AROS User Manual
2 - AROS USER MANUAL
AROS PUBLIC LICENSE (APL)
You may obtain a copy of the License at http://www.aros.org/license.html
DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY.
COVERED CODE IS PROVIDED UNDER THIS LICENSE ON AN —AS IS“ BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, WARRANTIES THAT THE COVERED CODE IS FREE OF DEFECTS, MERCHANTABLE, FIT FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE OR NON-INFRINGING. THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE COVERED CODE IS WITH YOU. SHOULD ANY COVERED CODE PROVE DEFECTIVE IN ANY RESPECT, YOU (NOT THE INITIAL DEVELOPER OR ANY OTHER CONTRIBUTOR) ASSUME THE COST OF ANY NECESSARY SERVICING, REPAIR OR CORRECTION. THIS DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY CONSTITUTES AN ESSENTIAL PART OF THIS LICENSE. NO USE OF ANY COVERED CODE IS AUTHORIZED HEREUNDER EXCEPT UNDER THIS DISCLAIMER.
LIMITATION OF LIABILITY.
UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES AND UNDER NO LEGAL THEORY, WHETHER TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE), CONTRACT, OR OTHERWISE, SHALL YOU, THE INITIAL DEVELOPER, ANY OTHER CONTRIBUTOR, OR ANY DISTRIBUTOR OF COVERED CODE, OR ANY SUPPLIER OF ANY OF SUCH PARTIES, BE LIABLE TO ANY PERSON FOR ANY INDIRECT, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OF ANY CHARACTER INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, DAMAGES FOR LOSS OF GOODWILL, WORK STOPPAGE, COMPUTER FAILURE OR MALFUNCTION, OR ANY AND ALL OTHER COMMERCIAL DAMAGES OR LOSSES, EVEN IF SUCH PARTY SHALL HAVE BEEN INFORMED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES. THIS LIMITATION OF LIABILITY SHALL NOT APPLY TO LIABILITY FOR DEATH OR PERSONAL INJURY RESULTING FROM SUCH PARTY'S NEGLIGENCE TO THE EXTENT APPLICABLE LAW PROHIBITS SUCH LIMITATION. SOME JURISDICTIONS DO NOT ALLOW THE EXCLUSION OR LIMITATION OF INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES, SO THIS EXCLUSION AND LIMITATION MAY NOT APPLY TO YOU.
COPYRIGHT AND TRADEMARKS. Copyright © 1995-2007, The AROS Development Team. All rights reserved. The AROS Kitty mascot is © 2003 by Eric schwartz The image used in the cover is © 2005 by Damir Sijakovic. Amiga® is a trademark of Amiga Inc. All other trademarks belong to their respective owners.
This manual was produced using a variety of resources and documentation available in www.aros.org and other AROS resource sites by João Ralha. Original AROS USER documentation was written by Stefan Rieken, Matt Parsons, Adam Chodorowski, Sergey Mineychev. AROS USER MANUAL - 3
TABLE OF CONTENTS
WELCOME...... 5 DOCUMENTATION CONVENTIONS ...... 5 OTHER USEFUL OR REFERENCE DOCUMENTATION...... 6 INTRODUCTION ...... 7 WHAT‘S AROS?...... 7 GOALS ...... 7 HISTORY ...... 7 REQUIREMENTS ...... 8 WARNING...... 10 CHAPTER 1: AROS BASICS...... 11 AROS ZUNE GUI BASICS ...... 11 AROS BASIC HANDLING ...... 15 Booting / Rebooting...... 15 Wandering around ...... 16 CHAPTER 2: FILE MANAGEMENT ...... 18 DISK DEVICES...... 18 PATHS...... 19 FILES AND DRAWER...... 19 FILE SYSTEMS ...... 20 ORGANIZING YOUR DATA...... 20 PREPARING A VOLUME...... 20 Creating a drawer...... 21 Deleting files/drawers...... 22 CHAPTER 3: AROS PROGRAMS ...... 25 AROS SYSTEM PROGRAMS ...... 25 TOOLS DRAWER...... 26 Commodities...... 27 DEVS AND STORAGE...... 28 Datatypes...... 29 Dosdrivers...... 29 Drivers...... 29 Keymaps...... 30 MIDI ...... 30 Networks...... 30 Printers...... 30 SYSTEM DIRECTORY ...... 31 UTILITIES DRAWER...... 33 Clock...... 33 Installer...... 33 More...... 33 Multiview...... 34 Snoopy...... 34 WBSTARTUP DRAWER...... 34 Tool types...... 34 CHAPTER 4: CUSTOMISING AROS...... 36 SETTING THE TIME AND DATE...... 36 SETTING UP THE LOCALE...... 37 SETTING UP THE INPUT ...... 38 4 - AROS USER MANUAL
SETTING WANDERER LOOK AND USE...... 38 Icontrol...... 39 Wanderer...... 39 FONT...... 41 Reqtools prefs...... 41 SETTING UP THE SOUND...... 42 SETTING UP INPUT/OUTPUT DEVICES ...... 42 Trackdisk prefs...... 42 Serial Prefs...... 43 CHAPTER 5: EXTRA APPLICATIONS...... 44 APPENDIX I œ FONT SUPPORT...... 51 Bitmap fonts...... 51 Free-type fonts...... 51 APPENDIX II œ BOOT OPTIONS ...... 53 GRUB SUPPORT ...... 53 HOW DOES IT WORK?...... 53 AROS Specific GRUB support ...... 54 APPENDIX IV œ TROUBLE SHOOTING...... 55 KNOWN PROBLEMATIC AND HARDWARE, OR THE SUPPORT IS LIMITED...55 NOT WORKING HARDWARE...... 55
AROS USER MANUAL - 5
HOW TO USE THIS MANUAL
Welcome
This is manual is meant to get people used to AROS. It is for everybody interested in AROS, as it tries to provide information on AROS in different Did you know… levels of expertise. We‘ll try to cover everything in depth, but in such a This image regards way that you don't need to learn what you don't want to learn. some more curious aspect of AROS itself or related subject. It tries to cover multiple platform usage, with the exception of AFA (AROS for Amiga) although many issues covered here should apply.
First chapters on this manual are for you to get the hangs on the WIMP Warning: usage of the AROS, they cover most basic and essential aspects of daily This kind of image is usage of an operating system. intended to get your Later chapters are intended mostly for expert use and consult purpose. attention regarding some procedure or behaviour which might If you‘re familiar with Amiga and AmigaDOS itself, most of the subject require caution from covered here should not be novelty to you, but there‘s a lot of hardware your part. and software specific subjects that are dealt here that might be of use to you.
Documentation Conventions
NOTE: The following conventions are used through out this manual: This image regards something that you should know in order KEYWORDS Keywords are displayed in all uppercase letters, however, to perform an the arguments are not case sensitive (unless stated operation on the best otherwise). possible manner.
Notice the side of this page it has some image with different purposes. Hardware related: The purposes are illustrated and described on that page. It pinpoints some important points regarding hardware Also on the side of the page might be the Icon program that the excerpt support, behaviour or near it refers to, basically it acts as quick reference. configuration.
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Other useful or reference documentation
You should also read the following manuals: AROS HD Installation AROS Shell Manual
Also it‘s recommended that you read other more actively maintained documentation, which is kept in http://www.aros.org/.
AROS USER MANUAL - 7
INTRODUCTION
What‘s AROS? The AROS Research Operating System is a lightweight, efficient and flexible desktop operating system, designed to help you make the most of your computer. It's an independent, portable and free project, aiming at Did you know that AmigaOS was the first being compatible with AmigaOS 3.1 at the API level (like Wine, unlike pre-emptive multi- UAE), while improving on it in many areas. The source code is available tasking operating under an open source license, which allows anyone to freely improve upon system for the it. —Personal Computer“ concept?
