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Introduction
So you did a scan and now you've got this perms.log thing and your
wondering what the heck you should do with it... Well you could just
copy the whole thing and paste it as a post to a FXP board but personally
I find it lame when people can't even spend the time to run a few tests on
the pubs they find. Most of the time it is because they do not know
how to efficiently do this. In this tutorial I will show several
different ways to make the pub fillers much happier when looking for pubs.
Necessary Tools
- Ping Companion - A great
add-on program for Ping also written by Grim
- TagCheck - Automatically
checks for Tags on pub using a online database, also written by Grim
- FlashFXP - A
great ftp client designed with the FXP Groups in mind. (Used for
Tagging)
Installation & Setup
Installing Ping Companion (PC) and TagCheck is simple, just extract
both zip files into the Ping directory. PC needs a small amount of
configuration before we start using it.
Start up PC and then click the options button. Set up the general
tab as I have in the screen shot. If you have a fast connection you
can choose to upload the 1mb file and it will be a good speed test, I
suggest using this only if your can upload at least 100KBps. Also I
like using Ping style logs because I find them nicer for posting purposes.
On the firewalls you can import your firewall list from your ping.ini if
you have any, otherwise just leave this off. On the FXP tab you can
test a pub for accepting FXP transfers and speed using a dump that you may
have. Enter all the information for the dump here and PC will try to
FXP a file from it to all the pubs that allow uploading. This is not
necessary so if you do not have a dump you can just leave the box
unchecked on this tab. Tag check requires no setup and can be used
as is.
Using Ping Companion
This program is quite simple, all you do is hit go and point it to a
perms.log (NOT results.log) and then hit ok. It will then start
checking all the pubs for upload/download, list, HD Space, and the FXP
test if it's enabled. You can watch it go and once it is done there
will be a nice new companion.log in the Ping directory. If you open
it up you'll notice it looks just like the perms.log but with some extra
information in it. The speeds next to Upload and Download are very
inaccurate when using the 1kb file because it only takes a second to
transfer it. The point of using that file is to make the process go
quick because it still verifies the Upload and Download status of the pub.
Also most pubs will get n/a for the HD Space check, this is because it
uploads a space.asp and then tries to check it using http. If the
site is not enabled for http or only allows viewing of html files it will
fail. It is does work you will see the HD Space available in the log
file as well. If a pub does not allow uploading PC does not bother with
the other tests because it is then useless, so all you will see is
"UPLOAD: No (0.00 kbytes/s)." If you have the FXP test enabled you
will see the transfer speed at the end of each pub listing. If it
has an error message rather than a speed then PC could not FXP to that
pub. Even if you have a FXPable dump to test from some pubs
specifically block FXP transfers. Anything over 100k for a FXP test
is fairly good. OK from here you can either skip to the end of this
and post the log as we have it now and let the fillers
check for tags and tag the pubs themselves. Or you can continue with the
tutorial and check for the tags yourself. As a beginner I suggest
checking yourself as it will really get you noticed because not a lot of
scanners check for tags.
Tag Checking
Checking pubs for tags can be a long and frustrating process, many of
the pubs you come across will already be tagged. Checking for tags
can either be done manually or using TagCheck. Many people prefer
checking manually, including me. TagCheck is the easy way to do it,
but can be very slow sometimes (if there are a lot of directories).
In this tutorial I will explain how to check for tags both ways. I
suggest reading through this and the tagging section before proceeding, to
same time you can tag pubs as you go along rather than checking them all
and then going back and tagging.
There are two ways you can use TagCheck, either have it check the whole
list at once, or paste the IP in one by one. The easiest way is to
have it do the whole list, to do this put perms.log in where it wants the
address. Then all you do is hit start and away it goes. It
will show all that it thinks could be tags, most of the time it is junk
that has the same words as a tag would and then sometimes it does find
tags. Once it is done you can go through the list of pubs and mark
the ones it found tags on as "Tagged." If the tag is older than 2
weeks the pub can be checked manually to determine if anyone is still
using it. If it is not in use it can be re-tagged by you.
Manually checking is a little more tricky, you first need to start up
FlashFXP and select the remote pane (the right side usually). Go to
your log and select the first ip and copy it and take mental note of the
pub dir, then go back to FlashFXP. Press F8, which is the hot key
for the quick connect dialog, and paste your ip in and hit enter.
Once it connects browse to the pub dir and take a look and what's inside.
If it is empty your lucky, you can tag it right there without any further
checking. Usually there will be a mess of folders inside, the first
thing to look for is any folders named: tag, tagged, com, lpt, or prn.
If you see any of these check the creation date, if there are any within
the last two weeks then mark the pub as tagged and move to the next.
If they are all fairly old you can start checking sub directories by
double clicking them and looking for folders with those same names in each
sub dir. If you cannot find any tags within a few levels deep it is
usually same to assume that there is no one there. Any recent tags
found and you should leave the pub alone because someone else is probably
using it already.
Tagging Pubs
The easiest way to tag pubs is to create a directory structure on your
computer and upload it to the pub. Here is an example of some tags I
might use:
/scanned/and/tagged/by/-=[jtp10181]=-
/tagged/by/-=[jtp10181]=-/for/-=[jtp-FXP]=-
All you do is create those directories in side of each other in a
temporary folder on your computer. Once that is done you can start
up FlashFXP and connect to one of the untagged pubs you found. On
the pub right click and select "Make Folder" and make a new folder named
something that shows this is a tag like simply tag or tagged works fine.
Then enter that folder and on the local pane (left side) browse to where
you started your uploadable tag. Drag the first folder of the tag to
the pub and it will create all the directories just how you did on your
computer. Once it is complete you will be back where you started.
Before you go double clicking all the folders to get to the new working
path, you can just use the pull-down menu and it will show all the
recently used directories. You can simply select the longest one and
it will take you there. From here you can either copy the directory
and paste it into your log (over the old directory) and move to the next
pub, or you can try making some locked folders so people wont be able to
delete your tag as easily.
If you would like to make some locked folders you first need to go read
Dir Locking - NT Basics if you have an NT pub.
If your pub is UNIX you can take a look at Dir
Locking - UNIX Advanced. Once you've got that figured out you
can just make some locked folders here at the end and then get into them
and copy the path and paste it to the log file.
You may be tempted to make a locked folder earlier in your tag. I
am confused as to why people do this. If the whole tag is visible it
is obvious that someone took the work to make a tag and the pub will be
used by a group. When people make locked com folders right away it
says to me that it could just be someone screwing around or many other
things. I like to keep the tag visible so others recognize it
better. Also making locked folders in the root of the pub will more
easily alert the sysop and get your tag deleted.
Posting Pubs
We are now ready to post our log, so find your favorite FXP board and
get to the scans section. Read any rules they may have, some boards
have specific posting instructions. Show your reading skills and
follow them well and the FXP board admins will respect you. Once you
read over their rules (if they have any) you can click the Link to create
a new thread/post. If there are no restrictions on the thread topic
I usually do one of the following. Currently I do: Perms
xxx.xxx-xxx.xxx, where the xxx is the range that is being posted. I
used to just name the post with how many pubs I was posting, something
like: -=[16 Tagged and Tested]=-.
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