Software of the Month Club 1996 June

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OS/2 Help File | 1996-02-21 | 33KB | 619 lines

ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 1. ROBOSAVE User's Guide ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ ROBOSAVE v3.04 1993/11/9 by Dick Kurtz and Jeff Knauth This edition of the User's Guide is for the Employee Written Software release of ROBOSAVE. (c) Copyright International Business Machines Corporation 1994. All rights Reserved. ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 1.1. What ROBOSAVE Does ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ ROBOSAVE is a tool which allows you to quickly and easily back up the OS/2 2.x Desktop. In addition you can save a limited number of user-specified files. If problems occur later, you can easily restore the saved information. Because it is so easy to do a ROBOSAVE, you will find that doing frequent backups is quite painless. The OS/2 2.x Desktop consists of control information for such things as folders, program objects, printer objects, and shadows. It also contains data about the tailoring you have done for colors, fonts, titles, window positions, associations, and much more. You may have invested a significant amount of time in adjusting the Desktop to your preferences. ROBOSAVE provides a good way to protect that investment. ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 1.2. Overview ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ Using ROBOSAVE is very simple. Here is a summary. Details are in following sections, together with suggestions for how you might plan ROBOSAVE backups for your system. o Installation - Download and unzip ROBOSAVE's zip file into a directory of your choice - Set up a ROBOSAVE profile; you can use ROBOSAVE.SMP as a model o Doing a save - Stabilize the Desktop by doing a shutdown and IPL - Invoke ROBOSAVE, using the profile you created above o Doing a restore - Bring up an OS/2 environment suitable for doing ROBOREST - Switch to the save drive and directory - Invoke ROBOREST - ReIPL ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 1.3. What ROBOSAVE Does Not Do ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ ROBOSAVE does not do a full backup of all the data on your system. Instead it saves only certain key information. Part of this information is saved automatically. Part you must specify thru a profile. A sample ROBOSAVE profile is provided; however, there may be other critical files for your applications that you should specify in your own profile. Restoring this information is often sufficient to get your system working again very quickly. Of course doing a full backup provides a better guarantee of a full recovery. However, doing a full backup requires much more time and more space on your backup medium. From ROBOSAVE's point of view the Desktop consists of the Desktop directory and all the files and directories under it. This is the information ROBOSAVE will save automatically. You must be careful about what information you either remove from or add to that directory tree. If you move an object from the Desktop to some location that is not in the Desktop, ROBOSAVE will NOT save that object. For example, suppose your Desktop directory is C:\DESKTOP. The standard OS/2 install will create a Productivity folder in the OS/2 System folder. Suppose you use the Workplace Shell Drives facility to drag the Productivity folder to some location not in the Desktop, let's say into a C:\MISC directory. From a (FAT) file system point of view, you just moved the C:\DESKTOP\OS!2_SYS\PRODUCTI directory to C:\MISC\PRODUCTI. It is no longer under C:\DESKTOP and will not be automatically saved by ROBOSAVE. Even if you create a shadow on the Desktop of the moved Productivity folder, the moved folder will not be saved because it is no longer in the Desktop. However, if all you do is move the object to another place in the Desktop, e.g., suppose you move it from the OS/2 System folder to the Information folder (assuming this folder itself is still in the Desktop), then the object is still in the Desktop structure and will be automatically saved by ROBOSAVE. This works both ways. If you create directories or files in the Desktop directory tree, ROBOSAVE will consider all that information as part of the Desktop and will save it automatically. Thus you should be careful not to put a bunch of "extraneous" things in the Desktop unless you really do want all that information saved every time you do a ROBOSAVE. ROBOSAVE is not intended to migrate a Desktop from one release (or CSD level) of OS/2 to another. The control information that ROBOSAVE saves from one release of OS/2 may very well not be compatible with another OS/2 