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116 lines
3.5 KiB
Groff
116 lines
3.5 KiB
Groff
.TH RECOVER 6 "9 January 1993"
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.UC 4
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.SH NAME
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recover \- recover a NetHack game interrupted by disaster
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.SH SYNOPSIS
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.B recover
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[
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.B \-d
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.I directory
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]
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.I "base1 base2" ...
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.SH DESCRIPTION
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.PP
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Occasionally, a NetHack game will be interrupted by disaster
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when the game or the system crashes.
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Prior to NetHack v3.1, these games were lost because various information
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like the player's inventory was kept only in memory.
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Now, all pertinent information can be written out to disk,
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so such games can be recovered at the point of the last level change.
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.PP
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The
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.I base
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options tell
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.I recover
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which files to process.
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Each base option specifies recovery of a separate game.
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.PP
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The
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.B \-d
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option, which must be the first argument if it appears,
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supplies a directory which is the NetHack playground.
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It overrides the value from NETHACKDIR, HACKDIR, or the directory
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specified by the game administrator during compilation
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(usually /usr/games/lib/nethackdir).
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.PP
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For recovery to be possible,
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.I nethack
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must have been compiled with the INSURANCE option, and the run-time option
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.I checkpoint
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must also have been on.
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NetHack normally writes out files for levels as the player leaves them,
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so they will be ready for return visits.
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When checkpointing, NetHack also writes out the level entered and
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the current game state on every level change.
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This naturally slows level changes down somewhat.
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.PP
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The level file names are of the form base.nn, where nn is an internal
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bookkeeping number for the level.
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The file base.0 is used for game identity, locking, and, when checkpointing,
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for the game state.
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Various OSes use different strategies for constructing the base name.
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Microcomputers use the character name, possibly truncated and modified
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to be a legal filename on that system.
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Multi-user systems use the (modified) character name prefixed
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by a user number to avoid conflicts,
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or "xlock" if the number of concurrent players is being limited.
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It may be necessary to look in the playground to find the correct
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base name of the interrupted game.
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.I recover
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will transform these level files into a save file of the same name as
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.I nethack
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would have used.
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.PP
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Since
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.I recover
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must be able to read and delete files from the playground
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and create files in the save directory,
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it has interesting interactions with game security.
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Giving ordinary players access to
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.I recover
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through setuid or setgid is tantamount to leaving the playground
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world-writable,
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with respect to both cheating and messing up other players.
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For a single-user system, this of course does not change anything,
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so some of the microcomputer ports install
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.I recover
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by default.
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.PP
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For a multi-user system,
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the game administrator may want to arrange for all .0 files in the
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playground to be fed to recover when the host machine boots,
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and handle game crashes individually.
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If the user population is sufficiently trustworthy,
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.I recover
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can be installed with the same permissions the
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.I nethack
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executable has.
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In either case,
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.I recover
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is easily compiled from the distribution utility directory.
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.SH NOTES
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.PP
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Like
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.I nethack
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itself,
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.I recover
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will overwrite existing savefiles of the same name.
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Savefiles created by
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.I recover
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are uncompressed;
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they may be compressed afterwards if desired,
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but even a compression-using
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.I nethack
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will find them in the uncompressed form.
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.SH "SEE ALSO"
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nethack(6)
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.SH BUGS
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.PP
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.I recover
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makes no attempt to find out if a base name specifies a game in progress.
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If multiple machines share a playground, this would be impossible to
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determine.
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.PP
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.I recover
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should be taught to use the nethack playground locking mechanism to
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avoid conflicts.
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