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FTrash.doc Version 1.0 ©1994,95 by Fionn Behrens - Page 1 - 1. FTrash Users Guide Introduction What is all this good for? Copyright Legal stuff & distribution status Requirements What you need to run FTrash Installation How to install FTrash Usage A small chapter. Its simple! :-) Problems What might go wrong Hints How to do it better Future Plans What I am intending to do Acknowledgement Whom I would like to thank Author Who am I? 2. Introduction FTrash is a commodity. Its purpose is to save you a lot of work in certain situations and to clean up behind you. When using FTrash correctly it will never happen again that you delete files by accident and then have to wait hours for your HardDisk recovery program if it can bring the data back to life. This is because every file that would be normally deleted will now be moved to the trashcan first. Only if there is a trashcan directory, certainly! If there is no trashcan on the disk where the file is, it will be deleted normally. Of course FTrash works for every program that uses system routines to delete files (the only exception I know of is ixemul.library). In addition to that FTrash will clean up your trashcan directories behind you according to your needs. You may determine how this is done for every single trashcan individually. You can specify how much space should be free on your disk at least and the maximum of days a file may stay in the trash. After that time or if your disk has less space free than specified the trash will be emptied, beginning with the oldest file. To minimize disk access FTrash uses an internal directory cache for all watched trashcans. FTrash has some extra gimmicks included. The first one can be noticed when you use the Workbench. Like on the Macintosh computer series you will have a 'fat' trashcan being displayed as long as files are inside of it. This can be switched off. You may also specify files that will always be deleted immediately, no matter if there is a trashcan or not. On the other hand you may specify a pattern for files that should better not be deleted. FTrash will then ask you if you really want to delete this file. 3. Copyright This software is subject to the "Standard Amiga FD-Software Copyright Note" It is Freeware as defined in paragraph 4a. For more information please read "AFD-COPYRIGHT" (at the end of this document). - Page 2 - 3. Copyright This program runs flawlessly on my own Amiga (Enforcer and Mungwall included). Anyway, there might be problems showing up on other systems, especially with other Icon patches (see the @{"problems" link "Probs" 0} section). So I certainly cannot guarantee that this thingy works like it should. Detailed @{"bug reports" link "Author" 0} and suggestions are always welcome. However if you like this program very much, I would be glad if you sent me a keyfile for your shareware program, a postcard or at least an email. You certainly do NOT need to do any of the above! 4. Requirements You need the following to use FTrash: - An Amiga (surprise, surprise :-) - Amiga OS Version 37 (Kickstart 2.04) at least - reqtools.library (©Nico Francois) Version 38 or higher. As there have been crashes reported with revision numbers smaller than my one (1266) from several beta testers I restricted FTrash to not use earlier revisions! This version (ReqTools 2.2c) can be obtained from various sources like Fish Disks and AmiNet (CD 4). You don't need it to use FTrash but I strongly suggest that if you run any kind of patch like FTrash in your system, then please use SetMan or a similar utility. SetMan is available from AmiNet (CD 3). FTrash might refuse to exit under certain circumstances if you do not use such a tool. 5. Installation If you want to have patched trashcan icon imagery then copy the files named 'def_FullTrash' and 'def_EmptyTrash' to your ENV:sys and ENVARC:sys directories. These icons are 3-bit MagicWB. If you do not use MagicWB please use the icons titled 'ugly_xxx.3bit' or 'ugly_xxx.8bit' (if you have a 256 color WB) and rename them to 'def_FullTrash' and 'def_EmptyTrash'. If you dont want patched icons then set the arg PATCHIMG=NO in the FTrash icon or on the command line. See usage for more info on options and settings. FTrash should be startet right before Workbench because it currently uses Disk.info to detect disks and therefore works best when it is started before all disk icons show up on the WB. If you start FTrash from your WBStartup it will work correctly also, but trashcans that are not used by you may not be cleaned up properly until next usage. This behaviour will change in future releases. All you NewIcons freaks start the NewIcons demon after FTrash. Then you may use NewIcons of your choice for FTrash and everything should work well. If you create your own NewIcon Images for FTrash please send them to me for inclusion in future releases! Thank you! 6. Usage You may use 3 different methods to make FTrash do what you want it to do: Config Requesters ToolTypes and Shell options ENV Variables 7. Config Requesters The configuration requesters Every time when FTrash detects a disk with a trashcan on it that has no associated