Tag Archives: info

A Note about Third-Party Components in ArcaOS

You may be aware of the recent massive Equifax security breach and the Company’s explanation surrounding a vulnerability in Apache Struts (CVE-2017-5638) disclosed by US CERT in early March 2017. Some reports have implied that the company has somehow blamed Apache Software Foundation for the breach, specifically by not moving quickly enough to address the security flaw. Apache has responded to these allegations clearly and concisely. In light of this incident, we thought this a good opportunity to help provide some clarity concerning third-party work and open source components, in general, as they pertain to ArcaOS and Arca Noae’s position regarding their fitness for use, and who is ultimately responsible to maintain his or her or, in the case of enterprise use, its own systems.

Arca Noae includes several components in ArcaOS developed by reputable third parties, including IBM, Apple, and others. Some of these components are open source, as well, meaning that the code for compiling these components into machine-readable form is freely available to the public. Open source software is often more secure than proprietary software, by nature of the fact that many (sometimes thousands) of developers around the world contribute to the code. This (often massive) group effort allows such projects to react quickly when flaws are discovered, and to work to constantly monitor and maintain the software. However, whether proprietary or open source, Arca Noae may have no control whatsoever over these components, inherent flaws, or as-yet-undisclosed security issues.

It is Arca Noae’s position that each ArcaOS licensee (whether an individual or an enterprise) bears the sole responsibility to consider his or her or its own interests and security. While we do what is within the realm of reasonable possibility to stay abreast of current trends and vulnerability disclosures (CVEs), we cannot guarantee that all issues will be identified and/or reported to our users by us. Thus, best practices dictate that each user remain vigilant and aware of the connected ecosystem in which we live and to take steps to mitigate his or her or its own risks.

Arca Noae welcomes reports from our users of disclosed and non-disclosed vulnerabilities. While we normally encourage our users to avail themselves of our Mantis ticketing system to report issues, those of a sensitive nature (such as an as-yet-undisclosed or little-known security flaw in a bundled component) should be reported through our contact page.

We would also like to take this opportunity to remind all of our ArcaOS licensees that ArcaOS does not utilize telemetry of any kind to communicate with us. We firmly believe that when a user licenses a copy of ArcaOS, his or her or its data should remain on the system as directed by the user, shared only by the user, and with the user’s full knowledge and consent.

The next exciting update to ArcaOS 5.0 is in the making, too. Watch the Arca Noae blog for a release announcement in the coming weeks.

Warpstock 2017, Toronto, Ontario

Want to learn more about using ArcaOS? Come to Warpstock 2017 in Toronto!

Warpstock as an event has been around since 1997. Since its inception, the goal of Warpstock has been to educate and expose users to OS/2, its available software, and how to get the most out of the environment. In addition, Warpstock has always been a great venue for meeting developers and engineers involved with OS/2 and its derivative operating systems, including eComStation and ArcaOS.

This year’s Warpstock event is scheduled for September 8-10 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Several key members of the ArcaOS development team will be on hand to present, answer questions, and take suggestions to improve the operating system as we continue to move toward the 5.1 release, planned for later next year.

More information about Warpstock, its history, past speakers and presentations, and this year’s event may be found on Warpstock’s site: http://www.warpstock.org.

Come join us in Toronto!

Blue Lion, by Arca Noae - Developer Interest

Arca Noae needs your help

In order to make the installation of Blue Lion as smooth and intuitive as possible, we need to update and maintain an extensive database of hardware we are likely to encounter during installation and the drivers associated with the various devices installed in current machines.

Luckily, during the installation of eComStation, a file is created: MACHINE.CFG, stored in <boot drive>\ecs\install\rsp. This file contains all of the relevant data we need to update our current database.

We are asking for community assistance to gather as many MACHINE.CFG files as possible. If you have installed eComStation systems, please attach the MACHINE.CFG file from each one to an email (you may attach multiple files to a single email or send separate ones) addressed to hardware-info at arcanoae dot com. This file should not contain any personally identifiable information, but to be sure, please review before attaching.

Many thanks from the Blue Lion Dev Team for your assistance!

Convenience of shutdown/poweroff in a virtual machine

At one time, shutting down an OS/2 guest under VirtualBox meant full shutdown and virtual powerdown. With recent versions of VirtualBox (5.x), however, this has not been the case.

We’ve noticed, and we’ve done some work to address this.

Did you know that Arca Noae’s ACPI driver runs just fine under these latest builds of VirtualBox? Using the ACPI driver, it is possible to configure the OS/2 (or eComStation) guest machine for complete poweroff using ACPI, just as you might configure a physical workstation.

If you’ve thought that the Arca Noae Drivers and Software subscription didn’t bring value to your virtual OS/2 experience, think again. Now is a great time to subscribe.

Dramatically improve your virtual machine’s network performance

Current VirtualBox recommendations are to use the virtual Intel network cards for guest machines and to configure for bridged networking. Until now, the only choice for OS/2 was the older, IBM-supplied, Intel E1000 driver. The result? Performance just slightly better than the default AMD PCnet-FAST III virtual adapter.

Now, however, there is a choice. Arca Noae subscribers may use the all-new MultiMac Legacy EM driver (MMLEM). This driver is a breakthrough for virtual machines running under VirtualBox, with performance measured at more than twice the throughput of the older driver.

