)

 Initial work on wide character support in C library (Kalamatee)

 Multiple improvements to copy and delete in Wanderer (Bo Kopperud)



 Updates:

 AROS build system (Kalamatee)

 Documentation (Matthias Rustler)

 BoingIconBar (20230501) (Kalamatee)

 ahci.device v0.04 (Kalamatee)

 Boot/No disk present animation (Kalamatee)

 SysExplorer v0.13 (Kalamatee)

 acpi.library 20201113 (Kalamatee)

 z library (Kalamatee)

 png.library v53.1 (Kalamatee)

 jpeg library v9d (Kalamatee)

 freetype2.library v6.3 (Kalamatee)



 Functional fixes:

 AROS Build system (Kalamatee)

 Allow loading old-style ELF keymaps (deadwood)

 Revert to using ISO-8859-2 for polish (deadwood)

 muimaster.library (bugs: notifications issues when 'new==old' for certains attributes) (deadwood)

 Register.mui (bugs: labels don't support escape sequences) (deadwood)

 InstallAROS (bugs: windows entry not added to grub config) (deadwood)

 ahci.device (bugs: wrong total size reported) (Kalamatee)

 USB (bugs: race condition with input.device) (Kalamatee)

 datatypes.library (bugs: ASCII not recognized) (Matthias Rustler)

 i8042.hidd (bugs: direct use of hardware, lockups on HyperV, log delay on some hardware) (Kalamatee, deadwood)

 C library (access, execl, vfork) (Kalamatee)

 wav.datatype (Kalamatee)

 locale.library (bugs: broken condition in OpenLocale) (Kalamatee)

 Prefs/Input (bugs: broken condition) (Kalamatee)

 InstallAROS (improved stack usage) (Kalamatee)





 Stability fixes:

 ImageAdjust.mui (arkade, Kalamatee)

 ata.device (Kalamatee)

 Prefs/ScreenMode (Kalamatee)

 intuition.library (Kalamatee)

 ilbm.datatype (Kalamatee)

 C:TaskList (Kalamatee)

 vesagfx.hidd (Kalamatee)

 exec.library (Kalamatee)



 64-bit/68k/ARM support:

 Fix 8 byte copy for AC080 (Kalamatee)

 Support AVX context save/restore. Report availability. (Kalamatee)

 Fix building of diskimage.device for ARM targets (Kalamatee)

 Add startup code to handle ARM EABI unwinding in binaries (Kalamatee)

Tested all '20210112-D02' software on AROS One and found no problems


Yes there are still problems, a few examples:
Italian = Some keys do not work, example: Enter, Backspace (File pc105_i is small, about half the size of the others)
French = Some keys do not work, example: Enter, Backspace
Polish = Doesn't seem to work, the keyboard remains in English
I have not tested other languages, probably other languages may also have problems


Here I should recall all reported bugs, at the moment I have encountered this one:
Regarding the Wanderer Bug "Errors while moving files to Storage or WBStartup".
I should point out that with the "Copy" mode the problem does not exist.
The problem only exists with the "Move" mode, at the moment it is only with the folder "Storage", with the folder "WBStartup" there seems to be no more problem
With "Move" mode, with all folders, I have found that if you try to move an "already existing" file, it generates an error instead of overwriting.
If instead you move an 'already existing' file from 'RAM' to any folder, the file is regularly overwritten


I integrated "20210112-D02" into AROS One and performed a full installation on WMVare, no problems encountered
I have also installed AROS One and created a Live Pendrive.


Also confirmed on VMware Warm reboot does not work


I started the Pendrive on a PC in VESA mode and found no prmblems, the pointer works perfectly.


Question: The 'InjectIcon' command found in Tools, what is it for and how is it used?

What Grub2 mods are required to access the SFS partition?
I understand that when using BIOS access, to a USB pendrive, you do not need to insmod Grub modules. But I believe I am having a USB handoff issue, when booting AROS.

Slightly older versions boot to a screen message "waiting for boot media". I've had this USB hand-off issue before. Replacing BIOS access with Grub's USB drivers solved the problem.