Launched in 1985 the Goals Amiga 1000 sported the The goals of the AROS project is it to create an OS which: AmigaOS which unlike it‘s 16-bit counterparts (IBM pc, Apple Mac and Atari 1. Is as compatible as possible with AmigaOS 3.1. st) was a true pre- emptive multi-tasking 2. Can be ported to different kinds of hardware architectures and operating system taking processors, such as x86, PowerPC, Alpha, Sparc, HPPA and other. advantage of the Custom Chip architecture. 3. Should be binary compatible on Amiga and source compatible on any other hardware. The latest AmigaOS offering during the 4. Can run as a standalone version, which boots directly from hard disk Commodore Amiga era and as an emulation which opens a window on an existing OS to develop was the 3.1 version in 1993 and offered a more software and run Amiga and native applications at the same time. stable and flexible OS that 5. Improves upon the functionality of AmigaOS. endured for many years and got different additions. This is regarded To reach this goal, we use a number of techniques. First of all, we make as the main fact that kept Amiga community active heavy use of the Internet. It‘s essentially a community project. The most even after the current version of the source is accessible 24 hours per day and patches Commodore demise. can be merged into it at any time. A small database with open tasks makes sure work is not duplicated.
History Some time back in the year 1993, the situation for the Amiga looked somewhat worse than usual and some Amiga fans got together and discussed what should be done to increase the acceptance of our beloved machine. Immediately the main reason for the missing success of the Amiga became clear: it was propagation, or rather the lack thereof. The Amiga should get a more widespread basis to make it more attractive for everyone to use and to develop for. So plans were made to reach this goal. One of the plans was to fix the bugs of the AmigaOS, another was to make it an modern operating system. The AOS project was born.
But exactly what was a bug? And how should the bugs be fixed? What are the features a so-called modern OS must have? And how should they be implemented into the AmigaOS?
Two years later, people were still arguing about this and not even one line of code had been written (or at least no one had ever seen that code). 8 - AROS USER MANUAL
Discussions were still of the pattern where someone stated that "we must have ..." and someone answered "read the old mails" or "this is impossible to do, because ..." which was shortly followed by "you're wrong because ..." and so on.
Did you know that while AROS has it‘s In the winter of 1995, Aaron Digulla got fed up with this situation and roots on the AmigaOS, the AmigaOS itself has posted an RFC (request for comments) to the AOS mailing list in which he it‘s roots on the asked what the minimal common ground might be. Several options were TripOS? given and the conclusion was that almost everyone would like to see an
TRIPOS (TRIvial Portable open OS which is compatible with AmigaOS 3.1 (Kickstart 40.68) on which Operating System) is a further discussions could be based, to see what is possible and what is computer operating system developed at the not. Computer Laboratory of Cambridge University and it was headed by Dr. So the work began and AROS was born. Martin Richards. MetaComCo acquired the rights to the 68000 version and continued development until TRIPOS was chosen by Commodore Amiga in March 1985 to form part of an operating system for their new computer.
TRIPOS provided features Development tree regarding AmigaOS based or inspired OS. such as pre-emptive multi-tasking (using strict- priority scheduling), a It can currently be installed on most IBM PC compatibles, and features hierarchical file system native graphics drivers for video cards such as the GeForce range made by and multiple command line interpreters. NVIDIA. Presently USB keyboards and mice are also supported.
The most important TRIPOS concepts have While the OS is still lacking in applications, a few have been ported, been the non-memory- including E-UAE, an emulation program that allows 68k-native AmigaOS management approach (meaning no checks are applications to run in the same way a majority must be run on AmigaOS performed to stop 4.0. Some AROS-specific applications have also been written. AROS has programs from using unallocated memory) and TCP/IP networking support, and it is also available an experimental message passing by version of AMosaic web browser, for test purposes, among other Internet- means of passing pointers instead of copying related applications. message contents. Those two concepts together allowed for sending and Requirements receiving over 1250 packets per second on a The requirements depend on the type of platform used. For x86 CPU 10 MHz Motorola 68010 native usage the AROS requires a PC with at least 32 Mb of memory and CPU. 80 Mb hd. A VESA compliant GFX board and PS2 mouse and keyboard is Most of TRIPOS was recommended. implemented in BCPL. The kernel and device drivers Since presently AROS does not support USB, to use USB keyboards and were implemented in mice you will have to enable legacy support or emulation (depending on assembly language. your pc) in the BIOS.
PPC requirements are unclear at the moment…
Naturally, if you‘re using a specific distribution of AROS requirements may vary from the ones appointed here. AROS USER MANUAL - 9
Specific hardware support may vary. Here is a provisory list of supported devices for different platforms.
x86 Compatible Drivers PPC Compatible Driver Unix 'Hosted' Env. (N/A) - ata.device (Hosted) r e
l - Generic PCI ATA UDMA l o
r compatible Driver t
n E Supported Hardware: o tag">D Update 2007-03-21: C I Michal Schulz has made - vga.hidd - Generic VGA (N/A) - x11.hid - x11 an initial commit of the Driver, limited to 640x480 accelerated AROS USB stack, enabling the use of USB mice and in 16 colours. graphics driver. creating the foundations - vesa.hidd - Generic to add support, VESA/VBE Driver, upto subsequently, also for 1024x768 and 32bit other devices. Please notice this is pre-alpha colour. stage software, this - nvidia.hidd - nVidia PCI means only USB 1.1 UHCI
s
t Accelerated 2D Driver, controllers are supported
e for now, and maybe it s upto 1600 x 1280 and
p won't work correctly on i 32bit colour. h your motherboard. Next C
- ati.hidd - ATI 2D thing to develop will be X extensions to USBHID F Accelerated Driver
G class, allowing to use graphic tablets and USB (N/A) - ac97.audio - nvidia - oss.audio - plays keyboards with AROS,
nforce2, and intel 810 audio through and OHCI controllers
s compatible PCI ac97 codec the hosts OSS support. We must note t
e driver. drivers. that support for USB 2.0 s EHCI controllers wasn‘t p i - emu10kx.audio - Sound defined in bounty Michal h
C Blaster is working on. In order to
o improve functionality and i Live/Audigy/Audigy2
d compatibility, huge beta
u compatible driver testing is required A - rtl8029.device - SanaII (N/A) (Hosted) RTL8029 chipset NIC driver. - etherlink3.device - 3com 3c905 family NIC driver. - nforce.device - nForce
family NIC driver. s
r - pcnet32.device - AMD o t PCNet32 NIC Driver. Works p
a with QEMU/VMWare d A
emulation also. k
r - intelpro100.device - Intel o PRO 100 series cards w t
e driver
N
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Warning
AROS is alpha quality software. This means that it is currently Warning: mostly fun to play with and cool to develop for. If you came READ ABOUT THE here because you thought AROS was a finished, complete and AROS PUBLIC LICENSE (APL) AND fully usable operating system, you will most likely be DISCLAIMER OF disappointed. AROS isn't there yet, but we're slowly moving in WARRANTY ON the right direction. PAGE 2.
AROS USER MANUAL - 11
CHAPTER 1: AROS BASICS
AROS Zune GUI Basics
GUI abbreviation stands for Graphical User Interface, and is applied to all the means used by OS to interact with user other than plain command-line interface (CLI). For those who never have used any OS from Amiga branch, it will be useful to give some GUI basics to help them in use of our system. Some of it, however, will be AROS-specific. An Amiga systems use definitely and common principles, as you can already note. The following elements compose the GUI: - Screens - Windows - Pull-Down/Pull up Menus - Gadgets - Requesters
A shared feature of AROS with AmigaOS is multiple —screens“. These are conceptually similar to X Window System virtual desktops or workspaces, but are generated dynamically by application programs as necessary and each screen can have a different resolution and colour depth. 12 - AROS USER MANUAL
The term —screen“ is used to refer the area in which reside the windows. Any application can have it‘s own named screen. It‘s not exclusive of the Desktop app Wanderer (Other systems only have one desktop area or multiple in which the applications are launched as windows).
When you boot AROS it launches a GUI app called Wanderer. The Wanderer app opens the Screen with app name. Other applications may open other screen, which could have different resolutions from the Wanderer œ as mentioned before.
