Major Weenie's Engine Room - V1N4





Well, the Major's had a dangerous month ...

It began with a quick trip to the dentist to have the last of my natural teeth removed. Why, you wonder, with all our wonderful technology, am I down to partials and plates? You might as well ask why we haven't cured the common cold: Humans just ain't as smart as we think we are. The thing that bugs me is, if you think the holographic doctor is a little short on people skills, you obviously haven't spent time with the holographic dentist.

Well, then after that little escapade, there was the Jefferies tube incident. Let's not go into it other than to say that Ensign Moonbeam told me I came out of there looking like one of his ancestors, some guy named Sting. I knew a gal name of Sting years ago, from Medusa 3... Well, down to business...

In keeping with the danger theme, let's take a look at customizing your system without really seeming to do so.

I guess a lot of Warped rookies don't realize that what's on their desktop is, basically, generated with REXX code. Although it's done by the system automagically the first time you boot it, of course, you can alter it later. And you can make those alterations appear to be permanent. I say "appear to be" because as long as you can type "format c:", nothing is completely permanent.

I often hear these rookies fresh from the Academy complaining that they've ruined their desktops. I always tell 'em the same thing: If you don't know what it does, don't fiddle with it! But they never learn. Well, no, actually, that is how they learn, come to think of it; that's how I learned. I ever tell you about what happened to the main deflector on the old USS Bilgerat? Some other time maybe.

Anyhow, if you mangle your desktop, how do you fix it? Hey, stop that snickering over there. Get Ensign Moonbeam to explain why my hair is standing straight up. Both strands, too. Right, if you look in the book, you'll see a whole discussion on the makeini command.

For those of you napping in the back that day, at the Academy they told you that the input to makeini is two files, ini.rc and inisys.rc which do two different things. Inisys.rc contains the input required to recreate the os2sys.ini file found in your \OS2 directory. If you have a good ini editor like SofTouch Systems Unimaint, and cruise around in your os2sys.ini file a little, you'll discover it mostly contains the definitional information for things like the scheme palette, the printer ports, and the like.

If you cruise around in your ini.rc file what you mostly see are two things: All the current settings for your system objects, and a whole bunch of stuff left behind by every program you ever installed whether it's still installed or not. It's OK to remove stuff for programs that are gone, but make sure you know what you're removing. Personally, I prefer something like Unimaint's uninstaller...

Now, the Major's going to point something out to you:

Warning: ''you can write REXX programs that add, delete, and modify data in your os2.ini and os2sys.ini files. Do not start doing this unless you make back up copies first. Unlike the Major of course, who claims he was under the influence of synthale at the time.''

Well, some of you are probably wondering why the Major's putting you into a coma with this. I'm getting there, bear with me.

Look. Suppose you get the charter to set up a bunch of Warp machines for the usual gang of idiots ((C) Mad Magazine, circa 1950), like my family for instance. And you just know that before you can say "raise shields", someone will have shredded their system setup folder. How do you avoid this? No, not by a transfer out of engineering!

Well, that's where the .rc files come in. Fire up your favorite text editor and take a look at ini.rc. If you page down aways, you'll see this line eventually: "PM_InstallObject" "Shredder;WPShredder;" "OBJECTID=WP_SHRED" OK, rookies, take a guess. What happens if you delete this line?

If your answer was, "You Weenie! You don't get a shredder if you rebuild the desktop!" you are correct.

Now, I know some of you are going to rush right out and do this so let me tell you the steps, sort of a pre-crash-and-burn checklist. After you do this, the boot will be a little slow because your desktop is going to be rebuilt, back to what it was originally, minus the shredder (and whatever else you decided to eliminate). If you haven't fouled this up, you'll be on the default desktop, but the shredder will be conspicuously missing from the launchpad. If you have fouled it up, I expect a bunch of messages in my subspace voicemail box.
 * 1) Copy your existing ini files (os2.ini and os2sys.ini) to a safe place. They're located in your \OS2 directory. There are multiple ways to do this. Note that, when your system is running, these files are marked system and read-only. If you like, you can remove the attributes, with the attrib command, then xcopy them to another directory somewhere. It won't hurt them to remove the attributes, but if it makes you nervous, feel free to put them back on. My personal preference is to boot to the Recovery Choices screen (hit Alt F1 when the white block and 'OS/2' appears in the upper left corner of the screen while your system is booting) and then use the move command to put them in another directory.
 * 2) Copy your existing ini.rc file to a safe place. Also found in your \OS2 directory, you might want it in the future sometime in its original condition (i.e., without your alterations).
 * 3) Boot your system to a command prompt, using the Recovery Choices boot function.
 * 4) Do a chdir command to the \OS2 directory.
 * 5) Using TEDIT, edit the ini.rc file and remove the line I mentioned above that creates your shredder.
 * 6) Erase os2.ini and os2sys.ini.
 * 7) Execute the commands: makeini os2.ini ini.rc && makeini os2sys.ini inisys.rc
 * 8) Reboot your system.

(The Captain thinks there's a battery in my personal communicator... but she's wrong.)

What do you mean, how do you undo it...?

OK, do this: Again, this boot will be a little slow because the desktop objects you had when you started this have to be recreated.
 * 1) Boot to a command prompt.
 * 2) In the \OS2 directory, erase os2.ini and os2sys.ini.
 * 3) Move or xcopy back the original os2.ini and os2sys.ini files back into \OS2.
 * 4) This is probably a good time to put the original .rc files back, too.
 * 5) Reboot.

Now listen, this method of not creating certain objects on your system is OK if what you're really after is a way to keep your kids from accidentally shredding your favorite icons, but it is probably not what you want to do if you're doing this for a large number of installations.

If you're going to do this in a commercial environment, then check out some of the excellent products to do this such as Desktop Observatory from Pinnacle Technology.

Now, some of you older, er, more experienced, crew members are asking yourself, "So, Major, what does any of this have to do with REXX? You said that it did."

Well, tune in next month, and we'll delve into how you can create (or recreate as the case maybe) the original system objects without causing a brown-out in the holodeck emitters.

Right now, though, I have to go get that holographic dentist to adjust my bite. If he louses it up again, I'll test it on him. But then, you don't get the same childish thrill biting a hologram as you get from biting a real dentist.

As always, I remain a

Major Weenie

''Major Weenie is Kent Rebman, a Technical Specialist with IBM. -ed''