release. Similarly, if after you do a ROBOSAVE you then change any fundamental system characteristics (e.g., file system type, display type, or boot drive), restoring the old system's data to the new system will not work. ROBOSAVE is intended to backup a system and then restore the data to exactly that same system. ROBOSAVE does not save the information used to automatically restart currently running programs. This is done to prevent restarting ROBOSAVE itself when the restored system is first IPLed. The implication of this is that after your system has been restored, you must restart your normally running programs yourself for the initial IPL. For subsequent IPLs, those programs will be restarted (or not) as usual, depending on the way you have chosen to tailor OS/2 for this restart function. ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 1.4. Prerequisites ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ Your operating system must be either OS/2 2.0 or 2.1. ROBOSAVE does not support earlier releases, e.g., OS/2 1.3. REXX is required in order to use ROBOSAVE. REXX is installed in OS/2 by default. You can use OS/2 Selective Install to add REXX if it is not already present on your system. ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 1.5. Installation ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ Download ROBOSAVE's zip file in binary and unzip it into a directory of your choice. Either this directory must be in your PATH, or it should be the current directory when ROBOSAVE is invoked. ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 1.6. ROBOSAVE Profile ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ A profile is required to run ROBOSAVE. See ROBOSAVE.SMP for an example. The profile is an ASCII text file which specifies parameters for operating ROBOSAVE. Usually you will name your profile ROBOSAVE.PRO, although you can give it a different name and then specify that name in the ROBOSAVE command. The profile controls what files will be saved. If you don't specify the right files for saving, they won't be available for restoring -- not good. Please invest the time to set up your profile appropriately to begin with, and keep it up to date as your application environment changes. If an "*" is found in column 1 of a line in the profile, that line is treated as a comment and is ignored. You should not have any blank lines in the profile; a blank line will terminate profile processing. One of the following verbs must start each of the non-comment lines of the profile. The verbs can be in any order and can be in upper or lower case. SAVE=directory where "directory" specifies the directory in which ROBOSAVE will save the files to be backed up, together with certain control information. This directory will be created for you if it does not exist. This is a required verb; there is no default. Examples: "save=A:\SAVEDATA" and "save=E:\SV930922". Later sections of the User's Guide provide guidance about choosing a save directory and give details about what is put into it. SAVENUM=number where "number" specifies the number of generations of data that can be saved in this directory. A new generation is created each time you successfully complete ROBOSAVE. When "number" is exceeded, the oldest generation is erased and is replaced by the new generation, the data saved by the current execution of ROBOSAVE. If you reduce "number", all the older generations are erased up to the point where "number" will not be exceeded by the new generation. Valid values are 1 thru 9. This is a required verb; there is no default. CLEANUP=B|E specifies when old generations should be erased if the "SAVENUM=" number is exceeded, as described above. "CLEANUP=B" means erase the data at the beginning of the ROBOSAVE operation, i.e., before the new generation is created. "CLEANUP=E" means erase the old data at the end, i.e., after the new generation has been created. The default is "CLEANUP=E". Erasing at the end is safer, in that the old data will not be erased unless the new generation has been successfully saved. However, erasing at the beginning might be necessary if the save directory is on a drive with little available space; you might need to erase the old generation first to make room for the new generation. LOG=P|T specifies the location of the ROBOSAVE.LOG file. This log records all ROBOSAVE activity for the save directory specified by the "SAVE" verb. "LOG=P" means put the log in the same directory as the ROBOSAVE profile. "LOG=T" means put the log in the save directory. The default is "LOG=P". ROBO=fileid [fileid ...] where each "fileid" specifies one or more files to be saved in the save directory. Normally the complete fileid (drive, path, and file) should be