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- ChkAV 2.0
- CopyRight 1991 by Dave Navarro, Jr.
- Courtesy of The Bard's Lair
-
-
- A big problem nowadays for sysops is the ever increasing problem of
- BBS's like Rusty & Edies that reZIP all their files using their own
- -AV, often overwriting a legitimate -AV created by the original
- author, solely for the purpose of advertising their BBS number to
- attract more callers. I'll agree that any BBS can always use more
- callers, but that's the purpose behind ZIP comments, do your
- advertising there, and if that file is uploaded to another BBS and
- your ZIP comment get's overwritten, well at least the person who
- uploaded that file saw your ad.
-
- Where am I going with all this? Well, after reading a long discussion
- in the RIME/MetroLink conference concerning the subject, I came across
- a few messages between a few individuals who were working on a program
- that would check for the AV in a ZIP and return an error level if it
- found one. Well, I jumped on the modem, called up the BBS that had
- the program and downloaded it, and it worked really nicely. However,
- there were a few problems.
-
- The program I downloaded would execute PKUNZIP using the -T option to
- test the zip and redirect that output to a text file. The ChkAV program
- would then search that text file for the presence of -AV and if found,
- would return an error level. Well it works, but if you happen to run
- accross a ZIP file with a file called -AV (a valid DOS filename) it
- thinks that the file has an -AV in it. Also, if you have a ZIP file
- with a LOT of files in it, the procedure slows your filechecking
- considerably.
-
- Being a programmer myself, and having just written a library to
- access information inside of ZIP files, I thought I'd see if I could
- find a more direct method. Unfortunately, while Phil Katz was nice
- enough to thoroughly describe the information fields within a ZIP
- header, he gave no information whatsoever about -AV's or testing
- for them. But after a couple of hours of pouring over his notes and
- some notes I made, I found out a fool-proof method for determining
- is a ZIP has an -AV in it. Unfortunately, I cannot determine who's
- -AV it is, but you can't have everything.
-
- To use ChkAv, just type ChkAv FILENAME.EXT, and ChkAv will return
- ERRORLEVEL=1 if the file is not a valid ZIP, ERRORLEVEL=2 if the
- file has an -AV, or no ERRORLEVEL if the file does not exist or
- does not contain an -AV. Note: ChkAv also works with self-
- extracting ZIP files as well.
-
- * Version 2.0 now does all printing through DOS so that output may
- be redirected.
-
- --------------------------------------------------------------------
- Whose AV 1.0
- CopyRight 1991 by Dave Navarro, Jr.
-
- Well just after I wrote ChkAv, I started getting messages asking if
- I could make it so that ChkAv could figure WHOSE AV it was. While
- I'm not a half bad programmer, I am not good enough to figure out the
- encryption technique that PK used for AV's. The only way to accomplish
- it is to unzip the file and search for the name. So, I wrote Whose AV
- which will search the PATH for WHOSAV.CFG which contains a list of the
- 'names' you want to search for, then calls PKUNZIP to unzip the file
- with the -T function and redirect it to a file called WHOSAV.LST which
- is then parsed for the 'names' contained in WHOSAV.CFG. If one is
- found an errorlevel is returned and the 'name' found is printed to
- the screen. All output is redirectable so you could redirect the
- name to a text file for a message or something. After WHOSAV is
- finished it erases WHOSAV.LST.
-
- I hope that together these utilities help sysops to help combat the
- problem of BBS's that abuse the AV privelage.
-
-
- Disclaimer:
-
- ChkAv and WhosAv were tested on a 486 machine with everything on it,
- and a generic XT clone with 640k and monochrome and worked without any
- problems. However, if ChkAv does not work on your system, or causes
- any problems I cannot be held responsible. Use this file at your own
- risk.
-
- If you do have any problems, or suggestions, please call The Bard's
- Lair at 718-381-3651 and leave me a note. I currently run ChkAv and
- WhosAv in my PROUT1.BAT file in ProDoor and it works without a hitch.
-
-
-