Ami-FileSafe V2.2 The New de facto Standard Filing System for the Amiga User Manual The Professional File System for the Amiga Typed and Edited By DIT 12-10-95 1. Copyright 2. Introduction A. Amiga Filing Systems B. AFS - The New de facto standard and it history C. V2.01 Basic Features D. DiskSalv support E. Floppy/Harddisk F. Future Releases and UpDates G. Performance 3. System Requirements 4. Floppy Installation A. Workbench 2.0 B. Workbench 3.0/3.1 5. Using Ami-FileSafe on floppy disks A. Formatting Floppy Disks B. Accessing disks 6. Installing Ami-FileSafe on harddisks A. Restrictions and requirements B. Preparing installation C. Making and changing mount list entries D. Installing Ami-FileSafe on the rigid disk blocks E. Installing Ami-FileSafe onto a partition F. Installing Updates 7. Using Ami-FileSafe on Hard Disks 8. Differences with FFS/OFS A. Free Space B. Compatibility C. Restrictions D. Fault tolerance i. OFS & FFS ii. AFS E. Virus damage and virus killers 9. Included tools A. MFS B. Makelink C. FFS2AFS Pro D. Undelete E. RemoveDirEntry 10. Bugs 11. Updates 12. Developers 13. Registrations 14. Support 1. Copyright The Ami-FileSafe (AFS) Software is the joint copyright of Fourth Level Developments & Michiel Pelt (1993/1995) the Developers) and distributed by Fourth Level Developments (the Distributors). No part of the software or the documentation may 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. The Developers and Distributors shall not be liable for errors contained in the software or documentation or for incidental or consequential damage in connection with the furnishing, performance or use of the software or documentation. The Developers and Distributors 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. It is the purchaser`s responsibility to ensure that copies of Ami-FileSafe are not made available or copied by third parties. It is therefore recommended that the original disks are kept in a secure place. In the event of copies being unlawfully distributed the original purchaser is responsible under British and European law for any losses or damages incurred by Fourth level developments. This software is provided under licence and on the understanding that any licences for earlier versions and any obligations whether written or implied under any earlier versions of Ami-FileSafe (AFS) or PFS are determined under this licence. If you have any problems, comments, suggestions or queries please get in touch with Fourth Level Development using one of the contacts given at the end of this manual. 2. Introduction A. Amiga Filing Systems The Standard AmigaDOS filesystem (OFS) has always had problems. There are two primary difficulties: Page 2 (i). it is slow (on large disks very slow!). (ii). The filing system has problems if the system crashes whilst writing to disk. Commodore tried to improve the performance of their file system a number of times. Workbench 2.0 added the Fast File System (FFS), and now, with Workbench 3.1, we have the Fast File System with directory caching (FFS- DC). This makes directory scans faster, but writing to disk and directory operations like delete and rename, are slower than ever. B. AFS - The New de facto standard and its history. These problems have been addressed by Ami-FileSafe along with a large number of other inefficiencies to produce a new de facto standard filing system for your Amiga. The improvements over FFS in both speed and data security are substantial. Ami-FileSafe (AFS) was originally developed by Michiel Pelt and released as shareware under the name PFS (professional File System). The need for a more sophisticated and comprehensive version soon became apparent and this led to collaboration between Michiel Pelt and Fourth Level Developments, who are renowned for their work on computer filing systems on magneto- optical drives with very large directory trees Ami-FileSafe Version 2.01 is the result of that collaboration. There were a number of bugs in the shareware version which has now been withdrawn from circulation. Fourth Level Developments and Michiel Pelt worked together to identify and eradicate all known bugs and to introduce some new features. This resulted in Ami-FileSafe Version 1.0 which was then subjected to exhaustive testing. As a result we had a stable platform for further development to commercial standards. Fourth Level Developments have a policy of not shipping software until it has fully matured and Ami-FileSafe V1.0 was therefore not released. We decided to add a substantial number of additional features which would make AFS operate reliably with all O/S legal software and which would provide a complete filing system capable of being accepted as the new de facto standard for the Amiga. The result is AFS V2.01 Page 3 C. V2.01 Basic Features The Version 2.01 includes: * Notification * Hard and soft links * Supports large partitions (Up