specified, e.g., robo=e:\somedir\myfile.xyz. Multiple fileids can be specified on each ROBO= line. Wildcards, both "*" and "?", can be used in the same way they are used in the OS/2 COPY command. If there are any blanks in the fileid, enclose the entire fileid in double quotes. In addition, by enclosing the fileid in brackets, you indicate that directories below the one specified in the fileid should also be searched. Bracketed fileids can be intermixed with normal fileids on the same line. In the following examples, notice the use of double quotes and brackets; the quotes must be outside the brackets when both are used. Profile line Files saved -------------------------- --------------------------------------- robo=d:\os2\*.ini D:\OS2\OS2.INI, D:\OS2\OS2SYS.INI, etc. robo="d:\my dir\my data" D:\MY DIR\MY DATA robo=[e:\*.ini] All .INI files on the E: drive robo=[g:\my*.*] All files on the G: drive whose names start with MY with any extension robo="[g:\Down\U ar*.*]" All files in the G:\DOWN directory (and all its subdirectories) whose names start with "U AR" and any extension robo=c:\x.y d:\dir\ccc.y C:\X.Y and D:\DIR\CCC.Y Examine ROBOSAVE.SMP for a list of additional files you may want to save if you installed OS/2 Windows support, Communications Manager, or LAN Services. You should not attempt to save ". SF" files, e.g., "EA DATA. SF". WARNING: You should be careful with using wildcard characters and/or brackets. It is very easy to unintentionally specify many files you don't really want to backup. This is especially significant if your save directory is on a diskette, which has less space and operates more slowly than a hard disk. It is also easy to unintentionally save a file multiple times; ROBOSAVE will make a separate copy for each specification, whether it was an explicit specification or by wildcards or brackets. Thus, specifying both "robo=e:\abc.ini" and "robo=e:\*.ini" would copy ABC.INI twice. It is a good idea after doing a ROBOSAVE to examine ROBOSAVE.LOG and see exactly which files were copied; then adjust your profile if necessary. Needless to say, having something like "robo=c:\*.*" would attempt to save far more than you really intended; in fact it would likely fail as the process stumbled over certain files that cannot be copied normally. ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 1.7. ROBOSAVE Command ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ Here is the syntax of the ROBOSAVE command. If the "/P" parameter is used, it must be the last parameter specified. ROBOSAVE [[fileid]...] [/P=profile] fileid has the same syntax and meaning as when used in a "ROBO=" line in a ROBOSAVE profile. Specifying a fileid as a ROBOSAVE command parameter has the same effect as specifying it in the profile. Fileids specified in the command are logically merged with those from the "ROBO=" lines of the profile. If no fileid parameter is specified in the ROBOSAVE command, only the fileids from the "ROBO=" lines will be used. /P=profile specifies the profile used by ROBOSAVE. This can be either a complete fileid (drive, path, file) or it can be just the drive and path; in the latter case the file is considered to be named ROBOSAVE.PRO and it must reside in the drive-path directory. If this parameter is not specified, the first occurrence of ROBOSAVE.PRO found in the current directory or PATH is used. Here are some examples: robosave robosave /p=d:\os2tools robosave e:\myapps\myapp.dat g:\temp\some.stf robosave "e:\my dir\my file.dat" "g:\main dir\sub dir" robosave e:\os!2_apps\*.ini /p=d:\my2tool\myprof.xyz robosave [e:\*.ini] "[g:\Down\This\Road\one way.*]" ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 1.8. Doing a Save ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ After you have installed ROBOSAVE and have built your profile, you can invoke it to save your data. In fact, this is the part of ROBOSAVE you will be using most often; it is very easy to do. Before doing the save, however, you should ensure your Desktop has stabilized. In particular, if you have made Desktop changes since you last IPLed, including moving objects around on the Desktop, and you want to be sure all this information is captured, you should shut down your system cleanly and reIPL. Then you can do the save. This is necessary because for some control information, OS/2 will not write the data to disk (where it can be copied by ROBOSAVE) until shutdown is done. Other control information is written to disk only occasionally, in a lazy-write fashion. Doing a shutdown will force that information to disk, too. Of course after you reIPL, don't start making more Desktop changes before doing the ROBOSAVE. It is preferable to have as little as possible going on while ROBOSAVE is running to lessen