On 12 Jan 97  10:59:10 Frank Malcolm typed to Niels Petersen ....

Hi Frank

 > NP> Have you thought about leaving your home machine in a comms program that
 > NP> is running in Host mode and phoning home to transfer the work files to
 > NP> the home computer _before_ you leave work for the day?

 > Yes, I have thought about doing that. At the moment the work machine
 > doesn't have a modem, no other real need for one. I'll probably take the
 > old Netcomm 2400 in at some stage and do that.

 The old stuff _can_ be useful at times despite what others say about
 "dinosaur technology" :-)


 > NP> If this is an option then you can just call again when you reach work
 > NP> the next moening and retrieve the updated files.

 > Yeah. Would also solve the problem of running late and the ferry leaves
 > in 8 minutes and it takes 10 to copy to the floppies. :-)

 :-)


 > NP> It also _guarantees_ an up to date "offsite" backup
of what I would
 > NP> imagine would be very important files.

 > As you say. At the moment I have a copy at work, at home, on the
 > in-transit floppies and on the last night's archive tape at home.
 > Obviously not all equally current, but enough to recover from.

 Murphy insurance must have more than 2 copies for it to work :-)


 > Your suggestion would also be helpful if say I stuff up something at
 > work/home, to just grab the previous one from home/work - now if I do
 > that I have to wait until the next day.

 Very handy. I do the accounting bookwork here in tassie and in January
 I had to get Beryl to send me another copy of her December spreadsheet.
 She is still using 2400. I have got the file and she has hung up in the
 time that the EC modems are still deciding how to talk to each other.


 > I do currently use batch files for this, imaginatively named TOFLOP.BAT
 > and FROMFLOP.BAT. :-)

 KISS

 > The timed event is a bit of a problem because I
 > normally go to work at anywhere between 6:45 and 9am (and sometimes
 > later) so I prefer to run it manually after I've finished what I'm doing
 > at each location.

Makes sense


 > NP>  I will send it again, again in the hope that it actually makes it this
 > NP>  time.

 > Well, it got here! Thanks. For me the most useful part will be the
 > description of the message digest algorithms in the help file although I
 > don't think I need anything better than 32-bit CRC for this application.

 I didn't think that you would change your current method., but i
 thought that you would finf the info in the file of interest.


 > That's probably the best idea, so you can either run it unattended and
 > review the log file, or attended and fix the problem immediately.

 OK Then


 > NP>  You sound iffy about that one.  I need to be able to see where in the
 > NP>  process it is, so that I can estimate when to return to it.
 > NP>  My method knew at the satart how many files there were and would
 > NP>  display  ??? of 2400 files  ??%

 > Iffy only in how to implement. How does your method know at the start
 > how many files?

The BAT file scans the disk for the files requested (*.exe *.com *.bin)
 and feeds the full path and file name to a tempfile in the Ram Drive.
 In then calsulates the number of lines in the temp file and passes it
 to the EXE  When the EXE runs, it opens the tempfile and inputs a line
 to get the filename to be Checksummed and then goes to work on that
 file after displaying  1 of xxx to the screen.

 >I suppose I could scan the disk not doing the CRC, that
 > doesn't take very long, then do it again and do the calc. And then I
 > could give a better indication than number of files, show progress in
 > bytes as well.

 Sounds good to me!!


 > I think it should be reasonably straightforward, I just have no
 > experience of LAN programming (yet).

 Set one up is the only way I know. Unless you have someone else stupid
 enough to let you play with their LAN :-)


 > NP>  > All my disks/partitions have a volume label and a
zero-length file in
 > NP>  > the root directory to identify them - this one is SYSTEM.04C, for
 > NP>  > example.

 > NP>  That's what I used ;-)

 > Great minds... :-)

 I agree :-)


 > Well yesterday I completed the testing of starting within an archive,
 > and calculating the CRC of *all* the files including within archives,
 > nested archives within archives, nested nested archives, etc. Ran it on
 > the C: drive, a bit over 20 mins for 390Meg. But the C: drive only has
 > about 240Meg of "real" files, so that included the time to unarchive
 > about 150Meg so I could calculate the CRC of the embedded files.

 20 mins is not a problem. I would just set it going and then do
 something else.

Cheers
Niels

* OLR 5.1 *  "A man must know his limitations if he wants to survive."

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