ArcaOS Tips
This page contains some important information on how to setup your ArcaOS system and keep it running reliably. These tips and tricks are based on detailed technical knowledge from the actual develpers who worked on the software.
ArcaOS Disk Setup Options
Click on this link to see some examples of how to partition and setup your hard disk for ArcaOS. Both good and bad examples are shown and an explaination of the benefits and problems with each example are given.
Managing wasteful and excessive EA buildup
There are a lot of programs available on ArcaOS that come from the Unix world. Unfortunately most, if not all of these programs are built with gcc and attach a bunch of unnecessary EAs to all the files they create. Some programs even attach these unnecessary EAs to any file they touch, whether or not the file is opened for writing. In most cases, these unnecessary EAs don't cause any harm other than taking up space and slowing things down. However, these unnecessary EAs can interfere with basic system functions. For example it has been proven that these unnecessary EAs can cause WPS failures, WPS instability, boot issues, and even complete boot failures. I have repeatedly lobbied for this issue to be fixed and these applications to stop adding these unnecessary wasteful EAs, but to no avail so far.
Therefore, since it is nearly impossible to not use these programs from the Unix world, it is prudent to regularly clean your system of the buildup of these unnecessary EAs. EaClean was written to clean a system of these unnecessary EAs (EA litter). You can download a copy here. This program has several options, but using it with the normal -c option is completely safe and will only clean the EA litter. Using eaclean with the -c option will not remove any of the necessary EAs and will not interfere with or break symlinks. Normal usage would be:
eaclean -s -c c:\*
This will clean all the EA litter recursively from all the files on your C: drive. This will NOT affect symlinks!
Normally the issues caused by these unnecessary EAs are strange and wierd. So if you have a strange problem that just looks wierd and doesn't seem to have any explanation, it's probably caused by these unnecessary EAs. Try cleaning them and your problem will probably go away. In any case, there is absolutely no harm in cleaning up your disk of these unnecessary EAs.
WARNING: The EAClean program has another option (-A) to remove ALL EAs from the files you specify. Use the -A option with care or do not use the -A option at all. Beware that removing ALL EAs (using -A) on your boot disk will break your ArcaOS system and will also remove symlink information.
Maximizing ArcaOS performance
The following tips and tricks can improve the performance of ArcaOS. You can choose to implement some of these as appropriate for your system.
- Don't use GPT disks unless you absolutely have to. The GPT filter driver adds complexity, uses additional system resources, and slows disk performance by 10% to 20%. How much slower depends on the type of system activity, but it will always be slower. If you run other operating systems and need GPT for them, consider putting ArcaOS and its data on a separate MBR disk.
- Separate the boot volume from the rest of your data. A small boot partition that keeps boot files separate from other data helps boot performance. See the third or fourth option in the ArcaOS Disk Setup Options page.
- Use a small (~2000MB) boot partition and format the volume with HPFS. See ArcaOS Disk Setup Options. The HPFS file system uses fewer primitive I/O operations during the initial boot process and performs better in the initial boot environment.
- Move PROGRAMS and UNIXROOT off of the boot volume. Putting PROGRAMS and UNIXROOT on a separate volume formatted with JFS helps runtime performance. See the third or fourth option in the ArcaOS Disk Setup Options page.
- Prune all the unneeded BASEDEV drivers from your config.sys. The BASEDEV
load period is the most time consuming part of the boot process. So the fewer
BASEDEV drivers the faster your system will boot.
Unused drivers can also consume memory and other system resources.
Eliminate all those you don't need, such as
- APM.ADD if you don't need legacy APM services.
- PRINT01.SYS if you don't have a printer connected to a parallel port.
- IBM1FLPY.ADD if you don't have a floppy drive or don't use floppies.
- USBCDROM.ADD is never needed. If you need USB CD/DVD drives add the /CDS switch to USBMSD.ADD
- DANIS506.ADD if you don't have IDE/S506 connected disks.
- OS2AHCI.ADD if you don't have AHCI connected disks.
- NVME.ADD if you don't have NVME connected disks.
- GPT.FLT if you don't use GPT disks.
- Use 64K colors for your video instead of 16M colors. This reduces the amount of memory used and the number of memory operations needed for screen operations by half. This may not be possible on no-CSM UEFI BIOS systems since the ANCS video emulation is limited.
- Use a solid color screen background instead of an image. This drastically improves the speed of screen painting and updates.
- Regularly clean all the EA litter from your system. See the Managing wasteful and excessive EA buildup section above.
- Use an INI cleaner to maintain your OS2.INI file. This file can grow to extremely large sizes if not maintained regularly. An excessively large OS2.INI file can slow down your system and can make your system unstable.