the chance that any data will be changing while it is being saved. If that happens, the saved data might be inconsistent and any subsequent restore from it might not produce what you want. ROBOSAVE runs quickly. Be patient and let it operate without interference. Now to do the save. Normally you just enter "ROBOSAVE" at an OS/2 command prompt, either full screen or windowed. If necessary, you can specify ROBOSAVE command parameters, as described in the preceding section. However most people will specify all fileids via "ROBO=" lines in their profile and will put their profile in a directory in their PATH; if you do this, no command parameters are necessary -- you can just say "ROBOSAVE". If you want to be fancier about ROBOSAVE invocation, you can build an OS/2 program object and then doubleclick on its icon to do a ROBOSAVE. To build such an object, drag a program object from the Templates folder. Then fill in the blanks as follows: o On the Program page: - Set "Path and file name" to "x:\path\ROBOSAVE.CMD". Replace "x:\path" with the drive and directory where you put ROBOSAVE. - Set "Parameters" with whatever parameters you need (usually leave this blank). - Set "Working directory" with ROBOSAVE's directory, i.e., with your values for the "x:\path" mentioned in the first item. o On the Session page: - Uncheck "Close window on exit". This is necessary to allow you to see any error messages before the window is closed. When you are finished with ROBOSAVE, just close the window as you normally would, e.g., by doubleclicking on the system icon in the upper left corner of the window. o On the General page: - Change "Title" to whatever you want to show up under the program's icon. If you have done all the preceding steps, the icon shipped with ROBOSAVE should already be displayed. WARNING: Needless to say, if you wait to do a backup until AFTER you have had a problem, then any restore with that backup data will just put you right back in the problem state again. Thus you need to do backups BEFORE you have a problem. Generally, you should do a backup after any major change if you are satisfied with the results of that change. This will give you a checkpoint of a system that you are now satisfied with, but before you or some outside force messes it up. Of course this assumes you have been following this procedure all along and thus already have a good backup of the system BEFORE making the major change. If you don't have such a BEFORE-the-change backup already, then make one first. Because ROBOSAVE is so easy to use and takes only a few minutes at most, it is very easy to do all this. Just be sure to label your backups so you'll know what you've got. We recommend doing major backups to diskettes (freshly formatted and still empty) -- one backup per diskette. ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 1.9. Doing a Restore ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ Suppose disaster has just struck. Maybe you accidentally powered off your system without doing a shutdown first, or possibly a power outage occurred. Both of these can result in a corrupted Desktop. Or maybe you got overenthusiatic while you were tidying up your Desktop and dropped the wrong thing on the shredder. Or maybe you encountered a programming bug. Or maybe your hardware hiccupped. Or ... you get the idea. If you have been faithfully doing ROBOSAVEs and have been saving the right data, you can probably recover your system completely and quickly. It is important to realize that the system will be restored back to the point it was at when you did the ROBOSAVE for that data. If you made any changes after that ROBOSAVE, those changes may be lost. This points out the desirability of doing frequent ROBOSAVEs and keeping your profile up to date. Part of the data created by ROBOSAVE in your save directory is a ROBOREST.CMD. Executing that command will restore the data saved by the ROBOSAVE you issued most recently to that save directory. If you have saved multiple generations in the same save directory, there will be a ROBOREST.CM1, a ROBOREST.CM2, etc. These represent the next older generation, and the next older beyond that, etc., with the oldest having the highest .CMn number. If you want to recover a previous generation instead of the most recent, just rename ROBOREST.CMD to some other name, e.g., ROBOREST.CUR, and then rename the desired ROBOREST.CMn to ROBOREST.CMD. You can examine ROBOSAVE.LOG to see when each save was done and what files were associated with each. You can doublecheck the chosen command file to ensure it is the desired one. Before invoking ROBOREST, you must first set up the proper OS/2 environment. You cannot simply issue ROBOREST from an OS/2 command prompt in your normal