BURKS 2/BURKS_AUG97.ISO/LINUX/DOSUTILS/FIPS.DOC

Text File | 1996-09-10 | 23KB | 510 lines

                  Welcome to FIPS
    The First nondestructive Interactive Partition Splitting program

                Version 1.1
                may 25, 1994

             Copyright 1993/94 by Arno Schaefer


0. What you need to use FIPS
1. Introduction
2. Safety
3. Restrictions
4. Before you start
5. Use with Stacker/SuperStor/Doublespace
6. Use with OS/2
7. Use with a multitasking OS
8. Using FIPS
9. After splitting the partition
10. Commandline Switches
11. Troubleshooting
12. Credits


FIPS is a program designed to split an existing DOS partition without deleting
the data on it.

FIPS is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 2, or (at your option)
any later version.

FIPS is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with FIPS; see the file COPYING.  If not, write to
the Free Software Foundation, 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.

Report problems and direct all questions to:

    [e-mail]


0. What you need to use FIPS

You need a defragmentation program in order to move all data to the beginning
of the hard disk. FIPS will only split your partition if you have enough free
space at the end. DOS 6.0 and later contains DEFRAG, which is suitable for
this purpose. Other suitable programs are Norton Speedisk (actually DEFRAG
is speedisk with less functions, licensed from Norton), PCTools' Compress,
DISKOPT in Novell DOS 7, or the shareware programs ORG, DOG or SAFPAK
(available by anonymous FTP from any SIMTEL mirror in the diskutil directory).
I did not test these however, so don't blame me if they don't work for you.

You may also want to use a program like Norton Disk Doctor (or 'scandisk'
in DOS 6.2) to check your harddisk before and after using FIPS.

FIPS was developed under DOS 5.0. It should work fine with anything above
3.0, perhaps even with 2.0. However it will not be of much use with older
DOS versions, since the large partition sizes are only available since DOS 4.
It has been reported to work with DOS 6.0 and 6.2 and it seems to work
with Novell DOS 7.


1. Introduction

The program was inspired by the Linux Project. When installing Linux on a
PC that was used for DOS / Windows, many people want to retain a smaller
partition for their DOS software. However, since most Harddisks contain
only one large partition, you would normally be required to do a complete
backup, erase the partition and build two (or more) new partitions. Then you
would restore the backup to one of the new partitions.
This is a very time consuming activity and requires lots of diskettes (why
buy 50+ disks only to once backup and restore your HD?).
FIPS was written to remedy this problem. You can now split a partition
without losing any data, provided there is enough free space for the new
partition at the end of the old one.


2. Safety

FIPS was specifically designed to provide a maximum of safety. On startup
it checks the Partition Table, Boot Sector and FAT for any inconsistencies.
If it finds anything suspicious, it will tell you so. If there are errors,
FIPS will not proceed.
You have the possibility to write backup copies of your root and bootsector
to a floppy disk before proceeding. If something goes wrong, you may restore
these with the program 'restorrb.exe' (see section 4).
After you have entered the start cylinder for the new partition, FIPS will
check if the new partition is completely empty by examining the FAT of the
old one. If it is not, FIPS will stop.
After having calculated the new Partition Table and Bootsector, FIPS will
check them again, so that eventual bugs in the calculation may be detected.
Only if everything is ok, FIPS will ask for permission to write the new
Root and Bootsector.


3. Restrictions

FIPS will only work with Hard Disk BIOSes that use interrupt 13h for low
level harddisk access. I think this is true for practically all PCs.

FIPS will only work on disks with a sector size of 512 bytes.
It seems that DOS is prepared to deal with different sector sizes, but
since they are not widely used, I decided not to support them.

FIPS will not split partitions with 12 bit FATs (you would not want to split
partitions with less than 10 MB, would you?).

FIPS will only split DOS partitions. Partition Table and Bootsector must
conform to the MSDOS 3.0+ conventions. This is marked by the system
indicator byte in the partition table, it must have the value 4 (16 bit
sector number) or 6 (32 bit sector number).
It will especially *not* split Linux partitions.

FIPS does not yet work on extended DOS partitions.

FIPS will not work if you already have four partitions, since it needs one
free partition entry.

FIPS will not reduce the original partition to a size with less than 4085
clusters, because this would imply rewriting the 16 bit FAT to a 12 bit FAT.


4. Before you start

Run CHKDSK or (under DOS 6.2) SCANDISK on the partition you want to split.
If you have Norton Disk Doctor or something similar, you may use it alter-
natively. Make sure there remain no 'dead' clusters on the disk.

Prepare a bootable floppy disk in drive A:. Under DOS this is usually done
by giving the command 'sys a:' or 'format a:/s'. Under Windows NT or OS/2
this may be different, if in doubt you should check your manual.

Copy the FIPS files RESTORRB.EXE, FIPS.EXE and ERRORS.TXT to this disk.

Test booting from the prepared floppy disk. Read you manual or ask a local
guru if you can't boot from floppy disk or if you can not access your hard
disk after booting (test this by giving the command 'dir c:', you should
see your hard disk's root directory).

When you start FIPS (later!), you will be given the opportunity to write
backup copies of your root and boot sector to a file on drive A: called
ROOTBOOT.00x (where x stands for a digit from 0 to 9). If anything goes wrong
while using FIPS, you can restore the original configuration by booting from
the floppy and running RESTORRB. Please note: if you use FIPS more than once
(this is normally not necessary, but it may happen), more than one ROOTBOOT
file is written to the floppy disk. RESTORRB lets you choose which configu-
ration file to restore. The file RESTORRB.000 contains your original confi-
guration. Try not to confuse the versions.

But before starting FIPS you _must_ now defragment your Harddisk. All of the
space that will be used for the new partition must be free. Be aware that the
Windows Swapfile will not be moved by most defragmentation programs. You must
uninstall it (in the 386enhanced part of the Windows Control Panel) and rein-
stall it after using FIPS.
If you use IMAGE or MIRROR, the last sector of the hard disk contains a
hidden system file with a pointer to your mirror files. You _must_ delete this
file before using FIPS (it will be recreated the next time you run mirror).
Do 'attrib -r -s -h image.idx' or 'attrib -r -s -h mirorsav.fil' in the root
directory, then delete the file.
If FIPS does not offer as much disk space for creation of the new partition
as you would expect it to have, this may mean that

a. You still have too much data in the remaining partition. Consider making
   the new partition smaller or deleting some of the data.

b. There are hidden files in the space of the new partition that have not
   been moved by the defragmentation program. Make sure to which program
   they belong. If a file is a swap file of some program (for example NDOS)
   it is possible that it can be safely deleted (and will be recreated
   automatically later when the need arises). See your manual for details.

   If the file belongs to some sort of copy protection, you must uninstall
   the program to which it belongs and reinstall it after reparti