diff --git a/doc/recover.txt b/doc/recover.txt index bfbc9f36a..2631dda0e 100644 --- a/doc/recover.txt +++ b/doc/recover.txt @@ -6,39 +6,39 @@ NAME recover - recover a NetHack game interrupted by disaster SYNOPSIS - recover [ -d directory ] base1 base2 ... + recover [-d playground-directory] base ... 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 pertinent information can be written out to - disk, so such games can be recovered at the point of the last level - change. + Occasionally, a NetHack game is interrupted by disaster when the pro- + gram or the system crashes. Prior to NetHack v3.1, these games were + lost because information like the player's inventory was kept only in + memory. Now, all pertinent 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. + Base operands tell recover which files to process. Each base 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 playground. It overrides the value - from NETHACKDIR, HACKDIR, or the directory specified by the game admin- - istrator during compilation (usually /usr/games/lib/nethackdir). - 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 directory housing the NetHack playground. It overrides the value + of the environment variables NETHACKDIR and HACKDIR, and the directory + specified by the game administrator during compilation (usually + /usr/games/lib/nethackdir). nethack(6) normally writes out files for + levels as the player leaves them, so they will be ready for return vis- + its. When checkpointing, it also writes out the level entered and the + current game state on every level change. This procedure slows level + changes. - The level file names are of the form base.nn, where nn is an internal + 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. Vari- - ous 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 + ous OSes use different strategies for constructing the base name. Sin- + gle-user systems use the character name, possibly truncated and modi- + fied 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 playground 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. + or xlock if the number of concurrent players is being limited. It may + be necessary to look in the playground to find the correct base name of + the interrupted game. recover transforms these level files into a save + file of the same name that 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 @@ -46,7 +46,7 @@ DESCRIPTION setuid or setgid is tantamount to leaving the playground world- writable, with respect to both cheating and messing up other players. For a single-user system, this of course does not change anything, so - some of the microcomputer ports install recover by default. + some of these 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 @@ -56,7 +56,7 @@ DESCRIPTION is easily compiled from the distribution utility directory. NOTES - Like nethack itself, recover will overwrite existing savefiles of the + 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.