Monster Media 1994 #1

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Text File | 1994-02-18 | 29KB | 710 lines

::::::::::::: :::::: :::::::::::::: :::::::::::::: :::::::::::::: :::::::: :::::::::::::: :::::::::::::: ::: ::: ::: ::: :::: ::: ::: ::: ::: ::: :::: ::: ::::::::::::: :::::::::::::: :::: :::::::::::::: ::::::::::::: :::::::::::::: :::: :::::::::::::: ::: ::: ::: ::: :::: ::: ::: ::: ::: ::: :::: ::: :::::::::::::: ::: ::: :::: :::::::::::::: ::::::::::::: ::: ::: :::: :::::::::::::: BATS -- BBS Activity Tracking System. Copyright (c) 1994 Mark G. Spivey and BBS Plus Software. Table of Contents Preamble and Credits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Overview and Features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Licensing Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 How to Register . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Registration Form . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 The Key System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Product Support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Installation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Scanning Logs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Execution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 File Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Archive Database . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Exit Bats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Purge A User's Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 View Archived . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Register Bats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 View Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Reports Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Category Report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Database Report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 User's Report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 System Activity Graph . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 User File Statistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Database Statistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Average Statistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Average Call Length . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Search Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Doors Activated . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Downloads Activated . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Messages Posted . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Questionnaires Activated . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Uploads Completed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 User's Activity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Mouse Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Bug Reports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 This document makes references to a number of product. All copyrights, trademarks, and reserved rights held in these products are acknowledged. <3> PREAMBLE AND CREDITS BATS was started in early June of 1992 to help system operators of RemoteAccess and SuperBBS track activity on Their system by use of the system logs. Many system operators archive their logs and save them so if they ever need to find out what a particular user has done on their System. The problem was how hard it was to find information on a specific user or file. Therefore a need for a product was brought to my attention and hence this program was written. It is the result of many long hours and hard work by the BBS Plus Software Beta Team and myself. I would like to thank the following people who have all been a part in the development of BATS: Jim Thompson, Norman Cox, Karen Maynor, Andrew Milner, Aki Antman, Steve Gabrilowitz, Fred Horner (Rest in Peace), Joe Hacker, and Adam Summers. Thanks to "Joe Hacker" for reformatting this documentation. Mark Spivey, BBS Plus Software <4> OVERVIEW AND FEATURES BATS is a full featured BBS activity tracking system that will track your user's activity with its own proprietary database files independent of the system logs. With BATS you will be able to retrieve information about your system's activity, an individual user's activity, and retrieve information from nine categories including: calls made, carrier drops, doors activated, files up and down loaded, Interactive EMSI calls, messages posted, password failures, and questionnaires activated. The system is fully automatic and once installed will gather information from the BBS logs and store it in a more compressed and faster format. It will also upon the SysOp's request archive the log and place it in a sub directory so that it can save disk space. Information retrieval is fast! You can pull out the mouse, activate the program and find out everything a specific user has done on your system with minimal keyboard intervention! You can do keyword searches, generate reports on a user's or your system's activity, view all system activity and purge out users that are no longer desired. (Purges are for BATS tracking only, not the BBS) The program uses professional looking and easy to use pull down menus. The only time you ever have to remember something is what keyword to search for! If you have your old logs, you can compile them as well. This will add to the size of your database allowing you to use information you already have, instead of having to wait for the database to build. As you can see, BATS is a great program to help you track what happens on your system, and in today's BBS world with copyright battles and lawsuits, this program will help you spot a potential problem user to give you that added bit of assurance you are in control. <5> LICENSING INFORMATION (Shareware or Personal Commercial version) "BATS" refers to the executable programs, documentation contained in the BATS archive and all executable programs and documentation contained in the separate log scanning archives released by BBS Plus Software. 