InetRes updating automatic

For anyone curious, with PtrCfg it was referring to Boot:Choices.Boot.PreDesk contrary to the note in PRM5a-540 which urges you to refer to PreDesk “as <Boot$ToBeLoaded> to preserve for future compatibility, should the structure of boot applications change” or <Choices$Write>.Boot.PreDesk alternatively.

Since this thread is already wildly off-topic… does anyone know whether there’s a clean way to refer to the variables in RiscPkg? My Uptime module currently gets installed into Boot.Choices.Boot.PreDesk and it sounds like that’ll break!

Edit: Maybe I should actually read the docs, as it’s already mentioned in there. I’ve fixed up the package and it should come through PackMan in the next wee while.

I realised the Filer might be better faulting attempts to copy or move an unhidden system application (eg. on an install floppy) to the root of the boot drive as it would appear to vanish into a black hole, so will have a think about how best to present that.

Having first forgotten about this, then mulled it some more since April 2022, finally I can ask for brave souls to try hidesys3.zip which contains a Pi and Titanium ROM plus the disc bits.

The ability to relocate Choices/!Scrap has already been integrated into recent nightly builds, so it’s just the Filer setup plugin that needs testing. For the ROM, my solution to being worried about dropping things into a black hole was to update Filer Action to halt any copy/move jobs if Filer says the special OS applications are currently hidden.

Please give it a go, if it doesn’t fall apart at the seams I’ll get it submitted to ROOL.

;) I was brave enough, my observations:-

• After following the instructions my system rebooted fine, and I was able to hide !Boot, !Scrap. After my initial skepticism about being able to hide !Boot, etc. it is a nice touch.
• !Netsurf broke
• !Ovation Pro, !Zap worked
• PDF production failed towards the end of the following Print, PrintPDF, and view PDF (I’ll update with error detail if it helps?)

!Netsurf broke

Unsurprising as NetSurf puts the font cache in !Scrap (amongst other slightly dubious behaviour) IIRC

Please give it a go, if it doesn’t fall apart at the seams I’ll get it submitted to ROOL.

Seams seem good here, nothing unfortunate has happened. Both Choices and Scrap have been moved from !Boot to the root, and hidden.

The protection of the hidden directories is doing what is intended.

No Netsurf issues have been seen.

!Netsurf broke

I could imagine it would be upset if !Scrap was moved while it was running (its log and the RuFL cache live in there). After moving !Scrap it’s probably worth a restart just in case something has a system variable pointing to the old location. Certainly NetSurf 3.10 seems happy here.

I’ve narrowed the issue with Netsurf (3.10) down to the supplied ROM, as switching back to RISC OS 5.28 solves it; happy to supply debug info, if needed. I’m testing on a Pi3B.

Have tried RC2 disc image but using Sprow’s ROM (27-Feb-2023) for the Pi and !Boot tweaks, which I suppose is RC2½ for the Pi. Using a CM4 I notice that the rom sees eMMc but as drive 0. The disc image has SparkFS 1.46 (read only) rather than 1.51 (r/w).

The hiding of the !Boot directory seems to work fine but many applications say ‘copy the supplied !Boot directory over the !Booot directory on your boot drive’ (necessary in the case of VRPC which does not have boot merge) and this will no longer work with !Boot hidden.

Testing continues …

necessary in the case of VRPC which does not have boot merge

But if you are running VRPC you are presumably not running a ROM with a Filer that can hide !Boot?
So if you can hide !Boot you also have Boot merge.

say ‘copy the supplied !Boot directory over the !Boot directory on your boot drive’ and this will no longer work with !Boot hidden.

This depends on whether the !boot directory is hidden from view only, or also blocked from writing. If the former dragging the supplied !boot onto the root of the boot drive should still work.

With the !Boot hidden, dragging a new !Boot into the root directory will fail with a message ‘The current operation is prevented because it would overwrite a hidden system directory’, which will stop accidental overwrites. However, using Configure → Boot → Install to merge it and log changes still works as normal.

Not suprisingly, Director still includes !Boot in it’s menus and can be used normally – it is only the Filer that hides it.

The hiding of the !Boot directory seems to work fine but many applications say ‘copy the supplied !Boot directory over the !Boot directory

Minor update hidesys4.zip now distinguishes that case and Filer Action reminds you to merge using the Boot setup plug-in.

Filer Action reminds you to merge using the Boot setup plug-in

Welcome applause! Can it do that even if !Boot is not hidden?

Steve said

NetSurf puts the font cache in !Scrap (amongst other slightly dubious behaviour)

If I could achieve one thing on this planet it would be to get people to understand the difference between a cache and a store. Then I could die happy.

NetSurf’s dreadful thing is not a cache.

It’s misconceived, unscaleable, unpermissioned, unwelcome and many other things, but it certainly isn’t a cache. It’s a store.

get people to understand the difference between a cache and a store

Easy. A cache is where you throw transient data for rapid retrieval, a store is where you build necessary data.

A cache may persist between times when the program is executed, but the data in the cache is simply there to speed up future operations on said data.

While it sounds a lot like a store, there is one critical difference. If you delete all of the files in the cache, then the program will just work as normal and will start dropping files into the cache as they are fetched/built/whatever.

If, however, the first thing the program does is freak out and start rebuilding files as soon as it is started with them missing, then it’s a store and not a cache. If the file is necessary, then the system cache (!Scrap) is about the dumbest place to put it. It should probably go in Choices somewhere.
<Rick looks sideways at Choices:WWW.Iris.cache>

@Sprow: Hidesys4 works here for me – a helpful message if I drag a !Boot to the Filer over a hidden !Boot.
And Boot Merge still works.

It’s misconceived, unscaleable, unpermissioned, unwelcome and many other things, but it certainly isn’t a cache. It’s a store.

Which makes it worse.

NetSurf’s font cache is provided by RUfL, a library which is used by a few other applications as well. It’s open source, and anyone who has a better idea for where to store it, or what to call it, can probably get involved and get it changed. I have written applications which rely on RUfL but I have not contributed to the source code myself.

Steve suggested

Which makes it worse.

Absolutely.

I have well over 5,000 fonts. Guess how well it copes with that. It gives me no option, no choice, it doesn’t ask for permission, it just scrapes data from thousands and thousands of fonts it’ll never touch just in case it might need it.

Does. Not. Scale.

Hidesys4 works here for me – a helpful message if I drag a !Boot to the Filer over a hidden !Boot. And Boot Merge still works.

Thanks Martin, Chris, David, Ron, Doug, and Andrew for trying out the prototypes. I’ve finally got organised and submitted them so can hopefully get back to the original task in hand (and the reason it’s tacked onto a thread about updating InetRes): to sort out the PackMan scripts so the stuff inside !Boot gets packaged.

Who knows, one day we might remove the manual faffing involved when a new stable release of the OS comes out?

While using the HideSys4 ROM, waiting for the HideSys changes to appear in the nightly ROMs, this morning I softloaded today’s ROM to get the ShareFS fix.

At boot I had an error message message Filer_Visibility not found caused by me previously setting Hide System Directories in Config.

This was easily fixed by adding an X before the command in FlrSetup. However, it raises a more general issue as I have also had similar problems booting from 5.24 after using the recent Theme Config, which had added some additional keyword options to WimpVisualFlags.

Should any config changes likely to cause such problems always create obey files with X before any commands which may cause problems?