settings you will be prompted by FTrash to input your desired values. If you want to configure a new trashcan then just double click on the disk icon where this trashcan is on (or delete a file on that disk :-)) - Page 3 - 7. Config Requesters A requester will pop up, asking you if you want to configure that trashcan or just ignore it (files will be moved in there even if you select ignore, but it will NOT be cleaned up and will not have a 'fat' icon then!!!) Second you'll have to tell if you want to have FTrash checking your disk every time a file is deleted or just once a day or never. If you select 'on every delete' FTrash will certainly spend more time crawling around in your trashcans and looking for files to clean up. However, FTrash works asynchronously, which means that this will NOT slow down deletions more than any of the other choices. Just set FTrash to a low pri with the TASKPRI ToolType and it wont use CPU time when other tasks need it. If you select 'never' then FTrash wont clean up that Trashcan for you and you have to do that by hand if necessary Third FTrash asks you how much space should be left on your disk at minimum. To check that out lets have an example: Imagine a Floppydisk with 900k space on it. You select a minimum of 300k free space. Now, every time FTrash checks that trashcan (daily or on every deletion) it looks if there is still enough space left on that disk. If not FTrash will begin to empty that trash starting with the oldest file until your 300k free space are there again (or the trashcan is empty). Fourth you are prompted to specify a maximum of days a file may stay in the trashcan. Every file in the trash that is older than that number of days will be cleaned up. 14 days are a good value for everyday use. If you have got lots of space left on your HD you may certainly have a bigger value here, but notice that deletions slow down a bit if the trashcan grows very big! Now your trashcan is set up for use. If you want to change its settings then just take a shell, cd to the disk of your choice and type 'delete trashcan.info' or use any directory tool to delete the trashcan icon. You will then be prompted for new settings. The old icon will be lost. 8. FTrash ToolTypes FTrash ToolTypes all these values may be used on the commandline as well if you start FTrash from the Shell. The following ToolTypes can be used in the FTrash Icon: - DELAY=<seconds> where <seconds> is the number of seconds that FTrash will wait after being started before it actually begins to clean up or do any other activity. I set this to 30 seconds, so that FTrash wont cause disk trashing under any circumstances while Workbench and WBStartUp are loading. - PATCHIMG=[YES|NO] set this to NO if you do not want to have trashcan images like on a Mac. - TASKPRI=<value> determines the priority at which the FTrash cleanup task is running. Default value is -1, but you may prefer to set this to something lower. A low value does not affect the speed of file deletions which are working completely asynchronous and always with the priority of the deleting task or process. - CX_PRIORITY=<value> this may be a value from -127 to 128, determining which position FTrash has in the handler chain of the Commodities System. Default is 0. There is no need to have this set to a high value, you may even use -127 if you want. - Page 4 - 8. FTrash ToolTypes - STARTPRI=<value> This value is only of interest if FTrash is being started from WBStartUp. It determines at which moment FTrash will be started. With STARTPRI set to a high Value, FTrash will be started before other Tools which have a lower priority and vice versa. - DONOTWAIT Dont worry about this one, just leave it there in the Icon :-) 9. Environment variables Environment Variables You may set 2 environment variables in conjuction with FTrash: - FTNODELETE Files matching the pattern contained in this variable will cause a a requester to pop up if you try to delete them. This requester will ask you if you really want to do that. For example you may use the pattern (startup#?|#?setup), which will prevent you from accidentally deleting files like startup-sequence. - FTDELETE is the opposite of FTNODELETE. Files matching this pattern will be deleted at once and not be moved to a trashcan, regardless if there is one or not. A good value for this is something like (Command-#?|#?.BAK|spool-#?) or anything else matching temporary files your system or your software tends to use and delete frequently. These variables may not be longer than 255 character max! Anything further will just be ignored and might end you up in using faulty file patterns (missing parentheses)! To set environment variables open a Shell by clicking on the Shell Icon, then type the following into it: setenv FT(NO)DELETE <mypattern> for example: setenv FTDELETE (Command-#?|#?.BAK|spool-#?) setenv FTNODELETE (startup#?|#?setup) to make these settings permanent, type: copy ENV:FT#? ENVARC: Changes in the environment variables will not take any effect before the next start of FTrash!!! For more information on AmigaDos file patterns please consult the manuals that came along with your Amiga computer. 