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| Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) |
What is the Zetmail system, and how does it work?
ZIMACS uses Zetnet's custom email and news delivery system, known as Zetmail. The Zetmail servers create a compressed file (or packet) which ZIMACS downloads whenever it connects. When email is sent to you, it is automatically added to the packet currently waiting for collection on the server. Also, the server periodically collects new posts made to any newsgroups to which you are subscribed and adds them to the packet. When you connect, the packet is downloaded and a new one will be created as more email and news arrives on the server.
The packets created by the server have filenames similar to 05152392.zet. The first two digits of the name indicate the day of the month on which the packet was created, and the remaining six are the time it last had an email or news item added to it. This .zet file contains a compressed set of files representing your emails (.mal files) and news items (.new files). Once downloaded, ZIMACS will decompress the compressed packet and insert the items it contains into the ZIMACS database, ready for viewing.
If you wish, you can have ZIMACS keep a copy of your downloaded packets. In conjunction with the pktview utility, this enables you to retrieve items that have been manually deleted or incorrectly filtered by the killfile. To do this, go to ZIMACS setup, and tick the Enable Packet Save box in the General section. If you also select the Delete Packets option, your packets will be deleted if you manually pack the database, and at the start of the month. It is suggested that you enable this option to prevent you from keeping an unneccessarily large number of packets. If you want to keep a copy of these packets whilst keeping the number of packets stored to an acceptable level, select the Zip Packets Before Deleting option. This will cause all packets to be stored in a zip file before they are deleted.
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