system since some of the files ROBOREST will try to replace are in use by the normal system. You must establish an environment independent of your normal system and issue ROBOREST from there. Fortunately that is easy to do. Below are three different techniques you can use. They produce equivalent results. Use the one that is most convenient for you. ROBOREST will attempt to verify that you have established a proper environment. If it detects something is wrong, it will display an error message and stop the procedure without making any changes to your system. Part of the recovery procedure involves erasing the old (possibly corrupted) Desktop before restoring the saved Desktop. You will be prompted for final authorization before this is done. If you answer anything other than "YES", the ROBOREST procedure will stop and no changes will be made to your system. You should make sure you don't have a directory in the Desktop tree as the current directory for its drive. For example, if C:\DESKTOP is your OS/2 Desktop directory, make sure you haven't done a CHANGEDIR on C: to \DESKTOP or to any of the directories under it. Having any of those directories as the current directory would interfere with the deletion of the Desktop tree. ROBOREST (ROBOSVUT) will fail if you make this mistake and will issue an error message. If this happens, just do a "CD \" and reissue ROBOREST. Except for the OS2.INI and OS2SYS.INI files, ROBOREST will restore the same Readonly, System, and Hidden attributes for each file that existed when you saved the file with ROBOSAVE. Restoring the Desktop - Method 1 This method requires you to have the Install and DISK 1 diskettes for the version of OS/2 you booted when you did the save. It is required that the OS/2 level of the diskettes must match exactly the level of the system being restored, including the CSD level. (In fact you may be able to get away with a different level sometimes, but other times you can't. Since failure can result in a corrupted system, we require the levels to be the same.) Instead of using the actual installation diskettes, you might use something equivalent, e.g., a diskette you have created with the BOOTOS2 tool (also known as BOOT2X); the diskette must be at the correct OS/2 level, of course. Or you might boot from another partition (at the correct OS/2 level, of course). - Boot from the OS/2 2.x Install and DISK 1 diskettes. - ESC to the OS/2 prompt when allowed. - Place your "save" diskette in A: if restoring from diskette. - Change to the "save" drive you will restore from. - Change to the "save" directory containing ROBOREST.CMD. - Invoke ROBOREST; there are no parameters. - Respond YES when prompted to delete the Desktop. - Re-boot when the restore is complete. Restoring the Desktop - Method 2 This method requires that the SHFTRN package be installed on your system. It must be on your hard drive and your CONFIG.SYS must have been edited to place the call to SHIFTRUN in it. This method is faster than Method 1 and does not require the two OS/2 installation diskettes. - Get the SHFTRN package from the same place you got ROBOSAVE. - Download and install it as directed. - Re-boot. - Press Left-Shift when the SHIFTRUN timer appears, then release it. - Place your "save" diskette in A: if restoring from diskette. - Change to the "save" drive you will restore from. - Change to the "save" directory containing ROBOREST.CMD. - Invoke ROBOREST; there are no parameters. - Respond YES when prompted to delete the Desktop. - Re-boot when the restore is complete. Restoring the Desktop - Method 3 This method is similar to using SHFTRN, but does not require the SHFTRN tool. It is quick and straightforward. The tradeoff is that you must edit CONFIG.SYS before using ROBOREST. You could make this your standard CONFIG.SYS, but then you would need to do an EXIT at the command prompt for every IPL. SHFTRN doesn't require that. - Edit CONFIG.SYS to put this line at the end, where "x:" is your boot drive: CALL=x:\OS2\CMD.EXE /K - IPL; eventually you will get a command prompt. - Place your "save" diskette in A: if restoring from diskette. - Change to the "save" drive you will restore from. - Change to the "save" directory containing ROBOREST.CMD. - Invoke ROBOREST; there are no parameters. - Respond YES when prompted to delete the Desktop. - Re-boot when the restore is complete. ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 1.10. Recovery of Individual Files ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ ROBOSAVE can also be useful if you have lost one or a few of your saved files instead of losing the whole Desktop. For example, if you have accidentally erased your CONFIG.SYS, you can look at ROBOSAVE.LOG to see the name under which it was copied to your save directory. Then just copy it back to your boot drive and rename it to CONFIG.SYS. ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 1.11. Choosing a Save Directory ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ There are some decisions you need to make when choosing a save directory. You can place the directory either on a diskette or on a hard drive. Placing the data on a diskette isolates it from the system and gives you some additional reliability. For example, if the system hard drive itself fails, you can reinstall OS/2 and your applications on a repaired drive and then use ROBOSAVE to reapply all your tailoring. You can easily and inexpensively keep multiple generations of backups on separate diskettes with one generation per diskette. Then just rotate thru the set of diskettes; when you are ready to do the next ROBOSAVE, format the diskette that holds the oldest generation and use it for the new save. Then even if your most recent backup is lost because for some reason the diskette holding it is no longer readable (it happens more often than you would like to think), you can go back to the next most recent backup on a separate diskette. On the other hand, saving to a diskette is much slower than saving to a hard drive. Also, if the amount of data to be saved is large, you may exceed a single diskette's capacity; ROBOSAVE does not support diskette spanning. For a typical system the diskette space constraint will not be a problem, particularly if you dedicate each diskette to a single generation of saved data. Normally the amount of data that should be saved is well under a megabyte. However, you might have a special case and have a large amount of data to save. A good technique is to combine the two media approaches by making frequent (quick) saves to a hard drive, but making occasional saves to the next available diskette, e.g., after you have made some particularly important change to your system. Also, if your saved data is too large for a diskette, you can save it to a hard drive and then later use a data compression program, such as PKZIP, to produce a file small enough to store offline on a diskette. Note there was a problem in OS/2 2.0 in which the OS2.INI and OS2SYS.INI files tended to grow very large; that problem seems to have been much alleviated in OS/2 2.1. Another consideration with choosing a save directory is whether to use the root directory as the save directory, even on a dedicated diskette. Generally that is not a good idea since for the FAT file system (which is the system used for diskettes) there is a limit to how many files can be stored in the root directory. The limit depends on the size of the hard disk or diskette involved, but is typically not much greater than several hundred files. On the other hand, a subdirectory does not have such a limit. Thus it is a good idea to specify something like "SAVE=A:\SAVEDIR" rather than "SAVE=A:\" in your profile. ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 1.12. Contents of the Save Directory ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ In your ROBOSAVE profile you designate a save directory thru the "SAVE=" verb. When you invoke ROBOSAVE, Desktop data and the files you specified are saved there, together with some ROBOSAVE control information. Here are the types of files you may see in the save directory. Each "n" represents a decimal digit. nnnnnnnn.FIL - A "robo=" file or a file from a Desktop directory nnnnnnnn.EAS - Extended Attributes from a file or Desktop directory ROBOREST.CMD - Restore command created by the most recent ROBOSAVE ROBOREST.CMn - Restore command created by a previous ROBOSAVE ROBOSVUT.EXE - Module to check the OS/2 state and erase the Desktop ROBOSAVE.LOG - Records all ROBOSAVE activity for this save directory ROBOSAVE.MRK - File containing last used nnnnnnnn value All saved files and all files holding split extended attributes are named with a numeric filename (nnnnnnnn) when put into the save directory. The numeric value is incremented as each file is created. A check is made to ensure that the next value to be used is not already in use in this save directory; if it is in use, the value is incremented until a free value is found. Using a numeric name instead of the real name solves several problems. It avoids ambiguity when two files with the same name are saved from different directories, or when the same file is saved multiple times in multiple generations. It also allows files with long HPFS names to be easily saved in a FAT save directory, e.g., on a diskette. The original name is restored by the ROBOREST.CMD when it is executed. You can see the correspondence between the nnnnnnnn names and the real names by looking at ROBOSAVE.LOG