You're dropping me!

[Liam R E Quin]

On Sun, 2012-12-23 at 10:52 -0800, Paul Rogers wrote:
> "When using wget, you can resume partial downloads, so it should not be
> a problem if your connection drops.  Use the -c option."
> 
> Of course I have.  But that doesn't work.  It starts over from 0.
> #man wget
>            Note that -c only works with FTP servers and with HTTP
>            servers that support the "Range" header.

You didn't say whether you were using ftp or http in your message.
Firefox supports both.

> > Another thing that may help is to run a slow ping in another window --
> > e.g., ping -s24 -i3 1.2.3.4 where 1.2.3.4 is the IP address of the
> >     server from which you're downloading. It's always been unclear to
> >     me as to why this should help, but it does seem to.
> 
> Ummm, O...K...

For what it's worth, in the past I (and others) have measured the
difference this made; there appeared to be an interaction with rouers
although I don't know if this is still true.

> I build from source the (B)LFS way, more or less.  Got a problem with
> XOrg-7.5 errors with my MTRR making inappropriate ioctls.  Tried
> server 1.7.1 & 1.8.2, libpciaccess-0.10.9 & 0.11.0.  Does it on two
> different boxes.  Thought I could try 1.7.7.

There's a patch here
http://lists.x.org/archives/xorg-devel/2010-July/011317.html
that may be relevant, although without more information about the actual
error it's hard to know.

> 
> > Or ask someone to send you the source on CD.
> Or I could ask Santa Claus to bring it to me.
> 
> How does this fix the problem of getting dropped?

I don't have enough information to address that problem beyond giving
you some suggestions that may help, which I have done.

> > Or take a laptop (or a blank CD or a thumb drive) to a public library.
> Wanna buy me a laptop?  Why suggest unhelpful things?  Having fun now?
Fun - no. You'd be surprised how many people don't realise that their
local library offers free network access and computer facilities. You
didn't mention whether you were trying to install on a laptop or desktop
or something else.


> http, if I've tried firefox, right?
> 
> And responding with silly suggestions isn't likely to help!

Firefox handles multiple protocols, and if you want someone to
investigate 'being dropped" you'd have to give the exact URL and the
time, or find someone e.g. on an IRC channel to help you by watching the
log to see if there's an error on the server.

But it'll have to be someone other than me.

-- 
Liam Quin - XML Activity Lead, W3C, http://www.w3.org/People/Quin/
http://www.holoweb.net/~liam/