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Latest News
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25-04-2010
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AmiUpdate 1.121 released
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26-01-2010
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AmiUpdate 1.120 released
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25-01-2010
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AmiUpdate 1.119 released
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22-01-2010
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Updated the developer documentation to include the new APPDIR: functionality.
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07-01-2010
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AmiUpdate 1.118 released
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27-08-2009
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AmiUpdate 1.117 released
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24-08-2009
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AmiUpdate 1.116 released
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23-08-2009
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AmiUpdate 1.115 released
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20-08-2009
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AmiUpdate 1.114 released
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17-05-2009
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AmiUpdate 1.113 released
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Description |
Welcome to the AmiUpdate manual
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About the software
Interim updates
Using the software
Built-in managers
The ToolType descriptions
File Information window
Updating a module
What is RollBack?
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About the Software
What is AmiUpdate?
An online database keeps track of updates that are released of included software, and this
tool will query that database and compare those new files with what you have installed on
your system. This forms the information part of the software, as it will inform you of any files
you have installed which are currently superseeded by newer releases.
There is functionality built in which will automatically download certain files and execute their
autoinstall scripts. Information about supported applications can be found here
More information about what can be downloaded and how to use this software can be found in
the Usage section.
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The interim updates
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AmiUpdate wouldn't be a very good online updater if it didn't update itself, well fear not. You should
never have to download and install any future version manually again. You will notice the initial
requester that appears when you first run the software, this is telling you that the software is actually
looking for a newer version of itself.
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Should it find such an update, you will be prompted as to whether you want to install it, of course you
should choose the YES option. After this, the update will be downloaded, installed, and the program
restarted with the new version.
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| The newer version of the software is also included in the database, so if you leave the software
running in inconified mode, or elect to not install it at startup time, you still wont miss the
update when it arrives.
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Using the software
AmiUpdate can be started via Workbench or CLI, and is very easy to use. There is no setup
required as it is all done for you via the tooltypes, which are explained in more detail
here.
If you run AmiUpdate without the StartIconified tooltype, you will
be presented with an empty list. At the bottom is a row of buttons. The "Scan" button should be
active at this point.
Clicking on that will start the process of collecting update information from the remote database,
and checking this information against what you have installed on your system. Once this process
has finished, you will be presented with any available updates in the main list.
The progress of the download is shown by the gauge above the button bank. You will notice the
"Scan" button becomes an "Abort" button during scanning, and this serves to
stop the scanning on the current server. As more servers come about, you may find AmiUpdate
performing passes of multiple databases, and the "Abort" button will stop the current
scan only.
If the StartIconified tooltype is specified, the functionality is slightly
different. Instead of seeing the GUI, an icon is displayed on the Workbench screen. This shows that
AmiUpdate is actually running, but what it is doing now is checking the online database at predefined
time intervals, automatically. This time delay is set via the ScanDelay
tooltype.
Once the scan has finished, there may be items listed in the window of updates found. Each
One will be accompanied by a small graphical icon, and there are currently 3 different types
of updates that will be shown.
Firstly, the small "Boing Ball" indicates that the update is an
Operating System component. You may also see a small "Boing Ball" with a green arrow,
and this denotes the update to be an Operating System extention. Items such as third party
device drivers and libraries would fall into this category. Lastly, a small "Wrench" indicates
a third party application or tool.
Each update may be also be coloured differently, and we shall describe what this means now.
If an item is black in colour, this means that the file can be downloaded by AmiUpdate, and this
will result in the checkbox being ticked by default. The checkbox indicates whether you want this
update to be downloaded and installed, if possible, or not.
You may also see items in red. These are items that AmiUpdate cannot download for one reason or
another, and are designed to be of informational purposes only. You will not be able to tick the
checkbox for these red items, but it is doubtfull you will ever see any of these.
You can click on the items in the list, and then click on the "Info" button in the bank at the bottom.
(Double clicking the list item also does the same job) This will bring up the "Information" window,
and it gives certain details about the selected file.
AmiUpdate has an Ignore system built in so that any updates that you do not want to be
notified of, can be skipped. Please see the Built-in managers section for more
information.
Once you are happy with your selection, click "Update" to start the process of downloading and
installing the selected updates.
