Frequently Asked Questions
I like nnCron LITE (nnCron, nnBackup) very much. How can I help the developers?
There are several ways you can help us:
Please, don't hesitate to contact us with your suggestions. :) Your help is greately appreciated!
Where can I find some information about Forth programming language?
Here are some useful links for beginners:
Don't forget to check onine versions of Starting Forth, a great book by Leo Brodie - http://home.iae.nl/users/mhx/sf.html and Thinking Forth by Leo Brodie - http://thinking-forth.sourceforge.net/ .
There is a newsgroup, COMP.LANG.FORTH, which is dedicated to Forth language.
How can I "instruct" nnCron LITE to keep a single log file and not to create a new one every day?
To do this, you should change values of variables Cronlog and (optionally) LogTimeFormat in cron.ini:
\ path of log Cronlog: "log\nncron.log" \ log time pattern LogTimeFormat: "%DD% %MMM% %hh%:%mm%:%ss% %ThreadId%"
How can I automate the backup process?
To use the console program nnBackup which is a ideal solution for using together with nnCron or nnCron LITE.
nnBackup allows to use all popular methods of backing up files:
Additionally, nnBackup can compress the backups using gz or zip algorithms, it can work with file lists and it also can remove obsolete data from the backup copies.
Why can't I start an application from a network drive? Why applications which were started from nnCron LITE cannot see network drives?
It is because under Windows NT/2000/ΥΠ, nnCron LITE is started as a system service run by SYSTEM (this is a built-in user account). And the user SYSTEM doesn't have enough rights to access network drives.
There are several ways to solve this problem:
I'm starting a plugin every two minutes and nnCron LITE log-file becomes overcrowded very often. How can I stop logging the specified task?
There is a special symbol - tilde ('~') that prevents a task from beeing logged to a log-file. Prepend it before exclamation point when starting plugin:
# this task will not be logged to log-file */2 * * * * ~!MY_PLUGIN
If you are starting executable file, batch-file or opening a document, just prepend '~' before the command:
# this task will not be logged to log-file */5 * * * * ~c:\test\reminder.bat
If you don't like to use tilde you can change it to any other available symbol by adding a line in your cron.ini:
\ changing ~ to * CHAR * TO NoLogPrefix
How can I launch a program using windows shortcut (*.lnk)?
It is not difficult at all if you don't need the AsLoggedUser authorization:
* * * * * !5 0 0 Z" c:\temp\cmd.exe.lnk" Z" open" 0 ShellExecuteA DROP * * * * * !5 0 0 Z" c:\temp\notepad.exe.lnk" Z" open" 0 ShellExecuteA DROP
The example looks different when you need the AsLoggedUser authorization. Launch your favourite text editor and place the following lines in run_shortcut.js file (note the forward slashes in shortcut paths):
var WshShell = new ActiveXObject("WScript.Shell");
WshShell.Run("c:/temp/cmd.exe.lnk");
WshShell.Run("c:/temp/notepad.exe.lnk");
Now you can run the newly created script like this:
* * * * * wscript.exe run_shortcut.js
Q: My antivirus program reports that there are viruses/troyan horses in nnCron/nnCron LITE/nnBackup distributives! WTF?!!..
Please, don't worry - there are no viruses/troyan horses in our programs. This is just an unfamous antivirus program 'false alarm'. Just an example: it seems the NOD32 antivirus program thinks that there is a virus in every program, which is written in Forth (SP-Forth) programming language. I'm pretty sure it's a good idea to send a link to our program to the developers of your antivirus program reporting such a false alarm and asking to fix it.
If there are some limitations in nnCron LITE: maximum crontab size, maximum crontab line length, maximum tasks count?
There is only one known limitation: the maximum length of a line in a crontab should not exceed 512 symbols.
Every nnCron LITE task is silently compiled into independent Forth-word and is stored in a common Forth-dictionary, which allocates 512 KB of memory. The words from nnCron LITE core are stored in the same memory area as well. Thus, there are around 300-350 KB of free memory available for storing the compiled tasks: enough to store more than 1000 tasks - quite reasonable limitation.
My batch-file is not working when launched from nnCron LITE. What may be wrong?
Make sure you are not using relative paths in your batch-file, because when you are launching batch-file or a program from nnCron LITE the working directory is set to a directory where cron.exe resides.
Here is what you can do to make your batch-file work: