Job Settings

When a new Job is added to the Job List, all settings are set to the default values specified in the Default Job Settings dialog. To open this dialog, select Options / Default / Job Settings in the Main Menu.

To edit settings for a particular Job, open the Job Settings dialog by doubleclicking the Job in the Job List or by selecting Jobs / Job Settings in the Main Menu.

Location

field contains the URL pointing to a file or directory on the remote server. Multiple downloading locations can be specified for all Jobs except the ones that point to a directory (http://host/path/ or ftp://host/path/) or have query parameters in the URL (http://host/path?parameters). To switch to another location or add new locations to the list, select Jobs / Locations in the Main Menu.

Title

is an optional field. It is the name of the Job that will appear in the Job List. Use it to give a meaningful name to your Job. If you leave the field blank, the name will be generated automatically.

Save to folder or <category>

allows you to specify the local directory in which the received file will be stored. You can define one or more file categories in the Destination Folders dialog and associate a folder with each category. This will allow you to pick a category from the drop down list instead of typing the fully qualified directory path.

If the field is left blank, the file will be stored in the DEFAULT category.

Restore Source Directories

This option allows you to preserve relative locations of the files if you download multiple files from the same site. For example, the Job configured to download http://www.netvampire.com/ftp/dummy.zip to C:\Temp\ will create the C:\Temp\http___www_netvampire_com_80\ftp\ directory and put the file there if this option is enabled.

Rename File To

is useful when you want to save the file under a different name. This is especially useful for URLs with queries, since such URLs point to the script file rather than to a document.

Start On / At

allows you to schedule the Job to start at any time in the future.

Referrer

Some HTTP servers only allow you to download files if you start by following their link. Use this field to let such servers know that you visited their page.

User Agent

Some HTTP servers only recognize requests sent by a particular browser. Use this field to make Net Vampire pretend that it is Internet Explorer or Netscape. By default, the user agent reported to the server is Net Vampire/3.3.

Force retry if received less than N bytes

Some busy HTTP servers may send a small HTML file with a Busy message instead of the file you requested. Since the reply code is OK, the only way to distinguish such messages from the actual file is by size. Use the Force Retry... option to tell Net Vampire to keep trying until it receives a file larger that the specified lower size limit.

Ignore File Time Change

Net Vampire takes special precautions to ensure the integrity of the received files. In particular, it checks the file size and date/time and starts over if any of these attributes have changed. Sometimes, however, you may want to disable date/time checking. Some huge servers, such as ftp.netscape.com or www.apple.com, physically consist of several computers. Each of these computers has exactly the same directory structure and files. File dates, however, are different on each computer. Every time you request a file from such a server, your connection is routed to a different computer, and Net Vampire detects file time change. Use the Ignore File Time Change option when downloading from such servers.

Strip Proxy Messages From the File

Most HTTP proxies, when the connection to the remote server is lost, send an HTML-formatted message to the client. This message comes in the same data flow as the file being received. In a web browser this doesn't cause a problem: the proxy message is displayed below the partially received web page. When downloading a binary file, this proxy behavior can easily result in file corruption. If you check the Strip Proxy Messages option, Net Vampire will detect these messages and strip them from the local file.

Start Job Regularly

See the Scheduling section for details.