INIREPAR.TXT

                Discussion of INIMAINT Repair Capabilities

INIMAINT has an item on the Recover menu called Repair. This item
gives the user the ability to perform a number of different automatic
Repair actions on his INI files. The Online Help documents how the
Repair function works, however, it does not detail the rational and
algorithms employed by INIMAINT to accomplish the various Repairs.
This document is an attempt to do that.

                      General Information

Type of Repair

There are four different type of Repair Options.

The first one, Report Only, will never make any changes, but will
only list the items that would have been Repaired if the Do Repair
Option had been chosen.

The Ask First, will ask the user if he wants each item repaired as
the item is found and determined to be invalid. This can take a very
long time in some cases, since the number of items can become quite
large

Do Repair, will automatically remove all invalid items for the
catagory selected from the appropriate INI file. This should only be
used when the user is sure he wants all invalid items removed.

Do Selected can only be used after Report Only, since it requires
that the invalid items be visible in the window. When Execute is
chosen with the Do Selected button checked, then every line in the
window that is selected will be deleted. The only exception to this
is when doing either the Handles or WPS repair and a selected item
has dependent items, such as subdirectories or files, in this case
all dependent items will also be deleted. For example, if a Drive
name itself is selected and Do Selected is chosen, then all entries
for the drive, including all directories and files, that have been
identified as invalid will be deleted.

The easiest and safest way to remove invalid items when the user is
not sure if they want everything done is to use the Report Only
option, select the items that they want deleted and then use Do
Selected. This cycle can be repeated over and over until all of the
desired items have been deleted.

Window Behavior

When and item is deleted for any reason, the word 'Deleted' will
appear after the item in the window. If there are deleted items in
the window and additional items are selected for deletion then the
previously deleted items will be removed from the window. For
example, if the first item in the window is selected and deleted, the
word deleted would appear after the first item. If then the second
items is selected and deleted, the second item will now have the word
deleted after it and the first item will be gone from the window.

Options

Different users want to handle directories and file that are on
removable, not ready, cdrom and vdisk devices differently. The
Options dialog gives each user the ability to choose how they want
each of these types of situations handled.

If Ignore is chosen, then directories and files on the appropriate
type of device will be completely ignored and will never appear in
the repair window.

If Report Only is selected, then the information will appear in the
window, but will not get automatically deleted if the Do Repair
option is chosen. The Report Only items can still be deleted by
selecting them and using the Do Selected option.

If Auto Repair, which is the default, is chosen, then the items will
be reported and will be automatically deleted if Do Repair is chosen.

The Do Not Save Deleted Items button will cause INIMAINT to not save
items that are deleted from an INI file in the Save INI File.
Normally, the user must specify a Save INI File and any entries
removed from any INI file are written to the Save INI File before
they are modified. This allows the user to restore items that he has
deleted if they discover that something has been deleted in error and
no backup is available.

The Log to INIREP.LOG is used for diagnostic purposes.

List Items versus Repair Items

For a number of the repair catagories there are multiple choices
available. The is always the Repair choice and it works the same for
each catagory of Repair. When the Repair choice is used, the only
items that will appear in the window will be items that are invalid
and should be deleted.

If the user want to see the valid items for the catagory or all the
items, then the appropriate List entry can be used to display these
entries. The List Invalid items is the same as the Repair as far as
the contents of the window is concerned, however, it is safer because
it is not possible to select or otherwise delete any of the items.

                        Type of Repair

Repair Pathnames and Filenames

Many, if not all, applications installed under OS/2 store things in
various INI files. However, few, if any, applications will remove
things from these files when they are deinstalled or the directory
structure is changed. This Repair action looks at the Pathname and
Filename entries in an INI file, compares them to the current Desktop
and either identifies and/or removes entries that are obsolete.

The action INIMAINT will take depends on the structure of the
individual Key Name or Key Value. There are two possibilities that
INIMAINT looks for:

   1. A Filename with no preceeding Path information.
   2. A full Pathname or Filename combination.

Each of the above are handled differently.

General Processing applicable to both type of names:

Any name that is too short, less than 3 characters, or too long,
longer than the maximum path length returned by DosQSysInfo, will not
be tested further.

Any name which contains non-printable characters will not be tested.

Processing of Filename with no Path information:

If the beginning of a Key Name or Key Value starts with either X:\ or
just \, INIMAINT assumes it is a full Pathname or Filename and
processes it as described below. INIMAINT will then check for a
Filename of the form *.XXX and ignore them, since this is simply a
definition of a type of file extension and not an actual file.
INIMAINT will then look for .XXX as the last four characters of the
Filename and will search for the following combinations:
   
   1. .EXE using the PATH Environment variable.
   2. .CMD using the PATH Environment variable.
   3. .DLL using the LIBPATH Environment variable.
   4. .HLP using the HELP Environment variable.

Processing of full Pathname or Filename:

If the name starts with \, then the drive used as the drive for the
OS2.INI file, which is the boot drive, will be appended to the start
of the name.

Any name that starts with A: or B: will be ignored, since they are
assumed to be floppy drives and probably do not contain any media.

Any trailing semicolons are removed from the name, since there are a
number of entries that are valid Filenames except for the semicolons.

If the trailing character in the name is a \ or if the name contains
any embedded semicolons, it will be tried as a Pathname and made a
candidate for removal if it is not found.

All other qualifing names will be tried as both a Filename and a
Pathname and will be made a candidate for removal if they fail both
tests.

Repair Objects

Most, if not all, of the items on the Desktop have been assigned an
Object Number. This number along with the name of the Object is
stored in the OS2.INI file. This Repair entry will display and give
the user the option to delete and Object. It is not currently
possible for INIMAINT to determine which Objects are valid and which
are invalid, so INIMAINT will never identify an Object as invalid.
Great care should be exercised when deleting any of the Objects,
since it is possible to do serious damage to your Desktop.

The structure which stores all of the Object cross reference is used
by the WPS Repair code to determine if Objects are valid and to find
the names of valid Objects.

Repair Directory/File Handles

Many Drives, Directories and Files are assigned Handles. This Handle
information is stored in the OS2SYS.INI file. However, when files are
moved, directories changed or other changes are made to the Desktop,
the Handle information is not updated. This Repair option gives the
user the ability to see the contents of the INI file Handles entry
and Repair any or all of the invalid entries.

It is difficult to remove incorrect information manually, even
knowing the internal structure of the entries, because all of the
Handles information is stored in a single INI file entry and a small
mistake in modifying could cause serious Desktop problems and/or
create a non-bootable situation.

The structure which stores all of the Handles information is used
by the WPS Repair code to determine if Handles are valid and to find
the names of Directories and Files.

Repair WPS Entries

WPS stores a variety of Desktop information in the INI files. As with
the Handles information above, obsolete information is not always
removed from the INI files when changes are made to the Desktop. This
Repair option gives the user the ability to see what is in his INI
files and remove those entries that are invalid.

As with the Handles above, it is difficult to make these changes
manually because things are stored in a number of different formats
and the cross reference between the random looking numbers and the
actual Objects and Handles would be very tedious to track manually.

The Repair WPS Entries uses the Objects and Handles structures. This
means that these structures must be filled before the WPS structure
can be filled. This can take a significnat amount of time in
situations where the Desktop is complex and/or there are a large
number of invalid entries.

Repair Both WPS and Handles Entries

This is simply a combination of Repair WPS Entries and Repair
Directory/File Handles above. It allows the user to do both types of
Repair with a single action.