mju@mudos.ann-arbor.mi.us (Marc Unangst) (12/22/89)
I have recently begun playing around DESQview. I'm planning on running a BBS in the background, and have some concerns about how it handles file sharing (with apps not written for DV). I'd like to run my mail-packer in the background, while my BBS software is in the foreground. The problem is that, every 10 minutes, the BBS software checks the outbound directory to see if there's any mail to send. If there is, it dials up the appropriate system, and then sends it. This wouldn't be a problem under a single-tasking system, since the mail-packer would never be running at the same time the BBS would be. However, a problem could arise if the BBS rescans the outbound directory while the mail-packer is in the middle of creating a packet. It will see the unfinished packet there, dial up the other system, and then send an incomplete packet. Then, of course, it will truncate the unfinished packet, and...A lot of confusion will result. I've tried running DOS's SHARE.EXE in the background, because the description says something about "enable file-sharing". However, all this does is pop up the critical error-handler, and the system hangs at the Abort, Retry, Fail prompt. This is not a good thing for an unattended system. So...Does anybody have a program that works the same way SHARE.EXE works, but instead of triggering the critical-error handler, just returns an error (EBUSY?)? This would let my BBS go on, and prevent it from sending the file until the mail-packer was done. -- Marc Unangst | "The only limit to our realization of Internet: mju@mudos.ann-arbor.mi.us | tomorrow will be our doubts of today." UUCP : ...!uunet!sharkey!mudos!mju | - Franklin D. Roosevelt Fidonet : Marc Unangst of 1:120/129.0 +--------------------------------------- BBS : The Starship Enterprise, 1200/2400 bps, +1 313 665-2832