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Text File | 1995-11-06 | 31.1 KB | 753 lines

!ClicBack Hard Disk Backup Utilities Version 2.8 © Steve Spry 1995. Please note that this application is NOT Public Domain, it is CCCCC AAAA RRRRR EEEEEE WW WW AAAA RRRRR EEEEEE CC AA AA RR RR EE WW WW AA AA RR RR EE CC AA AA RR RR EE WW W WW AA AA RR RR EE CC AAAAAA RRRRR EEEEE WW W WW AAAAAA RRRRR EEEEE CC AA AA RR RR EE WWWWWWW AA AA RR RR EE CC AA AA RR RR EE WWW WWW AA AA RR RR EE CCCCC AA AA RR RR EEEEEE WW WW AA AA RR RR EEEEEE It is NOT free software. Permission is hereby granted to allow any person, group, body, or company to use this program, subject to the following terms : 1. The program is supplied "as is", without express or implied warranty. No representations are made about the suitability of this software for any purpose. 2. This version of the program is CAREWARE, as such continued use requires registration (see below). 3. The author reserves the right to refuse any person, or company, permission to use this program. 4. The unregistered version of the program maybe freely distributed and a small charge made for the copying and postage etc. This 'fee' should not exceed £2. !ClicBack Utilities are CAREWARE and NOT PUBLIC DOMAIN. This means that the proceeds are given to charity.In the case of these programs the charity is CLIC,The Cancer & Leukaemia In Childhood Trust, registered charity number 802396. If, after a period of two weeks, you find the program useful you are required to register your copy of the programs for a fee of £10. This payment will entitle you to the "Key" file which will remove the banner file and put your name into the Info box. As a registered user you will also be entitled to free technical support. To register your copy of the programs please send a cheque or postal orders made payable to Steve Spry and a blank formatted disk to: Steve Spry 36 Moreton Avenue Bideford North Devon EX39 3AY If you could also inform me as to which version of RISCOS you have, the amount of memory you have, the processor and the size of your hard disk it would help me to develop the program further. Background ~~~~~~~~~~ This program had been sitting on my hard disk for nearly three years in a half finished state whilst I played around with data compression techniques. Following the death of my five year old son from a brain tumour in January 1993 I decided to finish this program and donate the proceeds to CLIC. As the program progressed more and more features were added or changed. Even now there are things that I would like to change but I could carry on for ever. This program is dedicated to his memory and all those brave young children fighting all forms of cancer.For there sake, if you like the program, please register your copy of the program. Further details about CLIC can be obtained from: 12-13 King Square, Bristol, BS2 8JH Tel: 0117 9248844 Fax: 0117 9244505 Introduction ~~~~~~~~~~~~ The main features of the programs include : • Full, Differential and Incremental backups. • Selective option to preserve history integrity • Backup to floppies or another hard disk. • Backup only specified directories or files. • Exclude any files or directories from the backup. • Verify whilst backing up. • Password protection for added security. • 32 bit CRC • Restore data to any directory. • Powerful searching facility to locate Files / Directories or Applications within backup data. • Ability to restore whole directories or applications. • Variable data compression. • Estimate number of floppy disks required. • Estimate time required to complete backup. • Save settings as configuration files. • Customisation file. • Acorn’s Interactive help supported. Getting Started ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ First copy the program to a directory on your hard disc. To load the program double click on the !ClicBack icon.The program will be loaded and the !ClicBack icon will be displayed on the right hand side of the iconbar. If the program has not been registered a banner will be displayed reminding you that the program is Careware and of your obligation to do this. Before you can proceed any further with the program you will have to click on the "Un-Registered" icon. This will remove the banner and unlock the program. Iconbar Menu ~~~~~~~~~~~~ Clicking menu over the !ClicBack icon will display a menu as shown in figure 1. Info ~~~~ Info will display information about your version of the program. The Registered to field will show ***Unregistered *** or your name if you have registered your copy. Save ~~~~ Save leads to a standard “Save as” dialogue box which enables you to save the current settings to a configuration file. The configuration files have a file type of &326. The !ClicBack program can be started by double clicking on a configuration file. The program will be loaded with the options from the configuration file. These files can be edited by hand if required, the syntax and details are at the end of this file. Quit ~~~~ Quit will exit !ClicBack, removing it from