@joerg

8000 buffers.

Further information: the reason that the archive failed to fully extract is that it was supposed to be a patch that extracted over the top of the previous installation (this is Latex for AOS4.0, I've been updating my installation over the last couple of days). The previous installation has a lot of soft links, but in the patch archive, the updated files appear as actual files, not as links, so when the archive is extracted, it tries to overwrite the soft links with these files, which fails. This was the cause of the archive extraction failing, and perhaps is also related to the buffer problem. Perhaps also it is not related, but I try to give as much information as possible.

Since then, I have backed up my data and reformatted that partition, because there were filesystem errors that I did not know how to correct.

@Jack

No special reason -- I just double clicked the file, and it opened UnArc, which did the unpacking one step at a time. In future, perhaps I'll configure something smoother.

--Stuart Anderson

I've just received the following requester from SFS:

-----------------------------------------------

SmartFileSystem DH5: (a1ide.device, unit 1)

SFS has ran out of cache buffers.

This is a safety check requester which should
never appear under normal conditions. Please
notify the author about the error and if
possible under what circumstances it appeared.

BEWARE: SFS might crash if you click Continue.
Please save your work first!

-----------------------------------------------

I have a 12GB partition on which I was
installing TeTex. I had just unzipped the
main .tar.gz archive, then unpacked the
resulting .tar archive. This was about
350MB, and all went well. Then I unpacked
a patch archive to update the main archive.
The patch is much smaller, about 15MB.
I unzipped the patch .tar.gz archive, which
was successful, so the archive seems good.
Then I tried to unpack the resulting .tar
archive, and encountered an error partway
through, where one file would not unpack.
I deselected it in UnArc and tried again.
Now the next file after it would not unpack.
I tried one more time, and the next file
DID unpack, but the following file would not
unpack. Immediately after UnArc put up its
requester notifying my of the error, the
SFS requester came up on top of it. There
was a barely perceptible delay between the
requesters which allowed me to see briefly
what was under the SFS requester.

That is all the information I was able to
obtain from the system. I am now going
to click continue and reboot.

I hope this information is useful.

EDIT:

Further information...

It appears that when I updated to SFS 1.277,
the dskcache.library.kmod did not also
automatically update (I had assumed it would).
I still had version 3.13 of
diskcache.library.kmod in my kickstart.
Perhaps this is the source of the trouble.
I have updated now to version 3.16 which
cave with the full SFS1.277 archive.
If there is still trouble, I will post
further information.

Replying to my own earlier post:

I have now tried again after a reboot, and I have verified the ethernet behavior: After ethernet is first initialized and addnetinterface is run, my ethernet connection shows packet losses of around 30-40%, even though I used a static IP address. With DHCP, I get either a system hang or 100% packet loss.

This time, I unplugged the OTHER end of my ethernet cable from my firewall rounter just to be sure that I wasn't affecting the mechanical connection between the ethernet cable and the jack on my microA1. I unplugged it, waited a few seconds, and plugged it back in. Again, just as before, there were two brief flashes from the LED (this time, of course, I was looking at the one on the firewall jack), and then a steady light. When I returned to my microA1 and tried to ping stuff, I now got 0% packet loss, internet connection was fast, everything perfect.

So this is a very reliable workaround for me: just unplug/replug the ethernet cable AFTER the network is running. This appears to reset SOMETHING to a valid state that was not correct before. I have no idea what, but perhaps this information will be useful to those working on the ethernet system. If any further information would be useful, please just ask. I would be happy to reboot my system multiple times, send you debug logs, or whatever.

--Stuart Anderson

@BobW

I've found a little additional information about the behavior of ethernet on my microA1:

Even if I set the interface configuration to static, I still sometimes get packet losses after a reboot. However, unplugging and reinserting the ethernet cable from the socked at the back of my microA1 causes the connection to become 100% reliable with no packet loss.

I don't think this is just a matter of a bad ethernet cable connector, because without moving or bumping the cable, I can cause the packet loss by rebooting, and then correct it by unplugging/replugging the ethernet cable. To try to eliminate mechanical failure of the connector, the next time this happens, I'll unplug the OTHER end of the ethernet cable and see what happens.

When I replug it, the indicator light in the receptical flashes briefly twice and then comes on steadily. To me (with my limited knowledge of ethernet hardware), this SEEMS like something is being reset when the connection is being reestablished. Speculation: the ethernet controller somehow gets into a bad state, and the replugging resets it to a valid state, after which everything works.

Perhaps others could try to verify this?

--Stuart Anderson

@BobW

I just noticed your thread from a link on amigaworld.net. I have had a very similar problem and found a very similar solution independently.

It seems that my microA1 does not like to connect to my router (Netgear FR114P) via DHCP. This is the same router I've had for a couple of years, and it always worked before, which seems to make it a software issue with OS4Final.

On the other hand, I have also an A1-XE (my wife's actually, but I do the upgrades and maintenance) attached to the SAME router, and it has NO problems at all connecting to the router using OS4Final. Which seems to make it a hardware issue.

It seems that there is some subtle difference between how the same eth3com.device interacts with the ethernet chip on the microA1 versus the A1XE. On the microA1 I get the same problem that you mentioned: hard locks, no GR, keyboard and mouse locked out, need to do a cold reboot after each lockup.

Things I have tested:

getnetstatus showed that the interface was configured and available.

shownetstatus reported the correct local host address (I had configured my router to assign always 192.168.0.5 to my microA1 on the LAN side of the firewall) and correct default gateway. However, it showed DUPLICATE DNS server entries. I did not statically configure any DNS servers, but let DHCP set them up, and shownetstatus gave me a list of 6 DNS servers, with the last 3 being duplicates of the first 3. The server addresses themselves were correct.

pinging the router or anything else on the LAN gave 100% packet loss.

If I change the setup to static routes and static DNS servers instead of DHCP, all works fine, ALMOST. After changing the settings to static, I had one further lockup upon my next cold reboot, but since then, I have had the system up for about 36 hours, online the whole time, and it is completely stable.

Hope this helps with the diagnosis!

--Stuart Anderson