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EVENTMAN and this documentation are Copyright (C) 1992 by Don Branson. The programs and documentation may altered only for private use, and may not be distributed in any way. The programs (except for TSRPROC.EXE) and documentation may be distributed. No fee may be charged except for media and distribution costs. TSRPROC.EXE may not be distributed except by Simian Id Software. Introduction to EVENTMAN ------------------------ Many people have expressed a need to be able to have their computers run certain processes at a certain time, whether someone was available to initiate the process or not. The computer should be able to determine when to run the process, instead of requiring human intervention. A typical example is people who need to back up PC networks. The backup process needs to run every night, after everyone is done working. Until now, this has required that either the users are taught to do backups, or that the network manager stay until everyone is done working for the night. By using EVENTMAN, a backup process can be started late at night, without the need for personnel to start it. Another example is signing on to electronic bulletin board systems (BBS's). With a heavily-used BBS, it may be nearly impossible to get on except during late night or very early morning hours. With EVENTMAN and a progammable terminal program such as Kermit, it is possible to have your system sign on to the board early, for example, 2:00 in the morning, retrieve messages or files, and sign off again. The messages are then on your PC and you can read them with an editor. A simple example is Daylight Savings time changes. Using EVENTMAN, you can have a process execute which sets your PC clock ahead in the spring, and back in the fall. As you use EVENTMAN, you may find that there are many daily routines which you perform that can be taken over by EVENTMAN. As you find new uses for EVENTMAN, please write and tell us how you are using it. This information can be included in future documentation, and will help other people as they use EVENTMAN. Concepts -------- EVENTMAN works following to basic concepts, the EVENT and the PROCESS. An event is a task which performs one or a couple tasks. There is no time information associated with an event. Examples of events would be backing up a hard drive, signing-on to a BBS, and printing a daily report. An event describes the task to be done, but not when it should be done. This allows us to describe one task, and execute it upon demand. A process ties together information about tasks (events) to be run with time information. A process describes what events to run at what times. A process will frequently list a number of events to be run at each time specified by the process. A process may occur once, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, or a some interval which you specify, such as hourly, or every 3-1/2 hours, for example. There are three main programs in the EVENTMAN package. The first is EVENTMAN. This program is used to create and maintain events and processes. PROCESS is a program which runs the processes you have created. When PROCESS runs, it runs in the foreground, which means that you cannot use other applications while it is running. TSRPROC solves this problem, and lets you use your computer while TSRPROC runs in the background. TSRPROC is available only to users who register at the advanced level. The Event/Process Creation Cycle -------------------------------- The first step in using EVENTMAN is to set up some events. In the samples given with EVENTMAN are some useful events which can be included in your processes. Some examples are DISPTIME, which displays the current system time. This can be used to print the start and end times of your processes. Another is LINE, which is useful for drawing a separator line between each event or process. The second step is to use EVENTMAN to set up processes to run at preset times. Once the events and processes are set up, use either PROCESS or TSRPROC to run the processes. The processes will execute at the times you specify, and will invoke the events in the order that you list them. EVENTMAN -------- Keyboard The function keys available are always listed at the bottom of the screen. In addition, the keys HOME, END, Page Up, Page Down, Insert, Delete, Backspace, Tab, Shift-Tab, and the arrow keys are functional in the Event Menu, the Process Menu, and data entry fields. Events When you run EVENTMAN, you should always be in a directory which contains EVENTMAN and all the associated event and process files. Enter EVENTMAN by typing EVENTMAN at the DOS prompt and pressing Enter. The screen will show a scrollable list of events. The number of events you see will depend on whether you are using a 25, 43, or 50 line display. The available functions keys are displayed at the bottom of the screen. The F1 key offers context-sensitive help screens. Each line in the event list is an event with a name of up to 8 characters, and a description of up to 60 characters. Each event also includes a file of DOS commands. To edit the file of DOS commands for an existing event, press F2. EVENTMAN is set up to use whatever editor you want it to. By default, it first tries to use the editor supplied to registered users. If that is not available, it will try to use the DOS 5.00 editor. If that is not available, it will use EDLIN. You can over-ride this process by telling EVENTMAN to use your favorite editor. For example, assume