the computers memory. Clicking SELECT on the !ClicBack icon on the iconbar will display the Setup Window shown in figure 3. <Figure 3> This window displays the various settings available. !ClicBack Setup Window ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Backup Type ~~~~~~~~~~~ The Backup Type popup menu allows you to choose the type of backup you wish to perform. There are three backup types available. Full Backup This type of backup backs up all the files on the source path to the destination path. This is first type of backup that you should perform. Incremental Backup This type of backup backs up only those files which have been created or modified since the last backup.The last backup maybe Full, Incremental or Differential. Therefore if you use Incremental backups you will need to use a different set of discs each time. Do not use the same discs that you used for the Full backup as you will lose the first part of the backup when it is over written by the Incremental backup data. Differential Backup A differential backup backs up only those files that have been created or modified since the last Full backup. Therefore only the one set of Differential backup discs will be required and can be used for each Differential backup. Once again do not use the same discs that you used for the Full backup as you will lose the first part of the backup when it is over written by the Differential backup data. Selective ~~~~~~~~~ For this option it is necessary to explain basically how the program works. When you conduct a backup the program will compile a list of files to backup. Once the backup has been completed the program will store the logfile in the Resources directory inside the !ClicBack application. These logfiles are used as the basis for the Differential and Incremental backup’s. The program compiles a list then finds the difference between the various files. This method gets around the problem where files are copied to the hard disk but have an older date/time stamp than the last backup. If the selective option is selected then the logfile will not be stored in the resources directory. I would recommend that you use the selective option if you are backing up any directory other than the root directory. File Source ~~~~~~~~~~~ The File Source specifies the directory that you wish to backup. Dragging a directory or file to this icon will insert the full pathname of that directory into the icon. If the object dragged is a file the inserted path will be the parent directory. Alternatively you can type the path into this icon. Destination ~~~~~~~~~~~ The Destination specifies where the backup data will be written to. The destination path can be set in one of two ways. If the destination is to floppy disks the destination drive is selected via the popup menu option. If the destination is another hard disk then simply drag the destination directory to the destination icon.Once again if the dragged object is a file then the inserted path will be the parent directory of the file. The two possible destinations are : ADFS floppy disk Other If the destination is to a floppy disk the program will prompt you for disks as required. The program will also automatically delete all files on the floppy disk and name the disk. If the disk is not a RISCOS 800k or 1.6M disk the program will prompt you to reformat it. If the destination is “Other” the program will not delete any files or attempt to name the disk. Lists Popup Menu ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This menu allows you to select which combination of the Include/Exclude lists you wish to use for the backup. The Use Include List option allows you to specify a list of files or directories to backup. Click on the Include option in the Misc menu to display the Include window.You may drag files / directories into this window to create a list of files to be backed up. If this option is not selected then the contents of the Include list are not used. When the program is started it will check for the presence of the files in the lists. If the files are not found then the file/Directory will be given the default icon of a directory. Cancel ~~~~~~ Clicking on the Cancel icon will discard any changes you have made to the settings and reload the default settings. Save ~~~~ Clicking on the Save icon will save the current settings as the default settings. OK ~~ Clicking on the OK icon will start the backup sequence. Main Window Menu ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Clicking menu over the main window will display the menu shown in figure 4. <Figure 4.