we tried loading a file in GT.M. we started off by invoking mupip and then load command. it read the file but shows an error. do we need to define a schema? if yes how?
It will be easier to assist you if you post the error you see, and also what steps you have taken to troubleshoot it that may be suggested by the GT.M Messages and Recovery Procedures manual (go to http://fis-gtm.com and click on the User Documentation tab).
It might also be clear if you clarify what you mean by "load a file". You could be talking about running a program (routine) that is stored as a host operating system file such as "myprogram.m", or you could be talking about loading a file full of data stored in, perhaps a comma seperated value format, in a host operating system file such as "mydata.csv".
Also (admittedly unlikely) you could be talking about loading a VistA FileMan File, that is stored as a host operating system file formatted as a KIDS build such as in "package.kid" where the FileMan data dictionary (a form a schema) is stored in that KIDS format.
Related
I have a legacy system which used to run on dos. It is an ERP system for retail stores (fashion). It think it stores it's data in flat files.
I have files ending with *.KEY and other files ending with *.D00 (counting up).
I think the key files hold the key informationen and the D-Files hold some data ... there are alot D77 files...
As far as my investigation concerns this is not dfb or foxpro it could proprietary...
The company who wrote it is out of business of course so no chance for support or any hints.
When I open these files in vim or other editors I get some binary signs and some text... I tryed it in hex mode but still nothing to use...
Is there any chance I can dump out the data... in csv, ascii, xml?
I am pretty sure that this is not a standard format. Can someone point me in a direction how those data were stored back in the days and how could I make them read-able...
Any tools, tips or tricks?
// EDIT
After some time I made some progress and can now post some details which I did not now of back then and made a good answer impossible.
I asume that the dos system was written in visual cobol and that the files could be b-tree files stored in ISAM format. I assume the closet thing I could provide is, that there is a possibility that the format is C-ISAM.
How can I access / view or modify these files... C#, JAVA, ruby.... everything new age language would be cool... I am not sure if I can handle cobol... It would be great to have a converter or a viewer tool preferable opensource...
Hope this clearifies more my question =)
OpenCOBOL has a very active user group. The language itself is free and runs on Linux and Windows and perhaps MacOSX. Have a chat to the user group there; they may be able to help.
Peachtree Accounting Software used those file extensions back in 1992.
I have a database file with .DB file extension. I have been googling and it looks like SQLite. I tried to connect to it using SQLite and SQLite3 drivers and I am getting an error "File is encrypted or not a database".
So I dont know if file is encrypted or it is not an SQLite database. Are there any other options what should the .DB extension should be? How do I find out that file is encrypted?
I tried to open it in the text editor and it is mostly a mess of charaters and some times there are words visible. I have uploaded the file here: http://cl.ly/3k0E01373r3v182a3p1o for the closer look.
Thank you for your hints and ideas what to do and how to work with this file.
Marco Pontello's TrID is a great way to determine the type of any file.
TrID is simple to use. Just run TrID and point it to the file to be analyzed. The file will be read and compared with the definitions in the database. Results are presented in order of highest probability.
Just download the executable and the latest definitions file into the same directory and then run TrID:
trid.exe "path/to/file.xyz"
It will output a list of possible file types for the file with a confidence rating. Here's a screenshot of using TrID to analyze a SQLite database file:
There's also a GUI version called TrIDNet:
If you're on a Unix-like platform (Mac OS X, Linux, etc), you could try running file myfile.db to see if that can figure out what type of file it is. The file utility will inspect the beginning of the file, looking for any clues like magic numbers, headers, and so on to determine the type of the file.
Look at the first 30 bytes of the file (open it in Notepad, Notepad++ or another simple text viewer). There's usually some kind of tag or extension name in there.
Both SQLite 2 and SQLite 3 have a very clear message: SQLite format 3 for SQLite 3 (obviously) and This file contains an SQLite 2.1 database for SQLite 2.
Note that encrypted SQLite databases don't have a header like that since the entire file is encrypted. See siyw's comment below.
On a Unix-like system (or Cygwin under Windows), the strings utility will search a file for strings, and print them to stdout. Might help you narrow the field.
There are a lot of programs besides database programs that use a "db" extension, including
ArcView Object Database File (ESRI)
MultiEdit
Netscape
Palm
and so on. Google "file extensions" for some sites that catalog file extensions and the programs that use them.
There's no conclusive way to know, because SQLite encrypts the entire database file, including the header.
Further, there's not a lot of difference to you, except for possible error text to a user if you're prompting them for a password.