The —screen“ is the place where your window is meant to be open. If it‘s said that application going to open on Wanderer screen, it will look like it‘s usually happens in other OS - your app will appear as window on desktop. On another hand, window can be open on it‘s own screen - it looks like it captures the whole screen. Actually there‘s gadget in the top-right corner of the screen allows screens to be cycled - as the AROS stores all screens in memory simultaneously, redrawing is instantaneous. So you can switch between Wanderer, Directory Opus and any other apps opening on it‘s own screen. This behaviour also comes from Amiga‘s history.
Close Title bar Zoom Depth gadget gadget gadget
Scroll bar
Scroll Resize bar gadget
The main activity is usually performed on windows, which are opened on the app screen (example double clicking on a drive icon on the wanderer). AROS USER MANUAL - 13
Unlike Screens the windows do not usually cover the all screen area, and are moveable through all the screen area (and even outside the screen area œ AROS specific option). Several windows can be opened and might function independently. Selecting a window is just a matter of selecting inside the it‘s area, while de-selecting can be achieved by either selecting another window… A window usually has control buttons to manipulate with it, called gadgets (which can be translated as interactive kind of graphical element). - First one in the top left corner of a window allows closing it; - Next, in the right part allows to minimise/maximise window; - The right upper corner gadget is used to put window to front or to back just like we switch screens; - The right lower corner gadget allows window resizing; - The scrollbars allow scrolling the window contents either in horizontal or vertical movement.
AROS Windows can have no gadgets at all (look at the Kitty demo in the Sys:Extras/Demos drawer - it doesn‘t even have a borders and yet has well-curved shape) or have a different set of it.
The window‘s contents consists from some usual elements could be seen in any GUI - buttons, lists, strings of text, any other kind of gadgets. If application is intended to change any preferences of a system or an application it‘s usual shortly called Pref and has a set of buttons to operate.
Any menu options of any application‘s window isn‘t attached to that window - it moved to upper strip, where it can be easily accessed. To do this, select window you‘re need, and move mouse pointer to upper side of a screen. Then, if you press right mouse button there, you can see the pull-down menu, representing our application‘s options. Yes, it looks like MacOS somehow. Also you can enable the menu to appear on any place of the screen, where you press left mouse button. To do so ... For example, if no application window is selected, you can see the Wanderer‘s menu then.
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Now, let‘s consider our desktop - as you probably already know, it‘s called Wanderer. What is this? Well, Wanderer is an application, just like all others. In fact, it is an AROS file manager, allowing you to choose and operate files (the functionality isn‘t complete yet), launch programs, get some system information, launch CLI (shell window) and other functions. Usually it opens on wide screen and acts like your desktop (icons on this desktop represents the volumes and disks you can work with). It can be set aside by unselecting Backdrop option, which can be found in Wanderer‘s menu (remember paragraph above?). After that a Wanderer becomes just another window you can move, resize etc. So, you can see it isn‘t like a Windows or another system‘s desktop, fixed to it‘s place. Of course, you can even not use the Wanderer at all and use your preferred file manager (e.g. Directory Opus).
We‘ve already mentioned gadgets one time or another - but what are those? The Gadgets are special buttons or options provided by the AROS Gui to allow different level of interaction between the user and OS. An OK or Cancel button is regarded as gadget. As well as scroll bar or button. Also List or tree items selectable are also gadgets. Another unknown name you can encounter in AROS is Zune.
Zune is GUI toolkit developed in replacement and best traditions of MUI (Magic User Interface), widely used on Amiga‘s. But is there an application called Zune? You can find Zune Pref and it allows you to set settings for Zune-based applications altogether or in particular. For example, to set Zune prefs for Wanderer you can select GUI prefs from it‘s menu, or to set Zune prefs for other apps you can use it as the CLI command Zune
AROS USER MANUAL - 15
AROS Basic handling
Booting / Rebooting Booting is the name to process of loading the operating system data whenever you power your computer. This information can be loaded from a disk type device to the computer‘s memory such as floppy disk (on older NOTE: systems) hard disk or an usb compliant device (not yet implemented in There are two special AROS). keys in AROS, just like Rebooting resets your computer without turning off the power. This on original Amiga, used to make quick process immediately terminates any active running programs and commands with it. Left performs —soft-reset“ of the machine. and Right WinKey (on PC keyboard) replaces the original Amiga Keys To reboot AROS you only have to press CTRL+ALT+DEL or CTRL+Left and is used in different Winkey+Right Winkey. combinations to launch commands. When the AROS is booted (or rebooted), the following events take place: - The GRUB process is loaded into memory and gives you some device options on how the boot process should be carried on. - The Computer executes the script file —Startup-sequence“ in the —Sys:s/“ drawer. Warning:
- This script loads all the device handlers, datatypes and prefs files Rebooting your system presente in the system. is an immediate - It may also execute the file —User-startup“ and —package“ script files process, which should be carried with caution (AROS only feature), if they exist. or could result in - It will launch the Wanderer app (the AROS workbench desktop like damage or loss of screen) and end the process of execution of the script file. computer data.
- Wanderer will verify if any program exist in the —sys:wbstartup“ To safely reboot your drawer and will run based on the information of the icon tooltypes. system: 1. End all programs and quit If the boot process was successful your monitor will display the wanderer wanderer; screen as illustrated below. 2. And/or be sure that all disk activity has stopped and that all disk device lights on your computer are unlit; 3. If you are rebooting from a floppy disk drive, insert a copy of the AROS boot disk into a floppy disk drive.
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You‘re now ready to proceed to —Wandering around“ for the use of the Wanderer app, which include basic file operations such as copying, deleting and daily disk maintenance services.
If an error occurs at any given time of the boot process a window (named —Boot Shell) will appear with error message or requester to inform/ask the user the course of action taken. An example illustration is provided in the next page figure.
Wandering around The Wanderer is app which sports a WIMP (Windows Icon Mouse and Pointer) system. You‘re probably familiar to the usage of this kind of system since all modern OS use it. In not so many words - Wanderer is the AROS equivalent to the Amiga Workbench. So mouse handling, icon selecting and window manipulation is not covered here. Please consult —AROS Zune Gui basics“ item early in this chapter for AROS specific features.
As mentioned earlier it act‘s as a primary tool for file management. So the display will feature several icons each representing Disks, drawers or files.
Also, from Amiga‘s history the file placement unit is often called a drawer instead of a folder/directory in other systems, but it‘s meaning remains the same. Translate it as a directory if you‘re unsure.
Opening a program in Wanderer is just like any Desktop WIMP based OS, just double-click on the icon with the mouse pointer or in alternative select it and press the RETURN/Enter key.
To select multiple icons, and treat them as single entity for next operation, can be achieved by two methods: AROS USER MANUAL - 17
- Make a square selection by dragging the pointer across the screen diagonally over the intended icon selection. - Select icon one by one, maintaining the Left —Shift“ key pressed.
To copy a drawer, project, tool or a selection of files to another device just drag the icon (or one of the selected) from its source window to the destination device window. Icon destination it‘s not possible at this AROS development stage.
There‘s also the possibility to wander around a window without using a mouse. Keyboard alternatives are available:
KEY PURPOSE
TAB cycles between the location input gadget, the parent dir gadget and the "icon view" area
PAGE UP will scroll the view up
PAGE DOWN will scroll the view down
HOME will put focus on the first icon in the window
END will put focus on the last icon in the window
CURSOR DOWN will put focus on the next icon down
CURSOR RIGHT will put focus on the next item right
SPACE toggle an icons selected state (use LEFT SHIFT for multi-selection)
ENTER/RETURN open the focused/selected icon
AROS SHELL
AROS has it‘s CLI - the Command Line Interface - which is commonly known as Shell. It main purpose is to expand the capabilities of the Operating System. Those who had used the AmigaOS can note that it looks pretty close to the AmigaDOS.
In this manual you‘ll find the very basic usage of AROS Shell. It gives a rough idea of the more common user needs. To have more in-depth information we suggest you read the AROS Shell Manual.