> Info ~~~~ Info will display information about your version of the program. The Registered to field will show ***Unregistered *** or your name. Options ~~~~~~~ This menu entry leads to the following sub-menu Include ~~~~~~~ Clicking on this menu entry will display the Include File window. Dragging files or directories to this window will include them into the backup. It is not necessary to include files or directories that are within the source directory as these will be backed up automatically. The Include list will only be used if the “Use Include List“ option is selected. Exclude ~~~~~~~ Clicking on this menu entry will display the Exclude File window. Dragging files or directories to this window will add them to the Exclude List. It is not necessary to exclude files or directories that are not within the source directory as these will be excluded automatically. The Exclude list will only be used if the “Use Exclude List” option is selected. You might wish to exclude every directory or file with a particular name from the backup i.e. *.o to exclude all directories or files called 'o'. To do this simply press and hold the shift key and then drag the object into the window. Although it is possible to use this with the include list a filename of *.o, for example, makes no sense and will be ignored. History ~~~~~~~ Clicking on this menu entry will display the History Window as shown below. This window gives date and time that the backups were completed, whether the backups were Selective or Non-Selective, backup type and the time taken to backup. From time to time you may wish to delete some of the entries from the History file. Pressing menu over this window will display the following menu. Only the bottom entry needs any explanation. The Remove option will delete the selected History file entries. Individual entries may be selected by clicking SELECT on the required entry. Multiple entries can be made by using ADJUST. Password ~~~~~~~~ This menu option leads to a dialogue box with two writable icons. Type your password into the top icon move to the second icon and retype the password. When you press return or tab with the caret in the second icon the program will check that the two copies of the password are the same. It will then unshade the 'Set' icon and allow you to password protect the backup data. The password must be at least two characters long and not more than eight characters. The password is not stored with the backup data. It is therefore important that you remember the password. The Password is also CASE SENSITIVE i.e. KEY is not the same password as Key. If the backup has been password protected the !Restore program will prompt you for a password before the restoration of data starts, but has no means of checking that the password is correct. Compression ~~~~~~~~~~~ This allows the user to set the amount of compression the program will attempt. The permitted values are in the range 1 to 9 with 9 being the maximum compression.The default value is 1 which provides the best compromise for speed whilst maintaining an adequate amount of compression.Setting this value to 9 will increase compression but will increase the time taken for the backup.The program uses the same amount of memory regardless of the compression level. Verify ~~~~~~ When Verify is selected the data that has just been written to the destination file will be verified to ensure that the data was written correctly. If any errors are detected the data will be written again. This will slow down the backup considerably. Don't Compress... ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Some types of file are already compressed such as archives, GIF or JPEG files etc. Attempting to compress these files again might only save a few bytes, if anything, and therefore isn't really worth the extra processing time. Selecting the menu option will open a window called "Don't Compress Filetypes". Dragging a file into this window will display the file icon and the filetype in Hex beside it. The program will not attempt to compress any of the specified filetypes. This can produce significant time savings. Disc detect ~~~~~~~~~~~ This causes the computer to check for the presence on a new disc once every second. If a new, formatted disc is found then the program will continue automatically. If the disc is already part of the backup set or unformatted then the program will do nothing until you click on OK. At this point you will be informed that the disc is either unformatted or it is already part of the backup set. If you wish to check the contents of a disc before using it you will need to 'Pause' the backup BEFORE inserting the disc. Backup Sequence ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Before starting the backup you should quit any other applications that are currently running. The extra memory gained will speed up the backup. Once you have ensured that the File source, Destination, backup type and other options are set correctly, you may start the backup by clicking on the OK icon. The first thing that happens during the backup sequence is a pre-backup pass of the File source. This builds a log file of all the files to be backed up, and the amount of data. When the log file is complete the backup will start. If you are not backing up to floppy disks, the backup will commence immediately. You can abandon the backup at anytime by clicking on Abort. There maybe a short delay before the program acknowledges your request to abandon the backup especially if the program