sCRT Button bar disappeared:(

[vramaswa]

Hi Folks, I created a nice button bar with my favorite commands in sCRT 7.1.2, but it has disappeared without trace (I now only see 2/3 of my button bars). I have always had Auto save Options settings turned on and I clicked Save Setting Now too because I realized yesterday that there were some issues with saving config settings with the tool.

I have noticed that, intermittently, not all config changes are saved.
For example, I deleted a couple of sessions and saved, closed sCRT and reopened, and those sessions were right there and now My button bar is missing. Any ideas, please?

[rtb]

Hi vramaswa,

I am sorry to hear about the loss of configuration folder information.

The behavior you are describing sounds like you have multiple instances of SecureCRT open, you make changes to the configuration folder in one, close it, and then close one in which configuration folder changes were not made thus overwriting the changes that you made.

Do you have multiple SecureCRT instances open at the same time?

Do you have a back-up of your configuration folder?

[vramaswa]

Hi Todd, yes, you are right, I probably had multiple sessions open. I am not sure how to get back that file, I will check, but thanks for the info.

Coming back to the issue, so I guess the only workaround is to ensure that only one instance is running while making config updates, is it, please?

If so, I think that is a flaw. Is there an effort to fix this limitation please? May a "Reload config" functionality?

Thanks,
Vikram

[rtb]

Hi Vikram,

My information about configuration folders and multiple instances is not accurate.

I have attached a couple of screenshots that illustrate what I think might be happening with the buttons. Is it possible that you just have too many buttons on a button bar to be displayed in your current SecureCRT program window size?

As to the sessions, I think that I would need to get more information about the steps to reproduce the issue. I just ran a test, and could not reproduce the issue. Are you able to reproduce this issue? If so, what steps do you take?

[vramaswa]

Thanks Todd. When multiple sessions are open, I noticed that the config changes made in one instance are reloaded automatically in other instances (for the most part, there could be some glitches, but will report if I can reproduce.

Button Bar disappearance: When the button bar name is changed in the buttonbar.ini file, the whole section (bar+button entries) gets wiped out and overwritten, this is probably what happened to me. There could be some other reference in some file where the 'names' are maintained. Anyway, for my work, I now know what to do, but I should have probably not fiddled with teh .ini without knowing much.

I was able to restore the buttons I lost by first creating blank buttons using copy-paste, and then editing those button entries in the buttonbar.ini file (left the name alone)

I must be missing something silly here, but I am alright for now until I go through the scripting help

Thanks
Vikram

[rtb]

Hi Vikram,

Thanks for the update. We don't recommend editing the Button Bar .ini file directly. The format is not documented, and is not expected to remain constant over different versions of SecureCRT.

With regards to scripting, we have a few good resources. The forums are full of discussions about different goals and example code. We also have a scripting manual that illustrates how to use the SecureCRT scripting API in conjunction with VBScript which you can find at the following location:

http://www.vandyke.com/support/tips/...ing/index.html

We also have some great examples in both VBScript and some Python at the following location:

http://forums.vandyke.com/showthread.php?t=10365

[vramaswa]

Thank you, Todd, appreciate it.

[rtb]

You are welcome Vikram.

Out of curiosity, why are you editing the button bar .ini file directly?

Are you trying to solve a particular problem?

[vramaswa]

I just launched a shortcut with 12 sessions and double-clicked on the window to maximize it at which point my desktop froze and became totally unresponsive. The machine (windows 7) auto-restarted, and when I relaunched sCRT, my button bars (5 in total) are no longer there. I am not sure I have a backup of the config folder either and its going to take me forever to recreate the buttons now. Any help please?

[bgagnon]

Hi vramaswa,

We spoke earlier on the phone.

It seems the ButtonBarV3.ini file was corrupted when the system crash occurred. By corrupted, I just mean that it could not finish writing out the data to the file due to the crash.

You were able to restore an older version of the Button Bar file from a restore point. I am sorry for the loss of data.

You also mentioned this would be a good option for SecureCRT to have.

I have added this thread to a feature request in our product enhancement database for an option for automatic config backup, restore point or open a copy of files to prevent losing data if a crash occurs. Should a future release of SecureCRT include this feature, notification will be posted here.

For others that might prefer direct e-mail notification, contact support@vandyke.com and include "Feature Request - Forum Thread #11253" in the subject line.

[vramaswa]

Thanks for the phone call, Brenda, appreciate it. The Windows "Restore Previous version" feature saved me a lot of pain because I was able to restore the wiped out buttonbarV3.ini to a previous 'stable' version. For once, thank you MS!

I see you call it a feature request, but I'd report it as a bug really, and a p0 at that.

Maintaining object state should really be a basic software requirement (and to be honest, I am a little surprised that sCRT with all its great features has such a bug - I was actually giving a demo to my ex-teammate's new group who were tired of PCM when this happened...

The software should definitely be using a copy of config files when it launches and save\backup the last stable copy as well.

Thanks
Vikram