10. Problems Problems that might appear (I) FTrash is not perfect at finding out if you moved files in and out of trashcans manually. Therefore it might happen that the trashcan icon does not show up 'normal' even when there are no files inside or vice versa. The - Page 5 - 10. Problems detection code will be more accurate in future versions. (Yet another kiske to be added, or maybe I'll try Notify even if it this will cause a lot of problems with my current cleanup system... >:) (II) Using Disks with identical names will confuse FTrash, if there is a Trashcan on at least one of them. I am currently working on a new concept to avoid that. However, using disks with eqal names is never a good idea. (III) FTrash won't work together with the Program 'IconManager'. This is due to a flaw in IconManager which seems to not check correctly if Workbench uses its Patches or if it is just another Process. The Author of IconManager told me that this problem will be gone in the next release of IconManager. (IV) If you encounter strange problems, Enforcer hits or even system failures while using FTrash, please send me a detailed description of your system, what you were doing in the moment when the problem occured and which software you were running. Dont forget to tell me which patches you use :) 11. Hints & Tips Hints and Tips - Use Commodities Exchange to temporarily disable all FTrash patches, if necessary. - If you want to change the configuration of one of your Trashcans, then delete its icon while FTrash is running! - Dont use your Trashcan as a kind of /tmp (temporary) directory. FTrash maintains an internal directory cache of every trashcan to minimize disk accesses. If you move files in an out of your trash FTrash will be forced to update its cache by re-reading the directory. Better have a separate TMP directory which you empty once a day via some kind of cron utilitiy or similar. - Notice that it is possible to choose quite silly settings, like that you always want 100% of your drive to be free (which will result in FTrash deleting every file from the trashcan as soon as it it moved in there). So please think about what your settings will do :-) - If you have some thousand files in a trashcan deletions on that volume will slow down noticeably. Try to avoid that by choosing reasonable cleanup settings. - NewIcons users please start the NewIcons patch demon after FTrash for correct operation. See Installation 12. Future Plans Future Plans - Maybe a kind of Prefs Editor for the trashcan settings [low pri] - Create the possibility to exclude certain tasks from the patch and/or from the unprotect requester. - Rewrite the Program to use real handler code to detect and maintain all inserted disks accurately (no need to start FTrash before WB then) - Set up Notification on the ENV vars to detect user changes at runtime. [low pri] - Writing a delete command that will always delete for real and that does not - like the dumb amigados delete - try to Lock() every file and this - Page 6 - 12. Future Plans way prevents deletion of vagabond soft links. Any futher suggestions are welcome, just drop me a note! 13. How to reach the Author The Author I may be reached via snail mail under the following address: Fionn Behrens Glueckaufstrasse 48/102 57076 Siegen Germany If you have acces to any electronic mailing system try the following ones: (topmost mailbox is checked most often) Behrens@appl1.hrz.uni-siegen.de fionn@informatik.uni-siegen.de Flash@asgard.rni.sub.org behrens@studm.hrz.uni-siegen.de 14. These people helped making FTrash I would like to thank all the people on #amigager@IRC who answered lots of my silly questions, tested beta versions of FTrash and had me having so much fun reading all those childish things on my screen ;-) Thanks to Nico Francois for reqtools.library. It makes life easier :-) Also thanks to Lars SFX Eilebrecht and Martin Huttenloher, my icon image sources :) Greetings go to SFX, #amigager, to an old and dusty planet and to sunshine :) 15. AFD Disclaimer "AFD-COPYRIGHT"(TM): __ __ *====================================* __ __ / // / * Standard Amiga FD-Software * / // / / // / * Copyright Note (TM) * / // / / // / *====================================* / // / __ __ / // / * * __ __ / // / \ \\ \/ // / * Version 1 - English * \ \\ \/ // / \ \\/ // / * 10-Dec-1994 * \ \\/ // / \ / // / * * \ / // / """ "" *====================================* """ "" 0. INTRODUCTION =============== If you are a user I hope you like this Standard Copyright Note for Free Dis- tributable Amiga Software you only have to read once instead of individual notes. There are translated versions of this document available on Aminet named: /pub/aminet/docs/misc/AFD-Files1-xx.lha (xx = number of languages). If you are a software developer and want to include this document in your own FD package then please read it carefully first, especially chapter 5 "DEVELOPERS INFORMATION". Thank you for your support. 