CompuServe Thread

Joan: To edit your startup-sequence, you can use one of two editors provided with the Amiga. The first is Ed and lives in your C: directory, so you don't have to do anything special to run it, save use the name and the file you want to edit on a command line. Step by step: 1. open a shell by double-clicking on the shell icon in the System drawer. 2. after the shell opens, type: ed s:startup-sequence (this will invoke the editor for that file. BTW: Startup-sequence lives in the s: drawer, much like ed lives in the c: drawer. In case you don't see these drawers, sometime click on the window for your boot disk and select "Show All" from the menu. There are a LOT of drawers out there) 3. Now edit the file to your hearts content. If you screw up, I'll tell you how to fix it in a bit.) 4. To save your changes, hit the ESCape key and type x. That tells Ed to save the file and exit. If you need to change anything, invoke Ed again to change it. 5. Reboot to restart the system and see if your changes worked. If they didn't, follow the below. If things go wrong: One of two things can go wrong. First, your changes cause the startup-sequence to fail. Second, you trash the startup-sequence during the edit so far that you need to recover the original. Second first, the best way to recover your original startup-sequence is to take advantage of the fact that Ed is smart enough to make a backup of the original file before you start. To recover this backup you need to do the following: 1. Type the command (in the Shell): Delete S:Startup-Sequence 2. Type: Rename S:Startup-Sequence.BAK S:Startup-Sequence 3. You're done. If you want to be ultra-cautious, you may want to verify that the backup file exists before you do the delete. If so, then type: List S:Startup-Sequence.BAK If it appears, it is there and you can do the delete safely. To rectify the first problem, what you need to do is to reboot the computer and AS SOON AS the very first window pops up, hold down the Control key and hit the D key. What this does is to "break" the startup-sequence so that you can take manual control of the computer. Once you have done that, and it may take a couple of tries to do it before the mangled command, do the same sequence as above, i.e. delete the current s:startup-sequence, rename the backup to the original and then reboot. If you run into the problem that a mangled command occurs before you see the first window, you can do one of two things. Try rebooting holding the control key and the D key, or boot from your original Workbench (I do hope you are not using your original diskette?!!!) to boot from. If you do the latter, reboot from your original, do note that you can't use quite the same commands. In this case, s:startup-sequence will be the copy on your boot floppy, not the one you want to fix. In that case, you need to CD (Change Directory) to whereever the copy you want to edit/fix lives and that will depend on what device it is on. If it is on a harddrive, you need to type: CD <drivename>:s where <drivename> is what it is called on your system. If a floppy, you'll need to insert it and then type: CD df0:s ,if it is inserted into your first floppy drive, or: CD df1:s , if it is your second floppy drive. In either case, then do the rename or edit without the s: in front of startup-sequence. Otherwise you'll edit the file on your boot floppy, and you never, never want to do that. There is another editor on your Extra's diskette called MicroEmacs, and in my opinion much better. You may want to look in the manual to see how to run that one since it does a lot more, but it is more complex. I hope this helps. "The first lesson of economics is scarcity…. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics." (T. Sowell)

Joan, . The startup-sequence is an ASCII text file. It can be loaded into any text editor or wordprocessor that can import ASCII format, which they all should be capable of doing. . You can also read it in a shell by using the TYPE command. Shell 1> type s:startup-sequence . The text will scroll up the screen, press the space bar to stop the scroll and use backspace to continue. To use the C= supplied editor called ED try the following. Shell 2> ed s:startup-sequence . If it doesn't load or says file not found, check your c: directory and see if ED is in there. If not you'll have to look on your WORKBENCH install disks. . BTW (by the way), which AmigaOS are you running? . Joan if your going to edit the startup script make a copy and save the copy with a .BAK extension. This way if you mung up the file you'll have the original to start over. . Always work with the copy if possible and also remember, if you use a wordprocessor and make edits save the file in ASCII and not the wp's format. That's it for now, any other questions just ask away, we're all always ready to help out around here. P.S. You should always try and use the member's PPN besides their name. I wasn't informed by the system that I had any messages. I just happened along to see your post to me. Sometimes I'll just gather the message headers and pick and choose froom the subject/area what I want to read. This time I had AutoPilot read each thread for new messages. If you don't have mine for some reason it is 73657,3335 Christopher