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HELP.111
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1991-08-09
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Rebuild, Validate and Mark
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
If you ever have doubts regarding the integrity of your message
base, then running one of these utilities can either put your
mind at rest or correct any problems.
These routines are quite fast. Counters Validation without
Marking (see below) is the fastest because it doesn't write to
any message or index files - it merely checks that what you have
makes sense and corrects Power-QWK's Pointers and Counters when
necessary.
Counters Validation checks (and corrects if necessary) the
current values of the following counters and pointers in each
existent conference in the current message base: Oldest Unread
Message Pointer, Number of Unread Messages.
Sometimes, Counters Validation will 'correct' the Oldest Unread
Message Pointer when it isn't actually wrong but merely out of
date. This causes the generation of a message of the form
Oldest Unread changed from x to y
where x is less than y. This is always acceptable and never
indicative of a fault.
It also checks the format of each Message Index entry. If errors
are found, the Index is truncated to exclude the invalid entries
and a message is displayed recommending that a full Rebuild be
run. This message should not be ignored.
'Mark read' and 'Mark unread' are variations of Counters
Validation in which, whilst the Validation is being performed,
all messages are simultaneously marked as 'Read' or 'Unread'
(whether you have in fact read them or not).
Rebuild resets all pointers and counters to zero and then uses
the contents of each conference message file in turn to re-create
its associated Index and reset all its counters and pointers to
the correct values. The efficacy of a Rebuild can be confirmed by
a succeeding run of Counters Validation.
Rebuild leaves all messages marked as 'unread'.
Bulletins Rebuild unsets all Bulletins Flags and then resets those
for which bulletin files actually exist. A side-effect of Bulletins
Rebuild is that all bulletins, in all conferences, become marked as
'unread'.
You should never have to run Bulletins Rebuild - although it can do
no harm to do so. It is only necessary if UNREAD bulletin files are
deleted other than within Power-QWK, for example, at the DOS command
line or as the result of a disc fault.
This facility is provided as a fail-safe mechanism - you should
nonetheless avoid the deletion of ANY Power-QWK file other than by
facilities provided within Power-QWK.