TITLE: Stacker causing lockup on 286 machines DOCUMENT ID: TID800152 DOCUMENT REVISION: 1 DATE: 15NOV95 ALERT STATUS: Yellow README FOR: NA NOVELL PRODUCT and VERSION: NOVELL DOS 7.0 ABSTRACT: NA --------------------------------------------------------------------- DISCLAIMER: THE ORIGIN OF THIS INFORMATION MAY BE INTERNAL OR EXTERNAL TO NOVELL. NOVELL MAKES EVERY EFFORT WITHIN ITS MEAN TO VERIFY THIS INFORMATION. HOWEVER, THE INFORMATION PROVIDED IN THIS DOCUMENT IS FOR YOUR INFORMATION ONLY. NOVELL MAKES NO EXPLICIT OR IMPLIED CLAIMS TO THE VALIDITY OF THIS INFORMATION. --------------------------------------------------------------------- SYMPTOMS: Attempting to copy a file to a Stacked drive on some 286 machines causes system to hang. CAUSES: If this is occuring with Stacker 4.0, it is due to a memory conflict. If this is occuring with Stacker 3.12, which ships with Novell DOS, it is most likely related to the cluster size of the compressed volume. If the compressed drive has 8K clusters, this problem occurs. SOLUTION: For Stacker 4.0, get the updated HIMEM.SYS from Novell. Updates to Novell DOS files are found in D70Uxx.EXE, where xx is a number which increments every time files are changed. It is available on the Desktop BBS (801 229-5197), Compuserve NOVLIB 10, WEB Site www.novell.com, and FTP server ftp.novell.com (pub\netwire\novlib\10). For Stacker 3.12, force a cluster size below 8K. Specifics on how to do this follow: There are several reasons the drive may have 8K clusters, each with its own way of altering the cluster size (A, B, and C, below): (A) When you compress more than 100 MB of a partition (hence ending up with over 200 MB of compressed space), Stacker defaults to 8K clusters. If the partition is 128 MB or less, you can force Stacker to use 4K clusters, by taking the following steps: (1) Backup any information on the drive. (2) Remove the data from the drive. Usually, this can be accomplished easily with XDEL, FORMAT, or FDISK. Note that if this drive contains your Novell DOS 7 files, you should leave them there, as you will need them in order to compress the drive. If this drive is already Stacked, once you remove the data, decompress it with the command "UNSTACK d:" (without the quotes), where d: is the letter representing the drive. (3) Give the command "CREATE d: /C=4" where d: is the letter of the drive you wish to compress. (4) After exiting CREATE, build a STACKER.BIN file with the command: COPY /B C:\NWDOS\STACLOAD.BIN + C:\NWDOS\STACKER.COM C:\STACKER.BIN (5) Create the file C:\STACKER.INI using any text editor. This file should contain the lines: /I- /P=1 /F=32 /DIR=C:\NWDOS d:\STACVOL.DSK,SW Note that the d: on the last line should be replaced with the letter of the drive you are compressing. Also note that if you were (or are) already using Stacker, this file may already exist, but may be hidden. Use the ATTRIB command to remove the hidden, system, and read-only attributes if needed. This file needs to reside on the uncompressed area of the bootable partition. If that partition is currently compressed, the file will reside on the host drive, not on the C: drive. If you have other partitions compressed, you will have additional lines in this file for the STACVOL.DSK files on other partitions. (6) Give the commands "ATTRIB +RSH STACKER.BIN" and "ATTRIB +RSH STACKER.INI". This will make these files hidden, system, and read-only, to protect them from accidental or malicious damage. (7) Reboot the machine. Your compressed drive should mount. If you wish to confirm that the drive contains 4K clusters, run CHKDSK. It should tell you that you have "4096 bytes in allocation unit". (8) Restore your programs and data which you backed up in step 1. Note that in some cases, the above procedure will leave you with your NWDOS directory on the D:(host) drive, when they originally may have been on your C: (uncompressed, or previously Stacked) drive. If this occurs you can either copy them back to C: or simply change your PATH line in the AUTOEXEC.BAT file to indicate D:\NWDOS rather than C:\NWDOS. You should also insure that you have a copy of COMMAND.COM in the C: root directory. -------------------------- (B) If your partition is over 128 MB, you will not be able to compress it all and still force 4K clusters. You have 2 alternatives: (1) Follow the steps listed in section (A). It will work, but Stacker will automatically limit the compressed drive to 128 MB (256 after compression). -or- (2) Backup your hard drive and use FDISK to remove and re-create your partitions, making each one smaller than 128 MB. Then you can use the steps in section (A). Note than if you make the partitions smaller than 100 MB, you will not need the steps in section (A). Rather, you can use the Novell DOS SETUP.EXE to compress as you normally would. ---------------------------- (C) Even with a partition smaller than 100 MB, you may have 8K clusters if you converted from SuperStor (or some other form of compression) to Stacker. If you have made this conversion and have symptoms described in this document, do the following: (1) Backup the files on the compressed drive. (2) Remove files from the drive until the space in use is less than the actual (uncompressed) size of the drive. It would be beneficial to remove enough files so that 5 to 10 MB of space will still be free once the drive is decompressed. (3) Decompress with the command "UNSTACK d:" (without quotes; replace d: with the drive letter in question). (4) Use Novell DOS's SETUP.EXE to compress the drive, as normal. (5) Restore any files you had to remove in step 2. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Any trademarks referenced in this document are the property of their respective owners. Consult your product manuals for complete trademark information. ---------------------------------------------------------------------