You may be prompted at the finish that some updates have been stored and need to be installed
manually. The requester will inform you where these unpacked updates are.
After the updates have finished, you may again be presented with different coloured items in the
list, and the colour will inform you of the success of that update. A successful update will be green
in colour, and signifies that the update was downloaded and, if found, the AutoInstall script executed
without problems. An amber entry in the list tells you that the update was downloaded, but a fatal
error occurred in the AutoInstall script, and that the update was not successfully finished. Lastly,
any red entries will inform you that a major error occurred and that the update download failed
for some reason.
AmiUpdate prints a detailed log of events during its cycle, and more information can be found
within it for all updates. This log, by default, is stored in "RAM Disk:" as au_log.
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Built-in Managers
AmiUpdate comes with two built-in managers that allow you to change the operation in different
ways.
The first is the Ignore manager:
This manager allows you to skip certain updates that may not be of interest to you, or maybe
has a known problem which installing it would cause instability.
To ignore an update, select it in the main list, and choose the "Ignore this Update" menu. This
will then save this selection permanently, so that the file will be skipped during each scan. You
can manipulate the ignored updates with the Ignore Manager, and this is accessed from the
"Ignore Manager" menu option. The resulting window should be self explanitory.
An ignored update will always be ignored until the listed version is again superceeded, so once
a later version becomes available, you will be notified again. You can also then opt to ignore
this later version, and it will replace the version listed in the Ignore Manager. This is to stop
any accidental ignoring of a file permanently.
The second manager is the MAP Manager:
This manager allows you to instruct AmiUpdate to look elsewhere for a particular update. The
database holds the location that the update should be found in, but mapping the file to a different
path will redirect the search. You can access the manager with the "MAP Manager" menu item,
and the initial list will be empty. A typical senario are the programs normally found in the WBStartup
directory, of which some may be not your choice to run at startup time. The only way to stop that
is to move the program somewhere else, but AmiUpdate wont be able to find it. If you have moved,
for instance "AmiDock" because you don't want to run it at startup time, when AmiUpdate does a
scan, it will report that it cannot find the program. You can now select it, and using the "Add Mapping"
menu item, set a path to where you have it stored. This menu item will only be available when AmiUpdate
fails to find the module in the location specified by the database, and this will be shown by the
presence of a "Not found on path" warning in the description line.
You will notice that you can set as many paths as you like for each entry, and they are searched in
the order they appear in the list. The first successful search is the one used for the version check,
and by using the up and down buttons, you can shuffle paths to suit the order you want.
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Setting the ToolTypes
The tooltypes used are very simple, and these are currently:
The "NOGFX" tooltype controls the viewing or hiding of the graphics at the
top of the main window. Enable this tooltype to hide the graphics.
The "SERVER" tooltype tells AmiUpdate where it should look for its database file.
Leave this setting alone, as the default setting of "www.amiupdate.net" is the only server so
far. Once more servers become available, it is possible to check multiple servers by 'OR'ing the server
names together with the pipe "|" character, ie: (www.amiupdate.net|www.myaudatabase.org).
The "EMAILADDRESS" tooltype is used as a password on anonymous FTP servers. Please
fill this in, it is only polite. The email address is also used in the web logs when you access the update
database. This helps in problem solving etc. It is NOT an email address harvester :)
The "STARTICONIFIED" tooltype switches AmiUpdate to automatic scan mode. This will
then connect to the database server at regular intervals and perform the system scan in the background. This
automatic mode is disabled the minute you open the GUI, and is switched back on when you iconify.
The "SCANDELAY" tooltype tells AmiUpdate how often to scan the database server
whilst iconified, and the value is in minutes. A reasonable default of 60 is set for this, but you could
set it to whatever.
The "KEEPUNPACKED" tooltype tells AmiUpdate that you want to keep all the unpacked
updates until the end of the updating process. This will accumulate all files in RAM:Unpacked, and this
significantly eases bulk updates. It also acts as a "Quiet" switch, and will suspend any requesters
during the update.
The "NOAUTOUPDATE" tooltype will turn off the ability to execute any autoinstall
scripts that may be present in the update archive. Once unarchived, the update will be stored in RAM:Unpacked
ready to install manually. This setting can be temporarily toggled via the ToolType menu, which is sometimes
usefull when a particular update refuses to install properly.
