When did I start PBM?

[Bill Wild Willy Kredentser]

I long ago added these lines to my PBM start script (.bat file on Windows):

Date /t
Time /t
java -version

I wanted to know when I started PBM so this gives me that information. The java command
is not related to that. I just wanted to have that displayed for information purposes.
These commands display in the PBM command window & I have the notices I want.

But I tend to leave PBM open for weeks at a time. The display of these commands in the
PBM command window scrolls out of the display buffer after a while due to little error
dumps that keep going into the command window. No problem. Look in polarbar.log. Nope.
That fills up & cycles through both polarbar.log & polarbar.log.1 so that the start of
PBM is no longer recorded in the log. So I've just now added these commands to the
script:

Echo PolarBar Started on 1>H:\PolarbarMailer\PBMStart.Txt
Date /t 1>>H:\PolarbarMailer\PBMStart.Txt
Echo at 1>>H:\PolarbarMailer\PBMStart.Txt
Time /t 1>>H:\PolarbarMailer\PBMStart.Txt
Echo using 1>>H:\PolarbarMailer\PBMStart.Txt
java -version 2>>H:\PolarbarMailer\PBMStart.Txt

I'm not entirely sure why the java command needs to be redirected through 2 & the other
commands all redirect through 1. I don't really care. I'm just happy this works.

Maybe somebody else will find this handy.

WW
GO HABS GO!
Configuration: Windows 7 64-bit, AdoptOpenJDK build 11.0.7+10 (2020/4/14), PBM 1.27 dev CI-799 build 2329

[chocola...@gmail.com]

Or, you could just go to Help/About in Polarbar and it will tell you how long it has been up.

Or use a tool like Process Explorer, Process Hacker, or PSList to see at the start time or up time (depending on the tool you use.)

Or increase the size and/or number of Polarbar log files.

Or increase the size of the Polarbar window's scroll-back buffer.

The reason some commands need stream 1 to be redirected but some need stream 2 to be redirected is because some use stdout and some use stderr depending on the type of output and the choice of whoever designed it.

Finding the reason for the error dumps and fixing them sounds like a grand idea too.

Hope that helps.

[Bill Wild Willy Kredentser]

> ** Reply to message from "chocola...@gmail.com" <chocola...@gmail.com> on Sat, 2 Jul 2022 13:50:44 -0700 (PDT)

> Or, you could just go to Help/About in Polarbar and it will tell you how
> long it has been up.

That's actually also displayed in the bottom border of the main PBM window. But I'm
lazy. I don't want to know simply the uptime. I want to know the date & time when I
started it without having to do the subtraction. Like I said, lazy.

> Or use a tool like Process Explorer, Process Hacker, or PSList to see at
> the start time or up time (depending on the tool you use.)

Things I would have to install & learn. Like I said, lazy. But interesting to know.

> Or increase the size and/or number of Polarbar log files.

I would need so many. I don't think this would be practical.

> Or increase the size of the Polarbar window's scroll-back buffer.

Again, it would have to be prohibitively big. Until I was fooling around with adding my
little private logging things to my script, I think PBM had been up for about a month.

> the choice of whoever designed it.

Right. I thought it was something logical like that.

> Finding the reason for the error dumps and fixing them sounds like a grand
> idea too.

Probably not. GMail has this quirky thing where after you refresh the Preview, you can
execute only one command. So after I download the latest new messages, I have to do
another Refresh before I delete the messages. But I regularly forget the last refresh.
This extra refresh didn't used to be required on my previous several ISPs, including my
employer way back when. But GMail is quirky. Every time I accidentally forget the
refresh & try to delete the messages I've just downloaded, PBM throws an error. It's not
worth reporting. We've already determined in here that PBM needs a certain level of
updating to be 100% compatible with the oddball, near-proprietary standards GMail
follows. It's good enough for my purposes at the moment. Honestly, I could live with
this forever. I'd rate it at 80% compatible. I can send & receive. But I can't see the
entire GMail folder tree & deleting doesn't actually delete the messages from the server.
They disappear from Preview, but they're actually still in the weirdo All Mail folder
when I go look at it using either the web interface in Firefox or the GMail app on my
Android phone. It's all about GMail's weird tagging scheme. This is all OK for now.
But until there's some sign of life on the development front of PBM, I figure there's no
point in reporting anything that isn't actually stopping me from using some feature of
PBM.

[chocola...@gmail.com]

About gives you days, hours and minutes. I can't see how important it is to know the precise instant you started Polarbar weeks ago, but, whatever floats your boat.