HELP! A/UX desktop gone blewy!

[Richard Todd]

rjohnson at nemesis.mpr.ca (Robbin Johnson) writes:

[summary--all the MacOS-specific files for desktop-type info have been
eaten.]

>Someone please tell me what to do besides reinstall everthing from
>scratch.  I do not have a CDROM drive available just now and therefore
>cannot reinstall.  Where or where is the command/application/secret that
>will allow me to rebuilt my desktop.  I have the manual set on order but

Ok.  The files that seem to hold the MacOS-style desktop info. are in the
System Folder directory (either in your home directory if you have a personal
System Folder, or /mac/sys/System Folder).  Cd to there (remembering to put
a backslash before the space, e.g. "cd /mac/sys/System\ Folder", as spaces
are ordinarily significant to the shell), and blow away these files:
  Desktop DB
  Desktop DF
  .fs_dirIDs
  .fs_cache
Then go into the MacOS environment.  There should be a pause while it rebuilds
the desktop, but after that you should be back to normal.  Well, mostly--the
special icons for the various types of A/UX files (text file, bin. file) etc.
won't show up, and neither will icons for the docs created by the various apps
on your system.  The Finder only reads the icons & filetypes associated with
an application when it opens the folder containing the application.  The cute
little icons for text file, etc. you normally would see originate in the
/mac/bin/CommandShell file, so you need to open up (from the Finder) the 
/mac/bin directory, and any others which contain apps you use.  NOTE: you
must do all this while running as root!  For some arcane reason (read: "obscure
braindamage"), , the Finder won't read the icons and file type info out of 
an app. if it can't open it for *writing*!  
  Once you're done with all this, you may want to stash away copies of the 
Desktop DB and Desktop DF files.  Those are the ones that seem to have the
icon and filetype information.  This way, if this happens to you again, 
you can just blow away the existing files, copy the saved Desktop D? files
in, and log in again without having to worry about going on a Great Icon 
Hunt.  I can't guarantee that this procedure will always work, not being 
privy to the details of just what exactly all those undocumented files do, 
but the couple of times I've done it it always worked.  (Oh, yeah, this is
under A/UX 2.0.  I don't know if they've changed the desktop file mechanism
under 2.0.1).  
--
Richard Todd	rmtodd at uokmax.ecn.uoknor.edu  rmtodd at chinet.chi.il.us
	rmtodd at servalan.uucp
"Elvis has left Bettendorf!"