DESKTOP RECOVERY PROCEDURE FOR GAMMATECH SENTRY BACKUPS ******************************************************* this procedure was developed by Frontline Technologies, Inc. The user is granted usage and redistribution privileges of the contents in their original form only. Frontline Technologies, Inc., provides no warranties, explicit or implied, and assumes no liabilities for usage. Please direct any comments or questions to James W. Richards at frontlne@wwa.com. BACKGROUND AND USAGE ******************** The Gammatech Sentry Utility provides selection options for backing up the OS/2 desktop. Unfortunately, Softouch systems provides no means of recovering the desktop. Thus, this command procedure was developed. After installation, the procedure can be used to recovery the desktop using the following procedure. Components that must be backed up for the recovery procedure to work are: the desktop tree, os2.ini, os2sys.ini, and config.sys. Warning: Do not use this procedure unless you have the Gammatech utilities installed. To recover, boot OS2. Hit ALT-F1 at boot time as soon as the OS2 logo first appears in the upper left hand corner. When the maintenance screen appears, select the (C) option to boot with the command line only. When the OS/2 command line prompt appears enter GTWPSRCV XX where XX represents which GAMMATECH backup version you wish to restore. Enter 00 for the most current version. The procedure will recover the 2 ini files, config.sys, and the Desktop directory saved by SENTRY. Then, reboot the system. INSTALLATION AND SETUP ********************** The procedure works off the CONFIG.X file stored in your X:\OS2\BOOT Directory, not from the standard config.sys used at normal boot time. Make all changes to the CONFIG.X file. Do not include any changes to CONFIG.SYS; the procedure will not work when running from the desktop, since it tries to remove the current desktop. First copy the command procedure to a directory included on the path statement in the CONFIG.X file. The file may be marked as read only and thus, you may have to remove the read-only attribute, either through Gammatech's file utility, the attribute command, or from some other utility that lets you reset file attributes. Next, add three environment variables to CONFIG.X. Set BOOTDRV to your boot drive, one character only please. Usually, this will be C or D. Next, Set GTPATH to the path where your Gammatech utilities reside. Mine are stored on the E drive in directory GTU30 and thus, the value I use for GTPATH is E:\GTU30. Finally setup GTBCKUP to the backup path that the Sentry program will use. I specified E:\GTU30\BACKUP. Next, Setup the SENTRY program to do the backups. I recommend setting up a shadow of the SENTRY program ICON in your startup folder. Start the Sentry, if needed, and open the settings notebook. Check all three backup options. The command procedure assumes that the backups are stored in a subdirectory of the Gammatech utilities directory called BACKUP. The entry in my backup directory, for example is E:\GTU30\BACKUP. Make certain the path matches with the value of environment variable GTBCKUP. Next, setup of the frequency of your backups. I've selected the time-of-day option and entered a specific time so that my backups occur once a day at the first boot of the day. Finally setup the number of backups versions you wish to retain. I selected 7 to get a backup for each day of the week. Remember the first backup version is labeled as 00. Now, as soon as the Sentry program does a backup, you should be in a position to restore your desktop. CAVEATS ******** A lot of time was spent trying to make this procedure "fail safe". The procedure checks that all the pieces are in place before starting the recovery. This portion is well tested and is functioning satisfactorily. It shuts down without harm if any required piece is missing. On examining the procedure, you will notice that the ini and config.sys files are copied to *.tmp versions just in case a failure occurs. The procedure does not do this for the Desktop under the assumption that if xcopy works for copying the desktop to a temporary tree structure, it will also work for restoring the desktop. The only situation I can think of where this assumption is false is if you try to restore the Desktop while the desktop is open. It will fail under this case, but in the situation where DELTREE tries to remove it, I think. The procedure checks the return code here, but I do not know if DELTREE sets a return code on a failure. Nonetheless, this case will not happen if you run the procedure as suggested. Thus, saved temporary versions of the ini and config.sys file are available for a manual recovery if disaster strikes during a recovery. Other considerations in the procedure's design are attempts to recover existing files when a failure occurs. Checks are in place to do this for all components save the desktop. If for some reason, none of your desktop components exist, you should be able to recovery by simply doing a mkdir DESKTOP on your boot drive and then running the recovery procedure. The procedure will take care over from here, assuming that the backups exist. The caveat here is that these components are not completely tested. Be aware of this situation if the procedure fails while trying to recover the two ini and config.sys files. A note as a personal observation. I would have preferred to write this procedure in REXX, but have been unsuccessful in getting REXX to work satisfactorily from the command line only. I am not entirely pleased with the recovery logic in the procedure, and can better appreciate the signal handling features of REXX and, in turn, the limitations of the CMD language. If anyone has suggestions for how to get REXX installed without the DESKTOP running, I would greatly appreciate the input. One final note to Softouch if they happen to get a hold of a copy of this posting. I am a great fan of Gammatech utilities; their products have bailed me out of troublesome situations on a number of occasions. I use almost all their products and I cannot say enough positive things about them. It is unfortunate, in my opinion, that Softouch has not included recovery software. Why have backup facilities in your software, but none for recovery? This simply does not make sense. The ideal approach here is to write a recovery program that is integrated with the backup features of Sentry. Softouch, are you listening? I'm making the procedure public for two reasons. First, it has bailed my butt out of trouble on a number of occasions and this confirms, in part, the need for it. Secondly, I have seen a number of horror stories on the Internet concerning desktops getting garbled up with no apparent options to the concerned parties to recover. This is further evidence of the procedure's need. IBM does provide backup and recovery procedures for the desktop, but the backups are taken each time you boot, ugh! Softouch's Sentry program provides a much more reasonable and manageable option of backing up once a day. IBM, are you listening too? James W. Richards Frontline Technologies, Inc. E-mail: frontlne@wwa.com July 5, 1996