Oct 20, 1992

SCANSERV.EXE for Novell NetWare
===============================

In the course of doing some research for a school paper (about
operating systems and disk file activity), I had cause to write
this small program which generates a very special kind of file
system directory.

SCANSERV produces a complete directory of all volumes on all 
attached servers, but is only interested in five pieces of in-
formation:

	file size
	update date
	archive date
	creation date
	access date


SCANSERV doesn't record any other information, and its output is
in a form suitable for reading into a spreadsheet or database system
for statistical analysis. SCANSERV outputs five decimal numbers for
each file it finds; the information for each file comprises one line.
(The information is listed in the order shown above; file size is first,
update date is second, etc).

The file date information is actually processed as a file "age" (i.e.,
how many days ago was that date?). For example, a file whose access date
is "today" will have an "age" value of zero; a file last accessed yesterday
will have an age of "1", etc.

SCANSERV outputs its information on the standard output (which can
redirected to a file.).

**** Useful Feature: Invalid Date detection! ****
==================================================

During the course of developing this program for my own data collection
purposes, I discovered that some of the "age" numbers I was getting were
negative! I explored further, and discovered that some files on my net-
work had dates like 0-13-2029, and so forth!

So, I added a feature to SCANSERV which will print out the file names
and weird date information as it is running its scan. If you want to use
SCANSERV solely for this purpose, just type:

	SCANSERV >nul

If any weird dates are found, they will appear on the screen!


**** Ulterior Motive: Your Help Would Be appreciated! ****
==========================================================

I have an ulterior motive in handing out this code. I would greatly appre-
ciate receiving scan results from your server to help me in building a
richer, more diverse model of how real-world people actually use their
Novell networks to store data. Up here in the ivory towers of academia, 
we like to get a cold, refreshing splash of REAL data :-) to keep us
thinking straight.

To collect this data, just type

	SCANSERV >outputfilename

Example:

	SCANSERV >C:\TEMP\SCAN.OUT

Since SCANSERV doesn't record file, directory, volume, or server names,
you won't have to worry about revealing anything confidential. I would
greatly appreciate receiving these data files via CompuServe E-Mail to
myself:

	Jorge Gustavson 72360,1665

If you could, please PKZIP the file before sending. It'll save us both
by a factor of about 4 in upload/download time.


***** Sample Output and Source Code INCLUDED *****
===================================================

A very simplified example output file EXAMPLE.OUT has been provided
for your perusal. I have also included the source code for the program,
comprised of:

	SCANSERV.C    NEWNOV.C  NEWNOV.H  VERSION.H

A Borland C++ V3.1 project file (SCANSERV.PRJ) is also included for 
quick and easy rebuilding using Borland C V3.1.


**** End of SCANSERV.TXT ****