Author Topic: Effective/efficient partition set-up for OS/2 Warp 4.52  (Read 264 times)

KevinP

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Effective/efficient partition set-up for OS/2 Warp 4.52
« on: June 03, 2026, 10:39:30 pm »
I have OS/2 Warp 4.52 running on a Pentium 4 machine.  I have it on a 20gb harddrive currently.  I have been using the "easy" installation option but am thinking of re-installing and trying the Advanced option and partition the drive.  What might be a good partition scheme?  I also have installation disks for DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.1 and wondered about including that as part of the drive.

Dariusz Piatkowski

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Re: Effective/efficient partition set-up for OS/2 Warp 4.52
« Reply #1 on: June 03, 2026, 11:36:12 pm »
Kevin!

Here is what has worked for me over the years, and I'm talking as in from the original Warp3 install to the 4.52 SMP I am at currently.

1) Main OS/2 partition: 250G
- I have about 30G room left

2) Maintenance partition: 50M
- this has about 12M left

Others have split up the install with the OS itself onto a separate partition, while APPs & DATA go to another one.

Given where the storage media tech has gone since those early '90s days I would expand to a larger SSD partition of about 400G (which actually happens to be my plan at the moment, I just never seem to have the time to make the massive move) so that you can set aside some over-provisioning space for the disk itself, which a 500G SSD easily provides.

KevinP

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Re: Effective/efficient partition set-up for OS/2 Warp 4.52
« Reply #2 on: June 04, 2026, 01:46:04 am »
Kevin!

Here is what has worked for me over the years, and I'm talking as in from the original Warp3 install to the 4.52 SMP I am at currently.

1) Main OS/2 partition: 250G
- I have about 30G room left

2) Maintenance partition: 50M
- this has about 12M left

Others have split up the install with the OS itself onto a separate partition, while APPs & DATA go to another one.

Given where the storage media tech has gone since those early '90s days I would expand to a larger SSD partition of about 400G (which actually happens to be my plan at the moment, I just never seem to have the time to make the massive move) so that you can set aside some over-provisioning space for the disk itself, which a 500G SSD easily provides.

Hello, Dariusz

What do you put on the maintenance partition?

Dave Yeo

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Re: Effective/efficient partition set-up for OS/2 Warp 4.52
« Reply #3 on: June 04, 2026, 02:17:44 am »
The maintenance partition can simply be another install of OS/2. Used to be some utilities that would create an maintenance partition out of your install. The one I used, bootos2, stopped working as the OS was upgraded. I'd advice 1-2 GB partition for it.
Partitioning, you need to use BootManager for multi operating systems. It needs a small primary of 1 cylinder, perhaps 8MB on your drive.
C: can be for DOS and Win3.1, a GB or even 2 at the most, partitioned FAT of course.
I usually put OS/2 on E:, a couple of GB's used to be huge but with stuff like the RPM stuff, maybe 4GB.
Can use F: for utilities and maybe data, once again a few GB or more. Things like MOZILLA_HOME can go on it and be preserved if needing to reinstall and shared if you need to use the maintainence partition, same with a lot of other programs.
Later if running out of room can add another partition of grow F:
About file systems, both HPFS and JFS work best with lots of empty space and can get weird as empty space approaches zero, so partitions on the large size are good.
JFS is likely your best bet for data, allows files larger then 2GB, journaling so chkdsk is much faster.  Not bootable unless your using ArcaOS.
Backups are always nice. Now a days I use USB HD's partitioned as JFS. I have one partitioned as a 1 TB volume. Tried 2TB but with a lot of small files, chkdsk was failing due to lack of memory. These are USB3

KevinP

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Re: Effective/efficient partition set-up for OS/2 Warp 4.52
« Reply #4 on: June 05, 2026, 05:07:59 am »
Which partitions should be active and primary, etc.?  I am using the bootable disk of DFSee.  The OS/2 Warp installation media I have apparently does not have fdisk as is shown in the Certification manual so I tried LVM but was having some trouble getting what I wanted.  Thanks

Dave Yeo

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Re: Effective/efficient partition set-up for OS/2 Warp 4.52
« Reply #5 on: June 05, 2026, 06:04:40 am »
Fdisk has been replaced with LVM, both the Java based GUI and the text mode lvm (type lvm at a cmd prompt). DFsee is good as well as the text mode LVM, which does take a bit of getting used to.
Primary partition for DOS/Win3.1, small Primary for the Boot Manager. There's also Airboot which fits in the MBR but I think OS/2 will insist on BootManager to install on other then C: OS/2 itself will happily use extended partitions. IIRC, DFsee will install BootManager for you. Edit --> UI, Switch to expert mode. Then Mode=FDISK-->OS/2 LVM and BootManager-->BootManager install. Need a small primary to install it to.
Partitions have to be startable for BootManager to boot them. Same if you want to install other stuff like Linux, Haiku, NT etc, partition with OS/2 (DFsee), make them startable and use advanced install in their install program to install on the new partitions.
BootManager needs to be the partition that boots, if Win9X etc tell you that your OS/2 install is history, use fdisk to make BootManager startable. Win9x was horrible that way, install it and at the end it would inform you that your OS/2 install was wiped, even though it was still there.
Really it is only DOS and Windows (and BootManager) that require primary partitions. Note that BootManager is limited to a max of 512GB drives.

