home
***
CD-ROM
|
disk
|
FTP
|
other
***
search
/
Crawly Crypt Collection 2
/
crawlyvol2.bin
/
apps
/
bbs
/
nitro3
/
nitro.doc
< prev
next >
Wrap
Text File
|
1994-07-10
|
6KB
|
154 lines
NITRO-Scan
(c) Copyright 1993 - 1994 Steve Barnes
Supplied courtesy of the Logic Church BBS (1:224/150)
Steve.Barnes@lchurch.mcd.on.ca
Steve Barnes
1166 Lorraine Street.
Sudbury, Ontario, Canada
P3A-2V4
(Voice) 705-560-3115, (BBS) 705-525-1307
INTRODUCTION:
NITRO-Scan is a replacement for the built-in mail scanning routines
in Quickbbs/ST. Normally, the standard routines do the job just
fine. However, my BBS run over a 275 message areas, with a good
portion of them echo areas. At any one time, their maybe upwards of
60000 messages in my system. Obviously, doing a mail scan would take
some time as you can imagine. So much so, that many of my users
would never bother doing it - let alone stand for it during logon!
Something needed to be done as messages were getting renumbered
right out of the system with out ever being seen by the person they
were addressed too.
Enter NITRO-Scan. I couldn't think of a good name for this beast,
and since, during development, it showed a real willingness to blow
up BIG TIME - I thought the name was appropriate. The name stuck
after I got it working reliably because as you will soon see, its
visciously FAST! So fast in fact, that it takes longer to display
new messages than it does to actually find them!
NITRO-Scan uses two main algorithms for its blistering performance.
The first and probably the most important, is a high level BTree to
use as an index file. This provides the fast access. The second,
aids both speed and index file size, instead of keying on the ASCII
representation of a messages 'TO:' field, NITRO-Scan instead uses a
16 bit CRC of the recievers name. This saves a HUGE amount of disk
space (32 bytes per message!). If your run a large message area as
I do, this really adds up.
FUNCTION:
Basically, NITRO-Scan has 3 operating modes as follows:
-r : Rebuild
-u : Update
-s : Scan
Rebuild mode is run after you renumber or pack your message bases.
It completely rebuilds the index files from scratch. Update is run
after every caller or after a mail run. It adds any new messages to
the index files. Scan is run when you wish to search for and mark
new messages for a caller.
NITRO-Scan does not alter ANY BBS files, it only reads them. All
files that are written too are NITRO-Scan's own files. Of which
they're two. The first - NITRO.NDX is the actual index file itself.
The second, is the NITRO.RUN file, which NITRO-Scan uses to speed
the updating function. Neither of these files are 'human' readable.
INSTALLATION:
You will find in the archive two files NITRO.110 & NITRO.112. If
your running version 1.10 of QBBS, rename NITRO.110 to NITRO.TTP.
Likewise if your running version 1.12 of QBBS, rename NITRO.112 to
NITRO.TTP.
This is the best part, NITRO-Scan doesn't even have a configuration
file. I've found the best way to run it is to create a folder
called NITRO and copy NITRO.TTP into it. You can run NITRO-Scan
from *anywhere* on your system, even on a different drive if you
wish.
Next is probably the most important step. Forget this and
NITRO-Scan will not work at all. You must create an environment
variable called 'QBBS' case is important! This is done with your
command line program with the 'SET' command. I use TomShell myself
and it looks like:
set QBBS \QBBS\
Now you need to edit your batch files <GACK!>, don't panic, this is
really easy. After a caller logs off your system run NITRO-Scan
with an -U paramter, same thing after you import network mail.
After you do a full renumber or pack, run NITRO-Scan with an -R
parameter. Thats it.
For the BBS side of things, the flat out easiest way to run
NITRO-Scan is via a .DOR file (I've even supplied mine for you to
copy over). After this, it's simply a matter of adding/changing the
menu entry for a new mail scan to run the door file. This is
parameter 7 with a parameter line of NITRO.DOR.
Were done.
CONCLUSION:
I hope you find NITRO-Scan as useful and as fast as I have.
NITRO-Scan is being distributed as true shareware. Send me $10 or
whatever you feel its worth to you if you use it.
Your are granted unlimited permission to distribute NITRO-Scan
provided it is distributed unaltered and intact. No fees may be
charged for distribution beyond media costs.
The author makes no claims whatsoever regarding performance, fitness
for purpose and is no way liable for financial losses, real or
percieved through the use of NITRO-Scan. Your use of NITRO-Scan is
done entirely at your own risk.
OTHER SOFTWARE BY STEVE BARNES:
CALLID - Uses your phone companies Call-Display features to provide
real-time screening or validation of callers. Available for
Forem/Turbo/Turbo-2, QBBS/ST.
NOTARY - Call back verifier for Forem/Turbo/Turbo-2 & QBBS/ST.
*FAR* to many options to list, perhaps the most feature packed call
back verifier available for ANY platform. Crippleware ($10) - note,
even in an 'unregistered' state, NOTARY provides a huge assortment
of features, but the bells and whistles are disabled. To give you
an idea of the popularity of NOTARY, do date, I've received over
100 registrations for it! (I didn't think their were that many
Atari BBS's in North America :)
FREQList - Builds Binkley AVAIL/OKFILES based on Forem/Turbo file
databases. Includes automatic filename substitution, wild carding,
inclusion on download level and much more. Freeware with source
code.
TurboTxt - Handy GEM based utility to add/strip control codes in
Forem/Turbo text files. Freeware.
ADDENDUM:
If you find that NITRO-Scan can't find the message areas, double
check to see that you have included the drive letter in the
QCONFIG option that specifies the path to the message areas. Same
thing applies to the environment variable.
Also, message areas that have a [SPACE] as the first character will
not be indexed.
If you have any recommendations for change to NITRO-Scan, please,
by all means feel free to contact me.