[SOLVED] IPrefs looking for non existant Volume/Assign..

[xenic]

Please consider it carefully since SYS: is an assignment that can be changed by the user. Would you want to use SYS: to build the full path if it doesn't point to the boot partition?

Yes.

The whole point of SYS: is to point to the root of the current boot partition. If anybody is mad enough to move the assignment "in mid-air" to something else, they are on their own for all other sorts of reasons. Weighed against all the (intended) benefits of being able to store paths in relation to whichever boot partition is the "live" one, I'd say sod 'em.
Niels

As unlikely as it seems for OS4, it was a common speedup on old classic Amigas. You could boot with a floppy, reassign all the standard system assignments (including SYS:) to a hard-disk partition. In fact let me quote from page C-7 of the OS 3.1 DOS manual:

"On an Amiga with more than 2MB of RAM, you can create a floppy-size RAD:; the default as configured by the MountList is floppy-sized. By copying your WorkBench files into this RAD: and reassigning to it all the directories normally assigned to the WorkBench disk, it can be used as a recoverable WorkBench-in-RAM."

Considering the speed of today's hard-disks and the lack of floppies on most OS4 Amigas it's unlikely that anybody is using the above method to speed up OS4 reboots. Personally, I have a script that copies my system partition to a large RAD: drive and reassigns everything there (including SYS:) for diagnostic purposes. I've used it to troubleshoot bad installer scripts and stupid mistakes I've made in my own programs. I'm not the only system customizer. Check out the top article at IntuitionBase see some really extreme system reassigning. Take a look the startmeup archive at O4Depot for some interresting boot choices. I guess a lot of us should be "sod 'emed"; whatever that means.

Since Colin is undoubtedly smart enough not to create a flag to always resolve OS4: or WorkBench: to SYS: my concern was probably unwarranted but it occurred to me that a volume/device name should only resolve to SYS: if the device/volume name is actually the current boot partition and that SYS: is assigned to the current boot partition. Sorry if my concern upset anyone.

[nbache]

The whole point of SYS: is to point to the root of the current boot partition.

As unlikely as it seems for OS4, it was a common speedup on old classic Amigas. You could boot with a floppy, reassign all the standard system assignments (including SYS:) to a hard-disk partition.

Yes, I remember that trick. And that's all right, when you do that, you are effectively making the HD partition your "boot partition", in the sense that it contains everything which would also have been on a normal boot partition, and all assigns point where they would have pointed if you had actually booted from it (at least that's the idea ).

This also means that e.g. your Prefs: (including your presets, patterns, bitmaps etc. which you might have pointed to in the paths in wbpattern.prefs) and your Utilities (with e.g. the dockies or whatever referred in your AmiDock prefs file) will be found in the partition where the system expects them.

So no problem there.

Best regards,

Niels