to 2GB) * Auto-Booting support * AddBuffers support * Sophisticated Cache Routines * Max transfer and DMA masking * Very Large Directory support * Setowner support * A new FreeBlock Management System * International Support Hundreds of minor fixes and improvements have been made which amount to a major rewrite of the entire filing system to commercial standards. D. DiskSalv support Ami-FileSafe is supported in Dave Haynie`s latest version of DiskSalv (release date June/July 1995) which will be distributed by Fourth Level Developments. E. Floppy/Harddisk Included are a version for floppy and a version for harddisk. It is up to you to use one of them or both. They don`t interfere with each other and can be used simultaneously on the same machine. F. Future Releases and UpDates There are many Amiga owners who use the Multi-User Filing System. The V2.01 filing system incorporates the features essential for MuFS. However MuFS permissions are not enforced in V2.01 but will be in Version 2.1. All purchasers of V2.01 are entitled to the V2.1 upgrade. Version 2.2 will include comprehensive undelete features (release date August 1995) and support for partitions up to 9G. Registered users of V2.01/".1 will be entitled to this upgrade free of charge. Page 4 Version 3.00 due in the Autumn of 1995, will provide a significant number of additional features including memory protection for both the filing system cache and for programmes written to take advantage of AFS. This will fulfil the long expressed requirement of serious Amiga users. The plans for Version 4.00 include multi-platform and operating system support, together with variable read/write access modes to enable developers to select the mode which best supports the requirements of their applications. Detailed information for developers is due for release in August/September 1995. G. Performance Ami-FileSafe has the following performance characteristics: High performance: read and write operations: faster by a factor of 2 directory scan: 10-20 times FFS. 3 times FFS-DC delete/rename/protect etc: 10-20 times faster Other features: full AmigaDOS compatibility better fault tolerance parallel access almost without performance loss disk NEVER get invalidated This distribution includes a floppy version and a harddisk version. The floppy version is fully compatible with the previous shareware versions of PFS. It can be used for both double and high density disks. The harddisk version supports all hard disks of all brands and sizes. It is RDB installable and supports booting. It is NOT compatible with harddisk shareware version of PFS 3. System Requirements Ami-FileSafe will work on any Amiga with kickstart 2.04 or higher. For RDB installed automounting this kickstart has to be in ROM. Versions for both 68000 and 68020+ based systems are provided. Page 5 4. Floppy Installation A. Workbench 2.0 First you have to boot from your standard Systemdisk or harddisk. Now double click on the INSTALL_2.0 (Or INSTALL_2.0_0.20 for 68020+ users) icon. This script will copy the filesystem to the l: directory of your system disk and add two entire to your mountlist, AF0: and AF1: To use the file system with Workbench 2.0 you have to mount it using the mount command: MOUNT af0: MOUNT af1: AF0: and AF1: now refer to Ami-FileSafe disks in drive 0 and 1. If you want to have Ami-FileSafe mounted on startup you should add the above command to your startup-sequence. B. Workbench 3.0/3.1 First you have to boot from your standard system disk or harddisk. Now double click on the INSTALL_3.0 (Or INSTALL_3.0_020+ user) icon. This script will copy the filesytem to the l: directory of your systemdisk and put two files in your SYS:Storage/DOSDrivers directory called AF0 and AF1. Double clicking their icons will mount the filesytem on the corresponding drive, AF0: and AF1: You can then refer to Ami-FileSafe disks in drive 0 and 1 as AF0: or AF1:. If you want to have Ami-FileSafe automatically mounted on startup you can move the AF0: and AF1: to your Devs:DOSDrives directory. 5. Using Ami-FileSafe on floppy disks A. Formatting Floppy Disks After mounting you can format floppies in Ami-FileSafe format by using the standard sys:system/format command. To format a disk named "hello" type: format drive af0: name hello Page 6 If the disk has been formatted, before you can use the quick option, even if the previous format was FFS or OFS (this works the other way round too). However, if you do so, you should remove the disk after formatting. format drive af0: name hello quick B. Accessing disks (i) Shell use: Ami-FileSafe disks can be referred to by diskname (e.g. hello) or by mountname (e.g. af0: or af1:). All Commodore cli commands work on Ami- FileSafe disks like on any other disk but you will get faster results. (ii) Workbench use: When an Ami-FileSafe disk is inserted in drive 0 two icons will appear on your workbench: one with label DF0:Ami-FileSafe and one with the diskname as label. The first comes from the standard filesytem, the second from the Ami-FileSafe filesystem. you can access the disk through the latter icon. It will behave just like DF0: only faster. 