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Change in resources?


Farelf

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Hi,

Starting 22 February (after 04:00 UIT/GMT) I have been effectively unable to process spam as a mole. Since then, pressing the "Process spam" button mostly results in a "Request timeout" as I wait for spamcop response ("...contacted ... waiting for reply"). I can persevere and sometimes get through after many tries. I then face a similar rigmarole to either send or preview spam reports. I have tried email submission but, again, sending the report after spamcop acceptance is the sticking point. It has been this way for two days now. I have one unreported spam message currently.

I've been a mole for just over two months using Netscape Communicator (Messenger and Navigator), mostly reporting by pasting the "page source" of received spam to the spamcop web page because that way the links get picked up, also because a few of my email submissions got lost (besides which, trebling my email volume was hardly my aim in joining the spam wars). I have maybe reported 1,000 - 1,200 spams one way or the other over this period. The installation I use for email is old and slow and at the end of more miles of copper than you want to know about but up until Sunday 22 February has been adequate. Web and email response just lately *might* have slowed marginally but everything apart from spamcop submission seems to be working as before and I cannot see any unusual volume of spam processing in the stats to account for spamcop maybe being overloaded (besides, we got through that spike in demand 4 weeks ago without any such effects).

Any thoughts on anything I can do (apart from getting a new PC) or has spamcop reduced resources to us moles? I shall keep trying from time to time but if nothing changes I shall, reluctantly, retire from the ranks of the righteous for the time being. Spamcop is effectively unuseable for me as things stand. I think of that as a tiny victory for the bad guys.

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The use of Netscape brings up a tale not often told <g> .. check the folder that stores your "temp" files ... I can't remember the actual filenmes involved, but in the past, this type of condition has been solved by deleting those Temp files ...

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Thanks Wazoo - that's "clearing disk cache" and it DOES seem to help, but only fractionally (one of the "perseverence" things, along with minimizing open applications, freeing up available RAM with Freemem). It remains inordinately difficult for me to get my stuff processed by spamcop and this is a sudden change compared to the previous 2 months. And I haven't changed anything (OK, we ALL say that but I haven't).

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OK, just passing on old stories ,, others have reported finding thousands of file in there,, and the infamous 1,024 seemed to ba a trigger point for the temp files from hitting the SpamCop reporting page ..

So, the next old story <g> ... a daily issue over in some of the Microsoft peer-to-peer support groups ... especially triggering on things like slowing down, timing out, sudden change, etc ... gets us to scumware ... What are the odds that you've downloaded, installed, updated (heavy emphasis on this part) , and ran tools like AdAware, SpyBot - Search & Destroy, PestPatrol ....????

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Yes, it would certainly be on the odds that any "resource" issue would be at my end but I haven't (intentionally) downloaded anything to this machine except email since my last update of Symantec virus definitions and I certainly haven't installed anything since then (blush - Feb 6th). Come to think of it, I will update and scan JIC.

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Wazoo, Wazoo, Wazoo - you were right on the money first time. Apart from the Navigator disk cache which can be an issue, Messenger does indeed create a .tmp file for every email received - not in the folder it has been told to on my installation but in the parent (C:/DOS in my case) and *yes*, the magic number does seem to be 1024 and, though it takes a very long time to get to that number, it eventually does and slooooows response right down.

Thanks a million, thank heavens you know about this arcane stuff, thank goodness Bill Gates isn't the only pudendacephaloid out there (getting tired of blaming him for everything), sorry to be so "dense" and I'm back in there smiting them hip & thigh

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Hot dang, glad you've got it going again!

Now, why does your system still have a setting to use C:\DOS as a "Temp" folder? Gads, you're taking me down the way-back path there <g>

oh geeze, Google strikes out ---

No definitions were found for pudendacephaloid

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The use of Netscape brings up a tale not often told <g> .. check the folder that stores your "temp" files ... I can't remember the actual filenmes involved, but in the past, this type of condition has been solved by deleting those Temp files ...

The filename is nsform**.tmp (where "**" is a two character alpha-numeric string). This problem seems to have been fixed in versions later than NS v4.79.

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Hi, JeffG,

An off-topic portion of this Topic has been moved to the SpamCop Lounge and retitled "Command-Line Editor Wars".  :)

...Looks like it's in Help rather than the Lounge. :huh:

Oops! Thanks for the heads-up.

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Re Netscape 4.79 problems. Thanks one and all - also, I belatedly found the FAQ topic

http://www.spamcop.net/fom-serve/cache/280.html

FWIW several nsformXX.TMP multipart form files are created for each spam individually processed, one of which is apparently deleted when the Netscape session is ended. The one which persists (and thus needs eventually to be deleted manually) includes the spam message as pasted for processing, whether subsequently reported or not, which might occasionally be a handy reference.

The location (directory) of the TMP files may relate to an initial Netscape installation value, "n" upgades ago (rather than the current default Windows temp directory), in any event it does not seem to be addressable from Netscape should a more convenient location be required. I found mine could be successfully changed in the Registry, being confident enough (or sufficiently foolhardy) with Regedit:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Netscape\Netscape Navigator\Main\Temp Directory

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Thanks for that note .. been saying recently I need to wade through the whole FAQ as it exists today ... I didn't know that was there .. and just to repeat, kudo's to Spambo on that one ... all I really remember was that it was a long time ago <g>

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