Day-To-Day Operation

Excluding Computers

For one reason or another, you may want to make sure certain IP addresses are NEVER indexed.  To do this, edit the file "data\ValidException.txt".  At the top of the file is a counter for how many exceptions exist in the file. If you are adding a new exception, make sure you increment this number.   Then, at the end of the file, add these lines:
IP-Address
Computer Name
0

Example:
StrangeSearch
192.168.0.1
0

This entry would cause the machine 192.168.0.1 to never be indexed again. 

Adding FTP Sites

The process of adding FTP sites is similar to that of excluding computers.  You need to make an entry in the ValidException.txt file, except this time you would place a "2" on the third line instead of a 0.  (NOTE: Computer names, the first line of the entry, must be less than 15 characters). 
Example:
StrangeFTP
192.168.0.15
2

This tags the IP address as an FTP site which means it will be ignored by the Windows Sharing indexer.  If an FTP Site ever changes addresses, you must update this entry manually. 

There are two other files you must update: FtpSites.txt and MachineException.txt.  At the top of both of these files are numbers which must be maintained in the same way as Excluding Computers in ValidException.txt.  The syntax for these files is:

MachineException.txt - Tells StrangeSearch how to list this FTP site in search results.  Note the lack of a trailing slash on the FTP URL.
192.168.0.15
ftp://user:pass@Strangesearch:21

FtpSites.txt - Tells StrangeSearch how to login to index this site.  If the site provides you with a special indexer account, the username/password in this file can be different than the one returned in the search results and defined in MachineException.txt
192.168.0.15
user
pass
HostName
FTP Port

New entries in this file do not take effect until you run maintenance.  After that point, FTP sites will be indexed automatically by the indexer. 

Running Maintenance

As often as you would like (probably about once a day) you should run maintenance to create a new set of search databases.  When a computer is indexed, it does not show up in the databases until maintenance is run.  To do this, go to the "StrangeControl" console in StrangeSearch and press the "Perform Maintenance" button.  While maintenance is being performed, searching will be disabled, but it will automatically be re-enabled when maintenance completes.

Using The StrangeServer

Monitoring Applications
On the left side of the StrangeServer app there are several applications that may be running.  You can click on their names to watch them run.
- Pinger is an application that pings all computers that are sharing files. 
- Indexer goes through the ValidMachineMap list of computers and tries to index them to see if they have files. 
- IP Mapper Maint goes through the list of Valid computers and tries to find Computer Names (to detect changed names or new computers).

Monitoring Searches
If you click on "Search Monitor" in the tree, you can see in real-time what searches are being performed.

Manual Machine Maintenance
If you click on "Machine Monitor" you will see a list of all the computers that are currently in your ValidMachineMap.  Occasionally, you will have to do manual maintenance on this list.  To check the computer name of a computer, press F5.  That will retrieve the current name of the computer, if possible.  To clear the name of a computer (effectively removing it from the search until it responds to a valid name request), press F6. 

Adding new IP addresses to the ValidMachineMap

To add new IP addresses or ranges of IP addresses to the ValidMachineMap, take StrangeSearch offline and use the MapMaker utility in the same way you did when you installed StrangeSearch.

Changing Time Values

There are a few user-configurable time values, and they can be edited in strange.ini in the root installation directory.  All of the values are in seconds.

IndexExpire: If an computer has not been available for indexing for this amount of time, the computer's index will be considered too old to retain and will be deleted (Default Value = 518400, which is 6 days)
IndexRefresh: Amount of time to wait between successful indexes of a computer.  To be polite, a computer should not be indexed excessively.  The default value of 24 hrs means that a computer will only be indexed once a day. (Default Value = 86400, which is 1 day)
NameExpire: If a computer has not responded to a Name Request within this amount of time, the computer is considered no longer valid and the name should be cleared from the search database.  (Default Value = 518400, which is 6 days)