Auto Reboot is a means of automatically quiting Hermes, rebooting your machine or shutting down the power on your Macintosh at a predetermined time. There are several reasons you might want to do this. The reboot option is good for cleaning up memory that Hermes, Hermes externals or other programs might have mucked up. Shutting down might appeal to you if you only run the board for a set period and would like your computer to turn off after that time. Quitting Hermes might be nice for a similar reason if you need the memory for something else to run.
Installing it.
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Auto Reboot consists of both a user and sysop external, but has not other associated files. To install it simply put Auto Reboot in the externals folder and restart.
Setting it up.
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All customizing of Auto Reboot is done from the sysop external. From the sysop external (the system preferences item under the sysop menu) you can customize Auto Reboot to suit your needs.
Toggling the 'On/Off' option will turn Auto Reboot on and off (it will not be called in the idle loop which is where all the action takes place) without having to remove it from the externals folder.
Next there is a small black box that has the time that Auto Reboot should perform the reboot/shutdown/quit. Click on this box to change its value. You will get a dialog similar to the one Hermes uses to set node and sysop available times. NOTE: You should not set the reboot time too close to midnight. The reason is that both Hermes and lots of externals do special processing then. Auto Reboot might interfere with these if you set the time too close to midnight.
Below the time to reboot box are three radio buttons. These allow you to set the action that Auto Reboot should perform. These options should be self explanatory.
Running it.
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Nothing special is required to run Auto Reboot in automatic mode. Each night Auto Reboot will perform the action set in the sysop external. It will do this after the time that you set in the the preferences dialog, but will wait until all users have logged off before it does it.
***As a saftey feature Auto Reboot will only reboot automatically once per hour no matter what. This means that if you do a reboot with it and then set the time 5 minutes ahead, it wil not reboot at that time. This is to avoid the possiblity of a unforseen problem causing your computer to keep rebooting.
Limitations, problems etc
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The only real problem I can see is that Auto Reboot doesn't provide much of a warning before doing its thing. This can be set up if it is really desired. This is only a problem locally, Auto Reboot won't ever reboot while a user is online.
Future features
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I am thinking about including the following but would like to hear other ideas.
--warnings on the local machine that a reboot is about to happen
--transfering to another application (this is sort of handled by Tabby)
All of these are dependent on people registering Auto Reboot. If you like it let me know and I will continue to work on it.
The plea.
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Auto Reboot is SHAREWARE. I think this is a really useful product. I am more than willing to support it but new versions are of course dependent on interest and interest is dependent on feedback and the best feedback is registration. I have written a few shareware applications and it is getting discouraging, not to mention financially hard, to justify all the time. If you use it please register your copy. I feel that shareware has fallen into the same trap as the commercial system it is supposed to be an alternative to. Authors ask for such large fees because so few people actually send them in. This in turn causes fewer people to send them in, which makes authors feel they need to ask for more, which…you get the picture. I have intentionally made the price so reasonable you don't have any excuse not to pay the shareware fee. If you don't think the external is worth $10 then DON'T USE IT.
Registration info
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To register send $10, *and* the registration form below (the form does make things easier) to Chris Owen, PO Box 1471, Garden City, KS 67846 (before August 1994 you can send it to me at 27 Bishop St #2R, New Haven CT 06511 for faster registration).
Auto Reboot is part of a larger "pack" of externals. Please see the accompanying documentation for details on how to register them all at a much reduced price.
If you have any questions or comments about Auto Reboot, I would appreciate hearing them. I can be reached on Olympus or at the addresses below.
Chris Owen (#681, I think)
owen-christopher@yale.edu <-- I prefer this address
Mulligan's Valley ("official" support board) 203-772-4485 (2400)