you want to use the QEDIT editor. This is executed by typing "Q" at the DOS prompt, so you can tell EVENTMAN to execute this editor by typing the following command before entering EVENTMAN: SET EDITOR=Q This will work if Q is in a directory on your PATH. If it is not, supply the full path name: SET EDITOR=C:\QEDIT\Q To create a new event, press the F3 key. EVENTMAN will ask you for an event name and a description. Press ESC to cancel or Enter to create the new event. If you create a new event, you will automatically be taken into the editor to enter the DOS commands for the event. To delete an existing event, use the F4 key. You will be requested to enter the word 'delete' to confirm that you want to delete the event. Typically, it is not necessary to delete events, since they only are invoked if they are included in processes. To return from the EVENTMAN Event Menu to the DOS prompt, press F6. To continue from the EVENTMAN Event Menu to the Process Menu, press F5. Processes Each process contains information about the date and time that the process should be run. The Process Menu lists each process, the process type, and the next execution date and time. To edit a process, press F2. You will be shown the process name, and you may change any of the other parameters. To move from parameter to parameter, use the Tab and Shift- Tab keys. The first parameter is the process type. The type indicates how often the process is repeated. Valid values here are: D - Daily The process is repeated every day at the same time. W - Weekly The process is repeated every week on the same weekday at the same time. M - Monthly The process is repeated every month on the same day of the month, at the same time. Y - Yearly The process is repeated every year, in the same month, on the same day of the month, at the same time. S - Single The process is not repeated. It is run once, then deleted from the process list. O - Other The process is repeated at the interval you specify. The interval is given in minutes, and you will be asked for the interval only for type 'O' processes. The next field of entry is the date field. This indicates the next date when the process will be executed. You can enter any date here. You might even enter, for example, a daily process which first starts a month from now, by entering the first date of execution at that future date. Note that the date must be entered year first, then month, then day. The date is converted to a text format and displayed next to your entry. The year must be four digits. (We're getting close to the year 2000!) The next field is the time field. The time field is entered in a 24- hour clock format. EVENTMAN will display the time in text format next to your entry, for confirmation. If you entered a process type of 'O', the next field will be the interval between executions. This interval is from start to start, so the length of time your process takes will not affect the starting time of the next process. The interval is indicated in minutes. A process to run every other day then, would have an interval of 2880 minutes. The final field to enter is the list of events invoked each time the process executes. The events must be valid event names, listed in order of execution, separated by commas. From the process menu, processes can be added with F3, or deleted with F4. When adding a process, you will be asked for the same information as when you are editing an existing process. When you delete a process, you will be asked to enter 'delete' to confirm. Use F6 to return from entering a process to the Process Menu. F6 will also return from the Process Menu to the Event Menu. PROCESS ------- PROCESS is a program which runs in the foreground. It maintains the list of processes in order by date and time. The list of processes is displayed on the screen. The next process to execute is displayed first on the list. When it is time to run the first process in the list, PROCESS invokes that process. When the process is complete, PROCESS updates the process and re-orders the list. Command line options PROCESS has one command-line option which allows processes to be tested in a short period of time which would normally run over days or weeks. To do this, use the -txxxx option for PROCESS, where 'xxxx' indicates a number of seconds. This will make PROCESS add 5 minutes to your system every xxxx seconds, and speed up testing. When you exit PROCESS, it will correct the date and time. You should always verify that the date and time were re-set correctly after using this option. PROCESS startup When PROCESS starts up, it will update the date and time on any process which has not executed, until the date and time are after the current system date and time. Processes which are invoked every few minutes may take some to update in this manner, especially if they are months or years old. Therefore, it is recommended that you use EVENTMAN to update these old processes manually before running PROCESS. TSRPROC ------- TSRPROC is the TSR (Terminate-and-Stay-Resident) version of the PROCESS program. TSRPROC will run in the background, waiting for a process to become current, and ready to execute. While TSRPROC is running in the background, you can use your system for other tasks, such as editing files, doing spreadsheets, whatever you need to work on. When the date and time on a process matches the system date and time, it "becomes current," which means that it is time to invoke that process. If you are working in some other application when a process