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1991-06-22
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------------------------------------------------------------------------
S E N T I N E L
Message Area Freshness Tester
V e r s i o n 1 . 1 2 c
Written by Bill Auclair Opus 1:141/545.0
Copyright (C) 1990,1991 by XanSoft Development
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
------------------------------------------------------------------------
OFFICIAL DISCLAIMER: There are no guarantees provided with
this utility. The author shall not be held liable for
the function or failure to function of this software, or for
any damages arising from its use or abuse. Now, with that
said, on to the good stuff....
SENTINEL is a BBS utility I put together after experiencing
various frustrating problems with echomail delivery.
I realized I had no reliable, "at a glance" indicator of
the activity (or inactivity) of my 60+ echomail/message areas.
I quickly resolved to change this situation.....
SENTINEL can be run from DOS or from within a batch file. When
invoked, the program will locate and parse any echomail control
file in which a subdirectory callout is followed by an echo tag,
by specifying the name of the ctl file after the <-c> switch.
If no echomail control file is specified, the program attempts
to find AREAS.BBS in the current directory. After the echomail
control file is processed, SENTINEL searches each echomail
message directory, locating the highest-numbered Fido-style
message and reading its SENT date. This date is then converted
to a pseudo-Julian value, and compared with a similar Julian
value calculated for the current date, as obtained from the
system clock. If the difference between these two values
is greater than or equal to the <-n> integer value specified
on the command line, the echomail area is flagged for inclusion
in the generated Freshness Report.
Beginning with SENTINEL versions 1.11a and up, message area
freshness monitoring in areas defined as "pass-thru" is now
possible. If SENTINEL cannot find *.MSG files in a pass-thru
area, it will attempt to find and obtain a datestamp from the
dupe-checking file (KILLDUPE.DAT for Opus systems, QDUPES.DAT
for systems running QMail, etc.), and will use this datestamp
information as a basis for a freshness report on that area.
In this "indirect" manner, echomail area inactivity can be
selectively monitored, and corrective action taken when needed,
to end dreaded (and all-too-frequent!) echomail "droughts".
Beginning with versions 1.11b and up, SENTINEL now parses the
echomail control file to obtain an echo's inbound feed (i.e., the
first net/node listed after the echo tag), and displays this
information in the body of the report. Areas defined in the
control file but having no net/node information associated with them
are flagged as <LOCAL>.
The Freshness Report defaults to the screen, but can also be
echoed to a text file by using the DOS redirection (>) symbol.
SENTINEL versions 1.11a and up accept the following 3 command line
switches, specified in any order:
<-c> Full path, filename and extension of echomail ctl file.
<-n> Minimum number of inactive days to report on.
<-d> Name of dupe-checking file used on your system. This file
is placed in each message subdirectory, including areas
defined as "pass-thru".
Do NOT place spaces between command-line switches and their
associated parameters!
EXAMPLE:
SENTINEL -cC:\BINKLEY\AREAS.BBS -n14 -dKILLDUPE.DAT > C:\OPUS\SENTLOG.BBS
specifies the AREAS.BBS echomail control file in C:\BINKLEY,
reporting on highest-numbered messages with a SENT date greater
than or equal to 14 days earlier than the current date, using the
dupe-checking file KILLDUPE.DAT to monitor activity in pass-thru
areas, and echoing screen output to the log file SENTLOG.BBS in
subdirectory C:\OPUS.
A "help screen" can be generated by typing SENTINEL -H.
REVISION HISTORY:
11/21/89 v1.10: First public release.
12/11/90 v1.11a: Added code so that SENTINEL now reports freshness of
message areas defined as "pass-thru". Revised logging
function to utilize DOS redirection functions.
12/18/90 v1.12: Added inbound feed (net/node) information to report
listings for each echomail area.
1/21/91 v1.12a: Fixed variable initialization problem that was causing
SENTINEL to lock up when processing echomail ctl files
with more than 128 characters per line. New per-line
character limit is 255.
6/22/91 v1.12c: Maintenance release, fixes some minor bugs. Streamlined
and reorganized program flow for faster execution.
Please do a harried programmer a favor! If you find any
"bugs", "glitches" or other errors in this software, REPORT
THEM! The author can be reached at FidoNet node # 1:141/545.
Thanks. Hope you find this utility useful....
Bill Auclair
6/22/91