Virtual OS/2 International Consumer Education

February 1999

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editor@os2voice.org
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OS/2 Tips

We scan the Web, Usenet and the OS/2 mail lists looking for these gems. Have you run across an interesting bit of information about OS/2 recently? Please share it with all our readers. Send your tips to editor@os2voice.org

Editor's note: these tips are from OS/2 users and in some cases can not be verified by myself. Please heed this as a warning that if you are not sure about something, don't do it.


January 19, 1999 - Our first tip of the month is from Frank Vos on stardock.os2.support usenet group on the news.stardock.com news server . If you are using Stardock's Object Desktop, here is a tip for Object Navigator:

If you put "SET OBJD_AUTOTILENAV=1" in your config.sys, you will be able to use two object navigators in one window and you can move files between two directories.


January 21, 1999 - Our second tip of the month is from Star Division Customer Support on their news server starnews.stardivision.com in stardivision.com.support.installation. If after to register online, you get an error on restarting Star Office:

It means that your registartion form has been damaged.
- go to /soffice50/config/ look for 'Oreg.sdw' and delete it.
- Run setup and choose 'Repair'.
You should have no problem anymore.


January 31, 1999 -Looking for an enhanced shutdown function, then Roger Lindmark on the TeamOS/2 List suggests trying the one in XFolder:

http://www2.rz.hu-berlin.de/~h0444vnd/xfolder.htm
Yes, I use it to and it works very well. However, to be able to Shutdown from WarpCenter you have to drag the XShutdown object to WarpCenter. If you install XFolder I recommend that you run the REXX-script bootmgr.cmd than all your partitions in BootManager are written to XFolder, so you can directly choose which partition to boot too. If you do not run this script you have to write it manually, which can cause problem if you misspell. I can boot to my DOS, Warp 4 and Service partition without passing BootManager. I can not boot to my Linux partition, which I think is due to I have Lilo prior BootManager i.e when I reboot I first choose Bootmanager in Lilo and then in BootManager I make the second choice. With XFolder the shutdown of OS/2 gets much better than Win95.

BTW, bootmgr.cmd is written by Duane. Great script this. Also if anyone is interested to translate XFolder to french for instance contact Ulrich Mueller.

Sincerely Yours

Roger


February 2, 1999 - Steven Levine had this great tip on the POSSI discussion list about how to see the IRQ setting assigned to your network card:

RMVIEW, typically, will not report NIC's because they do not report to the Resource Mananger. The MPTS applet OS2SNIFF works sometimes.

Editor's note: OS2SNIFF.EXE can be found in your x:\IBMINST directory. It only displays the hardware information for network cards


February 3, 1999 - On TeamOS/2 Help List here is a tip on copy/paste using EPM from Stewart Pelegan in answer to another person's problem with files being too large to copy to the clipboard:

When you say "...too large for the clipboard", am I to assume that you highlighted the text in one file, and were not able to do a Cntl-Ins and then a Shift-Ins?

If so, there are two other EPM options.

One, make sure you have "Ring enabled" set under Options/Preferences. Open both files in EPM. If you want to copy from File_A to File_B, highlight the section in File_A like before; go to the first line, hit Alt-l, do a Cntrl-Home(or End) and hit Alt-l again. Now go to File_B. You can do that by either hitting F11, F12, or click on the clockwise or counter-clockwise icons at the upper right hand corner. Move the cursor to the line in File_B below which you'd like to see the text from File_A appear. Hit Alt-C, and it should be copied.

Or, open File_B. Move the cursor to the place you want File_A inserted. Then click on File/Import text file...and you should be ok.

If you've tried both of these and still get the clipboard error, you can try the copy command:

copy file_a + file_b file_c

Do a HELP COPY command for more details.

Or, if you want to insert file_b after file_a, you can try:

type file_b >> file_a

If none of these don't work, it's time to start banging your head against the wall.

Stewart Pelegan


February 6, 1999 -Are you running TCP/IP 4.1 or greater and experiencing growing route tables? Ivan Adzhubei has this work around on the OS/2 ISP mail list:

This is a known problem (feature?) of tcpip 4.1 (and 4.2). At least I suppose what you are describing is the 'W3 routes' bug. Tcpip 4.1(2) adds permanent non-expiring routes to each and every external host you ever tried to reach. On a heavy network-active server this will soon lead to routing table overflow.

Workaround 1:

Add netmask of 255.255.255.0 to your default route statement in C:\MPTN\BIN\SETUP.CMD. Of course, netmask is not needed in default route, but adding it prevents permanent external routes to be added to routing table. Should look like this:

route add -default xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx -netmask 255.255.255.0

Workaround 2:

Flush routing tables periodically (you have mentioned this method). You can use grep/sh, perl or REXX script to look for 'W3' flags and remove only external routes marked with it.

Cheers,
Ivan


February 7, 1999 - Are you trying the new port of the Hexen/2 game and having joystick problems? here's a tip from Marty in comp.os.os2.games
Do you have a joystick plugged into your system that you're not using? If so, make sure you calibrate the joystick by deleting the joystick.clb file in the Hexen directory, starting the program, and moving the joystick to all extremes.

- Marty


February 11, 1999 - Here's another Hexen/2 related tip (guess you can tell where I've been spending time these days). This one is from Jostein Ullestad, the person doing the port:

You all know that there are several WAD files out there waiting to be played?
To use these use the parameter -file
Eg.
HexOS2.exe -file xxx.wad

http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/8666/heretic.html
http://shareware.gamespot.com/adjuncts/000cq9.html

Have fun
Jostein
http://www.powerutilities.no/


February 12, 1999 - Well if you haven't downloaded and installed the latest refresh version of Communicator for OS/2 then you are not getting in on the loads discussions now on usenet and the mail lists. What's fixed, what's not, what's broken now? Anyway here are a couple of tips I gleamed so far:

From David Eckard on the NS4OS2 mail list:

I didn't know what the Update Bookmarks function was supposed to do, so I clicked on it. It checks your bookmarks to see if they still exist. It changes the Icon in the bookmark list to have a question mark on it. cool, especially since my list often get out of date.

From Ken Yuill on the same list about the same Update Bookmark function:

Yes, it's a real nice feature, especially if you've imported old Navigator bookmarks.

Hint: Select "Disable Cookies" in Preferences->Advanced or you'll be doing a lot of clicking.

Next we have some tips on sorting Bookmarks from NS4OS2 list:

First from David Eckard:

left click on bookmarks
left click on edit
highlight what you want to sort
if you want to sort a folder for example highlight that
if you want to sort a selection, you have to hold down the control key
while selecting click on view
click on one of
By Name
By Location
By Created On
By Last Visited
At this point, the sort assending and sort descending should ungrey.
clock on sort selected.

This assumes that you want to sort selections rather than the whole list.

=================================================================
David Eckard

Finally Mike Kaply chimed in on sorting bookmarks as well:

Sort by Name is a visual sort, it does not actually resort the file itself. If you want to change it back, select Sort by name again and it turns off.

If you want to sort some bookmarks, select them (they must be clustered) or select a folder and select "Sort Selected Bookmarks"

This is the only options that genuinely sorts bookmarks on disk.

Mike


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