Make Life Easier:  Take some Sensible Precautions

        Alethic is quite aware that the potential for disaster is great with
all TSR (terminate and stay resident) programs and particularly for those
which read and write files in the background.  Because of this, Alethic has
intensively tested BackMail to a far greater extent than commercial programs
are normally tested.  That there have been many thousands of hours of trouble-
free BackMailing is a tribute to this testing.  But saying this is not
to say that all potential for catastrophic failure has been circumvented.
Since BackMail must run behind another application, there is no way that the
polite behavior, or even sanity of these third-party foreground applications
can be assured.

        For this reason, BackMailers should take a few precautions against the
evil day.  In particular Alethic recomends the frequent backing up of mail files
and phone directory.  This is because the most common symptom of trouble is
a corrupted mail file and/or phone directory.  The files in question contain
not only text but also pointers (which is to say the locations of messages,
headers and other information).  When BackMail writes to the files it must also
update these pointers or the information in the files will become invalid and
the files themselves unreadable by BackMail.  This can happen if a program
running in the forground (the one behind which BackMail is running) prevents
BackMail from writing to its mail files at a crucial time.  Some such
programs can 'tie up' DOS so that BackMail cannot gain access to its files.
BackMailers should also note that the mail files and the phone directory are
all cross-linked; they contain pointers to locations in each other.  This means
that those files must be backed-up together.  The easiest way to do this is by
means of a batch file.

        Suppose, for example, that your BackMail subdirectory is:
                                  C:\BACKMAIL
Here is a batchfile called SAVEMAIL.BAT which takes a 'snapshot' of your
mail files and phone directory in files of the same name but with type
'.SAV'

COPY C:\BACKMAIL\PHONE C:\BACKMAIL\PHONE.SAV
COPY C:\BACKMAIL\INMAIL C:\BACKMAIL\INMAIL.SAV
COPY C:\BACKMAIL\OUTMAIL C:\BACKMAIL\OUTMAIL.SAV

Use a text editor (in non-document mode!) to create a file called SAVEMAIL.BAT
with just these lines in it.  While you are at it, you might as well also
create a file called RESTMAIL.BAT which will be a means of restoring a
previously saved image of mail and phone directory.  Place the following lines
in the batch file:

DEL C:\BACKMAIL\PHONE
DEL C:\BACKMAIL\INMAIL
DEL C:\BACKMAIL\OUTMAIL
COPY C:\BACKMAIL\PHONE.SAV C:\BACKMAIL\PHONE
COPY C:\BACKMAIL\INMAIL.SAV C:\BACKMAIL\INMAIL
COPY C:\BACKMAIL\OUTMAIL.SAV C:\BACKMAIL\OUTMAIL

        Now each and every time your mail files or phone directory increase
in a way it would hurt to lose, give the comand SAVEMAIL at the DOS prompt.
This will overwrite your previously saved images so be careful not to
overwrite uncorrupted images with corrupt ones!  You can be reasonably sure
that your current files are safe if they display properly under the 'maintain'
functions and 'update phone directory', so take a quick look before you issue
the save.

        You are ready for disaster.  Suppose that one day you receive a warning
from BackMail that your mail files have become corrupt (which message you will
also receive if your phone file has become corrupt).  Follow these steps to
recover.
(1) Kill BackMail
(2) From the DOS prompt, give the command RESTMAIL
(3) Restart BackMail