[comp.sys.atari.st] Looking for way to compress a whole floppy

kibo@pawl23.pawl.rpi.edu (James Parry) (12/04/88)

[]
	I'm looking for a way to compress an *entire* floppy (subdirectories
and all files - boot sectors etc. aren't necessary) into a file.  (This
is so that I can post a collection of TeX fonts to CompuServe, so that
people won't have to create two dozen folders and move the hundred or so
files in one at a time...)
	Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
	--
	James "Kibo" Parry
	kibo%pawl.rpi.edu@itsgw.rpi.edu
	userfe0n@rpitsmts (bitnet)
	72347,2731 [Compu$erve]

Bob_BobR_Retelle@cup.portal.com (12/05/88)

James Parry askes for a way to compress a floppy disk, including folders
and files, into one file suitable for uploading...
 
I believe that the utility called "Magic Shadow" will do this, and that it's
Public Domain too...   I'm not 100% sure if it's available on CompuServe,
but it's worth checking in the Utilities DL area...
 
The only drawback to using a system like this is that it would have to
be clearly explained in the upload description that a non-standard utility
is required to extract the disk, but it *would* be far better than having to
reconstruct the folders manually..!
 
BobR

c60a-2bn@web-1c.berkeley.edu (Lawrence Chiu) (12/06/88)

You can use Shadow V1.03 (shareware) to compress an entire disk into a file.

It should be up on your local BBS as well as the pay services.

Lawrence Y. Chiu; University of California, Berkeley.

braner@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu (Moshe Braner) (12/06/88)

[]

I don't know of a program that will do it for you as-is,
but should be easy to write one along these lines:
(The actual program can be shorter than this description!)

1) load the whole floppy into RAM as one block, using one call
to Rwabs().  (First get the block of RAM using the TOS Malloc()
call, NOT the C compiler's malloc()...)

2) save that block into a file on your hard disk using one call
to the TOS function Fwrite() (preceded, of course, by Fopen, etc).

3) (later, outside that program:) run ARC on that file to
compress it, and upload.  (The 360K should be compressed
down to 180K or better.)

Optimization: write the files to a freshly formatted floppy,
to make sure the files are not fragmented and there are no
"holes".  Then make the program find out which is the last data
sector actually used on the floppy, and only copy up to that
sector.  You can find code to do that in my program FLEXCOPY.

Note: to make sure everybody can get it and like it, use
a STANDARD TOS formatted floppy disk to start with.  Also
you may want to use a single-sided floppy since some poor
souls out there are still stuck with those obsolete SS drives :-)

- Moshe Braner

teege@lan.informatik.tu-muenchen.dbp.de (Gunnar Teege) (12/06/88)

I wrote a Program called "darc" which uses arc to recursively
collect a whole folder tree into a single file and unarc it
again to restore the tree. You can found it at the Atarinet-
Server in Houston (Bitnet). If this doesn't work I can mail
it on request or post it to the binaries group.

G. Teege

uace0@uhnix2.uh.edu (Michael B. Vederman) (12/06/88)

In article <17822@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> c60a-2bn@web-1c.berkeley.edu (Lawrence Chiu) writes:
>
>You can use Shadow V1.03 (shareware) to compress an entire disk into a file.
>
>It should be up on your local BBS as well as the pay services.
>
>Lawrence Y. Chiu; University of California, Berkeley.


Please note that the *FULL* name of this utility is 'Magic Shadow Archiver'
and it is *NOT* SHADOW the background transfer program (which we wrote).
Our SHADOW is *NOT* shareware.

- mike vederman
Double Click Software

-- 
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University Atari Computer Enthusiasts : University of Houston UACE

wardlaw@ucrmath.UUCP (Johnie Wardlaw) (12/07/88)

I think that the "tar" utility posted to the binaries recently will archive
subdirectories, etc. (at least the Unix version does) then you can compress
the archive file using arc, compress, etc.

The ZOO archiver (available for PC, Unix, and Amiga so far) would be ideal,
as it can handle directories, but I have yet to see a full archiver come
across the net.  There was a BOOZ (zoo file extracter only) utility, however.

Hope this helps.

Johnie Wardlaw

c60a-2bn@web-1a.berkeley.edu (Lawrence Chiu) (12/08/88)

Sorry about that, Mike.  I should have made that clear.

The program that compresses an entire disk is Magic Shadow Archiver R1.03.

