Cream of the Crop 20/Cream of the Crop 20 (Terry Blount) (1996).iso/os2/pv3demo.zip/AUTOSET.HLP

OS/2 Help File | 1994-10-31 | 15KB | 313 lines

ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 1. General Help for AutoSet ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ

General Help for AutoSet

Auto Save is a utility that sets up other utilities contained in Performance V3
and places them into the OS/2 Startup Folder.

Program objects placed into the OS/2 Startup Folder are executed every time
OS/2 is started allowing you to "automate" certain repetitive tasks.  For
Performance V3 the task that benefit from "automation" are:

o   SimplBAK (Simple Backup - a file backup scheme)

o   AutoDSAV (Auto Desk Save - regular backup for the WorkPlace Shell Desktop)

o   LazyOFF (Turn off the Lazy Write feature of the High Performance File System)

Each of these utilities are very simple in nature - I wish they were as easy to
explain.


ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 2. SimplBAK ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ

SimplBAK

A small minority of personal computer users backup the data on their machines
on a regular basis.  Most of this small group of users have special devices
designed for backup, usually a tape drive.  What about the rest of us? It just
takes too long, I don't have the time!

And then it happens, lost data, usually self inflicted by a delete or erase
command.  Then, we wish we had taken the time.  OS/2 offers an opportunity for
a simple but effective  solution by using its multitasking capability.  By
placing a backup program into your Startup Folder you can perform regular
backups of recently created data.

You could use the OS/2 backup utility, but BACKUP saves the data in a different
format. You could use the OS/2 COPY command but this would be a lot of manual
work.  SimpleBAK uses the OS/2 copy facilities, but makes it easy to make
copies of newly created important data and it simply copies it - so the copy is
in the same format as the original.

SimplBAK is a command that has three operands: the from directory; the to
directory; and a frequency modifier.

SIMPLBAK  d:\fromdir  d:\todir  [n]

An example will best illustrate its use.

I keep all of my word processor files in a directory named D:\DESCRIBE\DATA
where there are several sub-directories, (LETTERS, FAX. REPORTS, LABELS, etc).
Every day additions and modifications are made to the files in this directory.
On a very irregular basis, every month or so, I backup all the files in these
directories to diskette.

SimplBAK makes copies of the recently created/modified files from all of the
sub-directories, every day at startup.  On my production system, I have the
luxury of hard drive space to send these daily copies.  SimplBAK operations are
fast and easy when using another hard drive partition but it will  also use
diskettes for the copy operation.  Here's the command I use for this directory
structure:

   SIMPLBAK D:\DESCRIBE\DATA  E:\BACKUP

This command will search the entire directory structure that is inside of
D:\DESCRIBE\DATA for files that were created or modified since the last time I
ran SimplBAK against the D:\DESCRIBE\DATA directory.  SimplBAK will create a
similar directory structure at E:\BACKUP during the first execution.  It also
creates a file in the from location to identify the time/date stamp of the last
copy operation.  Then the next time you run SimplBAK it uses this file to limit
its copies to only new or modified files.

 F R O M              T O

 D:\DESCRIBE          E:\BACKUP

      \DATA                \DESCRIBE

     \LETTERS                 \DATA

      \FAX                    \LETTERS

      \REPORTS                 \FAX

     \LABELS                  \REPORTS

      \MEMOS                  \LABLELS

                                 \MEMOS



I put this SimplBAK command in my OS/2 Startup folder and it runs every day.
Now, I have copies of the files I made and modified yesterday (or since the
last copy operation).  Over time I will have copies of all my valued data in
another partition.  Are there flaws in this strategy?  Sure, lets talk about a
few of them.

If I copy to a diskette and there isn't enough room, will it continue?

SimplBAK uses the standard OS/2 COPY command.  Before it attempts a copy of
each file, it checks to see if the destination has enough free space to fit the
next file, if there is not enough room SimplBAK prompts for another diskette.
You may not use SimplBAK to make copies of files to diskette if the file is
larger than your largest diskette capacity.  It does create a directory
structure on each diskette to hold the files being copied.

This doesn't make copies of the valuable data I have now.  How can I use
SimplBAK to create a copy of all of the data the first time through?

SimplBAK has a frequency modifier xxxx as an optional third argument.  Normally
SimplBAK copies all new or modified files since the last SimplBAK copy.  This
frequency modifier reduces the date of the last copy by xxxx number of days (it
defaults to 0).  So to copy all files in a directory structure use a
sufficiently large enough number in this field, (-9000 goes back 25+ years!)

For example:

 SimplBAK  D:\LOTUS\123G\123W  E:\BACKUP  -9000

will copy all files from the from directory structure of D:\LOTUS\123G\123W
that were created or modified in the past 25.2 years.  It will create a
sub-directory structure in the E:\BACKUP directory identical to the from
directory structure.

Similarly:

      SimplBAK  D:\LOTUS\123G\123W  A:\  -9000

will copy all files from the from directory structure of D:\LOTUS\123G\123W to
diskette(s).  It does keep track of the remaining space on a diskette,
prompting for a new diskette when the next file won't fit on the current diskette.

I built this feature into the AutoSet program to simplify this "first" copy.
As you set up the Simple BAK  objects for the Startup Folder - press the Backup
NOW button to copy all files created in the past 25 years (in the specified directory).


What about long names in an HPFS partition being copied to a FAT partition?

This is a problem that SimplBAK addresses with a compromise... truncation.  It
takes the first 8 characters of the name and copies the from longname file to
that truncated name if the to directory is formatted FAT.  If there is more
than one file with the same first eight characters in the same HPFS
sub-directory - it adds a numeric extension beginning with 1 and increments by
one for each duplication within a single execution of SimplBAK.  This leaves a
problem of subsequent executions of SimplBAK going to the same FAT directory.
There are two work-arounds for this situation; either copy HPFS files to HPFS
backup partitions or always copy HPFS files to new diskettes.

_________________________________________________________________________________________

SimplBAK isn't intended to satisfy all of your backup needs, but because of
OS/2's multitasking facilities, it can  make an incremental copy of your
valuable data with little or no pain, every time you start your system.

AutoSave goes a step further by placing a program object into your OS/2 Startup
Folder that may contain multiple SimplBAK commands.

Tab to the entry fields in the Setup SimplBAK panel (screen) and press F1 for
help on each item.


ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 3. AutoDSav ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ

AutoDsav (Automatic Desktop Save)

DESKSAVE is a utility of Performance V3.  It performs a simple backup of the
WorkPlace Shell Desktop directory structure and the OS2.INI and OS2SYS.INI
files.  By running DESKSAVE you will make a backup (copy) of your desktop that
can later be restored intact.  The problem is you have to run DESKSAVE in order
to have the backup!

AutoDsav is an upgraded version of DESKSAVE intended to be placed into your
STARTUP Folder.  It will automatically run every time your system is started.
Its parameters can be set to automatically backup the desktop by specifying a
frequency (in days since the last backup).  It alternates the backup between
two sub-directories Pv3AutoD.1 and Pv3AutoD.2.  Replacing and copying to the
older directory when today's date is greater than or equal to the previous
backup da