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BS1 part 26
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Qback 3.0 + superback 1.0.adf
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ReadMe!
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1992-12-11
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Quarterback V3.0 Release Notes
December 7, 1988
Thank you for purchasing Quarterback. We have put a lot of effort into
making Quarterback as reliable as possible. We made some last-minute
changes to it after the manual was printed, and we noticed a few things
which are not clearly explained in the manual. We suggest that you print
these notes and keep a copy with your Quarterback manual.
If you call us for support, please have your serial number and version
number ready. The serial number is on the Quarterback master diskette
label. The version number appears in the title bar of the Quarterback
window. Be sure to send us your postage-paid warranty card. It costs
you only a few seconds of your time, but we are much more receptive
to your call if your card is already in our files. Our business hours
are 8:30AM to 5:00PM Pacific time.
GENERAL NOTES
In our own testing of Quarterback, we can backup a full 20MB CLtd hard disk
in about 40 minutes in the fastest mode (write verification disabled and
archive bits not set). Your results may vary, depending on the speed of
your hard drive and the degree of fragmentation of your files.
Quarterback stores its parameter file, QB.OPT, in the S: directory. This
directory is normally found on the Workbench disk in DF0. Most hard disk
users use the AmigaDOS ASSIGN command to assign the S: subdirectory to their
hard disk. You may wish to add this command to your startup-sequence.
Otherwise, you may be asked to put your Workbench disk back into a drive so
that Quarterback can find the parameter file. After you have begun a
restore operation using DF0, and Quarterback has already taken over DF0, you
will not be able to use DF0 to access the S: subdirectory. In this case you
must wait until after you have completed the restore in order to save your
options.
We have added a new option for both backup and restore which allows you to
write the archive/restoration report to disk instead of printing it. If you
specify "disk" as the destination of the report, Quarterback asks for the
device and path to the directory into which you want the report written. You
can specify any valid AmigaDOS device and path. The device:path you specify
is saved along with the other options, and is automatically restored when
you invoke Quarterback. If you do not specify a device:path for the report,
it is written to the device and directory which is current when you start
Quarterback.
If you are a "power user" and you wish to use Quarterback without going
through all of the normal Quarterback dialog, you may wish to invoke
Quarterback from CLI with a parameter file, as described in the Quarterback
manual. Quarterback can also be invoked with parameters via the CLI command
line, which is not described in the manual. Command line parameters are the
same as for a command file. The INCLUDEALL and EXCLUDEALL keywords defined
in the Quarterback manual have been eliminated. Instead, the INCLUDE and
EXCLUDE keywords accept a parameter of ALL for the file name. Therefore, you
cannot INCLUDE or EXCLUDE a file named ALL in a command file or on the
command line.
For example, to invoke Quarterback to backup word processing documents which
have changed since the last backup in subdirectory WP on DH0, you would
type:
QUARTERBACK BACKUP DH0:WP EXCLUDE ALL ARCHIVE
Command line or command file parameters can be in any order, but are executed
in the order listed. Some keywords make no sense if executed in the wrong
order. So be sure that you consider the effects of each keyword as you
decide the order to enter them. For example, it makes no sense to follow
DATE xx-mmm-yy with INCLUDE ALL.
The maximum path length supported by Quarterback is 256 characters, including
the device/volume name.
Gadgets for selecting the floppy disk drives have been changed on the
BACKUP OPTIONS screen and removed from the RESTORE OPTIONS screen. Backup
and restore now support the use of DF0, DF1, DF2, or DF3. Backup can use
one or two drives. Restore uses only a single drive.
Menu items are disabled when the backup or restore is active. If you think
you may need another CLI, open it before you proceed from the Options window.
Quarterback does NOT support the full wild card options of AmigaDOS. Wild
cards are limited to ? anywhere in a name, and #? appearing ONCE in a name,
such as:
#GA?E?.c
or
files#?
Abort gadgets appear on several screens in Quarterback. Quarterback checks
the abort gadget periodically, usually when it has finished performing
some major activity, such as backing up or restoring an entire file. Thus,
if you click on an abort gadget you may not see any response for several
seconds. The natural temptation is to click a few more times to "wake up"
Quarterback. This may create undesirable actions, since the extra clicks
are usually saved, and may be acted upon in order when Quarterback finally
looks for them. When Quarterback sends a report to the printer, the printer
usually holds many lines of text in its buffer. Therefore, if you abort
a report, the printer may continue to print for some time before stopping.
Don't remove Quarterback disks while the drive light is on. And be sure to
remove Quarterback disks when warned. AmigaDOS doesn't like Quarterback
disks.
Disks formatted by Quarterback can be copied/verified using the AmigaDOS
Diskcopy utility.
Quarterback has very low overhead per file. The catalog entry is about 25
bytes per file (depending on the length of the file name and possible file
comments). There is a 14-byte ID per disk drive. Each file is stored as
pure data. No compression is used, other than the fact that Quarterback has
much lower overhead per file than AmigaDOS, and consequently is able to store
more useful data per floppy than AmigaDOS.