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CHAPTER 2: FILE MANAGEMENT
Disk Devices
Disk devices are often refered in AROS as volumes, in a much similar way the Amiga does. These devices have special designations, such as df0: for the internal floppy drive (if present), and df1: and df2: for additional floppy drives. For Hard Disk drives the same idea applies ranging from NOTE: dh0: to dhx: (where x is the last hard disk or partition mounted) as well There are two bootloader arguments for CD-ROM‘s (CD0 œ CDx). for the floppy driver in A disk icon is displayed on the Wanderer screen for each device mounted AROS that one can add and inserted disk. on the grub command line. Do bear in mind that the device name and the volume name are different - One is the nofdc ways of identifying a given disk. For most purposes using either the name setting, which completely disables the or the device id will grant access to the same path (either from shell or a driver. file-requestor). - The other is noclick For example if you have a CD-ROM in device cd0: (probably the first CD- which disables the floppy change ROM) with the volume name —My-CD“, you can reference it as either cd0: detection thusly also or My-CD:. Although referencing as it‘s volume name with no CD present removing the clicking in CD drive will cause AROS to pop a requestor asking the user to insert sound. Remember that you‘ll have to use the the —My-CD“ in an available drive. —diskchange
ALSO… USB (N/A) In development at the Presently AROS is unable to read standard amiga moment œ FAT at least formatted disks. intended A bounty exists to add Catweasel Controler board drivers. This board The Ram Disk icon represents the RAM: an area of the AROS‘s internal enables reading/writing amiga typical 880 kb / memory that is set up as a file storage device like a disk. Files and 1760kb disks. directories can be copied into RAM: for temporary storage. ADF file exchange is commonly used instead. AROS USER MANUAL - 19
Unlike physical disk devices the size of the Ram Disk is dynamic. It will be as larger as necessary to hold its contents. Of course its maximum size is limited by the amount of the system free memory. Also the speed of access to RAM: is much faster than a mechanical storage device. It‘s a common way to store temporary data. Any contents in the Ram disk are lost if rebooted or due to loss of power.
PATHS
A path is complete description of the location of a particular file on a disk device. When a program demands the name of a file for loading, it will Did you know the specify the file‘s path, including the volume or device name and all the reason behind the floppy clicking effect? drawers that lead to the file. The actual reason behind the clicks is interesting. The floppy drive itself will detect floppy removal / FILES AND DRAWER insertion, but for some reason it will only tell the floppy controller that a Files are basically data segments represented by it‘s name and attributes disk is present whenever which are stores in drawers and disks. And drawers are a part of the the head of the floppy drive changes track. So in necessary hierarchic file structure. order to poll if a disk is present or not you need to move the head The following rules apply for AROS naming of files and drawers: producing the click sound. - Names can be up to 31 characters long in OFS/FFS and up to 107 On Amiga hardware you chars in SFS or FAT formatted disks. still have to step the head - Colons (:) and slashes (/) are not allowed within a name. These to detect changes, but someone figured out that characters are reserved for path statements. if it placed the head on - Upper and lower case differences (such as capitalization) are cylinder 0 and try to step to cylinder -1, the drive preserved and displayed by AROS. The system does not distinguish would just ignore the the difference, since it treats them in case-insensitive manner command but still update the disk change stuff. In (upper case and lower case are considered the same at internal that way the noclick level of the OS). patches were devised.
- Duplicate file names are not allowed within the same drawer. If you However, the PC floppy save a file with the same name as an existing file in a drawer, it controller will not allow this procedure. That‘s overwrites the original file in that drawer. why the "noclick" option - The use of spaces must be handled with caution, since confusion in grub will also disable floppy change detection might arise. Also for shell handling of space containing names, it resulting in the need to must apply commas(—) at the beginning and end of the full path. run diskchange df0: manually instead.
The icons that Wanderer uses to represent the files in a volume or a drawer are stored in special .info files, with the name of the .info file matching the name of the file it represents. For example, the icon for Calculator, a simple calculator tools, is found in the file —Calculator.info“.
The .info file includes the graphical representation of the icon and its position in the volume or drawer window. The icon also specifies the type of the file, as used by Wanderer. Presently Wanderer recognises four different file types: 20 - AROS USER MANUAL
Tool An executable program.
A data file of an executable program. The program that created the file is named in the Project icon file - double-clicking on the icon loads the program and it‘s passed as an argument to it. A directory containing files, and other drawers Drawer (sub-directories).
Volume A physical disk device (floppy / CD-ROM / Hard- disk disk…) or a RAM disk.
Tool files may include "tool types" in the .info file. These are used to pass arguments for the program. Each tool type is a single line of text, which can optionally include parameters, written after an = sign. Tool types can be commented out by writing them in parentheses. For example, the tooltype "CX_POPKEY=ctrl alt f1" says that the application (a Commodity) will pop up the user interface in response to the key sequence Ctrl-Alt-F1.
Unlike AmigaOS, the —.info“ icon files in AROS are simple DUAL-PNG files as standard so they can be viewed correctly in any screen mode. The image presented in this manual is the current Nightly Builds of AROS, other distributions may present different icon sets.
If a file misses a —.info“ companion file the Wanderer will only display it if the menu option —View all files“ is checked. It will use the icon definition set on —Env:System/“ to set the default icon imagery…
File Systems
AROS support the following file-systems
(…)
Organizing your data
First of all you require a write-enabled volume to store the data on. This can be a floppy disk, hard disk or similar device. If you use your HD we‘ll assume it‘s correctly mounted, formatted and ready to go œ skip the next step.
Preparing a volume From the Wanderer: (Not implemented yet!)
AROS USER MANUAL - 21
From the shell:
Insert the disk into the device of your choice (if applicable) and open the shell. Warning:
At the shell prompt use the format command to format your disk device. Formatting a disk is Example: format df0: Name Mydisk FFS not a reversible You‘ll be prompt to continue (press enter/return to start formatting or process, and any data you may have in the ctrl+c to cancel). This will create a file structure read/write capable floppy disk will be erased in disk for AROS. the process.
Creating a drawer From Wanderer:
Open the disk and select the window. Now press right mouse button to access the pull-down menu. Move your mouse pointer to the Window option and select the item below named —New Drawer“ œ Just like the picture below demonstrates.
Alternatively you can press the Left Winkey+N with Disk Window selected.
A window like the one in figure x will open.
In the text gadget just delete the —Rename_Me“ text and type the name of your choice - for example —Documents“. Leave the icon checkmark if you wish the drawer to have an icon associated. The created drawer will have a default drawer icon accompany it. Pressing cancel will cancel the action and no drawer will be created.
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From shell: At the shell prompt window type the volume name followed by a colon (:) sign to access the disk. For example —Disk:“. Then type the command makedir
You may check the current path contents with the —dir“ command. Logically it will present your created directory.
Deleting files/drawers
From Wanderer: Just select the file(s) or/and drawer(s) and access the pull-down menu of Wanderer. On the Icon heading you‘ll find the option delete.
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When released it will pop the following requestor to make sure you want delete the selected icon(s).
It will display the name of the first selected file or drawer and offer four options. Either: - Select yes to delete one by one of your selection. - Yes to all will delete all icons without further asking. - Select no to leave the current displayed file alone - No to all to stop deleting the selected icons
If a drawer is selected all the contents will be deleted as well if the user replies —Yes to all“
From the shell: Type the Volume name followed by a colon sign to get to the disk intended. To delete a file or drawer you must use the command —Delete
For example:
Disk: Delete documents/myfile
If you wish to delete a drawer it must be empty of files or other drawers.