Something like:
insmod usb
insmod usbms
insmod sfs
insmod part_msdos
insmod ehci
#nativedisk ehci #returns -> error: sfs does not support UUIDs
set root=(usb0,msdos5,amiga1)
set prefix=(usb0,msdos5,amiga1)/Arch/pc/grub

However, using the above settings (in the Grub cli) only provides me with (usb0), after the 'ls' command. Previously, Grub listed (hd0,msdos5,amiga1). But that was when Grub had access to all of it's modules. This is why I am wondering what modules are required to access the amiga1 partition.

If I can reset root and prefix, with actual partition access, I can test for a successful boot. If all worked out, then there really isn't an Aros issue. It would just be a Grub2 issue, on my machine.

EDIT: I should add that the new 20211128, and reference build, just sit at the initiation messages screen. The D1 and D2 need to be in VGA safe mode to see the messages, otherwise the screen is just black. There seems to be no error listed, in the show stream of messages. I did a more detailed post prior to this. But it never posted, for some reason.

EDIT2: The initiation messages display a bunch of ACPI discovery line (DSDT, FACS, APIC, BOOT, MCFC, and SSDT). Then follows with this,
[HPET] 0 units total
ACPI: 4 ACPI AML tables successfully acquired and loaded
[Kernel :ACPI-APIC] Local APIC address 0xfee00000; Flags 0x0000
[Kernel :ACPI-APIC] Registering Cor #1 [ID=000] as BSP
[Kernel :ACPI-IOAPIC] Registering IO-APIC #1 [ID=001] @ fec00000 [GSI =0]
[Kernel :IOAPIC] ACPI IOAPIC Mode Enabled
[Kernel :ACPI] System Total APICs: 2, 1 usable
[Kernel :IOAPIC] Disabling i8259 PIC controller...
[Kernel :APIC-IA32] MSI Interrupts Allocatable

Then it just sits there. I'm not sure at what version things quit working. Icaros 2.3 works. Everything at axrt.org/development either does shown as above, or stalls at a screen "waiting for boot media".

@AMIGASYSTEM

Thanks for the tests. There are more fixes to Wanderer coming in next build, so possibly some of the reported bugs will be fixed as well.

As for InjectIcon, it looks like a tool to copy an image from one .info file to another .info file.

@d0wz

Thanks for the report. I have some comments and questions.

First, if you see "cat's eyes" and blinking "Waiting for bootable media" text, it means that AROS kickstart has already loaded (meaning you are "past" GRU.

If I understand you have a computer on which Icaros 2.3 was working and is installed now. You are trying to boot either D01 or D02 builds from a live pendrive prepared via InstallAROS on some VM. Is this correct understanding?

Can you describe our hardware? Processor, Motherboard, whether drives are set to IDE or SATA mode in BIOS.

Ok, probably InjectIcon won't work with DualPNGs, for this function we now have "IconClone" with a nice GUI that works very well by miker, at the moment is missing the App to change the type of Icon that miker himself is working on is missing.

On the subject of icons, I noticed that on "ABIv1" the Unknown Disks or NoDOS Disks use the def_NDOSdisk.info and def_NDOSharddisk.info, on ABIv0 instead these volumes are shown with a small and insignificant grey icon.

As far as I remember, there have been specific fixes for this to work which are not yet integrated in my repository.

On earlier builds, like 20191209-D7 and prior, I did make it to the cats eyes. They also provided substantially longer boot messages, prior to the cats eyes. However, they never pass the cats eyes.

I do point out the USB hand-off issue, as that seems to prevent some O.S.s from loading. I use Grub2 driver loading to force BIOS release of the USB device. Then the hand-off works as it should. Icaros 2.3 does not seem to have this issue, but Grub has been updated since then; along with the boot process now "I think" using newer Grub boot format features.

D01, D02, the reference build, and several after 2019209-D7 never make it to the cats eyes (did not pinpoint the exact version the change occurred). With D01 and D02 I cannot see the boot messages, unless I use VGA safe mode. I just see a black screen (default menu item). The reference build does show the messages, with the default menu item.


Almost. Icaros is also installed, to a pendrive, via VirtualBox. I've tried both D01 and D02. I've also tried several earlier builds, found in arxt.org/development. All tests are over a pendrive. The machine has no harddisk. Icaros was installed with InstallAROS, not Icaros' "prepare pendrive installation media" option.


