DOS ain't dead

> Public FTP ? Well, I got the bug several times with at least 3 different
> files, thus, it seems not to be specific to one "guilty" file - so no
> point to send a 200 MiB file, any file providing sufficient size probably
> would do The action was always 7-un-ZIP'ping, the size 150 .. 350
> MiB, compressibility bad (cca 1.5 ... 0.99 (!!!) times), 7-ZIP 4.42
> running on HX (not only HDPMI32), HIMEMX present (indeed for no
> reason, and not involved except HDPMI32 cooperation), at least 2 different
> partitions (one of them 7 GiB FAT32, other=??? (no longer know safely)) -
> given that, the reproductability is unfortunately occasional, not
> always ... seems to depend from fragmentation / last OS access /
> ??? . Last time I tried to isolate out HIMEMX, but the bug didn't occur
> even with it ... maybe more luck next time

Your "bug reports" are not really well-structured, you know? So currently you no longer have a reliable test case, which safely fails?

In this case one will have to wait until you got one again. But you can prepare at least one thing now: to make sure that you can easily switch the DOS then (FreeDOS/EDR-DOS/MS-DOS) with all other parameters unchanged (FAT partition, drivers loaded, DOS/DOSDATA loaded high, UMBPCI/EMM386, DOS Buffers).

---
MS-DOS forever!

> 2. IIRC have seen cca 2 "suspicious" BUG's in FreeDOS Bugzilla that might
> match this problem ... regrettably the Bugzilla is dead so I can't check
> them anymore

E-mail Eric Auer.

> 3. More exact results:
>
> - File size 633 MiB
> - 5 fragments, fragment breaks at cca 50 MiB (2 breaks just one 4 KiB
> cluster from each other) and 220 MiB (again 2 breaks just one 4 KiB
> cluster from each other)

CWSDPMI? HDPMI32? What versions? In particular, what 7-Zip are you trying? (7z + .DLL or 7za or p7zip 4.57 or ... ???)

> - Affected file area 80 MiB ... 96 MiB exactly 16 MiB - thus bug
> NOT related to fragmentation

(J)EMM386 loaded?

> - In affected area, 32 KiB are "lost" at the beginning, the complete (16
> MiB - 32 KiB) block "moved back" by 32 KiB, final 96 MiB - 32 KiB to 96
> MiB filled with garbage (??? , couldn't determine the origin)
> - After 96 MiB file is OK again up to the end

FAT16? FAT32? FAT32+?

> - Always occurs in FreeDOS, never in EDR-DOS, so it must be a
> FreeDOS kernel bug (but possibly already fixed in some "CVS" - see
> Bugzilla)

Maybe something is incorrect in your FAT (or its backup) that only FreeDOS attempts to use??

> 2. IIRC have seen cca 2 "suspicious" BUG's in FreeDOS Bugzilla that might
> match this problem ... regrettably the Bugzilla is dead so I can't check
> them anymore

Here's what Eric Auer says (via e-mail):

------------------------------------------------------
Bugzilla is slow but
still reacts as far as I can tell, just checked.

Unfortunately nobody tells which bug numbers this
thread on dos aint dead is talking about... Nor
which fat type is used nor whether a recent free-
dos kernel version was used... Maybe you can post
the list below into a new thread so people can say
which bugs 1. hurt most 2. they found to be fixed
in current kernels and 3. they have patches for.

Please also post that to jump directly to bug 4242
http://bugzilla.freedos.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4242
is the URL to go

Eric

------------------------------------------------------
bug_id,bug_severity,priority,bug_status,short_desc

1658,MAJOR,P2,NEW,Norton Ghost 5.1d file browser fails (kernel 2029+)
1842,MAJOR,P2,OLD,DOS=HIGH (HMA) fails on several scenarios in beta9sr2 distro
1862,MAJOR,P1,OLD,CHDIR fails on substituded drives (fixed SVN 1357?)
1908,MAJOR,P2,NEW,ren does not work in full root directory
1956,MAJOR,P2,OLD,All file opens fail under specific conditions (fixed SVN 1323?)
1959,MAJOR,P2,NEW,Opening big amount of files (+ config.sys?)

