═══ 1. Overview ═══ BaR is a PM-based front end for OS/2's backup and restore utilities. Its purpose is to simplify the process of backing up your files/data to floppies by allowing you to create what are called profiles. For help on the window objects, refer to the Creating/Configuring BaR topic. ═══ 2. Using BaR ═══ This section explains how to configure and use BaR. ═══ 2.1. Creating/Configuring Profiles ═══ When you first launch BaR, you are presented with a blank window with a series of raised icons along the top of the window and a series of embedded icons along the right-hand side. The top icons are pushbuttons and they serve the following functions: creates a new parent profile. edits and/or deletes log files created by backup.exe. configures the INI file backup feature. exits BaR. The embedded icons along the right-hand side serve the following functions: backs up the child profile dragged on to it or all of the children if the parent profile is dragged here. restores only child profiles, i.e. parents cannot be dragged here. opens the backup parameters notebook for the dragged child profile. creates a child profile beneath the dragged parent profile and opens the backup parameters notebook. deletes the dragged child profile or all of the children if a parent is dragged here. provides information on the family, regardless of whether a child or parent profile is dragged. You first begin by creating a parent profile, beneath which actual backup/restore profiles will be defined. The advantage of this is that you can group similar (or dissimilar) backup sessions beneath one parent, for e.g. Documents c:\notes\*.* d:\misc\letters\*.* e:\general\reports\*.* ═══ 2.2. Deleting Profiles ═══ You can delete a parent profile and/or its children in one of two ways: 1. Select the parent or child, right-click, and click Delete selected... 2. Drag the parent or child to the trashcan. Deleting a parent profile deletes all of its children as well. Note: You are first required to confirm the deletion before the child or family is actually removed from bar.ini. ═══ 2.3. Renaming Profiles ═══ To rename a child or parent profile, press and hold the Alt key and left-click on the name you would like to change. Click anywhere on the container to accept the change or press Esc to abort. ═══ 2.4. Moving Child-Profiles ═══ To move a child profile from one parent to another, click on it and drag it to the new parent. Note: For the move to be successful, the child must be dropped on the new parent's name, as opposed to one of its children. ═══ 2.5. Viewing Information ═══ To view information concerning a specific family - parent creation date and time; the last backup date and time and expired days for each child - drag the parent or child to the information icon. Note: If you backed up all the children by dragging the parent to the backup icon, only the last child in the family tree will contain the date/time information. ═══ 2.6. Working with Archive Attributes ═══ If you select the Modified backup option in the General page of the backup parameters notebook, you will be prompted when you backup the child profile if you would like to set/clear the archive attributes manually. Selecting Yes displays a window where you can set and/or clear the attributes. Note: If more than one child profile has this option checked, each will have its own Attributes window with the child's name in the title bar. ═══ 2.7. The File Exclusion Window ═══ A small window appears alongside the main BaR window. The list box contains the extension of files you would like OS/2's backup to ignore, such as BAK, TMP, and TXT files, for example. To add to this list, right click on the list box and choose the Add... menu item. To delete an entry, select it, right-click, then choose Delete. ═══ 2.8. Working with Logs ═══ If you chose to have OS/2's backup log the backup process to file, a file which you name will be created in BaR's own directory. If you want to view/edit/delete a file, click on the Log file pushbutton. A listbox will appear in which all of the files in the directory with the extension .LOG will appear. To edit a file, double click on it, or select the file, right-click, then choose the Edit menu item. To delete a file, select it, right-click, and choose Delete. To exit the window, either double-click on the system menu or right-click and select Exit. ═══ 2.9. Backing Up ═══ To backup files to floppies, drag either an individual child or parent profile to the backup icon. You can also select it and press CTRL+B. ═══ 2.10. Backing Up INI Files ═══ BaR is equipped with an, admittedly, crude INI file backup. What this essentially does is copy the user-selected .INIs to an equivalent directory structure beneath BaR's own directory. For example, D:\BIN\BAR\ | |____Drive_C\ | | | |____OS2\ | | | |____OS2.INI | |____OS2SYS.INI | |____Drive_D\ | | | |____OS2\WINOS2\ | | | | | |____WIN.INI | | |____SYSTEM.INI The INI backup facility is intended to take the bother out of backing up crucial INI files by doing it for you every xth time you launch BaR. To enable this feature, you first click on the INI pushbutton to invoke the preliminary setup window. Here you enable the INI backup feature by checking the Enable INI backup feature checkbox and selecting a frequency, from 1 to 9, which represents which invocation of BaR the INI backup should take place. For example, selecting 2 means that every second invocation of BaR will backup the selected .INI files. Once you have enabled the INI backup feature, click on the Files... button to invoke a window in which all of the .INI files found on your system appear. Select those you would like BaR to backup and click Save. To scan the available drives, click Scan. To select non-INI files, click Other. To delete items from the list, select them and click Delete. Once you are satisfied with the list of files, click Save, which dismisses the INI File List window. To save the INI backup feature settings, click on the Save button in the INI Backup Setting dialog box. Note: BaR doesn't actually backup your INI files. It simply copies them to an identical directory structure beneath its own directory, the root of each drive being Drive_C, etc. Because BaR attempts to maintain directory and file names, if you are backing INI files from an HPFS drive or partition, be sure to install BaR on a similar drive or partition. I'm not sure what will happen if you try to copy HPFS directory and/or file names to a FAT-formatted drive or partition, but I am almost positive the results will be less than satisfactory if either does not conform to the 8.3 DOS limitation. ═══ 2.11. Restoring ═══ To restore files from floppies, drag a child profile to the restore icon. Select the restore options from the window, and press Restore. To display the files which would be restored, press the Display pushbutton. Note: You cannot drag a parent to the Restore icon to restore the entire family. ═══ 3. Backup Options ═══ This section describes the various options available when creating child profiles. The titlebar of the notebook contains the parent name and the child, separated by a '+' character, e.g. Documents + Notes. To save the parameters for the newly-created child profile, click on the Save pushbutton. To abandon the profile, click on Discard. The backup notebook contains five pages: 1. Directory 2. General 3. Drive 4. Log 5. Date/Time ═══ 3.1. Directory ═══ The Directory notebook page contains a list of files and directories for the current drive. To select the backup directory, double click on a folder within the Directories container. Note: Filenames are included in the container to make it easier to see what exactly you will be backing up. ═══ 3.2. General ═══ The General notebook page contains general backup parameters. Append files to previous backup appends the backup to previous backups, useful for incremental child backups, for example. Apply file exclusion excludes the files with the extension you specify in the File Exclusion Window. Backup only modified files backs up only files with the archive attribute cleared. On setting/clearing archive attributes, refer to the Working with Attributes topic. Backup subdirectories backs up the files recursively. File mask backs up only the files matching the specified file mask. ═══ 3.3. Drive ═══ The Drive notebook page contains options specific to the floppy diskette drive. Select one of two diskette drives to which data should be backed up. These are: backs up to drive A: backs up to drive B: If you want backup.exe to format unformatted diskettes first, check the Format diskette(s) first checkbox and move the slider to the media format. Note: It is not necessary to have the slider reflect the media format if you have not checked the Format diskette(s) first checkbox. ═══ 3.4. Log ═══ The Log notebook page contains options specific to the logfile created by backup.exe. Log backup to file when checked instructs backup.exe to keep a log file of the backup process. Overwrite previous log instructs BaR to delete a previous log file for the current child or parent (if applicable). This is the default. Append to previous log instructs BaR to keep the current log file. The new backup process will be appended to the end of the file. ═══ 3.5. Date/Time ═══ The Date/Time notebook page contains options specific to date/time backup restrictions. Backup files since date instructs BaR to backup only those files which have changed since the date you specify. Backup files since time instructs BaR to backup only those files which have changed since the time you specify. ═══ 4. Restore Options ═══ This section contains information on the available Restore options. There are five sections to the Restore Options dialog box: 