So a basic file structure might be something like this: 24 - AROS USER MANUAL
Disk
Tools Dir Brochure Documents
Editor Help Financial report Personal notes Pictures
Cash-flow Report Christmas.jpg Holliday.jpg
Typical Drawer/File tree structure management AROS USER MANUAL - 25
CHAPTER 3: AROS PROGRAMS
AROS System programs
We have mentioned the applications, It‘s good to give a description of their functions. So, there‘s a groups of the AROS system applications collected in the separate directories:
- C - the place for all the system commands used in CLI - Classes - the place for datatypes, gadget`s images and Zune classes - Devs - where the device-related files (drivers, keymaps) and datatypes are placed - Fonts - here you can find all of the system fonts. Any additional fonts must be appended (assigned) to this dir. - Libs - where the system libraries are located. - Locale - holds catalog files of various AROS apps translations - Prefs - has a number of preferences-editing programs (Chapter X) - S - contains some system launch-time scripts - System - the place for some system controls - Tools - the place for some commonly used system apps - Utilities - the place for some not-so-commonly used but yet useful apps - WBStartup œ the place for programs to be launched on Wanderer startup
Aditional dirs can be found on the CD: - Demos œ Simple programs that show the OS graphic and GUI possibilities - Extras - where all the contributed programs reside
Instead of applications, there are more permanent running programs called tasks. 26 - AROS USER MANUAL
Tools Drawer
The tools directory is filled with programs that allow you to work with your hard drive definitions and installation, control window and screen properties, simple math operation and file editing as well as provide some commodities for the user and debugging tool for bug-reporting as well as software development.
In this drawer you‘ll find:
Calculator: This small tool is a standard four-function calculator for adding, subtracting, multiplying and diving.
Editor: The perfect tool for simple text script editing (see AROS Shell Manual for more info). If you used a text editor before, this one is on the same lines.
HDToolBox: This helps you in the task of setting the HD partitions (see AROS HD Installation Manual).
InstallAROS: This installs the AROS in your HD (see AROS HD Installation Manual)
PCITool: Basically is a tool for checking which boards and devices are found on the PCI BUS and provide a simple diagnose of their working conditions.
ScreenGrabber: It grabs a screen in form of a image and saves it to a true-colour png file.
SFSDefrag: Tool to defragment a disk formatted with SFS file system.
WIMP: A window and Screen manager tool. AROS USER MANUAL - 27
Commodities Another kind of AROS applications is the Commodities. This is an application that can help you make your system more comfortable. You can find most commodities on the —SYS:Tools/Commodities“ directory.
For example, an AROS window doesn‘t set to the top of others when you click on it, and you can find it uncomfortable. You can use the AROS commodity ClickToFront to fix it. It can be found beneath other commodities in SYS:Tools/Commodities directory. When you double click on it, window will become to the top of others if double clicked.
Another example is Opaque commodity - it allows you to move windows with their contents visible not just box line representing the window.
The FKey commodity allows you to make actions assigned to some combinations of keys. For example launching another program like a WWW browser or a file manager like Directory Opus.
As for the Blanker commodity is exactly what the name suggests œ a screen blanker so you can extend your monitor life œ especially on CRT and Plasma ones.
There‘s also an Exchange commodity, which allows you to manipulate launched commodities and get information about them. Usually commodities do not open any windows. 28 - AROS USER MANUAL
DEVS and STORAGE
Devs is the acronym for Devices, and in this directory you can find the
NOTE: software drivers for most output and input devices, which your computer Simply moving the uses. The Storage drawer serves the purpose of keeping the device type required device type files that are not suitable for the machine or not needed on start-up. file (i.e.: html.datatype) will not Basically to activate or deactivate the files activation at boot time you activate the datatype simply drag the file into the corresponding category directory either on at that time. Either Devs or Storage drawer. reboot or use the appropriate tool for it‘s activation.
Also some files do not require activation, but are controlled from the prefs program such as keymaps and printers. But they‘ll only show up as options in the prefs programs if present in the correct directory in the —Sys:Devs/“ drawer
Do bear in mind that the files contained here are most of the times simple definition files of the resources required to activate/mount a specific device or feature. These resources spread through the system through specific classes/handlers/libraries/tools…
You maybe wondering why would the user deactivate any devices? Well, three reasons could apply: - It‘s a specific device that your system/environment does not use (example: International keymaps œ most users will require one or two); - It may enter in conflict with other devices in the same category. Such as having two different datatypes for the same or similar purpose. - Due to shortness of available ram. Usually this one should not pose a problem, but in machines with very restricted memory this might save some memory space œ just keep the needed drivers in the Devs drawer and activate the ones on a needed basis in the storage one.
The following categories exist on the DEVS/STORAGE drawers (as subdirectories / drawers):
AHI/AudioModes These are the sound drivers for AROS through the use of AHI. AHI is the Retargetable Audio system for AROS. It handles sound card arbitration AROS USER MANUAL - 29 and sharing, real-time audio mixing and virtual audio channel management. Support for AC97 inboard driver is available as well as filesave. SB16 is not yet supported. The sound card and audio definitions should be configured through the use of AHI prefs tool in the Prefs drawer (See Chapter 4: Customising AROS).
Datatypes To operate with files of different types Amiga-like systems is using the datatypes. Datatype is the kind of system library allows the programs to read or/and write to such files without taking care of the implementing such a format in that program. AROS standard supported datatypes include:
Sound
8SVX Amiga Standard IFF sound file
Text
AmigaGuide Amiga Standard Hypertext document files
FTXT Ascii type text files HTML Hypertext Markup Language files
Picture
BMP Windows standard bitmap files
GIF Graphics Interchange files ILBM Amiga standard bitmap files PNG Portable Network Graphic files PPM Portable PixMap files
Other datatypes are included for simple file recognition, default icon representation and third party software launch. They‘re not handled by the AROS core system.
Additional datatypes maybe added by third-party software. In most cases will be just a question of copying the required files to the devs/storage and classes/libs drawer œ of course this depends largely on the datatypes requirement.
Dosdrivers These range from AROS-DOS supported devices and file systems definition to alien and third party ones. These can range from PIPEFS to FAT definition files.
Drivers This is where AROS keeps it‘s Hardware Independent Device Drivers used to control the Input/Output devices. These range from drive controllers, audio chipsets drivers to graphical boards drivers…. 30 - AROS USER MANUAL
AROS uses handlers to communicate with the file systems (usually they sit on the —Devs:“ drawer) and HIDD‘s to communicate with the hardware (In the —Devs:Drivers/“ dawer).
In order to activate the whole stack on UHCI machines, the command is: C:Loadresource DRIVERS:uhci.hidd
Keymaps These are the definition files for the various international keyboards layouts. These can be changed through the use of the Input Prefs program in the —Sys:Prefs/“ drawer (See Chapter 4: Customising AROS).
MIDI This directory keeps the MIDI hardware capable definition files. (Part of m68k AHI - Not currently supported in AROS!)
Networks The network drivers are stored here.
Printers In standby(AROS currently does not support printing œ currently development in that field is still a work in progress status)
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System Directory
The system drawer contains many of the system modular programs such as the wanderer and it‘s tools, font managing tools and the repository for the default intuition graphics and additional themes.
The themes drawer contains some additional themes to the AROS WIMP Graphic look. What you see in this manual screenshots is the ICE theme. Additional themes can be added.
The about tool is the same that you might access through the Wanderer pull-down menus Wanderer->About. This displays the current version as well additional info on the system, credits acknowledgements and sponsors.
The Fixfonts should be used after fonts are added or removed from your fonts drawer. By doing this the Fixfonts will try to update all the font files to match the corresponding directories. It does not require any user input nor does it offer any output window.
The FreeType Font Manager tool enables you to manage the use of outline (or vectorial) fonts on AROS. It‘s Primarily used for creating bitmap fonts from the outline ones so that they can be used by software that does not work with outline fonts.
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Do bear in mind that in slower machines this may constitute an advantage, since the fonts are already created, little time is lost in displaying the text in the specified font type and size.
Usually the Outline fonts are one file only and use the .otag extension to distinguish it from the .font bitmap fonts. For more information on AROS fonts usage please consult the Appendix 1:Font support. AROS USER MANUAL - 33
Utilities Drawer
In this directory you‘ll find a simple array of programs, which provide simple usage.
Clock This is a simple clock app that show‘s current time and date. It allows a very simple set of configuration through the setting of tooltypes. The acceptable tooltypes are: LEFT=
Installer This app is launched normally with the association of another file such as script install for a designated program.
More The more program displays simple Text files (in ascii mode) on a window. This app (if launched from the wanderer with no other argument) will present the user a file-requestor to select the text file.