Sorry, about that. I had forgotten to add that information, after my failed post. It is a Panasonic Toughbook CF-18, Ich6 i915, IDE (but no IDE drive installed), 1.2Ghz and 1.5Gb of ram.

@d0wz

Thanks for explanation, now I understand. I wasn't aware that grub could "fix" the hand off issue. It quite weird that you see the kickstart actually booting but then it stops before reaching dosboot (cat's eyes).

One thing that you can immediately test is adding "noacpi" to kernel command line (after "monitors" option if you select VGA grub entry). Another things that comes to my mind is checking if you can bring up Early Boot Menu (via bootmenu grub option). Let me know what's the outcome of these actions.

@deadwood

Thanks.

"noacpi" gets me to the cat eyes. "bootmenu" can be reached when used with "noacpi", but there really isn't anything in there. Boot Options, Display Options, and Expansion board Diagnostic all are empty. Boot with no startup-sequence doesn't change anything.

I imagine "Boot Options", being empty, is not a good thing.

The last initiation message was, "[PCIDevice] WARNING! Interrupt line is not assigned! Device may freeze or malfunction at use!".

@d0wz

Yes, "Boot Options" being empty is not good. You should see there one volume assigned to a device referring to USB.

There are two routes from now:
a) Please try upgrading your computers BIOS. If there are some issues with it that require software workaround, maybe there is a newer version.
b) If that cannot be done, I can build a special kernel for you with more debugging to see why USB fails for you

PS. Does your motherboard have USB 3.0 by any chance? If so, you need to disable it in BIOS. Also try disabling USB 2.0 in BIOS if you have such option.

The BIOS is updated as far as can be. No, this device does not have USB 3.0.

This may be of no use, but I noticed that the "nativedisk" command, with the Aros included Grub, returns that SFS does not support UUIDs. But a drive I have Grub 2.06 installed on does not give that error. Is that error due to changes for Aros compatibility?

I have installed Aros to a raw.img file. This is more or less the commands I use with my Grub.
-----
insmod usb
insmod usbms
nativedisk ehci
set root=(usb0,msdos1)
set prefix=(usb0,msdos1)/boot/grub
nativedisk
insmod part_amiga
insmod sfs
loopback loop (usb0,msdos1)/system/aros/aros.img
set root=(loop,msdos5,amiga1)
set prefix=(loop,msdos5,amiga1)/Arch/pc/grub
configfile=(loop,msdos5,amiga1)/Arch/pc/grub/grub.cfg
-----
Now from the Aros menu item VGA safe mode I add noacpi and then boot.
Immediately I get "No kickstart modules found, nothing to run".
Is this method a dead end? Aros cannot run over Int13? Which is what I think I am doing. I wondered is there is a custom Grub .img file included with the Aros Grub boot core.

At any rate, in the Grub provided with Aros, I cannot run "nativedisk ehci". If I use "insmod ehci" (usb0) is returned by "ls". If I "ls" (usb0) or (usb0)/ there is a long pause, and i get this "error: USB Mass Storage stalled."

Is standard Grub2 compatible with Aros? Could I insert a custom made Grub (2.06) into the disk, and boot Aros? Or is the Grub provided with Aros required (too far forked).

All of that aside, I could work with a image you provide, to sort out the cause. But I hesitate, as I know you are already busy. Draining your resources, for one laptop, hardly seems fair to the community. That is unless it provides a work around, that could support several machines with such issues. Of course, that is why I am trying to find a Grub workaround.

@d0wz

I can't answer you questions about usage of grub - I'm not familiar with details. What is see is however that grub2 that AROS uses (2.04) has only very slight modifications an not related with USB

https://github.com/deadw00d/AROS/blob/alt-abiv0/arch/all-pc/boot/grub2-aros/grub-2.04-aros.diff

so it's highly likely a stock grub2 should be able at least able to read AROS partition.

Also if your cpu is 64-bit, you could try this ISO: https://axrt.org/development/aros-pc-x86_64-alpha-6.zip. It has a newer kernel and maybe a better ACPI support.