eComStation 2.0 Silver Release README

!!! WHEN TESTING BETA SOFTWARE, ALWAYS BE SURE TO HAVE A TRIED AND TESTED

Thank you for your interest in testing the latest version of eComStation
2.0. A great deal of effort has been made to improve the usefulness to the
product. Please see the 'WHATSNEW.TXT' document for an overview of all
changes.

This product is available for download to all registered users of Software
Subscription Services for eComStation. For more information, please
visit: http://www.ecomstation.com/subscription/∞

This release offers a number of improvements that we would like to have
tested on a larger number of configurations. These are:


Preboot menu changes

The Preboot menu has been changed to accomodate an easier selection of the
target hardware and preset some configuration options automatically.

The following options are available:

Legacy hardware
Modern hardware, safe mode
Modern hardware, ACPI
Virtual Machine

Only by manually selecting ACPI, this will be installed and used, even from
the boot CD (phase 1).

Video driver:

It is now possible to select which video driver is used during boot from CD,
you can select VGA, GRADD, Panorama and SNAP. This selection will be kept
in the regular installer.

The following table lists the preselections based on the selection of target
hardware in the preboot menu (* indicates an unchangable parameter):

	video driver	mouse driver	ide driver
Legacy	SNAP	IBM SMOUSE	DANIS506
Modern safe	Panorama	Amouse	DANIS506
Modern ACPI	Panorama	Amouse	DANIS506
Virtual VPC	SNAP	IBM SMOUSE*	DANIS506
Virtual Vbox	SNAP	IBM SMOUSE*	DANIS506
Virtual VMware	SNAP	IBM SMOUSE*	IBM1S506*
Virtual Svista	SNAP	IBM SMOUSE*	IBM1S506*

The above listed virtual machines are autodetected.
For some more info on eComStation and virtual machines. have a look at:
http://en.ecomstation.ru/software/?action=vm∞

HDA Audio support

The support for HDA audio controllers on new mainboards is greatly improved
since the previous release candidate of eComStation 2.0. It is now detected
and installed on most supported systems. If you experience problems with
UniAud / HDA please refer to the 'REPORTING' section below to file a report.

Please note that UniAud has known problems with suspend & resume, so if you
want to use this feature, you should not activate the UniAud driver
currently.

Another issue with the current UniAud HDA driver is that the systemsounds
are chopped. This is a known problem which is under investigation.


Harddisk volume resizing

We like to ask that people can test the new disk resizer which has been
greatly enhanced since RC4.

This version has a custom DFSee engine that enables reliable RESIZING of
FAT32 and NTFS filesystems to allow shrinking an existing Windows
installation to make room for eComStation on the same system. The engine
included in this release is at level 9.04.

If the entire disk is occupied by a Windows Vista preload installation,
installation of eComStation will not be possible and the installer will
abort (the preboot disk integrity check will prevent further booting).
If you get this error message, you can at this moment hit the key
combination Ctrl+Break or Ctrl+C to continue the boot. You can also
disable the preboot disk integrity check in the preboot menu.

To invoke the disk resizer, please select 'Paritition resizing tool'
in the 'System' menu of the Installation Volume Manager which can be called
during installation (choose 'New Volume' to start it). It will take a while
to complete loading, when done, please select Next to show the list of
resizable volumes. If the list is empty, this means there is no suitable
volume detected that has enough free space for it to be resized.

You can also create freespace on the drive by using the tools supplied by
Windows Vista to manage your disk. In 'FAQ.TXT' you can find a small howto
for this operation.

NOTE: First create a primary partition in eComStation and then select the
boot manager. If you install the boot manager first you will get a partition
alignment error. So first install primary partition and then the boot manager.

NOTE: Previously, the disk manager in eComStation (LVM) would overwrite the
"Windows Disc Signature" in the master boot record, causing Windows Vista
to fail on subsequent boot. The Vista MBR flag will be preserved by
eComStation from the Silver release onwards.

NOTE: Installing next to Windows 7 does not work yet. It can be started from
the boot manager but it will hang because the second partition of
Windows 7 is marked "hidden". This is a know problem which likely will
be fixed in the GA version eComStation 2.0.


Bootable JFS

This release of eComStation contains the option to install the operating
system on a JFS volume. The advantage of doing this is that the amount of
diskcache is only limited by system memory (typically 10% of available
memory is assigned)
This increased cache size gives a huge gain in overall system performance.
To install onto a Bootable JFS volume, you will have to select 'JFS' as
filesystem type in the 'Format Volume' page of the installer.