1. Profile Information 2. General 3. Before Date/Time 4. After Date/Time 5. Drive To begin the restoration process, click on the Restore pushbutton. To display the files that would be restored without actually restoring them, click on the Display button. ═══ 4.1. Profile Information ═══ The Profile Information groupbox contains information specific to the current restore: Name is the name of the profile to be restored. Path is the target directory to which the files will be restored. File mask is the file mask to be used on the files to be restored. ═══ 4.2. General ═══ The General groupbox specifies general restore parameters: Permission requests permission from the user before restoring any files that have changed or are no longer on the target drive. Modified restores only those files whose archive attribute is cleared. Non-existant restores only those files that are no longer found in the target directory. Fail instructs restore.exe to fail if the target does not support extended attributes and the source file contains extended attributes. Recursive instructs restore.exe to restore files recursively. ═══ 4.3. Before Date/Time ═══ The Before (xx-yy-zz) / (hh:mm:ss) groupbox specifies the date and/or time parameters for restoration of files modified on or before the specified date and/or time. ═══ 4.4. After Date/Time ═══ The After (xx-yy-zz) / (hh:mm:ss) groupbox specifies the date and/or time parameters for restoration of files modified on or after the specified date and/or time. ═══ 4.5. Drive ═══ The Drive groupbox specifies the source drive for the restoration process. ═══ 5. Trouble Shooting ═══ Should you find that Profile names do not correspond to backup options, you can do one of two things. Either delete the BaR.INI file and start over, or edit the INI file manually. BaR.INI conforms to standard OS/2 (c) INI files, but the data is written to the file in ascii format. The basic structure is: [BaR] BaR_Dir = e.g. D:\USR\BaR\BaR.INI INIOptions = Yes|No x where x is a number from 1 to 9 Exclude = e.g. BAK !!! TMP Invocation = is a BaR invocation count used for INI backups DateFormat = xx-yy-zz where x, y, z represent the system dependent format [Parent-ProfileName] CreationDate = date time (of when the parent was created) Child-ProfileName = backup parameters (see below) Child-ProfileName__DateTime = date time (of when the last successful backup took place [INIBackup] x = INI file (where x is a sequential number beginning with 1) Backup parameters are written and read in the following order: ProfileName = Parameters Path = e.g. C:\*.* Drive = e.g. B: Log = e.g. /L:Profile.log Modified = /M Append = /A Recursive = /S Format = e.g. /F:1220 Date = e.g. /D:xx-yy-zz Time = e.g. /T:hh:mm:ss Exclude = Exclude_Yes | Exclude_No LogFile = Log_A | Log_O Each option must be separated by a space, and non-selected options are represented by the string . Path, Drive, Exclude, and Log File must have a valid string, i.e. something other than ; otherwise, BaR is likely to fail. ═══ 6. Registration ═══ BaR Front End is released as freeware, which means that you are not required to register if you decide to use this utility. If you feel that BaR offers a significant improvement to your daily computing needs and that its author should be renumerated, then you can send whatever you like to: Paul H. Caron c/o Mr. J-P Caron A10-420 Westmount Avenue Sudbury, Ontario P3A 5V4 CANADA ═══ 7. Disclaimer ═══ This program is supplied with no warranty whatsoever either expressed or implied. Neither its author nor Watcom International can be held directly or indirectly responsible for any loss or damage to your data and/or system as a result of the use and/or misuse of BaR Front End. If you decide to continue using BaR, you understand that you do so AT YOUR OWN RISK. All software and documentation is supplied AS IS. ═══ 8. Copyright ═══ BaR Front End (c) 1994 Paul H. Caron OS/2 (c) IBM International VX-Rexx (c) Watcom International ═══ 9. Contacting the Author ═══ If you find a bug or have suggestions for improvements, feel free to contact me at G9026163@mcmail.cis.McMaster.CA. ═══ ═══ Profiles are, in a sense, folders in which backup sub-profiles, called child profiles, are located. Each child profile is an actual set of parameters which are passed to backup.exe. Each parent profile may contain any number of related or unrelated children. ═══ ═══ Because the date format is system dependent, the installation utility requested that you specify the date format for your system. The value you selected is used to determine the date sequence which appears above the relevant spin buttons, as in the Backup files since date parameter in the Date/Time notebook page. If, for example, your date format was year-month-day, then the string Format yy-mm-dd would appear above the spin buttons and you would, necessarily, enter a date such as 94-12-01.