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doc/recover.txt

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+RECOVER(6)                    1993                     RECOVER(6)
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+NAME
+     recover - recover a NetHack game interrupted by disaster
+
+SYNOPSIS
+     recover [ -d directory ] base1 base2 ...
+
+DESCRIPTION
+     Occasionally, a NetHack game will be interrupted by disaster
+     when the game or the system crashes.  Prior to NetHack v3.1,
+     these games were lost because various information  like  the
+     player's  inventory  was kept only in memory.  Now, all per-
+     tinent information can be written out to disk, so such games
+     can be recovered at the point of the last level change.
+
+     The base options tell recover which files to process.   Each
+     base option specifies recovery of a separate game.
+
+     The -d option, which  must  be  the  first  argument  if  it
+     appears,  supplies  a  directory  which is the NetHack play-
+     ground.  It overrides the value from NETHACKDIR, HACKDIR, or
+     the  directory  specified  by  the game administrator during
+     compilation (usually /usr/games/lib/nethackdir).
+
+     For recovery to be possible, nethack must have been compiled
+     with  the  INSURANCE  option, and the run-time option check-
+     point must also have been on.  NetHack normally  writes  out
+     files  for levels as the player leaves them, so they will be
+     ready for return visits.  When checkpointing,  NetHack  also
+     writes  out  the level entered and the current game state on
+     every level change.  This naturally slows level changes down
+     somewhat.
+
+     The level file names are of the form base.nn, where nn is an
+     internal  bookkeeping number for the level.  The file base.0
+     is used for game identity, locking, and, when checkpointing,
+     for  the  game state.  Various OSes use different strategies
+     for constructing the  base  name.   Microcomputers  use  the
+     character  name,  possibly  truncated  and  modified to be a
+     legal filename on that system.  Multi-user systems  use  the
+     (modified) character name prefixed by a user number to avoid
+     conflicts, or "xlock" if the number of concurrent players is
+     being  limited.   It  may  be necessary to look in the play-
+     ground to find the correct  base  name  of  the  interrupted
+     game.   recover will transform these level files into a save
+     file of the same name as nethack would have used.
+
+     Since recover must be able to read and delete files from the
+     playground  and  create  files in the save directory, it has
+     interesting interactions with game security.   Giving  ordi-
+     nary  players  access to recover through setuid or setgid is
+     tantamount to leaving the  playground  world-writable,  with
+     respect  to both cheating and messing up other players.  For
+
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+January                  Last change: 9                         1
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+RECOVER(6)                    1993                     RECOVER(6)
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+     a single-user system, this of course does  not  change  any-
+     thing, so some of the microcomputer ports install recover by
+     default.
+
+     For a multi-user system, the game administrator may want  to
+     arrange  for  all  .0  files  in the playground to be fed to
+     recover when the host machine boots, and handle game crashes
+     individually.    If  the  user  population  is  sufficiently
+     trustworthy, recover can be installed with the same  permis-
+     sions  the  nethack executable has.  In either case, recover
+     is easily compiled from the distribution utility directory.
+
+NOTES
+     Like nethack itself, recover will overwrite  existing  save-
+     files  of  the  same name.  Savefiles created by recover are
+     uncompressed; they may be compressed afterwards if  desired,
+     but  even  a compression-using nethack will find them in the
+     uncompressed form.
+
+SEE ALSO
+     nethack(6)
+
+BUGS
+     recover makes no attempt to find out if a base  name  speci-
+     fies a game in progress.  If multiple machines share a play-
+     ground, this would be impossible to determine.
+
+     recover should be taught to use the nethack playground lock-
+     ing mechanism to avoid conflicts.
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+January                  Last change: 9                         2
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