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BLScanPlus Pro © 2004 Advanced Features |
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MailWasher
is a product of Firetrust,
a
commercial package that offers multiple strategies for the effective
control of SPAM.
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* BLScan Pro Advanced * BLScan Pro Advanced * BLScan Pro Advanced * BLScan Pro Advanced * BLScan Pro Advanced * BLScan Pro Advanced * BLScan Pro Advanced * BLScan Pro Advanced * BLScan Pro Advanced * |
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| Press the Play button for some soothing music | ||||||||||
| BLScan |  |
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BLScanPlus "Pro" has two advanced features.
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| The
Memory Throttle has been added to the Settings tab, the Advanced menu
is also enabled from the Settings tab... |
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| The
Advanced tab appears as below... |
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Collate/Distribute | |||||||||
| This
feature is provided by
'popular request' and allows users to join blacklist files from
different locations, run BLScan, then redistribute the new blacklist
file generated, back to the original locations and/or any other
accessible locations. This functionality is intended for users on a network. There have been several variations on this particular request, all of which are now facilitated by the Advanced menu. The "Collate Blacklist from..." list allows the user to navigate to blacklist files that may exist in several places on their computer or that may exist on other computers accessible over a home or office network. When BLScan is run, the blacklist files in the locations specified in the Collate list will be 'joined' together and combined into a single input file to BLScan. This collated file may be scanned or subject to manual wildcarding. On completion of manual wildcarding, the new blacklist file generated can then be distributed to the locations specified on the "Distribute Blacklist to..." list. If no distribution locations are specified, the new blacklist file is written to the BLScanPlus program folder. The order in which files are 'joined' from the collate list, is top to bottom. So the first file is joined to the second, the first/second combined file is then joined to the third, the first/second/third combined file joined to the fourth and so on. If you have a 'master' blacklist file which is perhaps larger than the others or is typically more heavily accessed/updated, it should ideally be placed first in the list (at the top) to speed up the collation process. It will still work correctly if it is not at the top, but the process may be a little slower. Since the user will typically want to copy the new blacklist file back to the original locations, a quick way of achieving this is to select the "Replace the files above with the new Blacklist file generated by BLScan" checkbox. There is then no need to specify the distribution locations. The file paths and tab settings can be saved for use next time. This allows a user to combine blacklists on several computers and redistribute the new file back the those locations without having to do any manual file moving/copying. Since the destination(s) for distribution of the new blacklist file can be specified in the Distribute list, this is a useful facility if the target destination is not the same as any of the source locations or there are additional distribution locations. An example of this would be when the new blacklist file generated is destined to be a shared blacklist file located elsewhere (a shared blacklist file is an option within MailWasher). Note: It should be noted that when collating/distributing files from/to multiple computers, Mailwasher should not be running on any of those computers. This is because Mailwasher saves its blacklist file on exit and if a new blacklist file were distributed while Mailwasher is running, the newly distributed blacklist file will get overwritten. A warning dialog is given to the user reminding him/her to check this before commencing a collation/distribution. By default the checkbox "Ask for confirmation when overwriting any files" is checked, hence whenever BLScanPlus is about to overwrite an existing file, a confirmation dialog will be shown. Backup files... Since any combination of Collate and Distribute lists is permissible, it is possible that a user may unintentionally overwrite a blacklist or other file by mistake. All is not lost however since BLScanPlus always creates a backup of the files specified in the Collate and Distribute lists. These are created in the BLScanBackup folder which is present in the BLScanPlus program folder. A timestamped copy of each input file is saved and will be called BC_<timestamp>_<n> for the files in the collate list and BD_<timestamp>_<n> for the files in the distribute list. In addition a "key" file is created (BK_<timestamp>) that lists which backup files map to which input file, this key file includes the original file paths. So if you do mess up, it is possible to manually restore the original files back to their original locations. Don't forget that the timestamp is simply the date and time in the format ddmmyyyyhhmmss. If you need to do this, read about it here. |
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Memory Throttle | |||||||||
| Like
any other software tool,
BLScanPlus Pro demands a certain amount of your computers memory (RAM)
in order to perform its processing. The BLScanPlus utilities are very
'text intensive', in that the various entries in the blacklist file
require parsing, separating, comparing, re-ordering etc. The amount of
RAM consumed by BLScanPlus is thus dependent on the number of entries
present in the input blacklist files. The trash utilities (Totter and
UnRotter) differ in this respect since these utilities read data,
process it, then dispose of it and hence do not have the same
dependency on the size of the input file (which is the MailWasher trash
file, rather than the blacklist file). The blacklist related utlilties (BLScan, BLJoin, BLComp, BLConv) have no actual limits to the size of the input files that they can process. However, the more entries, the higher the memory demand. Since the minimum computer memory that can support W2K or XP is 64MB, BLScanPlus has a default entry limit set at 50,000 entries. This figure was also chosen since it is the level at which MailWasher begins to struggle and is more than adequate for most applications. However, very few computers have the bare minimum memory installed, thus the memory throttle allows the default entry limit to be changed. If you have very large blacklist files and enough RAM, you can raise the permissible memory. Ideally, the memory throttle should be set as low as possible with some margin, ~1.5 times the number of lines in your blacklist file would be a good guide. An approximate calculation of the memory demand is the number blacklist entries x 0.001 Mbyte, so 50,000 entries would consume around 50,000*0.001= 50Mbytes. The memory throttle can be set from 10,000 up to 1,000,000 in steps of 10,000. Raising the memory throttle does not mean that BLScanPlus will automatically consume all of the permissible memory. It just means that BLScanPlus can use it, should it need to. The actual or exact amount of memory consumed is not easily calculated since users computer configurations vary widely. If the entries in a blacklist file exceed the throttle, all BLScanPlus utilities will exit 'gracefully' with an error. If however you set the throttle higher than your computers available memory, then BLScanPlus may crash with a 'memory exceeded' error. So the throttle truly puts the memory consumption into the hands of the user and should be used carefully. As a precautionary note, if the available memory is exceeded, it will not damage your computer, but it may interfere with any other applications you may be running. If you want to push the limits of your computers memory, then it is always a good idea to shut down any other applications that you may be running when you run BLScanPlus. If you want to know how much memory your computer has, right click on the "My Computer" icon and select "Properties", the available memory is shown at the bottom right of the "System Properties" dialog box. Alternatively, click "Start", then click "Settings", then click "System" to see the same dialog box. The default throttle setting of 50,000 corresponds to a maximum around ~50MB. |
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