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Date:	Sat, 8 Sep 2001 12:43:59 PDT
From:	Peter Skye <pskye@peterskye.com >
Reply-To:	scoug-help@scoug.com
To:	scoug-help@scoug.com
Subject:	SCOUG-Help: UniMaint & CDFS.IFS /W

Content Type: text/plain

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Harry Chris Motin wrote:
>
> Hi Peter,

Hi Harry!
_____

> based on many hard hours of experience:
>
> 1. reliable system for backing up and restoring your two
> OS2*.INI files, the CONFIG.SYS file and all the Desktop files.

I'm okay with the backups. I make daily backups, and I keep my OS2*.INI
and CONFIG.SYS files "forever". I also keep two backup generations of
my Desktop\ directory. And I also keep "forever" the OS2*SV.INI files
which CheckIni creates.

> UniMaint's backup and restore, ... Gamma Tech Sentry

And some people use RoboSave, and I use xcopy.

I rely on my daily backups for restorations, though I realize I don't
have the generation depth that these specialized programs give you. But
I do keep the OS2*.INI files from the backups "forever".

I'm trying to get a backup server onto my network. It will have a
pull-out drawer and backup to hard drive, so I can just pull out a drive
and keep it off site. I can't do that on my 24x7 machines because you
have to turn the machine off to pull out the drawer.

> I restore by booting from floppies to a
> minimal OS/2 system and then ... I restore

Yes, good advice, it's important to *not* boot to the Workplace Shell on
the drive that you're trying to restore to. I have a separate
Maintenance partition (F:) which I boot to.

(Lurkers: The Workplace Shell reads the OS2*.INI files into memory and
uses the memory copy, not the files on the disk. When you shut down it
writes the memory contents back to the disk. If you restore the disk
files with the WPS running, the restoration will be overwritten when you
shut down. Of course, you could just power off . . .)

> 2. Next get the most recent, working copy
> of the *.INI files and your desktop. Copy them
> to your boot system and boot using them.

Yeah, sometimes I've had to walk backwards three or four generations
until I found a good one.

> 3. Clean your *.INI files, using UniMaint, checkini
> and cleanini and in that order. Clean the *.INI files
> incrementally, making a good backup of the *.INI files,
> the CONFIG.SYS file, and the Desktop each step of the
> way. For example:
> (( Backup and archive, then run one of UniMaint,
> CheckIni, CleanIni, then warm boot and see if
> your system still works. Repeat. ))

That's a good procedure, and it's what I did yesterday. (Well, CheckIni
froze, but UniMaint and CleanIni ran.) I did save a backup after I ran
each utility.

Question: Why should UniMaint, CheckIni and CleanIni be run in that
particular order?

> because you have so much garbage in
> the *.INI files, you will have to be
> care and incremental with cleanini.

CleanIni appears to be the program that zapped the most stuff, and might
have caused my current problem (the UNIMAINT folder freezes my system).

Perhaps CleanIni sometimes removes stuff that shouldn't be removed?

> If something hangs, you can go back
> to your previous backup and try again.

The new "gotcha" is the UNIMAINT folder freezeup. I think I'm just
going to delete the thing from the command line, and reinstall UniMaint.

> After you succeed in a thorough cleaning, go through the same
> process again, say, 1 week later. And then do it again.

I used to run CheckIni every week, until it stopped working last winter
(apparently there's too much stuff in my INI files which shouldn't be
there and which CheckIni wasn't able to remove). I do a *lot* of
command line processing, and I probably have a lot of INI entries for
files that have been moved, renamed or deleted from the command line. I
even rename directories on-the-fly -- it's part of my daily processing
procedure.

> I hope this helps.

Sure did. Thanks, Harry.

- Peter

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