or the appropriate ROBOREST command. The "SAVENUM=" verb in the ROBOSAVE profile controls how many generations of data will be kept in the save directory. ROBOREST.CMD is associated with the most recent ROBOSAVE. Each ROBOREST.CMn file is a renamed ROBOREST.CMD that is associated with a preceding generation. When the number of generations exceeds the "SAVENUM=" value, the oldest ROBOREST.CMn file and all the files it points to will be deleted from the save directory. For example, if you have SAVENUM=3, the following ROBOREST.CMn files would be kept in the "SAVE=" directory. ROBOREST.CMD --> most recent ROBOREST.CM1 --> 2nd most recent ROBOREST.CM2 --> 3rd most recent If you run ROBOSAVE again, ROBOREST.CM2 and all the files it points to will be deleted. ROBOREST.CM1 will be renamed to ROBOREST.CM2 and ROBOREST.CMD will be renamed to ROBOREST.CM1. A new ROBOREST.CMD will be written containing commands to restore the data saved by the current run. ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 1.13. ROBOSVUT Utility ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ ROBOSVUT.EXE is a utility module which is used by both ROBOSAVE.CMD and ROBOREST.CMD. It accesses some low-level OS/2 services that are not directly available thru OS/2 commands or REXX functions. ROBOSAVE.CMD uses ROBOSVUT to copy files which for some reason cannot be copied by the OS/2 COPY command. For example, this can happen if a file has already been opened by some other process at the time ROBOSAVE tries to COPY it. In that case you will see a message from ROBOSAVE.CMD that the COPY failed and that now ROBOSVUT will be tried. ROBOSVUT will usually succeed in this situation. ROBOSAVE.CMD will also use ROBOSVUT to copy files that have been marked with the Hidden or System attribute; OS/2 COPY cannot find such files. A consideration with using ROBOSVUT to copy a file is that it will not save the file's extended attributes. For the files ROBOSVUT is typically used to save, that is not important because they do not have extended attributes. ROBOREST.CMD uses ROBOSVUT to verify the OS/2 environment before proceeding. ROBOSVUT will check that the right level of OS/2 has been IPLed to do the ROBOREST; it must be the level that was used to do the ROBOSAVE. This check will detect most errors, but it will not detect if there is a CSD mismatch. ROBOSVUT will also verify that the OS/2 Workplace Shell is not active for the Desktop being restored; if it were active, the restore would very likely be unsuccessful, or at least the results would be unpredictable. (Note that the Workplace Shell CAN be active for a different Desktop; thus it is valid to IPL from a different partition with its own Desktop to do the ROBOREST of the inactive partition you want to recover.) Finally, if all the tests are passed, the user will be prompted for authorization to erase the Desktop to prepare a clean slate for the restoration of the saved Desktop. If the user answers "YES", ROBOSVUT will erase the Desktop directory tree and then return to ROBOREST, which will then do the actual restore. Here are the return codes from ROBOSVUT.EXE. If an OS/2 function returns an error code to ROBOSVUT, both the OS/2 function name and the returned error code are displayed in addition to ROBOSVUT's own return code from the following list. 1 - Error. Opening source file for reading. 2 - Error. Opening target file for writing. 6 - Error. Unable to clear attributes on target. 11 - Error. DosAllocMem failed. 12 - Error. DosQuery failed for source. 13 - Error. DosQuery failed for target. 14 - Error. Open (READONLY) failed for target. 15 - Error. Read failed for source. 16 - Error. Write failed for target. Target disk full? 17 - Error. Close failed for target. 20 - Error. Unable to update attributes/timestamp for target. 21 - Error. VERIFY_COPY failed. 100 - Copy was successful. 199 - Desktop deleted successfully for ERASE_DESKTOP. 200 - User answered "NO" to prompt for ERASE_DESKTOP. 201 - Error. DosFindFirst failed for directory. 202 - Error. DosFindFirst found other than "." entry. 203 - Error. DosDelete failed. 204 - Error. DosFindNext failed. 205 - Error. DosFindClose failed. 206 - Error. DosDeleteDir failed. 207 - Error. Maximum number of DosFindFirst/DosFindNexts exceeded. 251 - Error. DosQuerySysInfo failed. 252 - Error. DosOpen failed for test file. 253 - Error. DosClose failed for test file. 254 - Error. DosSetCurrentDir failed. 300 - Error. DosOpen of test file detected Workplace Shell open. 301 - Error. OS/2 version mismatch between ROBOSAVE and ROBOREST. Note: If Ctrl-Break is pressed while ROBOSVUT is working or if the user selects "End the program" for an OS/2 disk error prompt, a 99 can be returned by the system to the invoker of ROBOSVUT.