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UNDERGROUND EMPIRE PCB FILEBASE CHECKER v1.0

BY Bad Peon

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Yes, we are still alive, and you will see some more releases from us (me) in the future. I've been pretty idle during the last couple of months/years for personal reasons which is probably due to the fact that i grow up and the older i get the less time i have for my old hobbies, which are being eaten up by my news hobbies such as going to university, taking care of a girlfriend, having a good time and so on. Yeah whatever. Use the time you have, it might be gone sooner than you expected... So here goes the documentation to my new PPE, not with a huge table of contents ahead of it...

Setting up the filebase is the worst part of installing a PC Board BBS, and maintaining it is a real pain in the ass, too. One of the major problems is that you have to enter the same paths over and over again, and as soon as you forget some paths, do a typo or move drive letters your users can't download anything anymore. This PPE will check your filebase for missing paths in the DLPATHS and ALLPATHS.LST files and add them, so you don't need to take care of that anymore.

What this PPE does (technically):
Loads PCBOARD.DAT, CNAMES, DIR.LST files, checks if all regular file areas (from DIR.LST files) and public upload areas (from CNAMES.) are listed in DLPATHS and ALLPATHS.LST and adds missing entries.

How to setup a filebase (examplary):
Create as many confs as desired (PCBSETUP, G, A), create one directory per conference (D:\PCB\CONFS\UE\, D:\PCB\CONFS\UE\, D:\PCB\CONFS\MP3\,), set all paths to DIR.LST files in first conference config to this dir, then clone other confs from first and make them point on their respective dirs. Then set up the areas in DIR.LST (dirfiles (D:\PCB\CONFS\UE\TEXT, D:\PCB\CONFS\UE\METAL, D:\PCB\CONFS\UE\PCB), paths to files in areas (D:\FB\UE\TEXT\, D:\FB\UE\METAL\, D:\FB\UE\PCB\) and area names (Text files, Metal Mag, PC Board related)). Set a path and filename for the ALLPATHS.LST file in PCBSETUP (press B twice to get to that screen). Quit PCBSETUP, have PCBSETUP check everything and make PCBSETUP create all missing directories (floor the Y key). In case PCBSETUP fails to create directories that is propably to due the fact that it can't create e.g. D:\1\2\ if D:\1\ doesn't exist. So create D:\1\, start and exit PCBSETUP again and all should be fine. Now run this PPE, it will take care of all DLPATHS and ALLPATHS.LST. Then start filling the areas with files, use e.g. PFED to do that.

How to maintain a filebase (examplary):
If you moved some directories or drive letters you have to take of that in PCB. One solution is PCBSETUP's find&replace-feature, which works pretty good. If you don't want to use it you need to change the path names in your DIR.LST files and run this PPE afterwards. It might be a good idea to delete your DLPATHS/ALLPATHS.LST files from time to time and run this PPE again, as there might be some old entries in there that are not needed anymore and waste time when flagging files. However, any entries of directories not in your DIR.LST files will be lost that way. That might be path names of a part of your filebase that you had put on a CD-R to save some diskspace (just keep that CD in the drive, man!), so you'll need to add them to your DLPATHS/ALL- PATHS.LST files after deleting them, because this PPE can't guess where you've put your files if they are not where they are supposed to be. If this problem applies to you tell me and i will add another feature to this PPE, which is a file that contains those blind file paths and adds them to the correct DLPATHS/ALLPATHS.LST files over and over again, if they do not already exist. Of corse i could add that right now instead of writing this bullshit but i want to have some feedback, harharhar.

Known bu... err, known features:
DOS FAT16 style file and path names only!!%$!!! This might be a problem for OS/2 users, no idea (running Windows myself). Please note that for asthetic reasons all path names are convert to upper case. If that turns out to be a problem for your system, contact me.

System requirements: