| 1 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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| 2 | AiR-BOOT-v1.1.1-testing feb 2016
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| 3 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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| 4 |
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| 5 | This v1.1.1-testing cycle will be relatively short with the main purpose of
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| 6 | integrating some patches and fixes from the local dev-queue. After things look
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| 7 | good enough a v1.1.2-RELEASE will be done.
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| 8 |
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| 9 | Once on v1.1.3-testing, the plan is to also integrate the building of the INF
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| 10 | and PDF documentation into this project. That part will require LFNs, but the
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| 11 | building of core AiR-BOOT files, like the installers and of course the
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| 12 | bootloader itself will remain doable on 8.3 FAT systems.
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| 13 |
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| 14 |
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| 15 |
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| 16 |
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| 17 |
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| 18 | ===============================================================================
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| 19 | AiR-BOOT version 1.1.0-RELEASE apr 2013
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| 20 | ===============================================================================
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| 21 |
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| 22 | This is the version as included on the eCS v2.2-beta CD's.
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| 23 | It was technically a pre-v1.1.0 release, with the final v1.1.0, including some
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| 24 | minor patches, to be included with eCS v2.2-GA. Because this version is now
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| 25 | known to be v1.1.0, we'll keep it that way. The minor patches and meanwhile
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| 26 | done fixes will soon appear as v1.1.1 test-version commits to be consolidated
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| 27 | to a v1.1.2 release. Issues regarding removable media are planned for the
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| 28 | v1.1.4 release as this requires removal of obsolete code and optimizing
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| 29 | existing code to create space in the ~32K block (track0) the loader resides in.
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| 30 |
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| 31 | With this version of AiR-BOOT, the display of the version number has changed
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| 32 | to be compatible with the WarpIN versioning system.
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| 33 | So all digits are now separated by a dot.
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| 34 | This change is only visual and tools relying on the way AiR-BOOT stores it's
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| 35 | version numer internally are not affected.
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| 36 |
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| 37 |
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| 38 | The following has been fixed:
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| 39 |
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| 40 | - AiR-BOOT cleared the bootable flag on all drives (TRAC ticket #6)
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| 41 | -----------------------------------------------------------------
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| 42 | This interferred with booting other drives, not containing AiR-BOOT,
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| 43 | directly from the BIOS. Now AiR-BOOT only clears the bootable-flag on the
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| 44 | boot-drive, which is the one where AiR-BOOT got activated from.
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| 45 |
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| 46 | AiR-BOOT would use INT13X extensions before checking their availability
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| 47 | -----------------------------------------------------------------------
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| 48 | Now the availability of INT13X is checked and a popup is displayed and the
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| 49 | system halted when they are not available. INT13X is a requirement for
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| 50 | this and higher versions of AiR-BOOT.
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| 51 |
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| 52 | - AiR-BOOT does not remember drive-letters (issue #2987)
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| 53 | ------------------------------------------------------
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| 54 | When using the drive-letter feature, AB would not remember the drive-letter.
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| 55 | This has been fixed.
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| 56 |
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| 57 | The purpose of this feature is to force a drive-letter onto the booting
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| 58 | system if it otherwise refuses to boot. ("... cannot operate harddrive ...")
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| 59 | This would occure on systems that have been formatted with HPFS and have
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| 60 | their system restored from archive. (i.e. from a zip-file)
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| 61 | In this case the HPFS partition misses the information needed by the loader
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| 62 | to indicate which drive-letter to use. (issues #3067 and #3119)
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| 63 | A SYSINSTX would solve such a problem, as did the dl-feature in AB v1.06.
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| 64 |
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| 65 | With this 1.1.0 version, this feature has become almost obsolete.
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| 66 | If the information is missing from the HPFS partition, AB recreates it
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| 67 | from the LVM information related to that partition.
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| 68 | It only does that in memory, just before booting the system and thus does not
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| 69 | alter/fix the HPFS partition on disk. The user can do that by regenerating
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| 70 | the system using SYSINSTX.
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| 71 |
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| 72 | When using multiple eComStation systems installed on the same drive-letter,
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| 73 | the drive-letter feature is still needed to force the correct letter on the
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| 74 | system being booted and hide the others. See the documentation on how to
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| 75 | install multiple OS/2 systems using the same drive-letter.
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| 76 |
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| 77 | Another case where the drive-letter feature can still be of value is when
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| 78 | restoring a pre-LVM system from archive to an HPFS partition.
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| 79 | In this case there will be no LVM information AiR-BOOT can use, so the
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| 80 | user can use the dl-feature to force the proper boot-drive.
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| 81 | After booting the pre-LVM system, it's advised to do a SYSINSTX to
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| 82 | permanently fix the HPFS partition. After that, the dl-feature can be
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| 83 | turned off since now the proper information is present.
