programs in the config.sys and autoexec.bat that write to the disk, in
particular mirror or image. Consider temporarily renaming these files.

Be aware that the location of your DOS partitions in the partition table may
change after using FIPS. If you use the new partition under DOS _and_ you
have an extended partition and/or two drives, this means that the names of
the partitions may change (e.g. D: may become E:). I have taken care that C:
always remains C:, so that you will still be able to boot.

Also if you have a CD-ROM, it will in most cases change its drive letter.
If you use the /L switch to explicitly specify the drive letter in the call
to MSCDEX in the autoexec.bat file, you might have to change it accordingly.
If you don't use the /L switch, MSCDEX will automatically choose the first
free letter, so that you do not need to change anything.

Apropos drive letters: DOS uses the following order to assign them:
1. The first primary partition on each drive
2. The volumes inside the extended partitions on all drives
3. The remaining primary partitions on all drives

Example:

C: first primary partition on first HD
D: first primary partition on second HD
E: first volume in extended partition on first HD
F: second volume in extended partition on first HD
G: first volume in extended partition on second HD
H: second primary partition on second HD
I: CD ROM

I am not aware of an easy way to change this scheme. In particular you
can not assign an arbitrary drive letter to a partition. You can however
influence the ordering by changing a primary partition into an extended one.

For Linux users:
The possible change of the location of the DOS paritition in the partition 
table also means that the device number of the DOS partition under Linux may
change (e.g. /dev/hda3 may become /dev/hda1). Any existing Linux partitions
will not change, so that you will have no trouble booting. You just need to
edit your /etc/fstab file if you mount your DOS partition on bootup.


6. Use with a multitasking OS

You should not use FIPS in multitasking environments like OS/2, Desqview,
Windows, Novell Task Manager or the Linux DOS Emulator. These systems might
still write to the disk after FIPS has changed the hard disk structure,
which may result in corrupting the disk. This is not necessarily so, I'd
suppose that in most cases it would work nevertheless. But since safety is my
first concern with FIPS, I would recommend booting from a DOS boot disk and
then running FIPS, that should be safe.
In version 1.0 I added some code by Dave McCaldon to detect Windows and
Desqview (thanks, Dave!). OS/2 and Novell Task Manager are not yet detected.
I had to remove the code for detecting the Linux DOS emulator because it
caused a hangup on many machines.


7. Using FIPS

If you have prepared a bootable floppy disk as described in section 5,
boot from it now.

Important! Make sure not to have a disk cache program like Smartdrive
running. It has been reported that in some cases the changes FIPS made
were only written to the disk in part, which resulted in hard disk
corruption later. I think this may be caused by the use of Smartdrive,
which in the default configuration delays the disk writes for some seconds.
If you reboot too fast, some of the changes may be lost.

You start FIPS by typing FIPS at the DOS prompt, followed by <ENTER>.
You may exit from the program at any time by pressing <CTRL-C>.

FIPS will first try to detect under which OS it is running. If it is
Windows or Desqview, it will complain and tell you to boot from a floppy
disk. You can proceed nevertheless, but this is at your own risk (see
section 8).

Then FIPS will detect your hard disks, if you have more than one, it will
ask you which one you want to work on.
In previous releases, FIPS failed to detect the correct number of hard disks
with some BIOSes (esp. in Gateway Pentium machines). I hope to have corrected
this. If FIPS fails to detect the correct number of disks, please let me
know. In the meantime you may use the '-n' switch to select the drive
by hand (see below).

FIPS then reads the root sector of the hard disk and displays the partition
table.

Example:

     |        |     Start      |      |      End       | Start  |Number of|
Part.|bootable|Head Cyl. Sector|System|Head Cyl. Sector| Sector |Sectors  |  MB
-----+--------+----------------+------+----------------+--------+---------+----
1    |    yes |   0  148      1|   83h|  15  295     63|  149184|   149184|  72
2    |     no |   1    0      1|   06h|  15  139     63|      63|   141057|  68
3    |     no |   0  140      1|   06h|  15  147     63|  141120|     8064|   3
4    |     no |   0    0      0|   00h|   0    0      0|       0|        0|   0


If you don't know what to make of this, don't worry too much. You may just use
the number of Megabytes to identify your partitions.

The root sector is then checked for errors.

If you have more than one partition on the disk, you will be asked which one
you want to split.

The boot sector of the chosen partition is read and some information is dis-
played.

Example:

Bytes per sector: 512
Sectors per cluster: 8
Reserved sectors: 1
Number of FATs: 2
Number of rootdirectory entries: 512
Number of sectors (short): 0
Media descriptor byte: f8h
Sectors per FAT: 145
Sectors per track: 63
Drive heads: 16
Hidden sectors: 63
Number of sectors (long): 141057
Physical drive number: 80h
Signature: 29h


FIPS checks if this information is consistent with the partition table and
tries to detect other errors.

It then verifies if the two copies of the FAT are identical, if they are not,
FIPS will exit with an error message.