Shadow from Double Click is an entirely different beast.
Lawrence Y. Chiu; University of California, Berkeley.

covertr@gtephx.UUCP (Richard E. Covert) (12/13/88)

there are two public domain program to archive complete disks (including
folders and subfolders). One is called CRUNCH or SCRUNCH and the other
is called the Magic Shadow Archiver. CRUNCH came out first but its main
hadicap is that you have to preformat the destination floppy with the 
correct format of the original floppy BEFORE running CRUNCH. And there
is no way to know what the original floppy's format was except trail and
error.

Magic Shadow Archiver produces an output file with 'MSA' as the filetype.
And MSA will correctly format the destination floppy as the 'MSA' file contains
that information.

I am not sure if thes programs are on GEnie, as they are public domain you
shouldn't have any problem locating them. 

Good luck!!!

Richard Covert

teege@lan.informatik.tu-muenchen.dbp.de (Gunnar Teege) (12/13/88)

I got several requests for my "darc"-program that I mentioned in
my last article. So I just posted it to the binaries group. I
hope it will show up soon.

G. Teege

teege@lan.informatik.tu-muenchen.dbp.de (Gunnar Teege) (12/14/88)

Sorry,
I promised to post the program DARC (for arc'ing whole folder trees)
to the binaries group, but Steve told me, that it was there already!
(it did not reach our node then, so I thought it got lost). So
please look in an archive for the binaries group for the program.
If you can't get it this way and absolutely want to have it,
mail to me and I will send it per mail. (Warning: the program is
SLOW, because it simply arc's the folders recursively. It does not
store boot sectors or other copy protection gimmicks, but only
normal folders, subfolders and so on. But it works on all devices
and on arbitraryly deep nested subfolders.)

G. Teege

ljdickey@water.waterloo.edu (Lee Dickey) (01/05/89)

In article <4037e250.14e07@gtephx.UUCP> covertr@gtephx.UUCP (Richard E. Covert) writes:
> ...
>Magic Shadow Archiver produces an output file with 'MSA' as the filetype.
>And MSA will correctly format the destination floppy as the 'MSA' file contains
>that information.

I would like to try this program.  Could someone tell me where to
find it?  Perhaps it could be posted to this newsgroup.

-- 
    L. J. Dickey, Faculty of Mathematics, University of Waterloo.
	ljdickey@WATDCS.UWaterloo.ca	ljdickey@water.BITNET
	ljdickey@water.UUCP		..!uunet!watmath!water!ljdickey
	ljdickey@water.waterloo.edu	

dyer@math.lsa.umich.edu (Jon Brode) (01/06/89)

The magic shadow archiver is available for anonymous ftp
from PC7. It is called shadow.arc.

The index is still very much outdated, but steps are being
taken to rectify the situation. 

Jon Brode  --  dyer@math.lsa.umich.edu
  PC7 moderator, Atari God

robocop@netmbx.UUCP (Thorsten Ebers) (01/09/89)

In article <535@stag.math.lsa.umich.edu> dyer@math.lsa.umich.edu (Jon Brode) writes:
]The magic shadow archiver is available for anonymous ftp
]from PC7. It is called shadow.arc.

There are more ways to compress a whole disk !

One is darc.ttp which invokes arc.ttp for each subdirectory rekursively.

Another one is FOLDER.PRG (also called AR.PRG).
It compresses a whole path including all subdirectories !

As far as I can remember by heart it is written by somebody at the Tech. Univ.
of Berlin...
It's seems not to be known widely, although I saw it quite often in BBSs here
in Berlin.

If some Bitnet-User sends me his mail-address I'll send a copy of it, so you
can get your own impression of it. I'm not mailing it outside the bitnet,
because that would mean to spend a lot of money (0.60 DM/KB via Pyramid or
1.10 DM/KB via unido !) I do not have.

Please reply using the bitnet (ripley%netmbx.uucp@db0tui6.bitnet), I have to
pay incoming data as well !


-- 
==       Greetings from :       ==      Hans-Ch.Eckert, Regensburger Str. 2 ==
==  *** ripley@netmbx.UUCP ***  ==	1000 Berlin 30    [Tel: 030/246292] ==
==============================================================================
==			Superkalifragilistikexpialigetisch !  (Mary P.)     ==

I  post this because Hans asked me to post this again,beecause he is not
able to post his article worldwide.
thorsten


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