Deck Exchange Problem

[Hysminai]

Hi Everybody,

This week I started to test Orphalese. What an amazing software!!!

But I'm a little confuse, maybe it's just me but everytime I tried to download a deck with more than 12mb I received a msg "user offline", or something like that. I tested with all decks available (more than 12mb) and every single one failed, eg. Faery Wisdom, Celtic Tree Oracle, Goddess Tarot...

I don't know if it's only a bug/error or my connection.

I need some help! :)

Hugs

[Programmer]

Hi Hysminai,

Thanks for reminding me about this. Actually I have slightly lost track of what the upper limit on the file size should be. About three weeks ago I uploaded a new version of the server program which should allow transmission of files up to 30 megs. When I tested that by trying to download a really big deck that somebody uploaded (26 megs) I saw that the fix had not worked. I figured maybe it would take if I rebooted the server, but I don't like to do that too often so I left it.

Then, after seeing your message just now, I did reboot the server and I find that I can download all the decks you mentioned, anything up to 20 megs in fact, but no more. But what was the limit before, I find myself asking. Was it 10, in which case my fix has improved things, or was it 20 anyway in which case this made no difference and your problem is nothing to do with the server (your own connection speed or something)? Maybe you could try again and let me know how you get on?

Also, glad you are enjoying the program ;-)

Richard

[Hysminai]

Hello Richard,

Thank you so much for your answer, but unfortunally I must say the problem still remains. I did eveything: I tried to download those decks from my law firm, from some friends' houses, even from a cyber café, but it didn't work. None of the files were downloaded. In fact, I notice another thing: after 20 minutes of downloading, every download just stop...goes till 20 minutes and 3 seconds and stops, showing that msg "user logged-off" or somthing like that. I don't know what to do.

I tried to download a file more than a hundred times (Faey Wisdom) and that 26mb one doesn't even start just go a few seconds and the msg appears. What a pity!

If you have some "light" about this, let me know.

Thanks again.

[Programmer]

Hi Hysminai,

Well, first of all the error message "the other user might have logged off" is a generalised message that always appears when there is a problem with the transfer. This definitely sounds like a timeout problem, given that you can download smaller decks but not these bigger ones. Also you correctly observed that the message appears straight away when the deck is over 20 megs. This is because the server program recognises straight away that the deck size is more than the configured maximum and throws an error.

Here is a bit of background so you can understand the problem (you don't need to follow this, it is a bit technical, I am just explaining in case anyone is interested!). First of all, there are two channels of communication that are open when you exchange a deck. From your machine to the server, and from the server to the person who is sharing the deck. If the deck has already been shared once, and the other user hasn't made any changes to it, then it might be cached on the server, in which case only one channel is used, i.e. the one between you and the server.

This means there are two or three machines involved in transfering the deck, and each one has some configured limits for the communication channel. One of these is maximum file size, and aother is maximum time before timeout. It seems that the lower limit in each case will prevail. For example, I changed the maximum file size on the server to 30 megs but it is still cutting off at 20. This must be because 20 is the default configuration on the client machine.

What I propose to do when I get the chance, which might be as early as next weekend, is specifically set a max file size of 30 megs on the client as well as the server, and also increase the timeout period on both from whatever it is now (I think 20 mins) to something like an hour. When I do I will post back on this thread. To test this or get the benefit of it you would have to download the new version of the program. Also, the test might still fail because most likely the other user will still be using an older version of the program with the previous configuration. However, I think that at least some of the decks you mentioned are cached on the server, so we should be able to test it.

I will post back when there is something more to report ;-)

Richard

[Programmer]

Just to say I spent a few hours last weekend playing around with these different settings but there was still a timeout occurring on the upload that I could not seem to control. It isn't worth uploading a beta until I can find out why that it happening. I will post here if I come up with anything.

[thorhammer]

Hey, Richard :) Just thought you might like to be aware that I'm having this exact same problem. Many, many decks come up when I go onto the file exchange, but none of them is available for download.

Thanks :)

\m/ Kat