is compressing a large file. Backup to Floppy Disk ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ If you are backing up to floppy disks you will be prompted to insert the first floppy disk of the disk set. After inserting the disk into the drive click on OK or press return. The program will first check that the disk has been formatted and if not, will prompt you before formatting it. The program will also prompt you to format any disk that is not a standard RISCOS disk, i.e. MSDOS formatted disks. Although the program could use these disks there is no benefit in doing so, they hold less data than the RISCOS equivalents and writing to these disks is much slower than a native disk format. The program will AUTOMATICALLY DELETE any files on the destination floppy. An estimate of the number of disks required and the estimation of time left will be updated as each floppy disk is filled. The floppy disks will also be named to reflect the backup type, date and disk number i.e. 37F0105002 This indicates that the backup was started at minute 37. The F shows that it was a Full backup, and the backup date was the 1st May and this is disc number 002. As the backup progresses you will be prompted to insert floppy disks as they are required. You can abandon the backup at any time by clicking on Abort. Backup progress ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ During the backup, information is displayed in the ClicBack Status window. Figure 5. <Figure 5> Name Displays the pathname of the file currently being processed. Size Displays the original size of the file. Done Shows the percentage of the backup completed. Disk This displays the current disk number. of ~ Displays an estimate of the number of disks required. Updated during the backup. Estimated Time left Displays an estimate of the time remaining for the backup to including delays in inserting floppy disks. Compression Displays the percentage of disk space saved.This value might be negative when the program is unable to compress the input files.This negative value arises because !ClicBack writes some internal information with the backup data. The backup can be aborted at any time by clicking on the Abort icon. There may be some delay whilst the current data chunk is compressed. You might notice that the amount of data backed up is not the same as the amount of used space on your hard disk.This is due to the filing systems allocating space for directory entries. Each directory will take one block of your hard disk.Therefore if the block size is 1024 bytes each directory will take up 1k of disk space.The backup program only needs the date/time stamp of the directory to recreate it on restoring the data. !ClicBack now supports filenames of upto 56 characters in length as used by Jason Tribbeck's !Longfiles. Because !Longfiles is basically an extension of the operating system you will need to ensure that !Longfiles has been installed prior to restoring your data. Restore ~~~~~~~ !Restore is copied to the first disc in a full backup. If you are using a Differential or Incremental backup then it is assumed that it will form part of a full backup set and that a copy of !Restore would have been copied to the first disc in the full backup set. This is done to save disc space on Incremental or Differential backups. Double clicking on the !Restore icon will load the application onto the iconbar. Clicking on the icon will open the programs main window. <Figure 6> The File Source and Destination icons will contain the default paths for the restore.These are obtained from a header within the BackData file.The destination will be the same as the source for the original backup. If you wish to restore the data to a different directory or drive then either drag the destination directory (or a file from that directory) into the destination icon or press menu over the window and drag the save icon from the destination submenu to your selected directory. Main Window Menu ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The menu has the following options. Info Info will display information about your version of the program. The Registered to field will show ***Unregistered *** or your name. Source The program expects to find the backup data file in the same directory as the !Restore program. If the program can not find the backup data an error will be displayed. When the program starts it will read certain details about the backup from the backup data such as source and destination. Destination This will bring up a standard save as box. Dragging the file icon to the destination directory will insert the full path into the destination icon.You can also select the destination directory by dropping the selected directory onto the destination icon. This will also insert the full path into the destination icon.If you drop a file onto the destination icon the parent directory will be inserted into the icon. Password This menu option leads to a writable icon into which you will have to enter the password if the backup is password protected. The Password