6. Installing Ami-FileSafe on Harddisks A. Restrictions and requirements The harddisk version of Ami-FileSafe has no limitations on the partition or harddisk other than those of FFS. Partitions of up to 2 gigabytes are supported. It can be installed and automounted in the RidgidBootBlock, but standard mountlists can also be used. Autobooting is supported. Memory usage depends on the number of buffers selected. B. Preparing installation WARNING - If you are not an experienced user you should consider backing up your harddisk before proceeding. If you haven`t already, double-click on one of the install icons. Use INSTALL_2.0 for Workbench 2.0/2.01 and INSTALL_3.0 for Workbench 3.0/3.1. If you have a 68020/68030/68040/68060 you should use the INSTALL_2.0_020 or INSTALL 3.0_020 icons instead. Page 7 WARNING - If you have a softkicked Amiga such as an A3000 then please read the SOFTKICK_README file on your install disk. C. Making and changing mountlist entries If you cannot use the RDB for hard disk installation, you can create your own mountlist entries. Make sure that you set the UNIT correctly. If you are making a harddisk mountlist entry, double-check all entries before trying to mount! Please refer to the DOS manual for more details D. Installing Ami-FileSafe on a rigid disk blocks Now you can install Ami-FileSafe on the RidgidDiskBlock. You can use Commodore`s HDToolbox, which is supplied with the workbench, for this. If you use another tool you should refer to its documentation for more information. Load HDToolBox and select the hard drive you are using. Click on the Partition button. Select Advanced Options in the partitioning window. A number of extra buttons appear. Click on the Add/Update button. Type in L:HardDiskAFS as the file name of the filesystem. Enter 0x41465302 as the dostype. Leave the version and revision number at the default values. Now click OK and then OK again to go back to the partitioning window. E. Installing Ami-FileSafe onto a partition Now you need to create a new partition. If you don`t have any free space then you will need to either: a) Re-organise your hard drive so you can delete a partition. b) Add a new hard drive. Page 8 If you need to quit HDToolBox then save the changes and reboot. When you have enough space free reload HDToolBox, select the desired drive and click Partition again. Enable the Advanced Options checkbox and continue as before. Click on New Partition and type in the partition device name you require. Click the Change button (Under Filesytem) and select Ami-FileSafe (AFS/2) as the filesystem for that partition. Click Ok. If you want to boot from the new partition then set the bootable flag. You can now set the number of buffers that Ami-FileSafe will use for this partition by typing the number you require into the buffers box. Each buffer is 1K. Ami-FileSafe works best (is faster) with 200-300 (200-300K). If you have enough memory free type in 300. If you are short of memory the enter 100. WARNING - you should not use less than 50 buffers with Ami-FileSafe. If you are using a SCSI card which did not come with your Amiga you will now need to check its manual for reference to maxtransfer and DMA mask. If you find any instructions about setting these values then follow them. If there is no reference to the maxtransfer the n use 0xf000. Click Ok and then Save Changes. Exit HDToolBox and reboot. Ami-FileSafe should be installed on the new partition now. When you have re-loaded workbench you can Format the partition by clicking on the icon (Shows up as NAME:NDOS) and selecting Format from the Workbench menu. F. Installing Updates Ever partition will use the version of Ami-FileSafe you have installed in the Rigid Disk Blocks. When you install an update you will need to update Ami-FileSafe on the Rigid Disk Blocks. After you have clicked on the install icon on your update disk, load up HDToolBox and select the hard drive you are going to update. Click partition and then enable the Advanced Options checkbox. Click on add/update and select Ami-FileSafe (Custom File System - 0x41465302). Click Update and type in L:HardDiskAFS. Page 9 Leave the version and revision numbers at the default. Now press Ok. Click Ok again, Save Changes, quit and reboot. 7. Using Ami-FileSave on Hard Disks Once you have installed Ami-FileSafe you should find it works just like FFS but faster. You may, however, notice a few minor differences. 