UpdIni for OS/2 Warp has been released and you can download it for free from this web site:
http://www.uni-bonn.de/~uzs0ad
UpdIni moves the files OS2.INI and OS2SYS.INI into a ramdisk and copies these files back to harddisk in regular intervals. The idea of this is to accelerate the WPS.

Documentation for UPDINI.EXE
(c) 1999 Peter Engels
translated by Michael Feldmann

History

V 1.0 : primary release
V 1.1 : Evaluation of USER_INI and SYSTEM_INI statements

What is UpdIni?

UpdIni moves the files OS2.INI and OS2SYS.INI into a ramdisk and copies these files back to harddisk in regular intervals.
The idea of this is to accelerate the WPS.
The WPS updates these INI files in irregular intervals with high priority, thus closing off all other activities during this time. If the INI files are located on a RAM disk, access time is significantly reduced. The user will not even notice any activity. With RAM disk data being transient, the INI files have to be backed up on harddisk periodically.
For this purpose UpdIni checks the date and time stamps of these files in the given interval. In case of a discrepancy UpdIni copies the INI files from RAM disk back to harddisk with idle-task priority.

WARNING : The changes which the WPS writes into the INI files when shutting down the system will not be copied anymore! This may be relevant when there are important entries having being changed immediately before system shutdown.
A possible scenario might be the automatic reboot in the course of a program installation. With an installation pending, I would definitely reset the SET INI parameters to point to the correct harddisk entries!
 

The commandline parameters

UpdIni expects two parameters :
First, the path for the INI files on your harddisk (normally D:\OS2), and second, the update interval in seconds.

e.g. : UpdIni D:\OS2\ 10

In this example every ten seconds the INI files will be checked and possibly written back from the Ramdisk to the directory D:\OS2.
The drive letter for the RamDisk and the names of the INI files are extracted from the USER_INI and SYSTEM_INI environment variables.

With UpdIni working completely in the background, there is no message whatsoever on screen.
If UpdIni cannot find one of the INI files only a short beep will inform you about this error and the program terminates.
 

Installing UpdIni

Installing the program is extremely easy.
Simply copy UpdIni.EXE to any directory of your harddisk. Now either you insert the following line into CONFIG.SYS

run=drive:\path\updini.exe INI-Path interval

or you create a symbol in your system startup folder. In this case, however, you will get a symbol on your desktop when running the program.

Furthermore, you have to change the entries for the INI files in your CONFIG.SYS:

SET USER_INI=N:\OS2.INI
SET SYSTEM_INI=N:\OS2SYS.INI

with drive N:\ being your Ramdisk. Here is no path allowed!
UpdIni generates a LOG-File.

Internals

UpdIni was written in TopSpeed Modula-2 and is a 16-bit OS/2 program. It is a multithreading program, thus causing almost no system load.
The program is based on an idea by Carsten Arnold.
 

Registration

UpdIni is freeware and may be used by anyone in any way,
as long as the program and the documentation is not changed.
If you use the program regularly the author  would appreciate a little email.
If you have ideas for changes and/or improvement or even find a bug, please feel free to email Peter Engels as well.

CONTACT AUTHOR

Peter Engels
e-mail : p.engels@gmx.de
URL: http://www.uni-bonn.de/~uzs0ad
 

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