is also CASE SENSITIVE i.e. KEY is not the same password as Key. If the backup has been password protected but you do not enter a password before starting the restore the program will prompt you for a password before the restoration of data starts, but has no means of checking that the password is correct. Clicking on OK will start the restore process. The program will display the status window which is identical to !ClicBack's status window. Retrieve ~~~~~~~~ Retrieve is copied to the last disc in the backup sequence along with a file which holds the information that !Retrieve needs in order to locate and restore the selected object. This program is used to restore single files, directories or applications. The program is loaded by double clicking on the !Retrieve icon. Clicking on the iconbar will open the programs main window. Figure 7 Main Window ~~~~~~~~~~~ The main window has a writable icon for you to specify the name of the file/directory or application which you wish to restore. There is a group of three icons which enables you to select what type of object you are looking for. The ‘Wildcard’ icon will extend the window to show the available wildcards. The wildcards are as follows: Digit # - Matches any characters 0-9 Any . - Matches any single character Not ~ - Matches any character except the character specified. Alphanum @ - Matches any alphanumeric character a-z, A-Z, 0-9 or _. Set [] - [abc] matches any of the characters a, b, or c. Note that a set is always case sensitive. Normal \ - \s will match the character s even if s is a special character. 0 or more * - *c matches 0 or more occurrences of c, where c is any of the simple character patterns listed above. 1 or more ^ - ^c matches 1 or more occurrences of c, where c is any of the simple character patterns listed above. Clicking on Run or pressing return will start the search. If the search finds more than fifty objects that matches the search pattern then an error will be generated prompting you to narrow the search pattern to reduce the number of possible matches and only the first 50 matches will be displayed. The matches will be displayed in a separate window called the search window as shown below. This shows the result of searching for objects called unique with the files and applications options set. To restore a selected file simply drag it from this window to the directory you wish to restore the file to. The program will prompt you to insert the required disks and proceed as for a normal restore. Several objects can be selected from the Matches window by clicking select on the first object and using Adjust to select subsequent objects. Figure 8 History 1.00 Not so much of a hard disk backup program but a hard disk cleaner. Managed to wipe every other file on a hard disk. If it wasn’t for a bug I would have had the lot. sorry Buck! 2.01 A working Multi-tasking backup program which I was reluctant do release into the world incase there where any bugs that I had not found despite extensive testing.Finally plucked up the courage to release it and was pleased by the stability of the program. 2.06 Fixed the minor bugs that have been reported and made some improvements that have been suggested by users e.g. Pause, better compression ratio etc. 2.50 Implemented the Difference Algorithm instead of using just the date time stamp. Fixed a bug that prevented !ClicBack from formatting high density disks (couldn’t test this on my old A3000). Added the compression level to the options file. Sorted out !Restore to only close the destination window. Fully tested on the RiscPC. 2.51 Fixed a bug that missed the last character off the filename when using !Retrieve. 2.52 Added detection of native RISCOS format disks. !ClicBack will now only accept D/E or F formatted disks. 2.53 Fixed a bug that prevented !Retrieve restoring any single file that was split across two or more disks. 2.54 Removed “Unstamped” option as it has been made redundant since the release of version 2.50. Also fixed a bug that would cause !ClicBack to crash if there were no files to backup. 2.60 Removed all restrictions on the demonstration version of the programs and decided to use a key file for registered users. (Thank you David Holden). Included and Shift-Drag option for excluding files to exclude all object with a given leafname. Finally tracked down the problem with !Restore asking for a disk beyond the last disk in the backup set. 2.70 Following several phone calls from David Holden I have changed a number of things in this version and fixed a problem with ArcFS and SparkFS which would cause !ClicBack to crash when ArcFS or SparkFS ran out of memory. The problem was caused by the above two programs intercepting calls to OS_GBPB and OS_File and changing the object type returned from these calls from 3 (Image files) to 2 (directory). !ClicBack therefore thought that it was recursing through a directory structure and wasn't expecting another program to deny access to a file because it was out of memory. Anyway it's fixed now. Also changed the following: 1. User interface - I think this gives a cleaner, less cluttered feel to the program. I know the popup menus do not appear in quite the right positions but I cannot find a way around in in Risc_OSLib. 