Unlike AmigaOS 3.1 More program, this one offers a set of window navigation scroll bars, and pull down-menu options. Still a few key commands are still present such as: Space bar: displays the next page. Backspace: Displays the previous page. Return: displays the next line of text. Home: Displays the beginning of the text (first page) 34 - AROS USER MANUAL
End: Displays the end of the text (end page)
Multiview Mutliview lets you view different type of files, such as image files, text files, amigaguide help files, sound files, animation and video files. The files are recognized by the Data type files (See Classes chapter).
Snoopy This useful tool enables the user to check what errors and misshapen events occur at the system level. Snoopy makes some OS functions "verbose", i.e. the parameters and the result are print to the debugging console. It‘s very similar to a Amiga program called SnoopDos. But unlike SnoopDos it does not open a shell window or a program window to present the results. On AROS/hosted you can see the output in the Shell from where you've started AROS. On AROS/native you have to start AROS/Tools/Debug/Sashimi. This shows all debugging output in a window.
WBStartup Drawer
The WBStarup drawer works just like the AmigaOS version œ it is provided to hold the programs that you wish to be launched when the Wanderer is launched (at the end of the boot process). For example you may want the ClicktoFront commodity to be running when you reboot or power on your computer. Just drag the icon for each desired program into the WBStartup window.
Tool types Like mentioned earlier the tool types are arguments stored in the icon files to be passed to the program started in Wanderer. The programs in the WBStartup drawer can include the following tool types:
DONOTWAIT Normally the wanderer waits for one program to finish before it opens the next. DONOTWAIT overrides this delay. WAIT=
36 - AROS USER MANUAL
CHAPTER 4: CUSTOMISING AROS
The prefs programs open a window with a few gadgets and buttons that allow some different level of configuration of the AROS functioning aspects. You‘ll find in all prefs programs a set of standard buttons on the lower part of the window. The buttons are: SAVE (saves the changes and close the window), USE (applies the changes and close the window, but do not saves them), CANCEL (discard all the changes and close the window). Additionally (depending on the prefs program) you may find: TEST (applies all the changes made by Pref but doesn‘t save and do not the changes but close the window), REVERT (reverts to the default settings),
Setting the Time and Date
Time Prefs Icon
Naturally for a number of reasons defining the time and Date is common task when booting a new computer or similar device. The Time Prefs program is made to be self-explanatory. What you need to know is that Use and Save Button will have very little difference in behaviour. Most hardware will immediately store the date and time set and compute it‘s clock cycle from that on, even when rebooted.
AROS USER MANUAL - 37
Setting up the Locale
AROS is becoming a really international system this days, being translated to many languages. Translating isn‘t very difficult, and number of the AROS translators is still increasing. If unicode support will be implemented it can be translated in every language people use. If you feel you can give AROS to your country, both OS and documentation, do not hesitate to contact us and offer your help.
So about the language - first, depending on fonts used you must set fonts by launching SYS:Prefs/Fonts and designating Fonts to different system text: Icons (used for icons labels), Screen (used on common screen) and System (used in CLI window). If your language uses different set than ISO (for example, cyrillyc CP-1251) there`s must be the fonts in correct codepage. Aros currently can use two kinds of fonts - the Amiga bitmap fonts (which can be used directly) and TrueType (via FreeType 2 manager, which still has some issues with non-ISO codepages). Bitmap fonts are in any particular codepage, and TTF can be unicode.
How can you change the AROS locale? To do this you need to launch a Locale pref in SYS:Prefs. You can see a list of supported locales there and select your preferred ones. On the second page of this Pref you can select the country used (it gives correct currency and date/time format). And the last tab allows you to change timezone to that used in your location.
After you‘ve made changes to fonts reboot the system, and you must be able to see all the translated content.
So now we can read, but can we write also in our language? To do this, you must change the keyboard layout.
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Setting up the Input
Keyboard and mouse settings are managed by the Input pref. You can change the layout and click Use but we can do even better. This tool allows you also to save presets - just like any application it‘s got a menu, allows you to save your preferences to the file with the given name and keep different settings of locales.
Example: Using multiple keyboard layouts We will use it later to switch our keyboard layouts. Choose your locale‘s keyboard layout from the list and make a left click to open the context menu. Then enter the name of your preset to File string, say, locale1 and click Ok to save it to SYS:Prefs/Presets directory. Now choose an American (PC) layout and repeat the saving presets, say, with name english. This presets can be used later to switch the layouts. Click Cancel to exit.
Now let`s launch the Fkey commodity and assign the locale switching. After you double- click on FKey icon, launch the Exchange, choose the FKey from list and click the Show button. This will invoke the FKey window. You can see the ALT TAB in list assigned to window switching. Now enter the first key comination, say, ALT Z and go to the right panel. Choose Launch the program from pulldown menu and enter SYS:Prefs/Input as an argument. Append the USE switch and english preset name to the string as shown:
SYS:Prefs/Input USE SYS:Prefs/Presets/english
Click on the New Button to add the another combination. Now set the combination for your locale as shown above, replacing english name with your preset name. Click New button again and then Save Settings. Now you can use defined combinations to switch the layouts.
Setting Wanderer Look and use
AROS USER MANUAL - 39
Icontrol First in the wanderer customisation is the Icontrol Preferences program. From this application you can set the way that Pull-Down Menus are called and their primary look. Also you can define if the windows will be able to move Offscreen (Amiga OS up to version 3.5 would not allow such possibility). The look option only affects the screen menus look if no theme has been defined for the menus.
Wanderer In the Wanderer window Prefs itself there are three tab gadget divided in General / Appearance / Toolbar. In the General Group you can define the method of navigation through a cycle gadget. The available options are:
- Classic This is the Amiga Workbench classic way of browsing. Each disk/drawer icon opens a different window. - Enhanced The enhanced way allows you to open a only a window for the icon opened as long as it‘s on the same disk device.
Beneath that option there‘s a Checkmark option œ User Files Folder on Workbench. Check it to…
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The user can also customize the contents of the Wander Screen Titlebar, by using the text gadget. Any text input is valid, so the user can write something like —My Wanderer Screen“. But that would be pretty pointless if you could not set variables on to it. So a few options are available:
%pc It will display the available free Chip Ram %pf It will display the available free Fast Ram %pt It will display the available free Ram (total) %PC It will display all the available Chip Ram %PF It will display all the available Fast Ram %PT It will display all the available Ram %os It will display the AROS version %wb It will display Wanderer version %ov It will display the aros.library version %wv It will display the workbench.library version
In the Appearance Group you can set the Wanderer screen and windows background. You can either set an specified colour, pattern, gradient or an image file.
The Icon list mode cycle gadget allows the user to define the way the icons are placed in the windows on Wanderer. The available options are:
List icons by grid An organized display of the icons in chequer system with all spacing between the icons being constant. List icons plainly The classic way that icons are loaded in Workbench the available space is managed depending on the various icon sizes and text fitting
The Icon text draw mode can be set either to Outline or Plain. Also you can set the maximum length of text displayed beneath the icon. So if you setted the maximum length to 9, a program called —My own req prefs“, would only display —My own…“. AROS USER MANUAL - 41
In the toolbar group there‘s only one option: Toolbar Enabled…
FONT This prefs program simply sets the Icon / Screen and System Font. The icon font is the font used to render the text used in the icons displayed by Wanderer. The screen font sets the all public screen text rendering fonts including the wanderer.
The system font is the font used by shell and other intuition rendered text that uses the default font. You‘ll notice that in the font requester show less fonts than the other options œ that‘s because the system font must be a monospaced bitmap font.
Reqtools prefs While more recent software uses ASL style requestors, some software still uses third party requestor library reqtools. Initially developed for AmigaOS 1.3, because of the lack of standard requestors, this evolved and was used until v3.1. For some simple programs many programmers still prefer it. One of its main advantages is the possibility for the user to set up some aspects of use and look of those requestors. The Reqtools Prefs program sets the options for: File Requestor, Font Requestor, 42 - AROS USER MANUAL
Setting Up The Sound
At the moment there‘s no working drivers for virtual machine‘s implemented sound cards (usually sb16/es) so the only way to try to get sound is use AROS-native on pc with a real SB Live/Audigy card. Also the AC97-compliant codecs are supported.