becomes current, TSRPROC will not try to run it. You have the option of indicating if TSRPROC should try again when you are done. TSRPROC will only try to run a process if you are at the DOS command prompt. To use TSRPROC, execute it once at the command line, specifying any command-line options you want. TSRPROC stays in memory, and will invoke processes as they become current, but only if you are at a DOS prompt, never interrupting your current task. When TSRPROC is resident, you can use Alt-LeftShift to display the list of waiting processes. Command-line options -------------------- These are the command-line options available with TSRPROC. They may be selected using either a dash (as in "-h") or a slash (as in "/h"): -h Display Help. This shows each command-line option and gives a brief description. TSRPROC does not stay in memory after displaying help, and does not do any processing. -u Unload the resident TSRPROC. By invoking TSRPROC with this option, no processing takes place, and the TSRPROC that was already loaded is unloaded from memory. -p Past processes. When you select this flag, TSRPROC will run processes that have a date and time stamp prior to the current time before beginning normal processing. -cxx Check-wait. TSRPROC checks the system time every 5 seconds, by default, to see if any processes are current. This ensures that any process will be executed within 5 seconds after it becomes current. Use this option to change the frequency with which TSRPROC checks the system time. Making the time too short may degrade system perform. Making the time longer than 60 seconds will mean that your processes may start a minute or two late. The number of seconds 'xx' is the length of time TSRPROC waits between attempts. -r Retry. If TSRPROC checks to see if a process can be run, and you are in an application, the process will not be run. By using this option, you tell TSRPROC to try again, until the process can execute. -d Debug. If you have problems with TSRPROC, try to reproduce the problem. When you run TSRPROC to reproduce the problem, specify this option, and also re-direct the output of TSRPROC to the printer, if you have one. Don't try to re-direct output to a file, as this can cause problems. This is how to enter the TSRPROC command with this option: TSRPROC -d >prn -t Test mode. This displays processes only and does not try to invoke them. Utility programs ---------------- DOW This is the Day-Of-Week program. This small program's purpose is to return the day of the week in the DOS error code. This error code can then be used in batch files for determining the day of the week. The codes returned are 0-6 for Sunday through Saturday. The file CDAYBACK.BAT (included with EVENTMAN) is an example of how to use DOW. It shows a single process that is to be run every day but one day of the week. Listing of CDAYBACK.BAT: : CBACKUP.COM is a program that I use for backing-up to tape. CBACKUP.BAT : is included instead of the .COM file, for the purpose of the : demonstration. echo off dow if errorlevel 6 goto saturday if errorlevel 5 goto friday if errorlevel 4 goto thursday if errorlevel 3 goto wednesday if errorlevel 2 goto tuesday if errorlevel 1 goto monday if errorlevel 0 goto sunday goto exit :sunday echo Today is Sunday - Don't do a backup goto exit :monday echo Today is Monday - Do a backup cbackup goto exit :tuesday echo Today is Tuesday - Do a backup cbackup goto exit :wednesday echo Today is Wednesday - Do a backup cbackup goto exit :thursday echo Today is Thursday - Do a backup cbackup goto exit :friday echo Today is Friday - Do a backup cbackup goto exit :saturday echo Today is Saturday - Do a backup cbackup goto exit :exit exit echo Procedure cbackup complete. CBACKUP.COM, executed by CDAYBACK.BAT, is a program that was created with the tape backup software that is supplied with the Identity Tape Drive. CBACKUP.BAT is supplied in lieu of the .COM file in the EVENTMAN package, so that you can see how it would work. You will create your own backup program, since this is dependent on the hardware and software that you own. DTIME This is the Display TIME program. It displays the current date and time in a readable format. It is used in an event to display the current date and time. (See the sample event DISPTIME.) Processes can then invoke this event at the beginning and end of a process, to indicate processing time information. EVENTMAN Examples ----------------- Unattended Hard Drive Backup See the example event BACKUP. It executes a batch file (CDAYBACK.BAT) which invokes a backup program that comes with the particular tape backup that I use. You will need to change it to use whatever software you have available with your drive. Signing on to a BBS using Kermit In order to automatically sign on to a BBS and retrieve messsages or files, you will need Kermit or some other programmable terminal program. A sample is included with EVENTMAN that signs on to a local BBS and retrieves un-read messages from a certain section of the BBS. You will need to have KERMIT in order to use this event in a process. Also, since all BBS's have different signon procedures, you will need to tailor AUTOLOG.KRM to work on your favorite BBS. AUTOLOG.KRM is the Kermit script which dials and logs on to the BBS. AUTOLOG.KRM is designed to work with a Hayes-compatible modem. Start with the event KERMIT, and follow the code from there, to see how the process works. Handling Daylight Savings time See the event SPRG_AHD. It is used to set the date ahead on a specific date.