The "LOGFILE" tooltype will accept a path to where you want AmiUpdate to write its
logfile. This logfile will output information on most of the operations during execution of scanning and
updating. The default is "RAM:au_log".
The "PGP" tooltype allows the user to specify the name of the PGP executable in
order to use the PGP5 system. This tooltype defaults to "pgp", and if you are using the 2.6.3
PGP no change is needed. To use PGP5, set this tooltype to "PGPV". As is the same case for PGP
2.6.3, make sure the executable is in the system path.
The "VERBOSE" tooltype will give more detailed information in the logfile regarding
each update that is found in the database, and will inform the user on how the update was determined. This
is a debugging aid and will be either hidden or removed at a later stage.
The "DEBUGSCRIPT" tooltype gives some functionality for bug hunting in AutoInstall
scripts. Without this tooltype set, the script is run to the NIL: device, so no output is shown. By setting
this tooltype, the script is run to an auto/wait console window, so any errors in it are shown, and the script
is echoed into this console. Use this tooltype only when you need to, the console window is annoying :)
The "UNPACKEDDIR" tooltype lets you specify the destination for AmiUpdate to store
its unpacked files. This setting defaults to "RAM Disk:Unpacked", but you can specify any valid
location. One note here: If you want to specify a path which contains a space, you will need to enclose the
path within quotes, ie: "Ram:Unpacked". This setting is passed straight to the copying routines
and no checking is done. If your intended path contains spaces, you do not need to quote enclose this string.
Internally paths are quoted to guard against this occurance. Simply specify the path as you require it.
The "UNPACKTOBASEDIR" tooltype allows you to turn off the storing of updates in a
named directory. By default, when an update is stored in the "UNPACKEDDIR", it is stored in a
sub-directory named accordingly. By specifying this tooltype, you can have all updates stored in the base
directory.
The "KEEPARCHIVES" tooltype allows you to turn on the storing of downloaded archives.
When an archive is stored, it will be put into "Archives/", which is created in the directory specified
by the "UNPACKEDDIR" tooltype. By default, this would be "Ram Disk:Unpacked/Archives".
The "TIMEOUT" tooltype allows you to set a longer timeout for connections and transfers.
Users on a broadband connection will find the default 10 second timeout should be sufficient. For dial-up users
that experience a lot of timeouts, they can try extending this to maybe 30 seconds or more, depending on your
connection quality.
The "NOSELFUPDATE" tooltype allows the user to turn off the version check at startup. If
this feature is disabled, any updates to AmiUpdate will appear in the main list after "Scan"ing.
The "ANIMDELAY" tooltype allows you to slow down the framerate of the animation which is displayed when
AmiUpdate is working. For the supplied animation, this delay is defaulted to 2, but for some third party
animations, this frame rate may need to be adjusted. The value is in 'ticks' (50th of a second).
The "ROLLBACKDIR" tooltype allows you to specify an alternative path to store the files backed up by the
Rollback system. This should be a fully qualified path to a drawer where the date specific directories
will be created. By default, the "RollBack" directory in the main AmiUpdate directory is used.
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Information window
The file information window currently informs you about local and remote file attributes, and these
values are read only. The type of update archive is also shown by the icon to the left of the window.
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Updating a component
You have decided that one of the modules in the list you want to update, and you have ticked its
checkbox. Click on "Update" and the software will go off and download it.
AmiUpdate has an FTP client built in to it, so it can fetch from those server types, as well as fetching
from web sites via HTTP download.
Some FTP servers are closed servers, and require authentication via a logon prompt. You will need to
know the logon details for any closed servers you may want to access, as you will be prompted to
enter them the first time you access that site. The logon details are then stored locally so that once
you have entered the details, you will not need to do it again. These details are stored in the SiteList
file in the same directory as AmiUpdate. The same is true for WWW "Realms" which are password protected
files on HTTP servers. Again you will be required to enter login details for these types of updates, but
instead of the server name, the name of the "realm" will be saved in the Sitelist file upon a successfull
connection and download.
