Ami-FileSafe V2.4 Pro ===================== Please read the release notes at the bottom of this file. Copyright and disclamer notice ============================== Ami-FileSafe (AFS) software and documentation is copyright Fourth Level Developments 1995/1996, All Rights Reserved. No part of the software or the documentation my be reproduced, transcribed, stored in a retrieval system, translated into any language or transmitted in any form without the express written consent of Fourth Level Developments. Fourth Level Developments shall not be liable for errors contained in the software, hardware and/or documentation or for incidental or consequential damage in connection with the furnishing, performance or use of the software, hardware,firmware and/or the documentation. Fourth Level Developments reserve the right to revise and make changes to the software and/or documentation from time to time without obligation to notify any person of such changes. This software is provided as a single machine licence and one copy of the software must be purchased for every machine that the software is to control. Release notes ============= 15-May-96 The current revision of Ami-FileSafe is 16.15 Compatibility ------------- We have made every attempt to make AFS compatible with the vast majority of Amiga software, but unfortunatley some software will still not function correctly with AFS. This is mainly due to software which is not programmed in an OS-Legal mannor. A few common programs that do not function under AFS are:- DiskExpander DiskSalv 2/3 (DiskSalv 4 AFS is now available from FLD) Reorg Quarterback Tools (The backup section will function, but the tools do not) A few games. (Due to copy protection/non-os-legal code) AFS Direct SCSI --------------- AFS now includes a direct SCSI version for extra performance. This can be installed by clicking on install_2.0_020ds or install_3.0_020ds depending on your operating system version. You can use the direct SCSI version of AFS on most SCSI and IDE controllers, however some will not function correct and in which case you should revert to the standard version of AFS. This can be done by following the updates procedure in the manual (Select the normal instead of the direct SCSI version of AFS when you click on the install icon on the floppy disk). AFSls ----- AFS now includes its own directory command called 'afsls' which is installed into your c: directory. Users of the unix ls command should find the options very similar. To get help on afsls type 'afsls -help' at the cli prompt. Rollover Logfiles ----------------- The Major new feature in this version of AFS is rollover logfiles. They are intended to resolve the age old problem of managing your logfiles. Under the normal system every time you add an entry to a logfile, it is appended to the end of a file, and the file gets bigger. This causes 2 major problems: a) You have to either shorten or delete the logfile every so often to reduce it's size and save your disk space. b) The logfile gets very fragmented because when the file is extended past the end of a sector a new blank sector needs to be allocated. By this time the new sector on the disk will have already been used, and so (in general) logfiles are split up over a wide area of the hard drive. To tackle these problems we introduce to concept of a roll over logfile. Using a program call 'MakeRollOver' you can create a new logfile. When it is created you should choose how many disks blocks (1 block=512 bytes) you wish to allocate to the logfile. The size you specify will be allocated from the disk immediatley, but the logfile will initally show up as 0 bytes log. As data is appended to the logfile it will grow in size until it reaches the size you allocated for the logfile. After this point data will still be appended to the end of logfile, but the file will not get any bigger. This is achieved by AFS removing the oldest log entries from the start of the file. Using this method your logfiles will not be fragmented any more than is needed to allocate the correct number of blocks when you created the file. To use this feature a program called 'MakeRollOver' is provided. To create a rollover logfile you should type (from the shell):- MakeRollOver Where is the name of the rollover logfile to create and blocks is the number of 512 byte blocks to allocate for the file. For example:- MakeRollOver mylog 20 Would allocate 10K for a file called mylog. The size of mylog will start out at 0 bytes long and extend upto 10K, after that it will stay at 10K and only the most recently appended data is stored in the file. FFS2AFS Converter ----------------- See the "FFS2AFS" file for details. MaxTransfer ----------- Due to a bug in the OS format command, we suggest that if you set your maxtransfer according to the manual, you use 0xf000 instead of 0xffff. Un-delete --------- AFS now includes an un-delete feature. Located off the root is a subdirectory called ".deldir". It stores the last 31 deleted files. To list the currently valid deleted files (from cli) type: list :.deldir You will notice the filenames have a number called a "slot number" appended after them to prevent duplicate file names. To undelete a file simply copy it from the .deldir onto another drive e.g:- copy :.deldir/NewsBatch@022 ram: Will un-delete the NewBatch@022 file and store it in ram disk. N.B. While it is possible to un-delete files onto the same volume, if you do this you may overwrite the file you are trying to un-delete. RemoveDirEntry -------------- *** WARNING *** You should not use this tool without consulting with support first. In the tools directory on your AFS install disk is a program called: RemoveDirEntry This program _forcefully_ removes a file or directory from an AFS partition. * It does _not_ free up the space allocated by the file/directory. * The file/directory will not go into the .deldir. * If you remove a directory _all_ the files in this directory and any sub-directories will be lost forever. It should only be used in the unlikely circumstance that you have a corrupted files or directory which can not be removed by any other means. The only time this tool should be of any use is: a) If there has been some physical corruption of the hard drive (Bad blocks). b) You have incorrectly set your maxtransfer or DMA Mask and in so doing caused a disk error. c) Extreme memory corruption of a file or directory header at the time you were writing to disk. When checking with technical support prior to using this tool please have the following information ready:- a) An output from "showconfig" (Type "showconfig" in any shell). b) Your current AFS version (Type version "L:HardDiskAFS" in any shell). c) Your MaxTransfer and DMA Mask setting (From HDToolBox). d) Details of your system configuration (Hardware and software). Installation ------------ If you have an older version of HDToolBox (WB2 and older WB3.0) then when you try to add a new Ami-FileSafe partition you will find there is not a AFS\1 option. If this is the case then click on "Custom File System" and then type into the "Identifier" field "0x41465301". The rest of the installation procedure is the same. DiskSpare and MultiFileSystem ----------------------------- If you are using DiskSpare with the floppy version Ami-FileSafe then do not try to use MultiFileSystem at the same time. This problem should be cured in the next release. Softkicked machines (A3000 etc.) ------------------------------- See the SoftKick_Readme file for details. Contacts ======== Tel: 0117 985 4455 Fax: 0117 955 9157 Email: afssales@flevel.demon.co.uk Mail: Ami-FileSafe Sales/Support Fourth Level Developments 31, Ashley Hill Montpelier Bristol BS6 5JA