8. Differences with FFS/OFS A. Free Space When you initially format an Ami-FileSafe disk you will find that the space free on the partition is slightly less than the total partition size. This is because Ami-FileSafe sets aside some of the partition to store the file structures. The info command gives the correct blocks used information. However the list command gives blocks used information which is too high. This is because the list command assumes every file consumes a block of free space to use as a headerblock, but Ami-FileSafe uses blocks much more efficiently. As a rule of thumb you can say that the real number of blocks used is the given amount minus the number of files listed. Directory tools like Directory Opus have some problems with their space left figure during a copy session. You will notice that after copying is finished freespace goes up to the correct figure. This also explains why Ami-FileSafe stores more data than FFS disks; it is because AFS uses a larger part of the blocks for actual data storage. B. Compatibility All Amiga-Dos features, except record locks, are implemented in Ami- FileSafe. Ami-FileSafe floppy disks cannot be made bootable (Hard disk partitions can), so using the INSTALL command on an Ami-FileSafe floppy disk will fail. All OS-Legal programs work with Ami-FileSafe, however, some disktools and games will not. Page 10 If you are using an external disk cache program with Ami-FileSafe then ensure you disable write cache. If you are using a virtual memory program such as VMM or GigaMem then do not try to put your swap file onto a AFS partition. You can use a full partition or a swap file on an FFS partition however. C. Restrictions Ami-FileSafe has the standard AmigaDOS restrictions on file and disk naming: Maximum disknamelength 32 Maximum filenamelength 96 Maximum commentlength 80 Almost unrestricted character use in file names These restrictions are enforced by AmigaDOS, they are not inherent to the file system. The number of files in a directory or on a disk is restricted only by the available diskspace. D. Fault tolerance (i) OFS & FFS When you reset or crash your machine on standard OFS or FFS disks during a write operation the disk usually becomes invalidated. When you insert that disk later the disk will be revalidated automatically. There are however a number of drawbacks with the original Commodore method: It takes a long time to validate (on large disks an unacceptably long period) It doesn`t always work (Sometimes the disk goes corrupt) If you were overwriting a file at the time of the crash you loose both the original and the new version. The date stamp on both the directory and the files are not updated and the directory gives misleading information. (ii) AFS With Ami-FileSafe the directory is correct at all times. This means that whenever you remove the disk, rest or crash the system, all the objects (files and directories) listed in the directory will be there as stated in that directory, including the filesize and date. Page 11 An Ami-FileSafe disk NEVER gets invalidated. However this does not mean you cannot lose data under any circumstances. When you operate on the disk (creating files and directories, deleting files etc) the file system keeps track of all changes to the directory but doesn`t write these changes to the disk until the operation is completed. It does write data, but only to clean areas (diskspace that wasn`t in use the last time the directory was updated). If you stop writing to the disk for half a second, the directory is updated so that the area occupied by deleted files can be reused without invalidating the disk. This means if your Amiga breaks down at a nasty moment you will probably find the disk in the state it was before you started your writing session. (A writing session terminates every time the AFS buffers are updated and when there is no disk activity for more than half a second.) This includes overwritten files, which will be back in their old state. To enable this to happen Ami-FileSafe ensures that at least 5% of the disk is free at all times. The directory and allocation tables themselves are also updated in such a way that the disk cannot become invalidated. So even a crash during the update won`t invalidate the disk. An extra advantage of this procedure is that files that are overwritten by a larger version are not fragmented, as in most filesystems. The file will be fragmented only when there is not a large enough continuous free segment available. A fragmented file is even defragmented if possible. Ami-FileSafe does everything it can to limit freespace-fragmentation and the directory is frequently updated to assist in this process. An Ami-FileSafe disk normally cannot get invalidated but it can get corrupted. Nothing can be done about bad tracks on a disk or external programs (like viruses or diskeditors) that mess with the disk. A read or write error makes the disk invalid. In this case you will need a new version of DiskSalv to repair your Ami-FileSafe disk. E. Virus damage and viruskillers Bootblocks viruses destroy the bootblock of the disk. For this reason Ami- FileSafe doesn`t store urecoverable data in those blocks. It does use the bootblock to recognise a disk as being an Ami-FileSafe disk, so it the bootblock id destroyed, the disk won`t be recognized anymore. Page 12 To repair such a disk you simply have to write an Ami-FileSafe bootblock back to it. You can do that by copying a bootblock from an unaffected disk to the disk. Most virus killers have functions to do that. Remember not to change any blocks other than the bootblocks (block 0 and 1). Most virus killers have no problem with Ami-FileSafe disks. You should check if your viruskiller accepts uninfected Ami-FileSafe disks as normal. 