Hello Sean!
28.02.04 at 17:24, Sean Dennis wrote to Andreas Proske:
On 28 Feb 04 at 17:21, Andreas Proske wrote to Alle:
näheres über das Programm "unisched" heraus zu bekommen, und suche
What does this program do, exactly?
An extract from the Unisched documentation:
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1. WHAT IS UNISCHED?
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Unisched is a fully year 2000 compliant scheduler software that has been designed with special consideration of the needs of a Fidonet node system. To cut it short: Unisched can react to various kinds of events with various actions. Possible events are:
- time controlled events (for example: every day at 15:00, every 1. each
month at 10:00, every 30 minutes, ...)
- the creation of sempahore files / flag files by other programs
- new mail has been received in the mailer's inbound directory
- a function key has been pressed at the Unisched console
Possible actions are:
- An external program, batch file, script, Workplace Shell object can be
startet.
- Unisched can exit with a certian error level.
- Unisched can modify a Binkley style static outbound (create a poll,
change the flavour of a mail packet, ...)
- Others (like playing music, creating flag files, deleting flag files, ...)
Unisched is intended to be a powerful program built around a simple and easily intelligible concept. In order to fully understand the event-action concept of Unisched, I suggest that you carefully read the documentation, but at least you should read section 3.3. Unisched is not like other schedulers, so you will surely profit from reading the docs :-).
Unisched is available as a 16 bit DOS executable (which is multitasking aware and has been successfully tested unter plain DOS, DESQview, Windows 95, Windows NT and OS/2) and of course as 32 bit native OS/2 executable (UNISCHE2.EXE). If you use the DOS executable, SHARE.EXE or a similar support for file locking MUST be active!
2. WHAT DO I NEED UNISCHED FOR?
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The possible fields of application of Unisched are diverse, and it surely can be useful even for non-Fidonet specific purpose. However, I have primarily written it to be a frontend for a seperate tosser task of a Fidonet node system, and this is where Unisched's strengths play at their best.
Instead of having to fiddle around in mailer batch files and mailer event files, the node can have a separate independent tosser task (be it a task under a multi tasking operating systems, or a separate DOS computer in a local area network). Unisched is being active 24/7. At certain times it starts the tosser to let it export mail that has been written locally or in the BBS. Every time the mailer receives mail, Unisched sees it (either because the mailer has created a semaphore file indicating that mails has been received, or because Unisched has poked directly in the inbound directory) and starts the tosser to let it import the mail. If the sysop ever feels the need to manually start the tosser, he simply presses a function key in Unisched which is associated to the same action as the event that automatically starts the tosser. Every morning at seven o'clock, Unisched plays a little wake-up tune, and, and, and ....
The advantage of this approach is obvious: If you start the tosser directly from the mailer batch, on a multiline system, you always must take the risk that two tossers are running parallel. Also, if you start the tosser from the mailer batch, the result is that the mailer is not available while you are tossing. These are two strong reasons why you want to have a separate tosser task.
Unisched separates what should have been separated in the first place: The mailer exclusively serves the modems, and Unisched does the rest. In the mailer event file, you only need to define two events, namedly ZMH and the rest of the day, so that the mailer does not have to do enything except what it has been designed for: to exchange mail. :-)
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Hope this helps.
Regards,
Martin
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