1. COPYRIGHT ============ - Page 7 - 15. AFD Disclaimer a. This software is copyrighted by its developer(s). That means that you are NOT ALLOWED to modify the program(s) and documentation in any way. Especially you MUST NOT REMOVE the documentation or this text file. b. You are NOT allowed to use this software or any part of it for any other purpose than that one mentioned in its documentation, this also includes any fonts, images or samples. If the developer(s) did NOT include the source code of the program(s) in this package you are NOT allowed to de- compile any part of it. 2. DISTRIBUTION =============== This package is freely distributable. That means you are allowed to re- distribute this package as long as you follow these points: a. Any re-distribution has to include all files in this archive, including this "AFD-COPYRIGHT" file, without any modifications. You are NOT allowed to add any files to the archive. b. This package may be freely distributed via BBSs, InterNet/UseNet, software libraries such as Fred Fish's and Aminet CD-ROM, and other similar electronic channels. c. Disk magazines and services that charge extra for file transfers may NOT distribute it without written permission by the developer(s)! 3. DISCLAIMER ============= By using this product, you accept the FULL responsibility for any damage or loss that might occur through its use or the inability to use it. The developer(s) of the software and the author and the translators of this "Copyright Note" can NOT be held responsible. IMPORTANT: The author and the translators of this "Copyright Note" do NOT give any guarantee for the quality and usefulness of ANY products that are subject to this note!!! 4. RETURN SERVICE ================= "Free distributable" only says that you do not have to pay for copying or re- distributing the software. You are allowed to test this product for 30 days. If you like it and decide to use the product regularly, most of the develo- pers want something in return for their efforts. The documentation of this software contains one classification out of these: a. Freeware - You are allowed to use this software FREE. b. Mailware - You have to send the developer(s) a MESSAGE (by email or snailmail). c. Cardware - You have to send the developer(s) a POSTCARD. d. Donationware - You have to make a DONATION to an organisation as stated in the documentation to this product. g. Giftware - You are requested to send the developer(s) a GIFT, for example: - some candy or - a package of disks or - a copy of a self-made program or - some money or - an Amiga 5000 PowerTower ;-) - Page 8 - 15. AFD Disclaimer s. Shareware - You have to send the developer(s) the amount of MONEY demanded in the documentation. 5. DEVELOPERS INFORMATION ========================= The concept of a "Standard-Licence" like this one has several advantages: - You as a developer don't have to think about copyright stuff yourself. - The users of your product have to read it only if they haven't done so before. - This document is available in several languages via Aminet. So you can be sure that the users have read it at least once and did understand it. If you want to include "AFD-COPYRIGHT"(TM) in your own Amiga(TM) FD-Software package you have to follow these rules: a. Read this whole document carefully and make sure that you agree with the whole text WITHOUT ANY EXCEPTIONS. (If you do not agree with it, do not use it! You are allowed to copy parts of it, but IF you do so, you MUST NOT use the names "AFD-COPYRIGHT"(TM) and "Standard Amiga FD-Software Copyright Note"(TM).) b. Make sure that you use the following Default-Tools in the .info-files you are going to release: - for ASCII texts: More - for AmigaGuide(tm) documents: AmigaGuide - for IFF-ILBM pictures: Display (The idea of this rule was inspired by Osma "Tau" Ahvenlampi, Finland. It was included to set a standard. If someone does not use these tools (s)he has to make not more than three links to the preferred programs!) c. Include a paragraph like the following in the manual to your product: ------8<------------------------------------------------------------------- This software is subject to the "Standard Amiga FD-Software Copyright Note" It is <type_of_software> as defined in paragraph 4<x>. [...] For more information please read "AFD-COPYRIGHT" (Version 1 or higher). ------8<------------------------------------------------------------------- Example: This software is subject to the "Standard Amiga FD-Software Copyright Note" It is SHAREWARE as defined in paragraph 4s. If you like it and use it regularly please send $15 to ... For more information please read "AFD-COPYRIGHT" (Version 1 or higher). d. You have to include this file called "AFD-COPYRIGHT"(TM) (english). IF you include an AmigaGuide(TM) hypertext documentation you can link it to this file or include the whole text in the AmigaGuide(TM) file just as you like. Please do not add more than two translations of this file to your package. So your package doesn't get too big. 6. AUTHORS ========== "AFD-COPYRIGHT"(TM) was written by Dietmar Knoll. It is itself subject to the above copyright note (© 10.12.1994). If you have any comments, hints or questions or some suggestions for the next version, please write to the following addresses: Dietmar Knoll InterNet-Email: To: knoll@namu01.gwdg.de Iltisweg 6 Subject: AFD D-37081 Goettingen GERMANY/EUROPE My WWW-Homepage: http://namu19.gwdg.de/knoll