Subj : Seal386 error message
To : Kevin Klement
From : Mike Tripp
Date : Wed Jun 29 2005 08:05 am
Hello Kevin!
28 Jun 05 16:37, Kevin Klement wrote to Mike Tripp:
>> Correcting the distribution errors or
>> manually verifying SEAL.INI?
KK> Both... :) Do I edit both or just one, specifically.
Ideally, you would've known about the syntax bugs in the distribution files and
manually made both corrections before you started. Those strings are used as
default templates for area creation, but you can customize them. I'm guessing
you must've already done that for the ;Echospec line, or you'd probably be
having trouble with all uplinks. The other is a ;Filespec line and you're not
concerned with FileFeeds right now.
KK> Do I just edit "seal.ini" and then run seal386 update?
KK> Which files do I edit specifically?
SEAL.INI looks like any old ASCII-based text configuration file such as
BINKLEY.CFG. SEALCFG.EXE is a nested menu configuration program like you find
in FD or IREX. Most config programs accept the user input and then produce a
cryptic binary file (which you little hope of fixing if corrupted) that the
main program uses during execution. SEALCFG actually just updates the ASCII
text to SEAL.INI and SEAL.EXE parses SEAL.INI on each execution run. So you
have the option of using the config program w/pretty user interface and/or
editing the ASCII directly with your text editor or batch logic.
If you make changes in SEALCFG, it automatically replicates any changes that
are necessary out to the other CFG files that are impacted...namely, SQUISH.CFG
and TICK.CFG. If you make changes directly to the text in SEAL.INI, you have
the extra step of running SEAL UPDATE to force the replication of those changes
out to the impacted files.
Troubleshooting the setup through the menued front-end can be difficult because
you are only accessing one attribute/field of one specific record on the screen
at a time. Discrepancies can be a lot easier to spot in the ASCII file itself
where there is only one long line per nodelink/feed and all of the lines of the
same type are grouped together into consecutive lines and you can see all the
working ones right alongside the one you're having trouble with. Even new link
setup can be simplified with some copy+modify: I want Joe to work just like
Frank, except his address=xxx, his password=yyy, and I will flag his areas with
Z instead of A.
So fire that editor up and search your way to the string "ECHOFEED" and see
what's different about your entry for the newsgroup feed address as compared to
the others that are working. It is probably something as simple a non-existent
path or a missing trailing slash, etc. Don't let the runtime error make you
think that the code is hosed. Robert was more concerned about getting features
implemented and bugfixes in, and planned to spruce up the error-handling later
after the feature-set stabilized...but became one of those famous "lost the
source in a drive crash" and "dropped out of Fido soon after" stories instead.