If everything checks out ok, FIPS now looks for free space at the end of
the partition. The new partition must have at least one cylinder, so if
the last cylinder is not free, you have no chance of splitting the
partition: FIPS will exit with an error message. Probably you forgot
to remove a mirror or image file (see above).

You must now enter on which cylinder the new partition should start.
Use the cursor keys right/left to increase or decrease the cylinder
count. The size of the remaining partition and the new partition are
displayed in the process, so you will have no trouble choosing the
right cylinder. With cursor up/down you can change the count in steps
of 10. When ready, press enter to continue.

FIPS will check again if the space for the new partition is empty -
this is an additional security measure and should never show an error,
since the free space was already determined before.

After this, FIPS will calculate the changes to the root sector, check the
changes and display the new partition table. You may now choose to reedit the
partition table (this will return you to the point where you select the par-
tition) or to continue. If you type 'c', FIPS will calculate the changed
boot sector, check it again and prompt you if you want to proceed. If you type
'y' then, FIPS will write the changes to the disk and exit.


8. After splitting the partition

Make sure that the changes have been written to the disk. If you used
a disk cache like Smartdrive (despite my explicit recommendation not
to use it :-), wait for some seconds so that the cache is flushed to disk.

Your new partition will be recognized by DOS after you rebooted. DO NOT
WRITE ANYTHING TO THE DISK BEFORE REBOOTING. After rebooting, use CHKDSK
or Norton Disk Doctor to make sure your old (now smaller) partition is ok.

There have been cases where the changes made by FIPS were not correctly
written. To make sure that this is not the case, run FIPS again with the
-t (test mode) switch after rebooting. Select the drive and partition that
you were splitting. If FIPS displays no error until the cylinder selection
dialogue, there is no problem and you can stop the program with CTRL-C.
Otherwise you should undo the changes with 'restorrb' and contact me by
email.

If you don't find any errors, you may now reboot with your normal config.sys
and autoexec.bat. Start some programs and make sure you can still read your
data.

If you want to use your new partition under DOS, you must format it. If you
have multiple partitions, make sure to format the right one, the drive names
may have changed!
If you want to use the partition under Linux, you may now change the system
indicator byte with Linux' fdisk, then use MKFS.

If you want to split the new partition again in two smaller ones, you must
first format it under DOS, otherwise FIPS will complain.


9. Commandline Switches

Here is the explanation of FIPS' commandline switches. If you prefer the DOS
style, you may use '/' instead of '-' as the switch character. The switches
may be arbitrarily combined. Type 'FIPS -help' to get a list of the switches.
Here is a more detailed explanation:

-t or -test : test mode (no writes to disk)

This doesn't need much explanation.

-d or -debug : debug mode

In this mode, a complete transcript of your session along with some additio-
nal information is written to the file FIPSINFO.DBG in the current directory.
You can send this file to me in case of trouble (see below).

-h or -help or -? : help page

A short summary of the switches

-n<num>   : select drive <num>

Preselect the drive number with this switch. Valid numbers are 128 to 255.
This may also be used to override the automatic drive detection - if for any
reason the drive is not found by FIPS, you may try this switch.


10. Troubleshooting

FIPS is still somewhat experimental, although it has been used by many
people successfully and without serious problems.
When in doubt I usually decided to stay safe and display error messages
when encountering suspicious configurations. Some of the minor errors may
be overridden.

Please make sure you have read this doc carefully and also look in the file
FIPS.FAQ that covers some frequently asked questions.

If you can't resolve a problem yourself, or have a configuration not sup-
ported by FIPS, or if you suspect a bug in FIPS, make a transcript of your
session using the -d switch and send the full FIPSINFO.DBG file along with a
short comment to schaefer@rbg.informatik.th-darmstadt.de. Possibly your
problem has already been solved.


11. Credits

FIPS is based on the procedure described by Drew Eckhardt in Linux digest132.
Most of what I know about Harddisk structures comes from the excellent german
book 'Scheibenkleister II' by Claus Brod and Anton Stepper. It is for the
Atari ST, but much of it applies to PCs also.
Information on the Harddisk Interrupts was drawn from Ralf Brown's Interrupt
List. Thanks to Hamish Coleman for some useful info and to Paul Smith for
his good suggestions. Gunnar Hilmarsson suggested the procedure for stacked
drives, and Miguel Alvarez helped me improve the partition ordering. Chetan
Patil, Rand Phares and Eric Jung pointed me at bugs in the program and
documentation. Stefan Andreasen provided important informations about OS/2.
Keith Crews suggested some additions to the documentation concerning the
preparation of the boot disk and new features of DOS 6.x. Dave McCaldon
wrote the code for detecting the OS FIPS is running under. Scott Ellentuch
and Billy Patton provided info about OnTrack Disk Manager.
A very valuable piece of info on EIDE drives and address translation is the
Linux EIDE-Mini-HOWTO by Patrick LoPresti.
Thanks to all others who sent me feedback and suggestions. FIPS would not be
the same program without the innumerable emails I received.


Arno Schaefer
schaefer@rbg.informatik.th-darmstadt.de