mirror of
https://codeberg.org/noisytoot/notnotdnethack.git
synced 2024-09-19 14:05:02 +01:00
116 lines
3.5 KiB
Groff
116 lines
3.5 KiB
Groff
.TH RECOVER 6 "9 January 1993"
|
|
.UC 4
|
|
.SH NAME
|
|
recover \- recover a NetHack game interrupted by disaster
|
|
.SH SYNOPSIS
|
|
.B recover
|
|
[
|
|
.B \-d
|
|
.I directory
|
|
]
|
|
.I "base1 base2" ...
|
|
.SH DESCRIPTION
|
|
.PP
|
|
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.
|
|
.PP
|
|
The
|
|
.I base
|
|
options tell
|
|
.I recover
|
|
which files to process.
|
|
Each base option specifies recovery of a separate game.
|
|
.PP
|
|
The
|
|
.B \-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 administrator during compilation
|
|
(usually /usr/games/lib/nethackdir).
|
|
.PP
|
|
For recovery to be possible,
|
|
.I nethack
|
|
must have been compiled with the INSURANCE option, and the run-time option
|
|
.I checkpoint
|
|
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.
|
|
.PP
|
|
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 playground to find the correct
|
|
base name of the interrupted game.
|
|
.I recover
|
|
will transform these level files into a save file of the same name as
|
|
.I nethack
|
|
would have used.
|
|
.PP
|
|
Since
|
|
.I 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 ordinary players access to
|
|
.I recover
|
|
through 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
|
|
.I recover
|
|
by default.
|
|
.PP
|
|
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,
|
|
.I recover
|
|
can be installed with the same permissions the
|
|
.I nethack
|
|
executable has.
|
|
In either case,
|
|
.I recover
|
|
is easily compiled from the distribution utility directory.
|
|
.SH NOTES
|
|
.PP
|
|
Like
|
|
.I nethack
|
|
itself,
|
|
.I recover
|
|
will overwrite existing savefiles of the same name.
|
|
Savefiles created by
|
|
.I recover
|
|
are uncompressed;
|
|
they may be compressed afterwards if desired,
|
|
but even a compression-using
|
|
.I nethack
|
|
will find them in the uncompressed form.
|
|
.SH "SEE ALSO"
|
|
nethack(6)
|
|
.SH BUGS
|
|
.PP
|
|
.I recover
|
|
makes no attempt to find out if a base name specifies a game in progress.
|
|
If multiple machines share a playground, this would be impossible to
|
|
determine.
|
|
.PP
|
|
.I recover
|
|
should be taught to use the nethack playground locking mechanism to
|
|
avoid conflicts.
|