KevinP

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Re: Effective/efficient partition set-up for OS/2 Warp 4.52
« Reply #6 on: June 05, 2026, 04:26:22 pm »
IIRC, DFsee will install BootManager for you. Edit --> UI, Switch to expert mode. Then Mode=FDISK-->OS/2 LVM and BootManager-->BootManager install. Need a small primary to install it to.

Yes, in the window where you select Partition Type there is an item for IBM Boot Manager and 1 cylinder size.   There is also a pre-set line for 2gb FAT 16 partition which is what I used for the DOS/Windows 3.1 partition.

Dariusz Piatkowski

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Re: Effective/efficient partition set-up for OS/2 Warp 4.52
« Reply #7 on: June 07, 2026, 02:14:10 pm »
...What do you put on the maintenance partition?

This is a basic command line only OS/2 install.

I has saved me countless times now (LOL), because sometimes when you think change-wise you have "dotted all the i's and crossed all the t's" on your main partition, something could always go wrong.

In short, that partition has about 470 files on there that are about 10M in total size. It's been a while since I built it, but to Dave's point I think I used BOOTOS2 utility (which was originaly an IBM thing, not sure if anyone ever picked it up after though). Take a look at the attached documentation, it can create a WPS capable install as well.

BOOTABLE is another option, this allows you to configure things very much to your liking, it is a bit more complex than BOOTOS2, but rewards will be greater as well.

Dave Yeo

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Re: Effective/efficient partition set-up for OS/2 Warp 4.52
« Reply #8 on: June 07, 2026, 06:28:02 pm »
IIRC, bootos2 was never updated to work after Warp v3. Thing is back then disk space was at a premium, now it is plentiful so easier to just have another install for maintenance.

Dariusz Piatkowski

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Re: Effective/efficient partition set-up for OS/2 Warp 4.52
« Reply #9 on: June 07, 2026, 08:50:15 pm »
Dave!

IIRC, bootos2 was never updated to work after Warp v3. Thing is back then disk space was at a premium, now it is plentiful so easier to just have another install for maintenance.

No, not the case...at least the install I have here fully supports Warp4, which essentially means it has the capability of supporting 4.52, some manual handling/fidgeting required - although it appears to support both the Single as well as Unified kernels in an 'out of the box' fashion.

I say this for the following reason:

Code: [Select]
...
11-02-96 10:58p        33,117    124 a---  BOS2S400.INI
...
11-02-96 10:58p         7,579    124 a---  BOS2U400.INI
...

Worth a try, and if my memory was any better I would guess that's probably the approach I took, I mean the DOC file states the following:

Quote
...
The BOOTOS2 program is a utility that allows you to build a BOOTable OS/2 V2,
V3 or V4 system using an existing OS/2 V2, V3 or V4 system.
...

EDIT
====
Spelling...yikes!  ???
« Last Edit: Today at 12:51:11 am by Dariusz Piatkowski »

Dave Yeo

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Re: Effective/efficient partition set-up for OS/2 Warp 4.52
« Reply #10 on: June 07, 2026, 10:16:26 pm »
OK, my memory is probably faulty, it was a long time back. I had it installed on D: (2nd drive, first primary, FAT) and it used to get updated every time I updated the main system, fixpaks and such as well as manually adding support for JFS and other stuff. It was a life saver on more then one occasion and really helped when updating hard drives back before LVM when you had to carefully plan your partitions and drive letters.
My install used the Presentation Manager but not the WPS.
Still easier to have a couple of complete installs today though strictly speaking the AOS license doesn't allow it, but as a beta tester...
IIRC, the original OS/2 licenses allowed multiple installs as long as only one was used at a time.

KevinP

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Re: Effective/efficient partition set-up for OS/2 Warp 4.52
« Reply #11 on: Today at 04:10:38 pm »
I did finally have some time to spend this weekend on the partitioning.  My skillsets are kind of lacking in this area but I seem to have gotten it done.  I don't know if this is the "right" way to do it but this is what worked for me:  I had to format the partitions in FAT32 before LVM would recognize them to install on them.  I have basic installations on D: and E: and have done the basic updates and am starting to install software on the main E: partition.  The Boot Manager took awhile to get right, I'm not sure why.  I would hit the button in DFSee to install the Boot Manager and it would appear to install but it wouldn't work on boot, there would be just a blinking cursor on the screen.  Finally, I deleted the entire partition.  Then I had to "open whole volume" to reinstall the partition.  Then I also formatted it FAT32.  This time when I installed the Boot Manager partition it worked on boot.

Question:  on the F: partition that was mentioned as one to use for programs, does it also need a full installation?  Thanks

Dave Yeo

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Re: Effective/efficient partition set-up for OS/2 Warp 4.52
« Reply #12 on: Today at 05:34:29 pm »
No, F: doesn't need an install, just formatting.
Edit: ideally E: should have been an extended partition so you wouldn't have to hide C:
« Last Edit: Today at 06:21:01 pm by Dave Yeo »