home
***
CD-ROM
|
disk
|
FTP
|
other
***
search
/
Collection of Tools & Utilities
/
Collection of Tools and Utilities.iso
/
dskut
/
restart3.zip
/
RESTART.DOC
< prev
Wrap
Text File
|
1990-09-24
|
6KB
|
187 lines
RESTART
Instructions for RESTART.COM
This is the second version of the RESTART.COM program that I wrote in
1988, one afternoon. It is a somewhat more flexible version.
I contribute this program to the Public Domain.
Tom Almy
toma@tekgvs.labs.tek.com
May 26, 1990
Improvements:
- commentary text after first line possible
- more than one config name can be given
- more and more instructive error messages
- now white space(s) separate config names from lines to write
- white space removed around input and output lines
- empty lines allowed and ignored in configuration file
Thomas Birnthaler
birnthal@forwiss.uni-erlangen.de
Aug 25, 1990
Improvements:
- additional config names can be defined based on presence or absence
of other config names
- more error messages
- added cold boot option
Tom Almy
September 24, 1990
DESCRIPTION
-----------
Restart is a system configuration management program. The conflicts
of many device drivers, tsrs, tradeoffs on ramdisks, etc, was driving
me nuts having multiple CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files to maintain
and copy. Restart maintains all the configurations in a single file,
CONFIGUR.DAT. This file contains a list of allowable configuration
names followed by descriptions of the contents of any number of files
(typically CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT in the root directory of the
booting drive, but can also be used for command alias files, altering
batch files, etc.). The file descriptions are lines to be included in
the file. Lines can be conditionally included or excluded based on
the configuration name.
After the files are created, restart can reboot the system. A time
delay can be specified for systems using staged-write disk caching.
Other options disable the reboot, or writing what would be the file
contents to the display rather than to the files (for debugging).
THE COMMAND LINE
----------------
RESTART
with no arguments gives a short message on the allowed arguments,
a list of all possible configurations, and all the (commentary) text
before the first *filename in CONFIGUR.DAT.
RESTART <config> ...
will create files for configuration(s) "<config> ...", and then reboot the
system. More than one configuration is allowed.
RESTART -n <config> ...
same, but won't reboot the system.
RESTART -c <config> ...
same, but does cold reboot, like when powered up, rather than warm (soft)
reboot, like ctrl-alt-delete.
RESTART -s <config> ...
writes what would be the file contents for configuration(s) "<config> ..."
to standard output (you might want to pipe the output through MORE).
RESTART -4 <config> ...
delays four seconds before rebooting (any integer delay, in seconds,
can be specified).
THE CONFIGURATION FILE
----------------------
The configuration file, CONFIGUR.DAT, is expected to be found in the
root directory of the boot drive (It looks at the first character of
the COMSPEC environment variable to decide which drive is the boot
drive). If the environment variable BOOTDRIVE is defined, then the
first character of that variable specifies the bootdrive.
- The first line of the configuration file specifies the allowable
configurations. Configuration names are separated by apostrophes, and
apostrophes are used at the beginning and end of the line as well. No
white spaces or other extraneous characters are allowed. For instance,
my first line looks like this:
'386'med'noram'small'c++'max'c60'
listing seven possible configurations.
- Zero or more lines of commentary text follow, describing e.g. the
possible configurations. This commentary text ends before the first
line specifying a file to generate.
- Zero or more subconfiguration lines (may be mixed with commentary text).
These lines follow the format of the conditionally included lines
described below. As an example, the line:
'a'b' ramdrive
will define the configuration ramdrive if either configuration a or
configuration b have been defined. This allows the use of 'ramdrive'
rather than 'a'b' in conditional lines, and can be more descriptive.
- At least one line must specify a file to generate. Lines
specifying files start with an asterisk. File names need to be
specified with full drive and pathnames. My first file line is:
*c:\config.sys
The lines that follow, up until the next file specification line or
end of file, describe the lines which go into that file.
- If a line starts with a list of one or more configurations, followed
by one or more white spaces, then that line is only included for those
configurations. For instance,
'noram'small' shell=c:\4dos.com /s:dc:\temp /p
The line starting at "shell" is only placed into the file if the
configuration is noram or small.
- A line that starts with a tilde is handled in the same manner, but
with the sense reversed. For instance,
~'noram'small' shell=c:\4dos.com /s:dk: /p
is only placed in the file if the configuration is not noram or
small. In this case, it would be equivalent to:
'386'med'c++'max'c60' shell=c:\4dos.com /s:dk: /p
- By having a line that cannot match any configuration, you can have
comment lines in the CONFIGUR.DAT file:
'' THIS IS A COMMENT LINE
- A line that starts with neither * ' nor ~ is always written
to the file.
- Empty lines are skipped, leading and trailing white space is removed
from input and output lines.
Here is a small sample CONFIGUR.DAT file:
-----------------------------------------
'clean'small'large'
commentary text
clean: maximum free memory
small: small system
large: large system
~'clean' notclean
*c:\config.sys
'notclean' driver=\sys\mouse.sys
'large' driver=\sys\fastdrive.sys 1024
'large' buffers=5
~'large' buffers=10
*c:\autoexec.bat
'large' pcshell/r
'notclean' neattsr/p/q
PATH=\bin;\dos