Backup Before Updating

[NewsArchive]

SetupBuilder 7.5
We tell our customers to perform a backup before installing next pgrade.
Most do, some don't. Sometimes the backup program says it works and it
doesn't. Everyone knows these scenarios. Anyway, I was planning on
giving our customers the option to have the SB update backup up their
data files before installing the new update. My question: What is the
best way to do this using SetupBuilder or is there an SB7 example of
this somewhere? I do not have the current SB examples downloaded.
Where are they located?

Also, I have not researched the rollback capability in SB. Is this
better than backup / restore?

Thanks.


--
Darrel (Dee) Witham
Professional Data Services, Inc

[NewsArchive]

Hi Darrel,

> SetupBuilder 7.5
> We tell our customers to perform a backup before installing next pgrade.
> Most do, some don't. Sometimes the backup program says it works and it
> doesn't. Everyone knows these scenarios. Anyway, I was planning on
> giving our customers the option to have the SB update backup up their
> data files before installing the new update. My question: What is the
> best way to do this using SetupBuilder or is there an SB7 example of
> this somewhere? I do not have the current SB examples downloaded.
> Where are they located?

By default, the Examples are located in your per-user "..\SetupBuilder
Projects\Examples" documents folder.

You have several different options to handle the backup scenario. For
example:

As part of the installation wizards, I would suggest to display a dialog
that lets the user enable the backup option (e.g. a [X] Backup Data
checkbox) and choose the backup folder. Then, as part of the installation
process, you can ZIP the data into an industry-standard ZIP archive ("Zip
File(s)..." script function) or copy the files to the backup location ("Copy
File(s)..." and "Copy Folder Tree..." script function).

> Also, I have not researched the rollback capability in SB. Is this
> better than backup / restore?

If the install is an update, the (Smart) Rollback feature lets you
"rollback" the software to a previous version. But you should never "log"
any action that is related to data files. An installer should never
delete/rollback user's data files.

Friedrich

[NewsArchive]

Friedrich - when using the Zip Files script function, what is the
ballpark speed of the zip process (how many KB per second/minute)? I
know there are many variables that come into play but just an average
will do for what I need.

Thanks

--
Darrel (Dee) Witham
Professional Data Services, Inc

[NewsArchive]

Hi Darrel,

> Friedrich - when using the Zip Files script function, what is the
> ballpark speed of the zip process (how many KB per second/minute)? I
> know there are many variables that come into play but just an average
> will do for what I need.

Unfortunately, it is impossible to answer this question. Compression
performance (and ratio) depends on the redundancy of symbols in the source
file.

SetupBuilder makes use of the LSZip compression technology. LSZip is one of
the fastest (if not THE fastest) PKWARE 2.04 industry-standard compatible
compression library on the market.

Friedrich

[NewsArchive]

Hi All

It's just a damn shame that Phil Katz died virtually penniless and so many others have made so much money on the back of his work.


Ben E. Brady

[NewsArchive]

Hi Ben,

> It's just a damn shame that Phil Katz died virtually penniless
> and so many others have made so much money on the back of his
> work.

In fact, Phil Katz turned PKWare, Inc. into a multi-million dollar company
($5 million annual sales) and became a millionaire from his shareware work
<g>. But he squandered much of it and ended up having financial problems.
And the sad thing is, PKWare was a candidate for a multi-billion dollar
company :-( But he missed the opportunity to be the first to bring PKZIP to
the Windows platform. He simply had no interest in it. He created an open
standard and published the original .ZIP File Format in 1989 to help ensure
the interoperability of the ZIP format.

Phil was a genius, he was brilliant. In the late '90s, I was in contact
with him. At that time, DynaZip was the only available data ZIP compression
library for developers and because it was a very expensive and buggy
product, I decided to develop LSZip. Phil Katz was kind enough to attest
LSZip to be 100% compatible with the 2.04g standard. He even shared some
interesting data compression ideas and concepts with me (and told me what I
have to do to improve performance in LSZip).

Unfortunately, Phil died of pancreatic bleeding, the result of chronic
alcoholism. His wife sold out to private investors.

Friedrich

[NewsArchive]

Hi Friedrich
Back in the early and mid-80's I ran my own BBSes on multiple platforms, Commodore 64, TRS-80 and PC. I'm intimately familiar with the rise (and fall) of Phil Katz. I was a huge supporter of PKARC and PKZIP, my BBS successes depended heavily upon his software.

When he died, it was widely reported here in the USA that he had basically committed suicide by drinking himself to death. According to news reports at the time of his death, he was found dead in a hotel room with several empty bottles. I remember thinking to myself, "What a waste of a brilliant mind to be so tortured." His company was worth a great deal of money, however he was denied access to it and died broke.

Here is an interesting post from Thom Henderson, the creator of the original ARC compression software.

http://www.esva.net/~thom/philkatz.html


Ben E. Brady

[NewsArchive]

Hi Ben,

> Back in the early and mid-80's I ran my own BBSes on multiple platforms,
> Commodore 64, TRS-80 and PC. I'm intimately familiar with the rise (and
> fall) of Phil Katz. I was a huge supporter of PKARC and PKZIP, my BBS
> successes depended heavily upon his software.

Wow! I had no idea that you ran your own BBSes. Cool. Good old days :)

> When he died, it was widely reported here in the USA that he had basically
> committed suicide by drinking himself to death. According to news reports
> at the time of his death, he was found dead in a hotel room with several
> empty bottles. I remember thinking to myself, "What a waste of a brilliant
> mind to be so tortured." His company was worth a great deal of money,
> however he was denied access to it and died broke.

Very well said. What a waste of a brilliant mind to be so tortured!

BTW, Corel acquired WinZip for $70 million plus $19 million to retire debt
that was outstanding at WinZip prior to the acquisition. So all in all, for
$89 million.

Phil's wife sold out PKWARE to private investors (investment-banking firm
Grace Matthews) for a not-small amount of money.

Friedrich

[NewsArchive]

Hi Friedrich

Yeah, the good old days... My FidoNet node ran on a Tandy 1000 entirely in RAM disk, with custom menus. I didn't have a hard disk in the machine, and I had one floppy disk for uploads and one floppy disk for downloads. (5 1/4 inch floppies)

I had a TRS-80 Model I that I modified by adding another address line to and changing the RAM chips so I could address 64K of RAM within the CPU itself and use the 32K in the expansion interface as bank-switchable memory to use as a print spooler. I could run TRS-DOS, New-DOS 80, DOS-Plus and CPM 2.2 on that machine. I overclocked the CPU, from 1.7 MHz to 5.3 MHz (PCs only ran at 4.77 MHz at the time).

Yeah, good old days...

Ben E. Brady

[NewsArchive]

You should have used my hard drive for the Commodore 64. I wrote an OS for a
SASI hard drive(s) and was one of the 3 hard drives available for the
Commodore. It used the serial port or the parallel port. We actually got on
the cover of both Commodore magazines. Unfortunately the hard drive company
I worked for (JCT) lost their investors just before the article came out.
They didn't have enough money for stamps to send replies. Plus the PC was
making it's way in and people were switching to that OS... who'd a thunk it
:)

My OS ran on a 16k EEprom. That included the serial port and parallel port
drivers, syntax, everything.

People have forgotten how much you can do with a gigabyte.

Anyway, I made hundreds of dollars... so being a hundredaire, I turned to
databases in the form of DbaseIII, then Clarion.

Ray
VMT