Some comparisons from netio 1.3 across a 1Gbps unmanaged switch, from an OS/2 VM running the latest 32-bit TCP/IP stack to a 64-bit Linux server running on bare metal1:

E1000:

TCP connection established.
Packet size  1k bytes:  15.04 MByte/s Tx,  9168.71 KByte/s Rx.
Packet size  2k bytes:  19.64 MByte/s Tx,  11.99 MByte/s Rx.
Packet size  4k bytes:  22.38 MByte/s Tx,  13.58 MByte/s Rx.
Packet size  8k bytes:  23.72 MByte/s Tx,  17.62 MByte/s Rx.
Packet size 16k bytes:  24.83 MByte/s Tx,  20.62 MByte/s Rx.
Packet size 32k bytes:  19.52 MByte/s Tx,  17.82 MByte/s Rx.
Done.

MMLEM:

TCP connection established.
Packet size  1k bytes:  13.19 MByte/s Tx,  9183.80 KByte/s Rx.
Packet size  2k bytes:  18.65 MByte/s Tx,  12.20 MByte/s Rx.
Packet size  4k bytes:  27.93 MByte/s Tx,  14.98 MByte/s Rx.
Packet size  8k bytes:  39.91 MByte/s Tx,  19.29 MByte/s Rx.
Packet size 16k bytes:  50.39 MByte/s Tx,  22.74 MByte/s Rx.
Packet size 32k bytes:  28.07 MByte/s Tx,  19.19 MByte/s Rx.
Done.

(Note that the falloff between 16 and 32k appears to be an issue within VirtualBox itself, as the same tests, when run against the host machine, actually report an improvement in throughput for the 32k packet size over the 16k one. A 32-bit Linux guest does not show this falloff.)

As you can see, peak transmit throughput, using 16k byte packets, went from 24.83MByte/s (198.64Mbps) to 50.39MByte/s (403.12Mbps). If you are transferring large files across your network to and from your OS/2 VM, this implies a possible reduction in the amount of time it takes for such transfers by more than one half2.

In addition, while the above tests were run using the Intel PRO/1000 MT Desktop (82540EM) virtual network card in the guest, the MMLEM driver also supports the Intel PRO/1000 T Server (82543GC) and Intel PRO/1000 MT Server (82545EM) virtual network card options available in VirtualBox 5.x, either of which may yield even better throughput (the older IBM-supplied driver does not support these server-class cards).

There are other benefits of the Arca Noae Drivers & Software subscription for virtualized users of OS/2, including full shut down and virtual power off of the VM when using Arca Noae’s ACPI PSD. So if you thought there wasn’t much value in subscribing just to run virtual machines, you might want to look again.

  1. Guest machine running eCS 2.1, configured with 2GB RAM, Intel PRO/1000 MT Desktop (82540EM) virtual network card, 32-bit TCP/IP stack, default sockets. Host machine running openSUSE LEAP 42.1 x64, 16GB RAM, single Intel 82567LF-2 onboard network adapter, and default adapter settings. NETIO target (host) machine running openSUSE 13.2 x64, 32GB RAM, dual Broadcom NetXtreme II BCM5708 onboard network adapters, in bonded active backup configuration, with default adapter settings for the physical bond slaves. Switch was Cisco SR2024 (unmanaged 10/100/1000).
  2. Many factors contribute to overall network throughput, including protocol, aggregate traffic, CPU activity, etc. These figures are meant as a guideline and not a guaranty of performance.

Who’s speaking at Warpstock Europe?

There will be plenty of information on hand at this year’s Warpstock Europe event. Here’s a sampling of what to expect from Arca Noae:

Saturday, David Azarewicz will be presenting on device driver progress and plans for the future (Blue Lion will be a milestone, but not the end of the road, by any means).

Also on Saturday, Lewis Rosenthal will be discussing what to expect in the Blue Lion package. While all of the details have not been set, we have a pretty good idea of what will be included.

Later in the afternoon, Steven Levine will pick up on Arca Noae SNAP. Learn what is coming next for this accelerated video driver.

We will return on Sunday with an update on YUM and RPM and how these technologies play an important role in Blue Lion by Lewis Rosenthal, as well as future plans for the well-received Arca Noae Package Manager.

Arca Noae’s last presentation on Sunday will be from Alex Taylor via Skype, discussing printing and fonts.

Between Arca Noae staff and the other presenters, there should be something for everyone. Arca Noae is the exclusive source for Warpstock Europe tickets. If you haven’t yet purchased your tickets, please visit our store today.

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Arca Noae at Warpstock Europe 2016

Arca Noae principals David Azarewicz and Lewis Rosenthal will be on hand at this year’s Warpstock Europe event to discuss some of the great offerings from Arca Noae, including latest driver development and the upcoming Blue Lion release.

Expect more details in the coming days, and be sure to visit the event page for general information and the Arca Noae store to register and purchase your tickets.

Blue Lion, by Arca Noae

Presentation: Blue Lion – A First Peek

We’ve added a new item to our Presentations, Whitepapers, & Case Studies page.

Blue Lion – A First Peek was a presentation given by Lewis Rosenthal via Skype to the Dutch OS/2 Users Group (eCS-gg), Saturday, January 9. The discussion focuses on Blue Lion’s new Preboot environment, including screenshots of current alpha builds, and references some planned features of the new installation media and maintenance environment. The presentation is provided as a PDF.