AHI sound in AROS supports also no sound (VOID) and disk writing options.
Setting Up Input/Output devices
Trackdisk prefs Basically this prefs tool sets the behaviour of the floppy drive. It will only show the system available floppy drives (The first drive in the chain will be the drive 0 and the second the drive 1).
AROS USER MANUAL - 43
You can set the —No click option“ and the amount of retries on reading or writing error. Do bear in mind that using the ”No click‘ option you‘ll have to use the shell ”diskchange‘ command to manually signal the system each time a new disk has been inserted in the drive.
If your system has no floppy drives the window will pop-up but all options will be shadowed to signal that no drive can have it‘s options set up. Also if the ”nofdc‘ option is set in GRUB you won‘t be able to use floppy drives (check the Appendix 2: Booting options).
Serial Prefs This prefs program is used to configure the serial communication settings on your computer.
The baud rate specifies the number of bits transferred through the serial port each second œ is often though as speed setting of data transfer. This baud rate must be equal to the device which you pretend to communicate.
Stop bits are extra bits added at the end of a character to allow the computer to interpret spacing between words an indicate when a transmission ends. Slower devices may require setting two stop bits œ other than that use the default of 1.
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CHAPTER 5: EXTRA APPLICATIONS
As mentioned earlier on this manual there‘s a directory containing all the contributed programs. These are organized by purpose or source.
So you have the Demos Drawer with a few graphic demonstrations of AROS capabilities. Things like Voxel, flame, parallax scrolling, tunnel effects and more are there for you to load and watch.
In the Development drawer you will find a LUA IDE, a FALSE programming language and some tools and includes for AROS development (for better reading on this subject we recommend the enclosed docs and the AROS developer documentation).
Also the Games Drawer, which contains a few games for entertainment purpose. Included are: - Bomber œ a bomberman clone - CXHextris œ a game with a different approach to the Tetris game theme - Doom œ The executable to play the well known FPS (You require the original game or demo WAD files in order to play). - Kiel œ 3 window games based on the minefield and other simple board games. - Lbreakout2 œ A breakout/pong/arkanoid clone - Moria3D œ A maze game with some simple 3d graphics. - Quake - The executable to play the well known FPS (You require the original game or demo WAD files in order to play). - Spout - Xinvaders 3D œ An Aros port of x11 unix game rendition of the invaders game.
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Installing the software
Actually there‘s no installer system in AROS. Installing an application usually means you have to extract it to some directory on a harddrive or ramdisk. Then some programs require you to make assignments which is done in CLI with the Assign command and some start script additions. For example, Lunapaint needs the Lunapaint: to be assigned to the directory it was extracted to to work properly. You can do this with the command
Assign Lunapaint: Disk:Path/Lunapaint
But if you don‘t want to type this command after reboot to launch it again, you must put it to S:User-Startup script. To do this, type this command in CLI prompt:
:> edit SYS:S/User-Startup
Then insert the Lunapaint (or other program) assign at the end of file. Save the changes and you‘ll have that fixed. Such a procedure can be used for any program that needs it.
Another way is using the ENVARC:SYS/Packages directory. All you need here is create a text file with the name of your application and put a path to application in that file. Then create a directory named S in the program‘s directory and put the package-startup file there. This way is more safer, but can be not so Amiga-styled to you.
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Setting up the Network
To communicate with other computers on network, AROS uses a TCP Stack, AROSTCP, which is a port of AmiTCP. This software is located in /Extras/Networking/Stacks/AROSTCP directory. Setting up is not easy but some kind of GUI tool is in development. Also please note that actually there‘s a very little amount of networking program on AROS yet (but some interesting tools is in development to be soon released).
First you need is to setup your machine side of network. This part can differ depending on your hardware. On a real machine you need to install the supported network interface card (NIC) and plug the cable to it. On a virtual machine you must set up it‘s NIC implementation and check if it‘s supported by AROS (at least, QEMU and VMWare ones is supported).
Net on QEMU/Linux
Read tips for launching AROS on Linux QEMU above.
After this is enabled we can go to the next point.
Second part is setting AROSTCP in AROS to work.
On linux system some steps needs to be done to make the network in VM working.
The tun (tunnel) module must be loaded:
#> modprobe tun
Then, the kernel must become a router:
#> echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward
Then, a rule must be added to the firewall:
#> iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o eth0 -j MASQUERADE
Finally, while still being root, start Qemu with:
#> qemu -cdrom aros.iso -m 48
The Linux tun module, by default, creates a gateway for the fake network at 172.20.0.0/16 with a gateway at 172.20.0.1. Say our Qemu hosted machine is at 172.20.0.10. Say your usual LAN is 192.168.0.0/24 with a DNS at 192.168.0.1 (or anywhere on the Internet, for that matter).
For QEMU on Windows in user mode networking you must replace it with 10.0.2.16 for host and 10.0.2.2 for gateway, or use TAP adapter, which is AROS USER MANUAL - 47 better. Remember to set up your firewall in way it can pass the QEMU packets.
You have to edit 3 files in the SYS:extras/Networking/stacks/AROSTCP/db drawer: hosts, interfaces and netdb-myhost. In hosts remove or comment out any entries. Hosts will be in netdb-myhost for now. In interfaces uncomment the prm-rtl8029.device line (QEMU is emulating this NIC among others, you can use pcnet32.device for VMWare), edit it (change an IP= string to which was above): eth0 DEV=DEVS:networks/prm-rtl8029.device UNIT=0 NOTRACKING IP=172.20.0.10 UP
In netdb-myhost, add the various local known hosts, your local domain name, the gateway:
HOST 172.20.0.10 arosbox.lan arosbox HOST 172.20.0.1 gateway DOMAIN lan NAMESERVER 192.168.0.1
The db directory itself can reside anywhere, you set its path in the ENVARC:AROSTCP/Config file, I advice you to copy the db files in the (created) ENVARC:AROSTCP/db directory, that way the Config file could be:
ENV:AROSTCP/db
Now make AROSTCP start at boot with the word "True" in ENVARC:AROSTCP/Autorun (Create the file if not exists in CLI window with a command echo "True" >sys:AROSTCP/Autorun) Edit the Sys:extras/Networking/Stacks/AROSTCP/S/Package-Startup:
; $VER: AROSTCP-PackageStartup 1.0 (01/08/06) ; AROSTCP-PackageStartup (c) The AROS Dev Team. ; Path "C" "S" ADD QUIET
If not exists T:Syslog makedir T:Syslog Endif
If not exists EMU: if $AROSTCP/AutoRun eq "True" C:execute S/startnet EndIf EndIf
The Sys:extras/Networking/Stacks/AROSTCP/S/Startnet file should be something like:
; $VER: AROSTCP-startnet 1.0 (01/08/06) ; AROSTCP-startnet (c) The AROS Dev Team. 48 - AROS USER MANUAL
; Run
Next boot, test it with:
ifconfig -a
You must see the output something like this:
lo0: flags=8
If you can see that eth0 string then your interface is up. You can test it by launching those commands:
AROS:>ping 172.20.0.1 PING 172.20.0.1 (172.20.0.1): 56 data bytes 64 bytes from 172.20.0.1: icmp_seq=0 ttl=255 time=xx ms 64 bytes from 172.20.0.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=255 time=xx ms 64 bytes from 172.20.0.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=255 time=xx ms
--- 172.20.0.1 ping statistics --- 3 packets transmitted, 3 packets received, 0% packets loss round trip min/avg/max = x/xx/xx ms
Output like this means that our interface packet`s reached the gateway with 172.20.0.1 address. If you got Host unreachable errors, then check your AROSTCP settings and VM options.
On Windows:To make external network accessible to VM you must setup routing from our virtual net to a real one, such as make a host system a router. For Linux this have been done already.
