Answers from e-Zine!

Welcome back to your source for answers to all your OS/2 questions! Each month we bring you tips, tricks, questions and answers from our readers and contributors. If you've got a question or tip you would like to share with us, send it in!

Q -- The window roll up was a nice feature of the Merlin Beta. Could you tell me if there is such a feature in the release version of Warp 4 without any added utility?

A -- Unfortunately, there is not. Apparently the feature was too unstable and IBM removed it from the final release of Warp 4. The good news is that popular utilities such as "X it" work just fine with Warp 4, perform the "window roll up" feature (and many others) and are a bargain as well.

Q -- In the c:\tcpip\bin directory there are many different network applications, however, there is no information about them. Where can I find out what each of the programs does? I have played with each of them somewhat and been able to get the basics working -- ftp, telnet -- but host.exe, hostname.exe, nslookup.exe and others are nonintuitive.

Also, in the Internet Connection folder there is an icon titled "Retrieve Software Updates", which apparently works through a gopher connection, but I have found that whatever server it is supposed to connect to is no longer there. Do you know what server it should be connecting to or should I just look to Hobbes to get software updates?

A -- The "TCP/IP Command Reference" would be the best place to look for information on host.exe, hostname.exe, nslookup.exe and other applications in the X:\tcpip\bin directory. On a Warp 4 system, you can find the "TCP/IP Command Reference" on-line manual in the Assistance Center -> Information -> Reference and Commands.

For "Retrieve Software Updates" try putting UPDATE /h ftp.ibm.net in the settings notebook. IBM is supposed to be using a new mechanism for distributing updates in the future so I would expect RSU to not matter shortly. Hobbes should not have the updates that would be available via these means. Look only on official IBM sites for updates.

Q -- I have PKUnzip but can't get any OS/2 ZIP files unzipped with it. Do you know where I can get an unzip utility that I can unzip with?

A -- Absolutely! Use your web browser to visit:

http://quest.jpl.nasa.gov/Info-ZIP/

and you'll find the latest zip.exe and unzip.exe for OS/2 from Info-ZIP. These files are free and are the ones that everyone uses for OS/2.

Files zipped with zip.exe from Info-ZIP are not compatible with PKUnzip, but the good news is that unzip.exe from Info-ZIP will easily unzip any file compressed by the DOS program PKZip.

Q -- We just installed Warp Connect about 10 days ago on a few machines at work. One of the most powerful features we use is the Peer to Peer for OS/2.

An idea dawned on me this morning, but I didn't get the results I had expected. I created a folder containing Web URLs and made it shared. I then made a connection from another machine to the new resource. What I had expected to get was a collection of URL objects that we could share across the LAN. What happened was that we had objects on the newly mapped shared drive, but they were not recognized by the remote system as URL objects that could be dropped onto the WebExplorer client area. The objects appeared identical on the remote machine as they did on the local system except they had the "unassociated" icon rather than the URL object icon.

Could you perhaps shed some light on this problem?

A -- Possibility #1:

The Workplace Shell is an object-oriented user interface. What this means is that the icons you can click on the Desktop are "objects" within the Workplace Shell. Simple, right?

Well, the problem with this design is that most programs are not object-oriented. And if a program isn't object-oriented like the Workplace Shell, then it can't 'see" Workplace Shell objects. And... you guessed it... neither OS/2 Warp Connect's nor OS/2 Warp 4's peer-to-peer services are object-oriented.

At this point you may be saying to yourself, "But I can still see folder and data objects with peer-to-peer... this guy is way off base." Well, yes and no. OS/2 Peer to Peer can not see folder or data objects. However, some objects are also partly files and directories. So OS/2 Peer to Peer sees these files and directories and shows them as folder and data objects. But not all the information about the object is there... some of it is in the folder or file, but the rest of it is in the other system's OS2.INI file, which OS/2 Peer to Peer doesn't look at.

So, to make a long story short, that's why your remote URL objects aren't behaving entirely like objects... to OS/2 Peer, they're not objects, they're just files.

Possibility #2:

You may want to try reinstalling WebExplorer on both machines (make sure they're both using the same version). If you have a WPS class browser, make sure that the WebExplorer_URL (or similarly named) class is installed on both machines as well.

That's it for this month. If you have a tip or question that you don't see covered here, don't forget to send it in!

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