[the following is a rephrase of my previous question, which was deemed ambiguous].
I'm digging into creating a basic licensing mechanism for a demo application. What I have in mind goes like that: the application creates an empty "license file" called, say "0b1xa487x.ini" upon the first run, then expires 30 days after it has been first executed and can't be run anymore as long as that specific file is present on the system.
What I'm looking for is a method to protect that specific file in a way to deter deletion. Since it will be a blank file, devoid of any content, I wouldn't mind it to be corrupt, have corrupt headers, invalid date, whatever it takes to stay undeletable.
I've seen a similar approach somewhere based on file attributes (the file had the HX attributes set in place); however, the attribute approach lead me nowhere, as I can't find any documented feature on the existence of a file attribute X.
I also know that there are other approaches including rootkit drivers and system services launched as system user, but this particular one seems to fit best in this scenario. Again, I outline that the file's contents may as well be inaccessible, I'm not planning to use the approach in running any kind of malware from the file, as I've been accused below :)
Corrupt suggests not conforming to some standard. There are no standards for blank files.
Thanks everybody for your suggestions. I found a way to render my file inaccessible, namely by using fortunate combination of file permissions. The downside is that these things don't work on non-NTFS partitions. The good thing is that I can always clean up after my application by simply removing these permissions programatically and deleting everything afterwards.
Regarding your last answer to Henk, I believe it is more easier to create a service, start it automatically with the OS, and open the file in the fmShareExclusive by using a TFileStream.
But, you can not force the kernel of the OS, or an antivirus to make your file 'undeletable'.
Best regards,
Radu
In C following this article (http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2006/12/21/1340571.aspx), we have succesfully been able to grab the file version information out of windows files however there are some files that seem to have a different mechanism for storing the version information that is not addressed in the article and was wondering if anyone had any ideas here.
One example of a file would be system32/oledlg.dll. Going through the file byte by byte we come to a chunk where the version information SHOULD be stored:
F^#i^#l^#e^#V^#e^#r^#s^#i^#o^#n^#^#^#^#^1.0 (x^#p^#s^#p^#.^#0^#8^#0^#4^#1^#3
^#-^#2^#1^#0^#8^#)^#^#^#^#^#.^#^G^#^A^#I^#n^#t^#e^#r^#n^#a^#l^#N^#a^#m^#e
That we can see is 1.0. However, when you look at the file information in windows the version is actually 5.1.2600.5512. The method in the article works for most files but there are a few instances I have come across where I am running into the above problem. Anyone have any experience with this? I only have access to standard C.
Based on the follow up article posted in the comment, does that mean there is no way to grab the actual file version from a file with a corrupted file info block?
I should also add that I am grabbing the files from a windows box, and then examining them on linux with a C program to grab the file info.
IT turns out the wrong peice of info for that file was being used to get the version, didn't actually need the File Version block but the "VS_VERSION_INFO" block.
I am writing a terminal-based application, but I want the user to be able to edit certain text data in a separate editor. For example, if the user chooses to edit the list of current usernames, the list should open as a text file in the user's favorite editor (vim, gedit, etc.). This will probably be an environment variable such as $MYAPPEDITOR. This is similar to the way commit messages work in svn.
Is the best way to do this to create a temporary file in /tmp, and read it in when the editor process is terminated? Or is there a better way to approach this problem?
There's already a $EDITOR variable, which is extremely standard and I have seen it working on a wide variety of unixes. Also, vi is always an option on any flavor of unix.
Debian has a sensible-editor command that invokes $EDITOR if it can, or falls back to some standard ones otherwise. Freedesktop.org has an xdg-open command that will detect which desktop environment is running and open the file with the associated application. As far as I know, sensible-editor doesn't exist on other distributions, and of course xdg-open will fail in a text-only environment, but it couldn't hurt to try as many options as possible, if you think it's important that a desktop user can see their happy shiny gedit or kate instead of scary old vi or nano. ;)
The way crontab and sudoedit work is also by making a file in /tmp. git puts it under .git, and svn actually puts it in the current directory (not /tmp).
The way svn and mercurial do it is by making a file in /tmp.
BTW, you don't need a MYAPPEDITOR, on nix there's EDITOR already present.
Since you mention svn in your post, why not just follow the same methodology? svn opens a file with a particular name with whatever $EDITOR (or $SVN_EDITOR) contains - this might actually require some work on your part; determining the parameters to each supported editor. In either case, you have the name of the file that was saved (or the error code of the application if something failed) and you can just use that.