Hello to everyone! First the good news: Icaros Desktop 1.5.2 is ready. But I think I will announce it in a better fashion later. Then, the curious one: I've found a little quirk in LiveUpdater that, strangely enough, no one has ever reported to me. In practice, instead of selectively update contents in Extras: depending on your first installation choices, it copies everything it finds in the Extras content of update packs. For instance, if you have installed just "Games" in Extras, but the update pack also includes Development, Multimedia and Networking stuff, it will copy onto your hard drive all them. Not a great issue for most people (they may never notice), but it can get a little nastier if you didn't install Extras development stuff on first place. Once LiveUpdater will be finished, in fact, you will find a Extras/Development dir in your hard drive, hence Icaros startup files will try assigning paths that don't actually exist. How can this be solved? For now, with a Do-It-Yourself procedure I am going to explain here:

1) open sys:tools/Lupd

2) from right click menu, select window -> show -> all files

3) double click on "copyfiles" script to edit it.

4) scroll down to the middle/end and carefully look for these lines:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
echo Copying Extras (it will take a while...)
LIST env:Icaros/icinstall NOHEAD FILES LFORMAT="Echo Updating Extras - %N*NIF ${%P%N} EQ True*N copy sysource:Extras/%N Extras:%N ALL FOOVR NOPRO*NEndIf" >ExtCopy
Execute ExtCopy
; delete ExtCopy >NIL:

　

　
copy FROM sysource:Extras extras: ALL QUIET FOOVR NOPRO
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

5) Notice the last line, the one in red colour: it will silently copy all contents from a "sysource:Extras" directory to your extras: one, overwriting everything it will find. Nothing wrong if this still was Icaros 1.3 or 1.4, but not very nice on 1.5, since we have now that nice package selector when you install it. So, delete that red line and save, end of the bugfix. Updating task for extras will be correctly handled by the other lines.

What did it happen? In practice, when I was modifying LiveUpdater to work with the new package managing stuff, I forgot to remove the line I was about to replace, so it survived until today. I'd like to have added this fix to Icaros 1.5.2, but unluckily all 1.5.2 files are already on the server, waiting for the last green lights, and rebuild everything just for this minor fix doesn't worth the effort. I plan to release a better LiveUpdater in the future, with better enhancements (and also this fix), so you can for now edit the file by yourself, or just download it from here:

> Download fixed version of "copyfiles" (5 KB)

and place it in SYS:Tools/LUPD replacing the old one.

One of the most common questions about Icaros Desktop is: "I do not own a internal or external USB DVD-ROM drive, how can I create a installation pendrive?" and, frankly, it's not a trivial question to answer to. Other operating systems allow using programs like unetbootin to create a "installation pendrive" from ISO files, but this is not an option for Icaros Desktop, since AROS kernel does not allow booting from this kind of pendrives. So, the best thing we can do to work around the issue is using a virtual machine. A very simple one which even hasn't a hard drive, but just the bare devices needed for installing Icaros onto a pendrive: a virtual DVD device and a USB controller, already configured to use USB 1.1 speed only - since 2.0 under VMware is kind of broken in AROS, at the moment. Here we go:

> Download aros-2-pendrive virtual machine (343 KB)

The archive is really small, but can be very useful. This virtual machine is compatible with most contemporary VMware desktop products like Workstation and Player (which is free and available both on Windows and Linux, but you'll need to dig a little in VMware website to find it), but may be easily adapted to work on other virtualization platforms as well (like VirtualBox), even if they aren't supported directly. Just install VMware, open this little virtual machine and follow instructions (they are provided in the archive, in PDF format, though you'll still need the Icaros Desktop manual as well).

Patched versions of Icaros Desktop 1.5 have been released. You can recognize them by the "-1" postfix in the end of archive names (for instance, IcarosLive_1_5_1-1.7z.exe). Patched version of Icaros Desktop won't corrupt FAT16-formatted USB pendrives and FAT12 floppies anymore. A updated version of the 1.5 > 1.5.1 update pack had already been released some hours before.

UPDATE PATH

Users of Icaros 1.4.x who had already downloaded any 1.5.x version, but not installed it, please download again a patched version and use it instead of the old one.

Users of Icaros Desktop 1.5 who have not already installed any update to 1.5.1, please download the patched version of the 1.5 > 1.5.1 update pack and install it with LiveUpdater

Users of Icaros Desktop 1.5.1 (or 1.5 updated to 1.5.1), please download patch 01 and install it with LiveUpdater

Users of Icaros Desktop 1.5 LKE, please download the patch 01. It applies on 1.5, 1.5.1 and 1.5 LKE indifferently. Do NOT install update from 1.5 to 1.5.1, because newer system files can't apparently work with older ones.

All files are available in the Download section of the site.

A nasty bug from AROS has been discovered and fixed by Neil Cafferkey a few hours ago. Here's what he says on AROS-EXEC.org: "There was a serious bug in fat.handler in nightly builds between 2012-07-22 and 2013-01-28. It could cause data corruption on FAT16 partitions and FAT12 floppies. The buggy version of fat.handler is 41.54, and was included in Icaros Desktop 1.5, but not in any 1.4 series release". FAT32 filesystem is not affected by the issue, so FAT32 formatted pendrives and drives - which currently are the majority - are safe, but this corruption issue may be dangerous for users data integrity and fast action is required. Downloads for Icaros Desktop 1.5 and 1.5.1 have been temporarily suspended: they will be replaced by patched versions of Icaros 1.5.1 as soon as possible. People who already installed them do not have to worry, they can upgrade their current versions (being them 1.5, 1.5 LKE or 1.5.1) with this patch:

> Download Icaros Desktop 1.5/1.5.1 Patch 01 (50 KB)

And  install it using LiveUpdater (save it somewhere on your drive, start Tools/LUPD/LiveUpdater, select "File" and choose the patch file). It includes a new fat.handler and a new List command. People who like to do everything by hand, can simply replace the current fat.handler in Devs/ and the current List command in C/ with the ones provided by this patch.

A patched version of the Icaros 1.5.1 Update Pack, used to patch any 1.5 release of Icaros Desktop, is already availble. It's called "IcarosUpdate150-151_1.zip", with the _1 postfix before the extension dot. The patch also fixes a wrong behavior of the List command, improving compatibility with the analogue AmigaOS™ one.

CURRENT 1.5 LKE VERSION WON'T BE REPLACED

Current archive for Icaros Desktop 1.5 LKE won't be replaced. People who still need to download this version will be warned to download patch 01 as well.