mart@momenta (Martin O. Gates) (09/02/90)
I am running dos 4.01 on one of my machines and I get a warning at boot time that I should load share.exe for large media. When I look at the manual entry for share I can find no justification for loading it because I have large media. Can anyone explain why I should load it or better yet tell me why I should not? Text of message: WARNING! SHARE should be loaded for large media I have a 386SX clone with a Conner 100Meg drive in one huge partition. Thanks, Martin O. Gates
belt@freyr.pttrnl.nl (Evert van de Belt) (09/04/90)
The same warning appears on my screen whilst booting up. I took a dive in the user guide and there it said: "Nothing !!". So I took another dive and this time into this network and somewhere it said that SHARE should be loaded for DOS 4.01 to remain compatible with very old versions of DOS like 1.**. I can't remember where I read it, but if you don't use very old software, don't use SHARE, it will only fill precious memory. Good luck, Evert van de Belt
cjp@beartrk.beartrack.com (CJ Pilzer) (09/05/90)
In article <1990Sep1.183023.24393@momenta>, mart@momenta (Martin O. Gates) writes: > > I am running dos 4.01 on one of my machines and I get a warning at > boot time that I should load share.exe for large media. When I look at the > manual entry for share I can find no justification for loading it because I > have large media. Can anyone explain why I should load it or better yet > tell me why I should not? The reason for running share is protect the FAT and the data on your hard disk from corruption. The usual way for recent programs to access dos files is through the use of handles assigned by dos. In the first version of dos there was no such service. At that time, files were access through File Control Blocks (FCB). File handles were introduced in ver. 2.0. In order to stay compatible with users of ver 1.0, some authors continued to use FCB's. In fact, SIDEKICK still uses them I think. If one of these programs is run in a partition larger than 32 megs. it will corrupt the FAT and make all data in that partition unavalible. Programming to prevent this damage is included in SHARE.EXE along with other code for use with shared files. If you just copy SHARE.EXE over into your root partition (or where you keep COMMAND.COM), it will be automatically loaded when necessary without any further action by you, when you boot the computer.
marshall@wind55.seri.gov (Marshall L. Buhl) (09/05/90)
belt@freyr.pttrnl.nl (Evert van de Belt) writes: >The same warning appears on my screen whilst booting up. I took a dive >in the user guide and there it said: "Nothing !!". So I took another >dive and this time into this network and somewhere it said that SHARE >should be loaded for DOS 4.01 to remain compatible with very old versions >of DOS like 1.**. I can't remember where I read it, but if you don't >use very old software, don't use SHARE, it will only fill precious >memory. And if you do happen to use an old program and don't have SHARE loaded, pray that you have good backups - it can trash your disk. > Good luck, You will need it if you run without SHARE. > Evert van de Belt -- Marshall L. Buhl, Jr. EMAIL: marshall@seri.gov Senior Computer Missionary VOICE: (303)231-1014 Wind Research Branch 1617 Cole Blvd., Golden, CO 80401-3393 Solar Energy Research Institute Solar - safe energy for a healthy future
scjones@thor.UUCP (Larry Jones) (09/05/90)
In article <belt.652436461@freyr>, belt@freyr.pttrnl.nl (Evert van de Belt) writes: > So I took another > dive and this time into this network and somewhere it said that SHARE > should be loaded for DOS 4.01 to remain compatible with very old versions > of DOS like 1.**. I can't remember where I read it, but if you don't > use very old software, don't use SHARE, it will only fill precious > memory. Allow me to reiterate once again -- SHARE is required for the old (DOS 1) FCB functions to work correctly on large partitions. Although DOS 2.0 introduced handle functions which were intended to replace the FCB functions, there are some cases where the FCB functions are much more efficient than the handle functions so THEY ARE STILL USED IN SOME NEW SOFTWARE. If you have a large DOS 4 partition and you don't load SHARE, sooner or later you WILL have to restore your disk from a backup because some piece of software has trashed it. ---- Larry Jones UUCP: uunet!sdrc!thor!scjones SDRC scjones@thor.UUCP 2000 Eastman Dr. BIX: ltl Milford, OH 45150-2789 AT&T: (513) 576-2070 Yep, we'd probably be dead by now if it wasn't for Twinkies. -- Calvin
dhesi%cirrusl@oliveb.ATC.olivetti.com (Rahul Dhesi) (09/06/90)
In <442@beartrk.beartrack.com> cjp@beartrk.beartrack.com (CJ Pilzer) writes:
In order to stay compatible with users of ver 1.0, some authors
continued to use FCB's... If one of these programs is run in a
partition larger than 32 megs. it will corrupt the FAT and make
all data in that partition unavalible. Programming to prevent
this damage is included in SHARE.EXE along with other code for use
with shared files.