A number of analysis tools are available on the install CD:

in \ECS\BOOTJFS

cachejfs.exe - query and set parameters of cache
cstats.exe - query usage of cache

in \ECS\BOOTJFS\DEBUG

chklgjfs.exe - show results of last chkdsk
dumpfs.exe - dump internal structure of JFS
logdump.exe - dump current state of log to \JFSLOG.DMP
validfs.exe - show current state of JFS
xchkdmp.exe - show results from chkdsk.new
xchklog.exe - dump results of last chkdsk to \chkdsk.new
xpeek.exe - utility for interactive work with structure of JFS


Genmac 2.20a GA

This package provides generic driver support for several network interface
cards under OS/2 and eComStation. Moreover, Genmac is enabled to
support WPA encryption with the Wireless LAN Monitor 3.x or better.

Genmac and the Wireless LAN monitor will be installed when the appropriate
hardware is detected by the installer. If it is not detected, you can
manually select the driver in the network installation dialog.

Note: only the selected driver will be copied onto your system, in order to
prevent problems with the MPTS installer later on. This may seem confusing,
when you run MPTS in a later stage, it will not show all Genmac supported
NICs.

Version 2.20a ga of GenMac now supports the NETBEUI protocol.

Version 2.20a ga of GenMac now offers suspend & resume on a limited set of
network adapters (when used in conjunction with ACPI) - this is an
*experimental* feature. More details can be found in \ecs\doc\genmac\


ACPI & APM

Support for ACPI is available in this release. The current version is 3.16.
ACPI will have to be enabled in the preboot menu, or after installation
can be enabled with the ACPI Wizard.

An INF helpfile has been compiled from the ACPI documentation, thanks to
CmcK.

Several tests should be performed, please refer to \ECS\DOC\ACPI\ACPITEST.DOC
and \ECS\DOC\ACPI\APMTEST.DOC for details.

When ACPI is installed, there is a number of utilities from the ACPI
Toolkit you can use, see the list below:

AcpiBattery.exe - Show ACPI battery state
AcpiIRQ.exe - Show current IRQ routing
AcpiStat.exe - Show ACPI statistics
AcpiTree.exe - Show ACPI tree
EmbeddedEvent.exe - Show events from Embedded controllers
GetNotify.exe - Show notify
GetTable.exe - Extract any ACPI table
GetValue.exe - Get current value from PM Timer
GPEdevice - Show numbers GPE event for devices
PowerOff.exe - Power Off (immediate!!)
PowerOffAPM.cmd - Power Off (via power object)
ScanPCI.exe - Scan PCI bus for devices
SetGetState.exe - Get/Set frequency/power state
SetGetThrtl.exe - Get/Set throtlling CPU
Thermal.exe - Show temperature of system components
TmrTest.exe - Test working of timer (testing IRQ0 timer 0)
UpTime.exe - Show uptime via PM Timer
WaitButton.exe - Wait press Power/Sleep button, VIO

More extensive explanation is available in \ECS\DOC\ACPI\PSD_EN.INF (under
'Utilities')

Multicore CPU and Multiprocessor SMP support

This release supports the installation of eComStation on a
Multiprocessor or MultiCore CPU computer. This includes Intel Core Duo,
Core2 Duo and AMD 64 X2, X3, X4.
To enable it, you can do so in the ACPI Wizard that is launched from the
Post Installation tasks at the end of the installation. Alternatively you
can start the ACPI Wizard at any time from the install/remove folder in
the Local System folder on the desktop.

The ACPI Wizard will try to determine your system configuration and set
parameters accordingly. You can manually change them of course.

Please note: many drivers are not SMP capable, which may cause
instability or unexpected behaviour on your system.

For more information please refer to \ECS\DOC\ACPI\PSD_EN.INF


Uninstall SMP support

It is possible to reverse a SMP installation, for example because your
system seems unstable or does not properly function with SMP activated.
For instructions on how to perform uninstallation, please refer to 'FAQ.TXT'
in the root of the CD. It is no longer possible to use the ACPIWZRD GUI to
perform an SMP kernel uninstall, as the SMP kernel is the only supported
option when using ACPI.


eComStation Virtual File System (Samba client support)

Samba is a SMB/CIFS protocols file and print sharing server/client set
originally made for the UNIX world to cooperate with corresponding
Windows and OS/2 servers or clients. eComStation has a native implementation
of the SMB/CIFS server/client set - IBM LAN Manager and IBM Peer. These
products have not been recently updated and may have some compatibility issues
with modern Windows SMB/CIFS implementations.

Serenity Systems International has reached an agreement with Blueprint
Software Works for the inclusion of the 'eComStation Virtual File System'
driver which provides Samba Client support.
An example of how to mount a Samba resource via a script
can be found in \ECS\DOC\EVFS\REXX


EVFS GUI

This GUI makes it easier to configure network access using the Samba
protocol.
The object for this tool is placed in the "Local Network" folder and is
called "Virtual Filesystem for SMB". It is possible to automatically
reconnect the network shares upon system reboot.
This GUI tool will be installed when the installation of (any) networking
component is selected. This tool now provides proper connection status
information.