1. BATS is the copyrighted material of BBS Plus Software. BATS must be used only in accordance with the conditions set out in this license agreement. 2. You may use BATS for a period of three weeks on a trial basis in order to determine it's suitability for your particular application. After this period you MUST register each copy of BATS that you run simultaneously. Multi-line installations that share the same message and file base AND have the same name only need to register one copy. 3. Registration entitles you to use BATS and any future versions of BATS for as long as you wish, subject to any special licensing conditions attached to future versions. For details on the registration procedure, refer to the section in this document "HOW TO REGISTER". 4. BBS Plus Software is not obligated to provide future versions of, or support for, BATS. 5. Site, Corporate and Group registrations are available, and are dealt with on a case by case basis. 6. You may not modify or otherwise reverse engineer BATS. 7. You are encouraged to distribute BATS provided that no fee is charged for its distribution, and that the distribution archive is not modified in any way. Pay Bulletin Board Systems may however charge their normal fee provided that no additional charged for BATS is levied. 8. BATS may be included as part of ANY software library that is distributed on a commercial basis. (Commercial = "for money") 9. BATS may not be used in any illegal or unlawful manner. 10. BBS Plus Software's liability resulting from your use or inability to use BATS is limited to the amount that the affected party has paid for it. <6> HOW TO REGISTER SHAREWARE or PERSONAL COMMERCIAL version: Systems that qualify for this category must be physically run from a non-commercial or private dwelling COMMERCIAL site. A private dwelling is a home or private residence. (Example: BBS that charges any access fee is PERSONAL COMMERCIAL) Corporations, Government or other business's that are run from a business or government address where more than two people are employed, and no people reside on a temporary or permanent basis must request a site or commercial license agreement and registration form. This will be dealt with on a case by case basis. (Example: If you are running this from a computer store that is separate from your place of residence or you work out of your home and employ more than two people then you are COMMERCIAL and must request a site or commercial license.) Print or reproduce the registration form at the end of this section and send it with your registration payment to the following address: NON-COMMERCIAL : 12$, 12 United States Dollars. PERSONAL COMMERCIAL : 19$, 19 United States Dollars. Mark Spivey C/o BBS Plus Software. P.O. Box 45058 San Diego, CA 92145 U.S.A. * You MUST fill out the registration form correctly in order for your registration to be processed. * Check and money orders must be made payable to the person listed above and be in United States Funds. * Please include your FIDONET address or a self addressed stamped envelope so that receipt of your payment may be acknowledged. ** BATS REGISTRATION FORM *** Your Name ___________________________________________________ Your BBS Name _______________________________________________ [The above two lines are used to generate your registration key and must appear EXACTLY as they do in the configuration file.] Network Address (net name too) ______________________________ Primary BBS # and Baud ______________________________________ Voice Telephone # ___________________________________________ Hours of Operation __________________________________________ Postal Address: _____________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________ Version Registering BATS _______________. Registration Amount enclosed _____, for ____ copy(s). What do you like about BATS? ________________________________ _____________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________ What enhancements or changes would you like to see in our next release? _____________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________ What BBS program do you use? ________________________________ <8> THE KEY SYSTEM Upon registering you will receive your uniquely generated key. Each key is a small file. To install the key, simply place the file in the BATS directory. When BATS detects a valid key it goes into registered mode and functions previously not available will work. Features marked in this manual with a [*] are only available to registered users. These bonus features are my way of showing you appreciation for your registering with me. In addition to this, you will also receive toll-free