[net.micro.mac] HFS deadly folders

maddog@tolerant.UUCP (02/25/86)

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I brought home my brand new HD 20 about a week ago and proceeded to load
onto it most of my goodies and toys (and maybe a few useful things just
to justify the expense to my wife!).  All went well for a week or so.
I am a bit disapointed by the overall performance but that's another
matter.  So yesterday I innocently open one of my folders and ....
the system freezes: nothing responds, no mouse tracking.  So having little
choice, I reboot.  {I suppose I should mention that I was running Finder 5.1
and system version 3.0 at the time).  The system reboots fine and everything
looks OK until I try to open that same folder again - same thing, I reboot
again.  This time I come back up and run Switcher to see if I can run 
anything out of the deadly folder.  No problem; open dialog boxes show me
all the files, the applications run.  A bit perplexed at this point I decide
to backup to floppies everything of value on the HD 20.  That boring chore
out of the way (does anyone have a backup/restore program for HFS?) I
decided that my problem looked like an Finder bug and booted with the
option and command keys held down to force the Finder to rebuild the
desktop file.  As previously reported (I couldn't find the reference), the
system crashed with bomb=02 during the rebuild.  My cries of woe were muted
only by the recollection of that earlier, belatedly recalled article.
Having little left to loose, I tried booting with the mouse button held down
(forcing it to stay with the floppy as the startup disk).  AND LO AND BEHOLD..
my HD 20 desktop file was rebuild and all my files were still there!
The 'deadly folder' was now quite benign! Subsequent normal reboots (onto the
HD 20) were fine.  Apparently the desktop rebuild cured the bad folder and
booting from the floppy cured the desktop rebuild.

Can anyone shed some light on what really happened to me?

			-bill (I'm still glad I made those backups) Arnett

-- 
  Bill Arnett             		{ucbvax,nsc}!tolerant!maddog
  Tolerant Systems, Inc. San Jose
  408/946-5667

borton@sdcc3.UUCP (Chris Borton) (02/26/86)

I found that remaking the DeskTop file on an HD20 is a very good thing to do
every two weeks or so.  One time I shed 77K!

The HD20 System that came with the HD20, System 3.0b2, and System 3.0 all have
the same problem redoing the desktop: if done with the HD as the startup disk
it will bomb at the very end with an Address Error (=02).  The cure for this
is to use a floppy as the startup disk, and it will then work.

Previous Systems/Finders handled remaking the desktop on startup floppies fine.
I kept hoping this problem would be fixed with System 3.0.  I was disappointed.

Has anyone tried this with the new ROMs?  Perhaps they might be the trick.
If someone out there who knows the reasoning behind this (and a solution?) 
please enlighten us.  (Larry?)

If anyone hears of a backup program for the HD20 PLEASE TELL US!!!!  Current
methods of backup (~none) are far too primitive to be associated with a Mac.  

--chris
-------
Chris Borton, UC San Diego Undergraduate CS	
Micro Consultant, UCSD

borton@ucsd.ARPA  or  
...!{ucbvax,decvax,noscvax,ihnp4,bang}!sdcsvax!borton

dudek@utai.UUCP (Gregory Dudek) (03/04/86)

    I've remade my desktop using the HD20 as startup disk on my Mac+
without difficulty several times.  The problems described with remaking
the startup disk's desktop with finder 5.1 & system 3.* must be
related to the old ROMS.  
    It certainly is nice not to have folders dissapear anymore, as they 
did when you remade a MFS Desktop!
    Greg Dudek
-- 
	    Dept. of Computer Science (vision group)    University of Toronto
	    Usenet:	{linus, ihnp4, allegra, decvax, floyd}!utcsri!dudek
	    CSNET:	dudek@Toronto
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