NOTE: Due to an inconvenient "feature" of ReAction string gadgets, please make sure that you press
<return> or <enter> after each entry, otherwise the text will not be recognised.
Sorry for this, but this is the way the system works. The window close gadget is taken as a user abortion of the FTP
logon details, and as such, it aborts the whole updating procedure.
Anonymous FTP is also possible, and in this case you will not be prompted, but it will use your email
address as the password for the logon. This is only polite to the server administrators, plus the same
email address is used in the web logs when you access the update list, which may help in trouble
shooting problems at any time. So please don't forget to set it up in the tooltypes.
Once the update file has finished downloading, AmiUpdate will then try to decrypt/unarchive it and
prepare itself to install. If the update is PGP armoured, AmiUpdate will try to locate the PGP executable
on your system and use it to decrypt this type of file. You should have PGP set up on your system and
working correctly. The system defaults to using "PGP" as the name of the executable to search for, but
if you are using PGP5, you will need to set the PGP tooltype to specify the executable name.
PGP uses a passphrase system to decrypt any armoured files it comes across, and if you do not have
the PGPPass environment variable set, AmiUpdate will prompt you for this passphrase. Enter it into the
resulting requester and PGP should decrypt the file. By selecting "Use" from this requester means that
PGP will only use the passphrase this time, if you want the passphrase saved and used everytime,
select "Save", and AmiUpdate will create the PGPPass environment variable for you.
If for any reason the PGP process fails, or you do not have PGP installed, you will be given the
option to save the file to RAM Disk:. This way you can unpack and install it manually.
Once the PGP file has been decrypted, or if it wasn't a PGP file at all, the XADMaster library
is used to unpack the downloaded update. All archive formats supported by XADMaster are
supported, and should allow authors packing archives of the compressor of their choice.
Once unpacked, AmiUpdate will try to install it for you as described below.
You will see the progress of any downloads in the download progress window, and by clicking
the Cancel Transfer button, you can terminate the current download. At this point you will
be asked if it is only the current update you wish to cancel, or all selected updates.
AmiUpdate looks for a script in the root of the archive called "AutoInstall". This is a standard
DOS script which will may opt to run the main Installer script. If this script is found, it is executed,
and the actions set out in the script are started. In order to keep everything tidy, this initial script
will be executed with a closed valid output stream, so any type of error in this script will only be
seen as it happens. This DOS script may elect to start an Installer tool script, or it may start a script
that calls the "CopyStore" command, which is part of the Rollback system. More about the Rollback
system can be found here.
When a new version of AmiUpdate is available, if it hasn't already been noticed at startup time, you
will see it in the main list. It can be fetched and installed via AmiUpdate itself.
The execution of the AutoInstall script can be permanently turned on or off by specifying the
NOAUTOUPDATE tooltype, and you can also turn them on and off temporarily by using the
tooltypes menu.
If this script is not found, AmiUpdate will inform you that the file has been unarchived to an accessible
place, and that you may install it manually.
The files are only available while the requester is being shown,
and the files will be deleted once it is cleared to ready itself for the next item in the list, if any.
If you set the KEEPUNPACKED tooltype, this notification is suppressed until all files have been downloaded
and unpacked. If you are updating multiple files, this will make it significantly easier for bulk installations.
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What is the system Rollback tool?
The RollBack tool can be found in the AmiUpdate directory and along with the CopyStore command forms
the full Update/RollBack suite.
The ability to update certain modules and applications has already beed discussed in the above sections of this
guide, so now we shall contemplate the after effects of the update and think about how to correct an update
that has made things worse.
Enter stage-left, RollBack.
Anything that has been installed by using the CopyStore command can be "undone" thanks to RollBack.
Open up the Rollback tool, and you wont see anything the very first time. In the left hand list, you will see
(eventually) all the dates on which an update was made with a rollback opportunity. Select a date and the
archive that was installed on that date will be shown in the right hand list. Again, select an archive in the list
and press "Info" (or double click the archive name) and a window will appear showing you all the files that
would be restored if this update was "Rolled Back".
This makes it extremely easy to go back to a working system after updating a particular module or application.
For more detailed information on Rollback, please refer to the System_RollBack.guide in the AmiUpdate directory
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