OS/2 Aurora

OS/2 Aurora: IBM repositions Warp for e-business

Product: OS/2 Warp Server for e-business (14.02F_UNI version tested)
Price: The Workspace on Demand client software is US$229.
Status: released in May '99.
Summary: An occasionally clumsy installation process mars this ambitious operating system's attempts to evolve beyond the narrow niche OS/2 now finds itself in. Powerful Journaling File System and application serving capabilities demonstrate that IBM is still a force to be reckoned with in the OS market.

• IBM's newest incarnation of Warp is targeted at e-businesses.
• Getting the "e" part working, however, proved tricky.

"AIC7870.ADD failed to load" was the first indication things weren't going to go completely smoothly during our tests of OS/2 Warp Server for e-business, an advanced version of the OS/2 Warp operating system. The OS, formerly known as Aurora, was apparently looking for a non-existent SCSI adapter in our test system. Fortunately, things improved and, after a bit of head scratching when the system prompted us to reboot, but then returned us to our old Windows environment after an initial attempt to load it from the three required installation diskettes, we managed to get the installation moving ahead by re-inserting disk 1 and rebooting again.

Oddly, WSFEB (as we shall call the OS for efficiency's sake) did not allow us to reformat or otherwise alter the three non-DOS partitions we had on our test machine's hard drive (two were configured for Linux, while one was set up for BeOS), however, it allowed us to install WSFEB on our FAT16 boot partition -- warning us that we needed 450MB free to do so.

The installer offers some intriguing options: "print PostScript on non-PostScript printers" under Advanced Print Services, what appears to be a complete set of LDAP (lightweight directory access protocol) services, plus the expected print and networking options. An option to install the Tivoli System Management Agent was a welcome sight, albeit not surprising as Tivoli is now a division of IBM. As we've mentioned elsewhere, this tool allows completely automatic remote updating of PCs from a centralized management console -- practically a must in larger enterprises. Netscape Communicator is provided as the default web browser, along with what Warp users say is now a robust Java implementation.

As well, we were delighted that many of the hassles we'd encountered in previous Warp installations were gone. The OS properly detected our Toshiba IDE CD-ROM, Sound Blaster 32 sound card, mouse, ATI Rage Pro graphics card and other components and the installation proceeded rapidly on course... until the installer finished, the system rebooted and an all-too-familiar string of CONFIG.SYS error messages began appearing, saying that our system's (3Com) 3C59X family network adapter was not responding, plus a bunch of other gobbledegook. For the record, this adapter had been auto-detected and worked perfectly under Windows 98, BeOS, and Linux with nary a problem. Doh!

For Further Reading:

• Warp 4.1
• Dual-booting OSes
• Operating System Section Index
• Aurora screen shots
• PCWeek: IBM tunes OS/2 Warp upgrade for e-commerce

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