support for BATS (US and Canada Only) in case you are having problems with it. It should be made aware that BATS is still fully functional before it is registered, the bonus features are nice, but their absence makes the program no less usable. BATS is not and will not be "Demo ware" or "Expire ware". WARNING! Your key is unique and under NO circumstances should it be made available to anyone else. Doing so is a direct violation of the agreement you entered into with us by registering. <9> PRODUCT SUPPORT You can always get the latest version of BATS from Online Information Systems, 619-695-3675, 1:505/207 14.4 v32.bis. In addition to this, I will support anyone via Netmail at the above system. Registered users will receive better support if it is needed. <10> INSTALLATION BATS should run on any IBM 8088 or 80x86 compatible computer. The only programs you will need in addition to the package are A BBS, PKZIP(TM) and PKUNZIP(TM). BATS will use these two programs to compress and decompress the database files into a dated file name that the view utility can access. The minimum memory requirement is 512k available, it will work with less, but not reliably. There is a large amount of in memory searches that can cause out of memory errors. Also the program needs enough memory for PKZIP and PKUNZIP when using the archive and view archived portions of the program. The program has been tested under DesqView and has had no problems to date, but rest assured, you do need to allocate enough memory for the program to work efficiently and properly. 1. Ensure that you have the following statement in your CONFIG.SYS file: FILES=20, AT LEAST 14 are used by the program at once. If you run a multi-line BBS you will need to increase number of files DOS can have open at one time by increasing the FILES value. Note: Each additional handle will reduce the available memory by 50 to 60 bytes. 2. Create a directory and place the archive files in there. It is a good idea to put them in their own directory. BATS will create some sub directories under itself, that MUST remain there for full operation. 3. Execute BATSINIT.EXE, This program will ask you approximately how many users your BBS has, this is important because the system uses a fixed size user file that dramatically accelerate searches. If you expect to have 1000 users, enter 1500 just to be sure. The maximum is 20,000 users. 4. You should then edit the BATS.CFG file and the BATSLOGS.CFG files and change them accordingly. The BATS.CFG file contains the SysOp Name and BBS Name and if you are using the Remote Access version of BATS, it contains a third line that tells BATS if your log is EXPANDED or COMPACT. Make sure you spell this right! And make sure you get the right type in there, if you are getting weird dates then you probably have the wrong one entered here. The BATSLOGS.CFG file simply contains all of the paths to all of the BBS system logs you have. If you have a single node, then you can use C:\RA\RA.LOG (example). If you have multiple nodes, you can use C:\RA\NODE1\RA.LOG Etc. (example). Make sure you are using separate logs for each node. This way the scanner can determine the information it receives correctly. 5. Next you can (optional) edit the IGNRDOOR.LST file and the ALASDOOR.LST file which allows you to tell BATS to ignore up to 60 doors and rename up to 60 doors. (Unregistered versions only support 10!). For more information, read the files and it should be self explanatory. This feature allows you to have BATS give more readable DOOR names in DOORBATS.DAT and also ignore ones that are executed on a log-in basis. This completes the installation and configuration of BATS, you are now ready to go onto the SCANNING portion of this document. <11> SCANNING LOGS After you have installed and configured BATS you are now ready to scan your first log file. This is really quite simple and automated, all you need to know is whether you would like BATS to keep your old logs for you or if you want them deleted. BATS will delete the log file if you choose to save them, and will leave it alone if you do not choose to archive them (you already have a utility which archives your logs and you don't want to change it), but if you choose to save them it will automatically ARCHIVE them after they are scanned and save them in the LOGx.ZIP where x equals the line number in the BATSLOGS.CFG file. To scan the LOG and have it ARCHIVED and DELETED you should use the following line: BATS /SCAN /ARCHIVE To scan the LOG and NOT have it ARCHIVED or DELETED you should use: the following line: BATS /SCAN To scan the LOG and HAVE it DELETED you should execute the following line: BATS /SCAN /DLOG There is only one more command line option you need to know about and it is /SORT and it allows you to sort the DATABASE if for some reason things are out of order. SCAN will do this each time it is activated, so you may never need to do this. BATS /SORT will sort the DATABASE. <12> EXECUTION To use BATS, you activate BATS.EXE from the "DOS" prompt. This loads the user interface that allows you to search the database for the requested information. You have one other option that allows you to call up a user account quickly by typing BATS USER NAME and the program will search for USER NAME. This is real helpful in the QuickBBS message reader for example. <13> BATS MENU OPTIONS FILE ARCHIVE DATABASE [*] This will archive your database files when they become full or outdated. You may later retrieve them via the VIEW ARCHIVED function explained later in this section. THIS WILL DELETE THE CURRENT DATABASE, EXCEPT FOR USERBATS.DAT. If you have accidentally archived the database and want to restore it, just UNZIP the archive it created in the BATS\ARCHIVE directory and overwrite the ones in the BATS directory. The archive name will be the month and day of the first and last call and the extension will be the year of the last call. EXIT BATS This will exit BATS and return you to DOS. ESC will also allow you to return to DOS. PURGE A USERS DATA This will purge a user's account information from the DATABASE and all entries pertaining to their account. It is real handy in situations where you create a TEST USER just for purposes of seeing if your system works correctly for new users. It will permanently remove the information from the database. VIEW ARCHIVED [*] This will view an archived database that you may have created or BATS created when the database became full. If BATS detects that the database is getting too large, it will automatically archive the database and then it will create a semaphore file informing BATS what reason it had, so that when you load BATS the next time in user interface mode, it will explain what has happened. REGISTER BATS This will appear if you have not registered BATS, it will allow you to fill out the questions required to create a registration form, it will then generate REGISTER.FRM in the current directory. This should be printed out and mailed in with the amount stated above. You may also use the above form for registration purposes, but this is to make it easier. <14> VIEW This will allow you to view all activity within a category. The following categories are supported: - CALLS TO SYSTEM - CARRIER DROPS - DOORS OPENED - DOWNLOADS COMPLETED - INTERACTIVE EMSI SESSIONS - MESSAGES POSTED - PASSWORD FAILURES - QUESTIONNAIRES ACTIVATED - UPLOADS COMPLETED - USERS ON FILE The view utility supports a mouse and you can scroll by clicking on the arrows or by using the cursor control keys. To exit the screen, press ENTER, ESC or click outside the window. <15> REPORTS This will allow you to generate three readable reports, a system usage graph, and four statistic screens. This allows you to see what really goes on with your system. CATEGORY REPORT [*] This will generate a report on one of the nine tracked categories, to be output to the printer, or disk. DATABASE REPORT [*] This will generate a report on the nine categories of the database, to be output to the printer, or disk. USER'S REPORT [*] This will generate a report on a user's total system activity, to be output to the printer, or disk. SYSTEM ACTIVITY GRAPH This will display your system's activity as a graph. The graph will always show at least ONE entry for each category to prevent any problems with the average computations. USER FILE STATISTICS This will tell you the total users tracked, and total slots free. It lets you look at how full your database is. You should always have around 25% of your slots free, and it should never become 90% full, if this happens, you should increase the size of your user file by using BATSINIT. If this ever occurs, you need to manually back up the database and start over new, you cannot change the SIZE of the user file without replacing it, and all of the databases are linked to this file as an index. DATABASE STATISTICS This will tell you the total number or entries in the nine categories BATS tracks. If any entry exceeds 30,000 BATS will automatically archive the database the next time it scans and starts a fresh one, but USERBATS.DAT will not be lost. AVERAGE STATISTICS This will tell you the average statistics for the nine categories per total users and calls. AVERAGE CALL LENGTH [*] This will tell you the average call length to the BBS. It takes a little time to calculate because it reads in each call and computes total length in hours, minutes, and seconds. <16> SEARCH DOORS ACTIVATED This will search for doors activated by keywords. DOWNLOADS ACTIVATED This will search for downloads completed by keywords. MESSAGES POSTED This will search for messages posted by area. QUESTIONNAIRES ACTIVATED This will search for questionnaires completed by keywords. UPLOADS COMPLETED This will search for uploads completed by keyword. USER'S ACTIVITY This will search for a users activity in the categories available. It is probably one of the most popular used commands. <17> MOUSE SUPPORT Most of the menus and scroll lists support Microsoft(TM) compatible mice. This is real handy when you want to look around the database while leaning back with the pad and mouse in your lap. The FIND features will need keyboard intervention for key word entry. <18> BUG REPORTS If you notice any bugs that are due to my programs, you are encouraged to report them to me. It helps to report bugs to the authors as sometimes they still sneak by the beta testing mode. When reporting a bug, give as much detail as possible and net mail it to me at 1:202/507 or US MAIL to: Mark Spivey ATTN.: Bug Report P.O. Box 45058 San Diego, CA 92145 U.S.A. The log scanners will always create an ERRORS.LOG that will be very helpful in determining the error that occurred, please send this file to 1:202/507 if possible for quicker processing.