Two new USB installers for Total Commander

[Black Dog]

[face=courier]On 27-10-2005 22:18:56 +0000 ghisler(Author) wrote:

g> For example, I'm still looking for an easy way to launch TC
g> on a non-U3 stick.

Do you mean to launch TC in some automatic way? Cause it looks like start via autorun.inf doesn't work for flash drives... As for me, I do it via batch files, located in a root - plug my flash drive, Win+E to get drive letter, Win+R to run batch file:

____________transmission_from_tc.bat______________[/face]

[face=terminal]@ECHO OFF
start totalcmd\TOTALCMD.EXE %* /I=.\wincmd.ini /F=.\wcx_ftp.ini
:END[/face]

[face=courier]_______________end_of_transmission________________


This one runs Commander via RUNAS so you have to type user name after path in "Run..." dialog, e.g. "x:\runas_tc.bat Admin":

__________transmission_from_runas_tc.bat___________[/face]

[face=terminal]@ECHO OFF
START RUNAS /NOPROFILE /USER:%1 "totalcmd\TOTALCMD.EXE /N /I=.\wincmd.ini /F=.\wcx_ftp.ini"
:END[/face]

[face=courier]_______________end_of_transmission________________

And UseIniInProgramDir make things even easier...[/face]

[ghisler(Author)]

One of my USB-sticks is mapped fixed to drive B, but is not shown at the "Install to" selection list.
Nevertheless I can type the path manually and it is generated successfully

The installer is currently only checking drives C-Z. Why? Drives A and B are mostly used for floppies, and these are reported as removable disks too, but are usually too small to hold TC plus plugins...

[sqa_wizard]

Drives A and B are mostly used for floppies, and these are reported as removable disks too

Nowadays a PC has only 1 floppy (if any at all)

My drive A ist shown with a floppy icon at TC, while drive B (Stick) is shown with an icon for removable media ...

But anyway, there is no need to change anything, it is very special ...

[Lefteous]

2ghisler(Author)

this time I have also updated the U3 installer (has anyone tried that one yet?).

I really want to try this but I'm not sure if my USB stick supports u3. I read on the U3 homepage that the SanDisk Cruzer™ Micro supports U3. I do have a SanDisk Cruzer™ Mini. How can I find out if my stick supports this? When I attach the stick there is no virtual cd drive added. Doesn't sound good, right?

More information about this stick:
http://www.sandisk.com/pressrelease/20050919.htm

Another question on this:
Will there be a special version of TC 7.0 which read/writes less from the stick than the desktop version?

[sqa_wizard]

... read/writes less from the stick

U3 is totally different to the usual USB-Stick behaviour.

A started U3-application is fully copied to your harddisk first.
Then it runs from there (to prevent problems with the running appl., if the stick is removed unsave meanwhile)

[Lefteous]

2sqa_wizard
Thanks for the information.

[AlleyKat]

I totally agree with sqa_wizard; I've only seen it demonstrated, but my very first thought was "neat, a portable disk image thingy". I must say it's even smarter than that and could become a big hit. Only thing that worries me is the security, its ability to get around the administrator rights must be every admins nightmare...

http://www.everythingusb.com/u3.html explains it really good I think. It's a different hardware base than ordinary flashdrives so even thou the idea is much the same, the solutions are very different. Its (option for) superior capacity and its ease of use could be what will take it beyond popularity of ordinary sticks.

[Wilhelm M.]

I have observed a quite strange behaviour of tc2usb.exe.

I selected some of my desktop plugins to be copied to the USB installation. And tc2usb.exe generated the following sub-directory structure (below the main tcmd directory):

plugins
- wlx\jpegthumbs\
- wcx\msi\

and within those "jpegthumbs" and "msi" subdirectories ALL my lister and packer plugins, respectively, are installed.

Meaning: tc2usb arbitrarily picks 2 of my plugins and makes sub-directories with their names.
What is that good for?

[ghisler(Author)]

2Wilhelm M.
Apparently you had all lister plugins in one directory, and all packer plugins in another. tc2usb is not handling this as a separate situation, it expects that each plugin is installed in its own directory.If two or more plugins are located in the same directory, they will all be placed in the directory of the FIRST plugin you have checked for copying to the stick.

[Wilhelm M.]

@ghisler
Aha! Understood.

However, my personal preference is to handle directories as economical as possible. I have installed many lister plugins but only few other plugins. So I have only a LSPlugins directory for the former and a Plugins directory for all the others.

But that should be easily corrected by editing the wincmd.ini appropriately, i.e. deleting the - in my opinion - unnecessary sub-directories, shouldn't it?

[ghisler(Author)]

Of course you can modify the locations manually - the idea of the USB installer is to make it work automatically without user intervention. It does work like this, the directory is just not called as you may want it. Use an editor with search+replace to change it to your needs in wincmd.ini.

[sqa_wizard]

... deleting the - in my opinion - unnecessary sub-directories

Most plugins already use their own language files.
Some put those in the same directory as the plugin, some are using a "language" sub-folder.

There is a big chance, that the naming is the same for different plugins. This means, that worst case they will overwrite each other!
But in general : How will you figure out which sub-directory belongs to which plugin ? (without usage of plugin sub-directories)

[Wilhelm M.]

Thats right. Configuration files of different plugins having the same name is of course a problem. If that really occurs I will have to use a sub-directory structure. However, till this day this did not happen! I have approx. a dozen of lister plugins installed and they still live happily together in one sub-dir. But then I always examine the plugins-archive before I install it, to make shure that the plugin will not mess up my dir structure. But I must very very rarely make a manual intervention.

On the other hand, imagine you want to see the contents of a plugin directory and you have to wade through a directory sequence like

tcmd\plugins\wlx\another_daft_plugin\language\german\

well, if you like that it's ok. I find it rather annoying. But thats a matter of taste, of course.

[MayorA]

Hi

I still wonder why it is not possible to offer (additionally to the plugin selection list) a selectable list of subfolders of the TC install directory to copy with the installer ?

It has been mentioned before by other users:

...How about icon libraries etc?

I would just present a list of all subfolders, which could be selected for addition.
This would allow a complete installation, including icons, skins, tools etc.

Another nice feature would be, if the all selections/settings could be saved in an additional (ini) file to use them as default values for the next time tc2usb.exe is called (e.g. to update the USB stick).

Many Thanks to C. Ghisler for his usefull work and the responsiveness to user requests.

[wavijo]

I still wonder why it is not possible to offer (additionally to the plugin selection list) a selectable list of subfolders of the TC install directory to copy with the installer ?

Many plugins do not tell you to install to a separate sub-folder. I have a dbx plugin that just says extract to the TC folder but when we run tc2usb all the plugins wind up in the same subfolder. For this purpose I would think that having all the plugins in the TC folder would be ok or in a generic all purpose plugin folder.

Many Thanx