Would it be fair to say, then, that MS-DOS has a serious disk-
corrupting bug, and SHARE.EXE is the bug fix? A program that goes
strictly through the MS-DOS system calls should *never* cause FAT
corruption if the operating system is working correctly.
--
Rahul Dhesi <dhesi%cirrusl@oliveb.ATC.olivetti.com>
UUCP: oliveb!cirrusl!dhesi
toma@tekgvs.LABS.TEK.COM (Tom Almy) (09/07/90)
In article <156@thor.UUCP> scjones@thor.UUCP (Larry Jones) writes: >In article <belt.652436461@freyr>, belt@freyr.pttrnl.nl (Evert van de Belt) writes: >> [...] I can't remember where I read it, but if you don't >> use very old software, don't use SHARE, it will only fill precious >> memory. >Allow me to reiterate once again -- SHARE is required for the old (DOS >1) FCB functions to work correctly on large partitions. Although DOS >2.0 introduced handle functions which were intended to replace the FCB >functions, there are some cases where the FCB functions are much more >efficient than the handle functions so THEY ARE STILL USED IN SOME NEW >SOFTWARE. If you have a large DOS 4 partition and you don't load >SHARE, sooner or later you WILL have to restore your disk from a >backup because some piece of software has trashed it. Which is why I wrote NOSHARE.COM, a TSR that causes any attempt to open or create a file with FCBs to return "failure". This tiny program doesn't cause problems with file sharing (which one tends to get with SHARE) and should prevent against disk corruption. It also effectively tells you about old programs that should be tossed. Because Microsoft doesn't document what SHARE actually does, use NOSHARE at your own risk (it does work for me). There might be something else I should guard against but don't. As an endorsement, Microsoft recommends *against* the use of NOSHARE, so I figure it has got to be good :-). section 1 of uuencode 3.16 of file noshare.com by R.E.M. begin 644 noshare.com MZ0@`]`$`````"@"\FA_'!@4!F!^]_A^)+@<!_.@Z`+@`3,TA`````(#\#W0*` M@/P6=`4N_RZ``+#_SUY86EL>CMNT)<TA'__FM#7-(8G8C,/#N@H`N``QS2'H> M2@`'3D]32$%21>A1`.@\``M">2!4;VT@06QM>>@_`+@A`.C)_Z,D`8D>)@&ZB M)`%2NH``4KH6`%+H40",R%"ZA`!2NB$`4NB7_^FK_UN*!S#D0U-0`<-86E.)= MT^DA`+@-`.@)`+@*`.D#``$``*+&`;1`N0$`NL8!BQ[$`<TAPXG!B=J+'L0!; 3M$#-(<-;65]>XP:,V([`\Z3_XZ3_F `` end sum -r/size 53542/375 section (from "begin" to "end") sum -r/size 4841/244 entire input file Tom Almy toma@tekgvs.labs.tek.com Standard Disclaimers Apply
scjones@thor.UUCP (Larry Jones) (09/08/90)
In article <2363@cirrusl.UUCP>, dhesi%cirrusl@oliveb.ATC.olivetti.com (Rahul Dhesi) writes: > [ about SHARE.EXE being required for large partitions ] > Would it be fair to say, then, that MS-DOS has a serious disk- > corrupting bug, and SHARE.EXE is the bug fix? A program that goes > strictly through the MS-DOS system calls should *never* cause FAT > corruption if the operating system is working correctly. No, I don't think so. SHARE.EXE is an attempt to modularize DOS so that you can save precious memory by not installing parts that you don't need. If you don't install a part that you do need, it trys to install it itself and complains if it can't so that you know that there's a problem. If you chose to ignore the warning, then you deserve whatever happens. Mind you, I DO think they could have documented the whole thing a lot better, and trashing the disk is a rather severe consequence. On the whole, though, I prefer that to simply refusing to boot or adding code to all of the FCB functions to check for invalid usage which would bloat DOS and slow it down as well. ---- Larry Jones UUCP: uunet!sdrc!thor!scjones SDRC scjones@thor.UUCP 2000 Eastman Dr. BIX: ltl Milford, OH 45150-2789 AT&T: (513) 576-2070 It's like SOMEthing... I just can't think of it. -- Calvin
keithe@tekgvs.LABS.TEK.COM (Keith Ericson) (09/15/90)
In article <8110@tekgvs.LABS.TEK.COM> keithe@tekgvs.LABS.TEK.COM (Keith Ericson) writes: In article <belt.652436461@freyr> belt@freyr.pttrnl.nl (Evert van de Belt) writes: >I can't remember where I read it, but if you don't >use very old software, don't use SHARE, it will only fill precious >memory. > I just discovered (it may be documented in the manual, but you know how that goes!) that WordPerfect's "Notebook" (database) won't start up properly if share.exe is not running. And Tom Almy informs me that their Printer Driver modification program won't run if share _is_ running! Go figure... kEITHe