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| 84 |
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| 85 | Yet another situation might occur when the ordering of primary partitions
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| 86 | is changed. There are situations when partitioning an empty harddisk,
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| 87 | the LVM subsystem creates so called cross-linked entries.
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| 88 | This means that the first pointer in the partition table does not point to
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| 89 | the first partition on disk. This can happen when creating multiple
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| 90 | partitions in MiniLVM and saving them all at once.
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| 91 | Good practice is to create-save-create-save...
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| 92 |
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| 93 | Having primary partitions cross-linked is normally not a problem,
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| 94 | but if the user corrects the ordering, i.e. with Linux fdisk (not advised!),
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| 95 | the relation between those primaries and their LVM information
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| 96 | might get mixed up. (The LVM-info is still in the old order)
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| 97 | In this case the AiR-BOOT drive-letter feature could be used to force
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| 98 | the correct drive-letter. The user should recreate the LVM-info with
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| 99 | MiniLVM by unssigning and reassigning the drive-letters for the primary
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| 100 | partitions to regenerate the LVM information. After this,
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| 101 | the partition should boot and the dl-feature can be turned off.
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| 102 |
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| 103 | * Please note that the dl-feature should be used with caution *
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| 104 | Supplying incorrect information can cause system boot failure !
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| 105 | The drive-letter entered in this feature should be the same as the one
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| 106 | used in the CONFIG.SYS corresponding to that system.
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| 107 |
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| 108 | As a convenience, a drive-letter in the dl-feature pop-up can now be set
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| 109 | to "Disabled" by pressing backspace.
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| 110 | (As opposed to arrowing up/down to get to the "Disabled" entry)
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| 111 |
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| 112 |
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| 113 |
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| 114 | - HPFS zero-drive boot-bug (issues #3067 and #3119)
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| 115 | -------------------------------------------------
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| 116 | AiR-BOOT would sometimes refuse to boot older OS/2 systems on HPFS.
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| 117 | This has been fixed.
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| 118 |
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| 119 | The nature of this bug is described above.
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| 120 | AiR-BOOT now checks for this condition and tries to use the drive-letter
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| 121 | from the partition's LVM info. If that's not possible, the system will refuse
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| 122 | to boot and the user can reset the system and turn on the dl-feature
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| 123 | to force a boot-drive. The system should then boot, after which the user is
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| 124 | advised to repair the HPFS volume by regenerating the system with SYSINSTX.
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| 125 |
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| 126 |
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| 127 |
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| 128 | - Double 'I13X' signature (issue #3002)
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| 129 | -------------------------------------
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| 130 | The LVM-engine from eComStation v1.x puts the 'I13X' signature in a
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| 131 | different location in the MBR (Master Boot Record) than the
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| 132 | LVM-engine from eComStation v2.x does.
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| 133 | The true impact of this is unknown at the time but could involve scenario's
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| 134 | where a v1.x IBM-BM is used with a v2.x generated MBR, or vice-versa.
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| 135 | (Not advised or supported anyway)
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| 136 | Previous versions of AiR-BOOT used the v1.x location of the signature.
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| 137 | Starting with v1.1.0 the 'I13X' signature is at both places in the AB MBR.
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| 138 |
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| 139 |
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| 140 |
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| 141 | - Windows cannot find NTLDR/BOOTMGR (issue #3064)
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| 142 | ---------------------------------------
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| 143 | AiR-BOOT v1.07 could not boot Windows XP/Vista/7 if it was installed in a
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| 144 | logical partition.
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| 145 | This has been fixed.
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| 146 |
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| 147 | Unlike OS/2 and eComStation, Windows cannot truly boot from a logical
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| 148 | partition. It always needs a primary partition where it can store it's
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| 149 | loader. When the partition used for the loader is FAT32, the loader code
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| 150 | cannot find the NT kernel-loader (a file on disk) if the field that
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| 151 | otherwise belongs to the physical disk identifier is overwritten.
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| 152 | This field has a different meaning in FAT32 and AiR-BOOT now treats it
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| 153 | as such.
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| 154 |
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| 155 |
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| 156 |
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| 157 | - Contact information corrected
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| 158 | -----------------------------
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| 159 | An unfortunate mistake was made with v1.07 in that it contained the *wrong*
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| 160 | contact information in it's SETUP display.
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| 161 | This still pointed to the sourceforge site, causing lot of confusion.
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| 162 | Version 1.07 and up reside on Netlabs, see the end of this document for
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| 163 | links.
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| 164 |
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| 165 |
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| 166 |
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| 167 | - Release date corrected
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| 168 | ----------------------
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| 169 | AB v1.07 internally had the release date of v1.06.
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| 170 | AB v1.1.0 has a correct internal release date.
