Christof Lange wrote:
>
> On 25 Feb 01 at 2:48, owner-arachne-digest@arachne wrote:
>
> >The operation of loading another copy of command.com (shelling), will
> >make a COPY of the contents of your current environment and set your
> >SHELLED environment space to the default for your DOS (256 ?) *OR* one
> >byte more than you already NEED, whichever is greater. :(
>
> Very interesting, Clarence,
>
> A. So there should be a general workaraound possible:
>
> 1. allocating as much as possible space for a dummy variable in
> autoexec.bat:
>
> set morespace=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX (...)
Hi Christof;
Yes, that's ugly but it WILL work if you can't find some instruction or
switch to set the environment space in MS-DOSshell.
Typically it goes like this:
If you just type "command", you get a new command shell with the minimized
environment as I said before.
If, instead, you were to type: "command /e:512" you would be specifying the
new environment size as 512 bytes. This should be enough for anyone - like
640k. Hehe. <G> This is what Arachne does when she shells to DOS.
My DOS6 reference has a whole chapter on DOSSHELL and not a single mention
of environment space. It was mentioned that certain things are remembered
only for the current session, so I assume those items were placed in the
environment.
Let's try to get some REAL info the only way that ever works. Experiment.<g>
Set this line in your config.sys:
Shell=C:\command.com /p /e:512
Write a batch file:
Fill.bat
@Echo off
Set 1=12345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890
Set 2=12345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890
r
e
p
e
a
t
Set 10=123456789012345678901234567890
The last is shortened because the 1=,2= etc. take space too.
Re-boot
Enter DOSSHELL
Execute fill.bat
I don't know how you manuever around in that thing, so do what is necessary
to look at the environment in the same session that ran the fill.bat and
find out where it got truncated.
If you had QEMM, it would have been a simple matter of running MFT.
In fact, MFT operates without QEMM installed, so I could send you a copy.
> According to Arachne documentation I have to allocate a couple
> of environment variables before, if I want to start Arachne from
> MS-doshell task switcher:
>
> SET ARACHNE=vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv
> SET ARACHNETEMP=D:\TEMP
> SET MYIP=vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv
> SET REMIP=vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv
> SET NETMASK=vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv
> SET PEERMRU=vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv
I never read that probably because I wasn't interested in a "Windows" infant.
> As everybody keeps telling, Arachne makes extensive use of
> environment variables. Are there other ones I would need to
> predefine or take into account?
Not unless you use the environment method with LSPPP.
Arachne does have a rather long "PROMPT" when shelled that takes extra space,
but she specifies the required space numerically, so no "pad" is required.
> C. Another related problem?
>
> The above would explain why my dir2htm utility (I think, I posted it
> at the site http://www.volny.cz/lange) does not work properly. I
> put the current directory for file listing into an environment
> variable d2h and predefined it as:
>
> set d2h="X:\"
>
> When I run the utility in Arachne, however, a DGI tries to change it,
> e.g. to:
>
> set d2h="X:\NEWS\DISARMAMENT"
>
> And this works sometimes and sometimes not.
>
> D. Does that explain everything?
Quite probably - no guarantees.
> And, please, Clarence, tell us just one more thing: Is it possible
> that even the X-swap error of the mail.asf at 'reload:inbox.dgi'
> could be due to environment space problems? When I tested it last
> time with A.1.70r3, IIRC, it crashed only with running Arachne from
> ms-dosshell.
Well, MSDOSSHELL takes OTHER memory too, so that's not necessarily
related. A1.70r3 likes to crash, so try the experiment with something
not as volatile. I thought you liked 1.67 ? <G>
- Clarence Verge
--
- Help stamp out FATWARE. As a start visit: http://home.arachne.cz/
--