Thanks to the contributions of several people the performance of the Samba
network is now considerably improved. More information on Samba can be
found at: http://svn.netlabs.org/samba/wiki∞


Netware installation from CD1

It is now possible to add Netware client support to eComStation, straight
from the installation CD. This is especially important for those customers
that have a Netware networking environment.

If you find that you are unable to connect to your NetWare network, your
NET.CFG file (located in the root of your boot volume) may need to be
configured. For guidance, open the Install object in the NetWare Network
Resources folder, select Configuration | This workstation..., and make your
changes to the file. Remember to reboot after editing NET.CFG, as these
statements are only read at startup.


Preboot harddisk integrity check

There are several situations which may cause installation problems with LVM
in the install process. In this release, it is possible to disable the
integrity check at page 2 (miscellaneous) of the eComStation installer
preboot menu.

- PBR problems: Set when either the 'hidden sectors' or the geometry fields
in a bootsector do not match the position of the partition or the used
disk-geometry.

- CHS problems: Set when the CHS-values in a partition-table for a
partition do NOT match the current disk-geometry used by the operating
system. This may lead to error from (mini)LVM about the disk being
'corrupt'. Another possible cause for this error is when any partitions
are present on a disk that have NO LVM information at all and are of a
type that gets a default drive letter assigned by OS2LVM.DMD/OS2DASD.CMD

- Boot problems: Set when extended-containers are marked ACTIVE, when
multiple primaries are marked ACTIVE, or if any non-standard flagbyte
values are used in the partition table. These errors MAY lead to the
system failing to boot properly!

All of these problems will now be detected before the installer starts
and an option to fix them is presented. If you choose not to fix them, you
are not able to proceed with the installation.

This technology uses a custom DFSee 'engine' and should be safe, however,
neither Serenity Systems International nor Fsys can be held liable for any
damages that may occur to the data on your harddrive. So make sure you
have a backup of any important data on the drive!


Video Driver Wizard

It is now possible to change the selected video driver fairly easily,
without the need of a complete reinstallation of the system. In case of
video-related problems, you can press alt-f1 during the first bootstage
and select option 'D - reset GRADD based video driver to 800 x 600 64K
colours.'
This should take you to a proper desktop (probably with incorrect resolution
of course) from which you can invoke the Video Driver Wizard to (re)install
the proper driver. It can be found under Desktop -> Local System -> Install/
Remove -> Video Driver Wizard.
If the reset to GRADD does not work, it is also possible to switch to
VGA and perform the same action.


Migration

Although it should be possible to perform a migration from earlier releases,
please note that the following bugs related to migration are still unresolved:

* 1124∞: Post install network setup is confusing in migration
* 1054∞: Add option to wipe instead of move directories
* 1771∞: Start File & Print Client object corrupted in Startup Folder
* 1951∞: eComStation shutdown folder not migrated properly
* 1899∞: Renaming/Removing "Previous Desktop" after migration breaks eCenter
* 1248∞: 1 GB partition size too small when performing migration
* 2095∞: Volume Manager object not created on migration from 1.2R to RC4
* 1944∞: Disable DS Saver during installation

Reporting errors

To increase the amount of user feedback we implemented a 'Feedback
Wizard' which is invoked automatically when you finish the installation or
change the ACPI configuration. Please use it to submit the required
details to the eComStation development team.

Of course, you are still encouraged to create a report at:

http://www.ecomstation.com/support/rc7report/∞

For information on how to report problems related to UniAud, please
refer to http://svn.netlabs.org/uniaud∞

When you create a new ticket, please always attach logs.
You can create all the logs we need, by downloading this package:
ftp://ftp.netlabs.org/pub/uniaud/UniInfo.zip∞
Please attach the zip file that Uniinfo creates to your ticket.

For information on how to report problems related to ACPI, please refer to
http://svn.netlabs.org/acpi∞

Before raising a ticket, please read
http://ecomstation.ru/projects/acpitools/?action=logs∞
Collect all the data that applies to your issue and include it with the
ticket.

For information on how to report problems related to Samba, please refer to
http://svn.netlabs.org/samba∞

You are welcome to join the TestTeam if you want to discuss this silver
release and future developments. See http://ewiki.ecomstation.nl/TestTeam∞
for more details.

DISTRIBUTION / CREATING CDS

This product is provided as a downloadable ISO file, this is a raw CD image
that you can burn on CD-R media. For instructions on burning the CD image
to CD please consult the PDF document howtoburncds.pdf in the same
directory.

REGISTRATION KEY REQUIRED FOR INSTALLING

For the time being you can use the eComStation 1.2 (or 1.2R) key to install
this release candidate of eComStation 2.0.


(c) 2001-2009 Serenity Systems International

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