Version 0.10 by Steven Flintham (15A) ChckMes is a simple program which will
examine a file produced by the
messaging system and attempt to
correct the most common form of
corruption.
If the messaging system crashes the
number of messages actually in the
file may not agree with the message
count stored in the file.
ChckMes counts the actual number of
messages and if it is different from
the count stored in the file it will
ask you if you want to change it to
match. You should normally answer Y,
for yes.
The method used to count the number of
messages is deliberately simple in
order to avoid the risk of getting the
count wrong, so it may take some time
if the message file is long.
ChckMes also gives a few possibly
interesting statistics about the
message file but you can feel free to
ignore them if they don't make any
sense or are of no interest.
The only possible problem is if there
are actually more than 25 messages in
the message file. This is not allowed
and so simply setting the count in the
file to the true number of messages
will not solve the problem. In this
case you should load the messaging
system, tidy the file and then recheck
it. Everything should be OK after this.
Technical details If you really want to know, this is
why tidying the message file is
necessary if there are more than 25
messages in the file. Obviously this
should never occur in the first place
but the whole point of ChckMes is that
it attempts to solve problems caused
by any bugs.
ChckMes gives a warning and sets the
message count to 25. The message file
will appear to work correctly in the
messaging system as that will ignore
any messages after the first 25.
However, if you delete a message there
will then be only 24 messages in the
file.
Running ChckMes after deleting that
message will again show a discrepancy
between the number of actual messages
in the file and the count stored in
the file. This time there is no bug
responsible for the error - the
problem has arisen because the count
is 24 (as it should be, since the
messaging system only knew about the
first 25 messages in the file) but
Chckmes can see the extra messages at
the end of the file.
It will attempt to correct the message
count and will succeed if there is now
a total of 25 or less messages in the
file, but if there are still more than
25 then the same problem will recur.
Failing to tidy the file is not fatal
but using ChckMes on the file will
show another discrepancy as described
above, which is misleading.