O-S 2: Things it Won't Do
O/S 2: Things it Won't Do Speaking of turning off computers, I'd like to tell about my experiences with OS/2. I write a lot of programs for a client on a 386 machine that runs OS/2 and acts as a network server. Every once in a while the whole system halts with a messsage similar to "Single step interrupt in system code" and needs to be rebooted. OS/2's file structure is similar to MS DOS's, so this procedure typically leaves a few "lost" clusters (i.e., disk clusters that are marked as allocated, but don't belong to any files). This happens with DOS too if you reboot while you have open files. Under DOS this is fixed very easily by issuing CHKDSK/F. Under OS/2 this doesn't work, because C: disk has open files on it (swap file, harderr.sys, et al). So, I have to first boot MS DOS from a floppy in drive A: and do DOS's CHKDSK C:/F (this is Compaq DOS, which supports large partitions), and only then reboot OS/2. This helps deal with another OS/2 problem---uncontrollable growth of the swap file. I have 9MB of RAM, and the swap file normally runs about 6MB, but sometimes, when I load several programs, or edit a huge file, it increases (say... 20MB), and it never shrinks, and it can't be touched while OS/2 is running. Once, an erroneous C program died an out-of-bounds error, but nevertheless caused the swapfile to take up all available disk space. When I boot DOS, I also erase the swapfile. I guess there's a moral in this having to keep around a DOS diskette to keep OS/2 running... PS/2 --- half a computer OS/2 --- half an operating system for half a computer Dimitri Vulis CUNY GC Math ------- End of Forwarded Message