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| 171 | This is a non-impact fix.
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| 172 |
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| 173 |
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| 174 |
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| 175 |
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| 176 | Note:
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| 177 | -----
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| 178 | The fixes above also involved the installer, AIRBOOT2.EXE and SET(A)BOOT.EXE
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| 179 | of which new versions are provided.
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| 180 | Therefore, you should not try to install v1.1.0 by using the v1.07 installer.
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| 181 | It will report a broken configuration while this is not the case.
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| 182 |
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| 183 |
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| 184 |
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| 185 |
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| 186 |
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| 187 |
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| 188 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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| 189 | =============================
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| 190 | AiR-BOOT version 1.07-RELEASE may 2011
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| 191 | =============================
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| 192 |
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| 193 | With eComStation v2.1, as released in may 2011, AiR-BOOT replaces the familiar
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| 194 | but aging IBM Boot Manager. While it is still possible to use IBM-BM,
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| 195 | it will not function correctly on huge disks (>502GiB) or play well in
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| 196 | conjunction with Windows 7 OEM installations.
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| 197 |
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| 198 | While AiR-BOOT v1.06, the latest version by it's original developer
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| 199 | Martin Kiewitz, could almost be used as-is, a couple of things needed to be
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| 200 | fixed.
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| 201 |
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| 202 | These include the following:
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| 203 |
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| 204 |
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| 205 | - Support for eComStation phase1
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| 206 | ------------------------------
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| 207 | When eComStation is being installed, it needs to reboot the system without
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| 208 | displaying any boot-manager menu after completing phase1.
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| 209 | With IBM-BM installed, it "programs" it using the SETBOOT utility.
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| 210 | While AiR-BOOT v1.06 already contained SET(A)BOOT, this functionality
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| 211 | was lacking. It has been implemented starting with the v1.07 version.
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| 212 |
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| 213 |
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| 214 |
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| 215 | - Support for huge disks (>502MiB)
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| 216 | --------------------------------
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| 217 | When using eComStation on huge disks, it uses a special geometry that
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| 218 | has a different number of sectors per track. (127 or 255 instead of 63).
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| 219 | This impacts the location of the LVM information which is usually stored in
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| 220 | the last sector of track0 or just below the logical partition. Also,
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| 221 | partitions do not start at a multiple of 63 sectors anymore, but on a
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| 222 | multiple of 127 or 255 sectors, depending on the size of the disk.
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| 223 | Support for huge disks has been implemented starting with v1.07.
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| 224 |
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| 225 |
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| 226 |
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| 227 | - Support for legacy systems on huge disks
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| 228 | ----------------------------------------
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| 229 | Since it's always best to use the OS/2 Volume Manager (MiniLVM) to partition
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| 230 | disks that also contain OS/2 volumes, on huge disks this implies that such
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| 231 | volumes have a different alignment due to the special geometry in use.
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| 232 | With v1.07 support has been added for booting legacy systems like PC-DOS
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| 233 | and FreeDOS and the DOS based 32-bit versions of Windows (95/98/ME) on
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| 234 | such huge disks.
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| 235 |
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| 236 |
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| 237 |
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| 238 | - Adjusted color-theme
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| 239 | ---------------------
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| 240 | While the bright and shiny colors of v1.06 are arguably nice, they do not
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| 241 | fit a distinguished product like eComStation.
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| 242 | To prevent "culture shock", the color-theme has been adjusted to more
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| 243 | resemble the IBM Boot Manager.
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| 244 |
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| 245 |
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| 246 |
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| 247 |
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| 248 | Note:
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| 249 | -----
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| 250 | I't important to know that AiR-BOOT versions 1.07 and up are *not* developed
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| 251 | by the original autor, Martin Kiewitz.
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| 252 | Technically, version 1.07 and up are forks of the 1.06 version and maintained
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| 253 | by a different developer. As such, addressing the original author with regard
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| 254 | to v1.07 and up is not the correct path.
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| 255 |
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| 256 | The eComStation version of AiR-BOOT resides on Netlabs and not on Sourceforge.
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| 257 |
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| 258 |
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| 259 |
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| 260 | Resources:
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| 261 | ----------
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| 262 | GitHub Project Portal : http://rousseaux.github.io/netlabs.air-boot
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| 263 | GitHub Repository : http://github.com/rousseaux/netlabs.air-boot
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| 264 | Netlabs Project Page : http://trac.netlabs.org/air-boot
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| 265 | Netlabs Respository : http://trac.netlabs.org/air-boot/browser/trunk
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| 266 | Bug tracking: : http://trac.netlabs.org/air-boot/report
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| 267 | Contact e-mail : rousseau.os2dev@gmx.com
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| 268 |
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| 269 |
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| 270 | - x -
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