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Date:	Wed, 15 May 2002 09:57:28 PST7
From:	Peter Skye <pskye@peterskye.com >
Reply-To:	scoug-help@scoug.com
To:	scoug-help@scoug.com
Subject:	SCOUG-Help: more on backup using compression software

Content Type: text/plain

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A while back I complained on this list [SCOUG-Help] that PKZip wouldn't
compress my many files (I wanted to use it to back up to a hard drive)
due to the OS/2 version only allowing about 2,000 files in an archive.

Posted today (15May2002) to Hobbes is new version 3.00 of RAR, an
alternate compression utility. My preliminary tests show it handles
locked files such as \DMISL\BIN\sldb.dmi (which COPY, XCOPY and PKZip
won't do) and it doesn't have PKZip's OS/2 constraint of a maximum
number of files.

The file date of the RAR executable is 14May2002. You can get the files
at:

http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/pub/incoming/rar300.txt
http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/pub/incoming/rar300.zip

and eventually they'll be moved to

http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/pub/os2/util/archiver/rar300.zip

This rar300.zip file contains the exact same OS/2 and DOS files (I
checked) that are on the RAR home site at http://www.rarlab.com/, but
the rarlab.com version of the files are in DOS executable format while
the Hobbes files are in .zip format. The DOS executable format won't
extract the files if you run it in a directory path with a long filename
(such as C:\MyExecutables\RAR\); you can either extract to an "8.3" path
or use the .zip version.

The readme.txt has some important information that can be a bit
confusing. Here are the unconfused infobits:

1) You only need the rar32.exe file (you can ignore the emx.exe and
rsx.exe files which are for DOS support).

2) For full documentation you have to download the Windows version, so
go to http://www.rarlab.com/ and click to the Download frame, then
download the WinRAR 3.00 version (wrar.exe). When I tried running this
file, winrar.exe gave me an execution error (the file is Win32 format)
so I haven't seen the documentation. I've emailed RAR author Eugene
Roshal and asked if he can make the documentation available online.

The following five "locked"(?) files were handled "sort of" successfully
by RAR (these files cause SYS0032 errors in other apps):
sldb.dmi
dhcpc.db
deter___.DB
_CACHE0.DB
LOG0001.DAT
RAR successfully archived the data in these files but *did* report that
it couldn't get the Extended Attributes for some of them (only
LOG0001.DAT actually had any extended attributes). Also, SWAPPER.DAT
couldn't be archived by RAR (not that I want it, but I was testing).

The file LOG0001.DAT which RAR couldn't get the Extended Attributes for
is the error log file used by SYSLOG and SYSLOGPM; documentation is in
CMDREF.INF and SYSLOGPM.HLP. I used PMSEEK to find this, which led me
to run SYSLOGPM (SYSLOG just runs SYSLOGPM) which I had never done
before. I was quite surprised at all the system errors I'm getting in
PMWP.DLL (plus something called a "File wrapped" error), and as a side
note SYSLOGPM should become part of your weekly maintenance procedure
(run it right now to see your own system error log). SYSLOGPM.EXE is in
the \OS2\ directory.

Both RAR and PKZip are shareware.

- Peter

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