9. Included tools You will find tools that come in handy with Ami-FileSafe in the tools directory. A. MFS MFS helps you combine several filesystems (Ami-FileSafe, FFS etc) on a single drive. Please read the instructions with MFS. B. Makelink A new makelink command is included with Ami-FileSafe. It is automatically installed in your c: directory. It is included to fix a bug (with softlinks) in the version included with Workbench. C. FFS2AFS Converter (PRO) Included in this version is an FFS2AFS converter. This program will convert your standard Fast File System partitions to Ami-FileSafe format. Warning - While the converter program makes every attempt to ensure your data is safe (In the event of a system crash or power loss) you could under rare circumstances lose data. We therefore suggest you make a backup of your FFS partition before running the converter. When you get to section 6E in the installation procedure (in the manual) you can instead of creating a new partition convert one of your current FFS partitions to AFS:- a) Choose an FFS (Standard, International or directory cache) partition to convert to AFS. If you are using the User version of Ami-FileSafe then you should only try to convert an FFS partition which is on a hard drive whose size is less than 650MB. Do not forget that the user version of Ami-FileSafe can only be used on one hard drive, so do not try to convert partitions from more than one drive. You now need to ensure you have at least 10% of the partition free. If you do not then you will need to either compress, delete # or move off some files to free up enough space for the conversion. b) At this point you may want to re-organize this partition to improve performance. If you decide to do this you will need a shareware program called "Reorg". You should optimize your FFS partition with "Free blocks after boot block" selected (From the advanced options menu). c) Open a shell and type: ffs2afs name: Where 'name' is the name of an FFS partition that you wish to convert to AFS. You will asked if you wish to proceed, if you type 'y' then that partition will be converted to AFS. If the converter program fails due to lack of free space: Wait until the FFS partition is validated. Go back and free up some more space on that partition before trying again. If the conversion finishes successfully: Reboot your Amiga. The partition you converted should now be useable as normal. You may repeat this procedure for other FFS partitions if you wish. D. Undelete 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. E. 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 pleas 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). 10. BUGS If you find something that you think doesn`t function properly please send a bug report to Fourth Level Developments. 11. Updates Users are entitled to all updates within 6 months of purchase. The updates are supplied free of charge if they are obtained by email/ftp. If you want updates sent by post then please send a payment of £3.00 for Europe or £4.50 outside. You must state your serial number (A 4 digit number on the floppy disk) when applying for updates. Page 13 12. Developers If you are a developer and wish to: (a) develop tools to run with Ami-FileSafe or (b) programmes to take full advantage of future Ami-FileSafe features then please contact Fourth Level Developments for a programmer`s information pack. You will be asked to enter into a mutual confidentiality agreement and provide some information about your project. Acceptance will give you access to the AFS beta-testers forum. 13. Registration All copies of Ami-FileSafe are registered with the name of the purchaser. If you acquire a copy from a trade source you must register your purchase with Fourth Level Developments in order to obtain updates Up-dates are not effective on unregistered copies. 14. Support If you have any problems, comments, or queries please contact us: Email:afssupport@flevel.demon.co.uk Tel:+44(0)117 985 4455 Fax:+44(0)117 955 9157 Mail:Fourth Level Developments 31, Ashley Hill Montpelier Bristol BS6 5JA. England If you are a trade customer (minimum order quantity = 12) then please ring the trade Desk: +44(0) 117 955 8225. Page 14 End of Text.