You can test it even further by pinging other hosts and try using some networking applications which you can find on Archives.aros-exec.org, like ftp and AIRCos. If you use an FTP program with your FTP server, remember it can work only with passive ftp servers, and set up your server to this mode. Net on QEMU/Windows
Setting QEMU to run on Windows is relatively harder to that of Linux. First, make sure you have turn your Firewall to learning mode (or prepare AROS USER MANUAL - 49 it to receive new rules) or completely disable it. Firewall can block transfers to VM.
There`s two ways to use network with QEMU on Windows. First and the more proven is to use the tap interface. To use it you must download the OpenVPN 2.0 package for Windows (Windows 2k/XP only). After you install it, you will get an extra network connection in disconnected state. Rename it to, say, eth0. Then go to the eth0 connection properties and set an IP address in the properties of TCP-IP protocol. You must set: IP address in other subnet than your base IP (If you have 192.168.0.x one, then set, say, the same 10.0.2.2) and 255.255.255.0 netmask. Reboot. Then replace starting line options in QEMU (or add if there`s were not) - net nic -net tap,ifname=eth0. Then set an AROS side as it was described above for user mode networking. Note that you will need the administrator privileges to install OpenVPN TAP adaptor.
The second option is to use a user-mode networking stack which is launched by default (or using the "-net nic -net user" switches, which is default now). Options given is for 0.8 or newer QEMU version. Setting the AROS side is similar to that of Linux use, but you will need to use the following IP addresses to setup and test: 10.0.2.16 for AROS machine IP (instead of 172.20.0.10), 10.0.2.2 for gateway (instead of 172.20.0.1). This mode can work even without administrating privileges given to user, but can make some applications on AROS refuse to work properly (such as FTP-client).
There`s some guides available on how to setup the QEMU networking in Windows:
* For VLan * For Tap
Net on VMWare
VMWare`s side network is relatively easy to set up. All you need is to add the NIC to configuration of your VM and assign the IP to new network connection, associated with that card. Other using notes is the same as with QEMU above, except for the adapter type in SYS:Extras/Networking/Stacks/AROSTCP/db/interfaces file eth0 DEV=DEVS:networks/pcnet32.device UNIT=0 IP=10.0.2.2 UP
Net on the real PC
On a real PC you will need to do all you can do for any OS - prepare the hardware to connect to AROS box - cables, hub and other. Then you must setup the AROS side similar to shown above, replacing the IP addresses to those acceptable in your LAN for AROS-box IP, gateway and DNS. Set up 50 - AROS USER MANUAL
the networking card in interfaces file by uncommenting the string corresponding to your card.
To be finished...
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APPENDIX I œ FONT SUPPORT
AROS support two type of fonts: Bitmap fonts (or fixed fonts) and Vectorial fonts (Truetype / Freetype / Outline fonts).
Bitmap fonts The bitmap fonts are raster image collection, each representing a character in a pre-defined height size and a constant width (monospaced or non proportional fonts) or variable width (proportional fonts). Each chain of carachters is saved in a directory with same name as the .font file, with a number representing its size. Althought being pre-rendered many programs allow setting additional type formats such as BOLD, ITALIC and UNDERLINE.
Example of AROS Bitmap fonts (various sizes):
Monospaced FIXED TTCourier XEN
Proportional ARIAL
SCALA STOP SWSCRfont
Its main advantage has to do with speed of use on slower machines.
Free-type fonts These fonts have the vectorial definition of its contents and are rendered to whatever size is required on the moment of use. Usually they occupy more space but are more efficient especially for printing on paper.
By default, FreeType 2 supports the following font formats: - TrueType fonts (and collections) - Type 1 fonts - CID-keyed Type 1 fonts - CFF fonts - OpenType fonts (both TrueType and CFF variants) - SFNT-based bitmap fonts - X11 PCF fonts - Windows FNT fonts - BDF fonts (including anti-aliased ones) - PFR fonts 52 - AROS USER MANUAL
- Type 42 fonts (limited support) - Example of outline or free-type fonts
AROS boots through the
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APPENDIX II œ BOOT OPTIONS
GRUB Support
AROS boots through the use of GNU GRUB to set up it‘s kernel. GRUB stands for GRand Unified Bootloader, which was originally designed and implemented by Erich Stefan Boleyn.
In short it‘s a boot loader (the first software program that runs when a computer starts). It is responsible for loading and transferring control to the operating system kernel software (such as the AROS or the Linux). The kernel, in turn, sets up the rest of the operating system.
How does it work? When you power your computer, the computer's BIOS seek the available bootable device (which might be floppy drive, cd-rom or the hard-drive) and transfers control to the master boot record (MBR), the first 512 bytes of the hard disk.
The MBR contains GRUB stage 1. Given the small size of the MBR, Stage 1 does little more than load the next stage of GRUB (which resides physically on the disk). Stage 1 can either load Stage 2 directly, or it can load stage 1.5: GRUB Stage 1.5 is located in the first 30 kb of hard disk immediately following the MBR. After that Stage 1.5 loads Stage 2.
When GRUB Stage 2 receives control, it will prompt the user in order to select which operating system to boot. This normally takes the form of a graphical menu, although if this is not available or the user wishes further control, GRUB has its own command prompt, where the user can manually specify the boot parameters. GRUB can also be set to automatically load a particular kernel after a timeout period.
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The GNU GRUB kernel selection Once boot options have been selected, GRUB loads the selected kernel into memory and passes control on to the kernel. At this stage GRUB can pass control of the boot process to another loader using chain loading if required by the operating system.
AROS Specific GRUB support The stage 1.5, stage 2 and the AROS kernel are in the boot drawer in your boot device (root directory of the volume) œ Icon (.info filename) is not provided for the drawer so it‘s not initially presented if you open through Wanderer. If you access that drawer you‘ll find the following file structure:
Boot
Grub aros-pc-i386.gz (or aros-ppc.gz)
stage1 stage1 menu.lst
The in the boot directory you‘ll find the kernel file (which name varies from platform to platform) and the grub directory. In the grub directory the file which interest us is the —menu.lst“. This is a text file that holds the GRUB kernel options. It can be edited using the editor supplied in the tools drawer.
GRUB supports some AROS-native kernel options. These options include:
Nofdc Disables the floppy driver completely Noclick Disables the floppy disk change detection (and clicking) ATA=32bit Enables 32-bit I/O in the hdd driver (safe) Forcedma Forces DMA to be active in the hdd driver (should be safe, but might not be) gfx=
Please note that they are case-sensitive.
For more information on GNU GRUB please consult the site: http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/
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APPENDIX IV œ TROUBLE SHOOTING
KNOWN PROBLEMATIC AND HARDWARE, OR THE SUPPORT IS LIMITED
The following hardware should work, or is partially supported.
Laptop - IBM ThinkPad 365x - Onboard sound unsupported. No native support for Trident video chip, however works with VESA driver. Impossible to use CD-ROM, PCMCIA unsupported. - ASUS A3500Fc ASUS A3500Fc (15" Yonah Duo T2300E 1.66G,512M,60G4,DVDRW,WL-g). Onboard sound (ICH7M+Intel HDA) is not supported. Onboard nic (rtl8139) unsupported yet. Touchpad (Synaptics)/usb mouse works fine (but resolution isn`t best). GFX works nice in 16-bit modes,in 32-bit VESA modes the system becomes unstable and sometimes reboots
Motherboard - ASUS A8N SLI Deluxe - Onboard sound untested. SLI unsupported, Onboard NICS unsupported, USB unsupported, SATA unsupported. - A-Trend ATC-1020 - AROS GRUB have some problem with booting from Live CD (stuck on Error 17). Other things and booting from HD works normally.
Video - S3 Virge 86C325 - Only 4-bit VGA mode works. 16-bit and 24-bit VESA modes causing errors and hanging the system. - Voodoo 3 3000, 16 Mb - Only 16-bit VESA modes work.
Not Working Hardware
The following hardware does not work at all in AROS presently.
- HP Omnibook XE series (Touchpad mouse ) - This is a PS2 device, AROS just hangs on boot of synaptics touchpads if it is enabled in the BIOS. - FR33E Motherboard from First International does not boot AROS -- Just Freezes - MacBook Pro -- Not a problem with AROS, but GRUB fails at Stage 1.5 when booted via Boot Camp.