Another thought Sean ..

What I do to accomplish this is sort of crud but has worked for a long time
here. In the .CMD or .BAT file which has the job of doing things where the
other tasks are to shut up, if they can be shut up by issuing a flag of
some kind to them, then what I do is start a loop in my command file at the
time I need to run the event which needs to silence the other events.

I hit the top of this manual loop.  It turns off task 1, 2, x and whatever.
Then if goes and fires up the required maintenance task.  Which is set to
exit that task with an error level that the .CMD or .BAT file can see, *OR*
write a little flag file on the hard disk which can become a logic part of
the process. That appears and/or dissapears as needed.

As well I also set another discrete flag file on the hard disk which, in
effect, tells the whole operation that this master task is running as
planned.

OK, I then include a SLEEP task at the bottom of the loop, which does not
affect the running of the master task.  Following that sleep exit, the .CMD
or .BAT file then has a reverse direction pointer that goes back to the
start of the loop in it.  OK, as long as the master pointer file code is
found in the loop, it just hops of to the SLEEP call and, temporarily
endlessly goes around and around the loop until ..

When the master process is over, then both the error exit will be found,as
well as the process will erase the marker file that causes the loop to go
loop-ti-loop!  At that point, since the master .BAT or .CMD file now knows
that the critical process is finished, it sends the loop internally to
restart or awaken the other tasks.  And following that process, it jumps
out of the master loop to a lower point in the .BAT or .CMD file and off we
go into normal work again.

The reason I use the SLEEP tool is that by doing this I don't take up a
chunk of CPU time just to run romp-ity-romp around and around the loop,plus
one more safety point.  I have another vector enabled.  If something jams
up this whole process and a major event time has passed, that would tell
the whole system that a jam has taken place, due again to the presence or
absence of uet another little flag file name there, I can tell the whole
.BAT or .CMD file to take off on a master fixit jump point in the whole
process.  Which can cure things and get the whole process going again
without me being around .. except very rarely.

A long time ago my friend Paul Sittler, who wrote the very first virus that
ever appeared in the original FidoNet, which we were running on 300 and
1200 baud modems at the time, taught me something!  Always do everything
you can to let the operating system do the work.  Grin!

I've lived that way as best I can ever since.  And, no, the virus deal was
not deliberate!  It was an accident.  He wrote a CPM operating system
program that figured out how I could isolate EchoMail messages to my
1:117/3000 private network addition to net 1:117 here.  Then released it to
all the then Fido operations.  They were estatic!  But he made an error. 
The message to each other node was a separate file on the hard disk .. or
floppy.  And he forgot to erase that message/file after it went out to the
next place.

In a week or so, the whole FidoNet system went down when all the servers
ran out of disk space.

Chuckle.  So don't forget to erase the flag points on your hard drive after
you play this cool stunt and they are no longer needed..

;)

Mike {at} 117/100



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