2. Changed format of configuration files. These are now in a human-readable format, the syntax of which can be found elsewhere in this manual. 3. Added a means for the user to specify which files not to compress. This can make backing up data a lot quicker as the program no longer has to work so hard in order to same a few k's compressing pre-compressed files. 4. Re-coded a large portion of the programs, saving quite a bit of space and, hopefully making it a bit quicker. 5. !ClicBack now recognises image files and will back them up as a single (sometimes large) file (DOS partition files). 6. Cleared the bug that would cause the program to sometimes crash when you selected History. I still don't know why it did it but i've recoded this and the problem (appears) to have vanished. The text justification of the history file does appear a bit strange on a RiscPC if you are using an outline font for the desktop. 2.71 Fixed a problem with the lists that would cause the program to crash if the user selected all items and then selected remove. Also changed the saving of options files to save the numerical filetype and not the string filetype as this could cause problems if the textual filetype was not know to the system when the options file was loaded. 2.80 Replaced the deletion routines for ADFS floppy discs with 'Quick Format' routines. This can save a lot of time if the backup discs have a lot of files on them. Future Plans I intend to make the restore program more visually based. i.e. show a directory tree and allow you to point and click to specify the files to restore. As usual the problem is time. Improve the search facilities to incorporate fuzzy matching. i.e. a search for directtory would find directory. And the normal improvement ..... speed. I hope to double the program speed of the backup eventually. The speed of restoration is already pretty impressive for large files. known bugs None at the moment.... and as they say, it's not a bug it's just an undocumented feature!!!! Thanks To Dominic Symes for THE text(?) editor !ZAP. If you haven’t got a copy get one! Martin Ebourne and Bryan Scattergood for the C/Assembler modes in !ZAP. Acorn for there C Compiler (and computer). Jonathan Marten for the inspiration to start this program. (UAP ?) Chris Taylor for the suggestions on improving the program and encouragement My wife for being a computer widow. David Holden for persuading me to remove all restrictions on the program and for his advice and suggestions regarding !ClicBack's operation. And all registered users of the program. Configuration File Syntax ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ !ClicBack uses a very simple script language for its configuration files. The language consists of 15 tokens. The tokens are as follows: on - These are used in conjunction with the other tokens to specify off if an option is switched on or off. The simple on/off options are as follows. #selective on|off Turns the selective option on or off. #use_exclude on|off Informs the program that you wish to use the exclude list. #use_include on|off Informs the program that you wish to use the include list. #verify on|off Turns the verify option on or off. The following options require either a string or number parameter. #compression 1..9 Sets the level of data compression to a value between 1 and 9. #drive_number 0..3|255 Used to indicate which floppy disk drive you wish to backup to. If the destination is another hard disk then this value should be set to 255. #backup_type full|diff|incr Allows you to specify the type of backup you only need to give the first four characters of the backup type. #source path Set the source path for the backup. #destination path Set the destination for the backup. #include pathname Add the object to the include list. #exclude pathname Add the object to the exclude list. #dont_compress &filetype Add the file type to the list of filetypes not to compress. There are two other tokens which are currently unused.These options will be added in the future. The minimum size for file compression is currently set in the messages file inside the !ClicBack application. #auto_disk_detect on|off Turns disk changed polling on or off. #min_size number Set the minimum file size for compression. Example 1 script: #source SCSI::Backup.$.Test.UTILITIES3 #destination SCSI::Backup.$.Test #drive_number 255 #backup_type full #compression 1 #verify off #selective off #use_include off #use_exclude off #dont_compress &3FB #dont_compress &DDC #dont_compress &C85 Example 2 script #source SCSI::Backup.$.Test.UTILITIES3 #destination ADFS::0.$ #drive_number 0 #backup_type full #compression 9 #verify off #selective off #use_include on #use_exclude on #exclude SCSI::Main.$.EagleM2.!TakeTwo #exclude *.Scrap #include SCSI::Main.$.EagleM2.!AudioWrks #dont_compress &3FB #dont_compress &DDC #dont_compress &C85