735,normal,P2,OLD,infinite retry attempts for floppy read error
1049,normal,P2,NEW,Abort, Ignore, Retry, Fail? - always retries (fixed 2032a?)
1651,normal,P2,NEW,data corruption on improper disk change during access (2029)
1688,normal,P2,OLD,Unrecognized Partitions Result In Error Message
1706,normal,P2,OLD,Indenture game: keyboard fails after a while, hardware specific
1753,normal,P2,NEW,Invalid Opcode on NetWare 16-bit Client (VLM) when logging in
1793,normal,P2,NEW,djgpp grep called from within rhide doesn't end
1814,normal,P2,NEW,Kernel crash with Opteron / RAID in initdisk
1817,normal,P3,OLD,COPY creates invalid FAT32 dir entries w/ SMARTDRV delayed write & LFN when DOSLFN not loaded
1825,normal,P3,NEW,Lost clusters after OrCAD SDT 386+ v1.21 PartList Configure
1845,normal,P2,OLD,disk access failure when booting ultimatebootcd
1854,normal,P2,OLD,turbo c++ 3.0 fails to run (fixed in SVN revision 1348)
1873,normal,P2,OLD,Kernel 2035a: stargunner display corruption (2033 okay, 2034 less broken than 2035a)
1875,normal,P2,NEW,bupdate.exe from telegard produced incorrect result
1887,normal,P3,OLD,char access to ATAPICDD, EMM386, HIMEM, CLOCK$ drivers hangs
1890,normal,P2,NEW,File Date stamp on network shares incorrect
1923,normal,P1,other,OLD,Kernel hangs when booting if IDE/SATA Compact flash card installed
1944,normal,P2,OLD,MS Himem.sys complains about VDISK app being already loaded
1953,normal,P2,OLD,21h/29h returns 0 (valid) for all drive root names up to LASTDRIVE (fixed SVN 1334?)
1957,normal,P2,OLD,GRABASC causes crash without LOADFIX

1779,minor,P2,NEW,TESTER needed: * and DJGPP RHIDE graphical corruption
1960,minor,P5,OLD,Error message at boot about illegal partition table

698,tiny,P2,REOPENED,kernel has no int 13h DMA boundary helper
1176,tiny,P2,OLD,Third floppy drive (PC-XT) not recognized
1703,tiny,P2,OLD,Freedos bugs for Chinese: No working DBCS support
1742,tiny,P2,OLD,WISH: improve config.sys menu documentation and consistency
1748,tiny,P2,OLD,DATE fails to store year > 2000 correctly on some embedded systems
1758,tiny,P2,OLD,F8 modus does not ask in rare case
1797,tiny,P2,OLD,Kernel crashes when accessing Ontracked HD without Ontrack
1828,tiny,P2,OLD,COMDRIVE remote com1 drive letter hangs for non-floppy
1861,tiny,P2,OLD,WISH: HLT in kernel idle loop, activated by config.sys option
1882,tiny,P2,OLD,WISH: Logo file supports
1903,tiny,P2,other,OLD,check whether freedos umb chain follows RBIL table #01630 style
1909,tiny,P2,MS-DOS,OLD,JO.SYS support
------------------------------------------------------

> This is nonsense (no offense ), because FD Himem is known to be buggy
> in the present, which is slightly worse than having had bugs in the past.

Maybe I should have said we need to test everything some more? More testing is surely needed for something non-trivial as this. The only way to be sure of the bug is to isolate the issue, so switching (or disabling) mem. managers is recommended.

> Generally, a history of fixed bugs usually is seen as positive
...
> NO such history available might be an indication that the
> software isn't used at all or is premature.

YES, I frequently wonder after downloading software xxx version zzz how in the past version yyy could work for me at all given all the horrible bugs found and fixed in zzz compared to version yyy

---
This is a LOGITECH mouse driver, but some software expect here
the following string:*** This is Copyright 1983 Microsoft ***