BACKUP NOTES
If you have partitioned your hard disk, you must backup or restore each
partition as a different device.
When Quarterback builds a catalog of files to backup it automatically
scans down through all levels of the directory tree structure, starting at
the device or device/path that you specify. If you wish to include files
from any directory on a drive, you should specify just the device itself,
so that Quarterback can scan from the root directory down through all levels
of the structure. If you know that you want only files from a single
directory and nothing else, you should specify the full device/path to that
directory.
When Quarterback has built the complete catalog, you can then select the
individual files or groups of files to be included in (or excluded from) the
backup. All files are "included" when Quarterback first displays the
catalog. If you wish only to backup one or two files, you should first
"exclude" all files, then "include" only the ones you really want. You can
move down or up the tree, including or excluding files as you wish, until you
have identified all files to be processed. Then you are ready to proceed
with the backup.
A new option affecting how subdirectories are backed up has been added to the
BACKUP OPTIONS screen. It is:
Backup full subdirectory structure: YES NO
If you select YES, Quarterback includes all subdirectories in the backup
catalog, even if a subdirectory is empty (contains no files or other sub-
directories). This takes up only a little more room in the catalog of the
first backup disk, but makes it possible for you to restore the empty sub-
directories, if you wish (using the Restore Full Subdirectory Structure
option described below). You might want to do this if you are performing a
full restore to a replacement disk drive, and you want the restored disk to
have the exact same directory structure as the original drive.
If you select NO, Quarterback includes only those subdirectories in the
backup catalog which contain files or other subdirectories to be backed up.
Quarterback can now use any of the standard floppy drives, DF0-DF3, for
backup. Any pair of these drives is also valid. However, no more than
two floppies can be used for backup.
During backup, Quarterback writes a unique identification code to each disk,
including a sequence number and the date and time of the backup. On restore,
Quarterback checks each disk for the proper sequence number, and the date and
time. The date/time stamp allows Quarterback to detect intermixing of disks
from different sets of backups.
Quarterback can be directed to read each track of the backup disks after
writing. If Quarterback finds an unusable track on a disk during backup, it
warns you and asks you to replace the bad disk with another disk. It then
resets itself to the beginning of that disk and continues. The new disk
replaces the bad disk in its entirety. You need not retain the bad disk.
You CANNOT overwrite an individual file on an existing set of backup disks.
Each backup operation completely erases any previous data on a set of disks.
Quarterback does NOT allow you to "add" more files to an existing backup set
of disks. The "incremental" backup mode always produces a new set of disks
which contain only those files which have changed since some previous backup.
When you perform an incremental backup you must also retain the previous set
of backup disks.
Quarterback may encounter illegal file names, such as "*" when it builds the
catalog of files. Such file names cannot be processed by Quarterback, and
are automatically excluded from the catalog and from the backup.
If Quarterback cannot open a file or detects a read error in a file during
the backup, it fills the space allocated for the file on the backup disk
with random data, warns you with a message on the screen, and marks the file
name with *** ERROR *** on the archive report. However, the file does
appear in the backup catalog, even though the data in the file is useless.
This happens because the catalog is written to the first diskette, long
before Quarterback discovers the problem. If you attempt to restore such a
file, you will find the contents useless. During restore, you should
exclude any files which are marked *** ERROR *** on the backup report.
RESTORE NOTES
Quarterback now restores comments, protection bits, and the date/time stamp
on all files AND directories.
The restore option called "Create Subdirectories, as necessary" has been
eliminated. In its place you will find a new restore option affecting the
way empty subdirectories are handled. It is:
Restore full subdirectory structure: YES NO
If you are restoring to a device/path which already has a subdirectory
structure which matches the catalog on the backup disks, this option has
no effect.
If you select YES, Quarterback restores all subdirectories found in the
backup catalog, even if the new subdirectory will be empty.
If you select NO, Quarterback restores only those subdirectories which
contain files marked for restoration.
You should set this option to "NO" if you are restoring just a few files to a
device which already has the desired subdirectory structure in place.
Specify "NO" to avoid creating a bunch of empty directories which are of no
use to you. Creating all those empty subdirectories can takes many minutes.
User beware!
If you restore to a different subdirectory on the same device, you may run
out of room on that device, especially if you specify that the full sub-
directory structure is to be restored.
Restore uses only a single floppy drive, with no automatic switching of
floppy disk drives. You can use any one of the available floppy drives for
the restore, but only one. Our reasoning for this limit is that restore is
a critical process, and even though it may take some time, you should give
it your total attention. Quarterback performs many error checks during
restore. If it finds an error, the recovery from that error is much more
complicated if there are two floppy drives involved, both for the user
and the program.
For restore, we have moved the floppy drive option from the options screen
to the device screen, so that Quarterback can know which disk drive to use
for reading the catalog, which is stored on the first disk of the backup
set.
We have added an a