prozilla/docs/FAQ

This is the ProZilla Frequently-Asked Questions List.

Copyright (C) 2000 Kalum Somaratna (Grendel).

This FAQ list may be freely distributed with the ProZilla package or any
part thereof, provided that this copyright notice is left intact on all
copies.

ProZilla  FAQ List
******************

ProZilla is a download accelerator for Linux, which makes multiple
connections to the server and downloads the file in chunks thus making
the download much faster than it would have been possible if it was done
using a single connection based conventional method like netscape and wget
do. In addition it supports downloading from multiple server based on 
ftpsearch results and pinging them.

Table of Contents
*****************


ProZilla FAQ List

1 I'm in a hurry and I don't want to read all those doc's....

2 What systems does it run on?

3 Configuration Issues
  3.1 What on earth hapenned to the old ProZilla config files? 	

4 Downloading issues
  4.1 ProZilla says "Resume not supported"?	
  4.2 ProZilla is using only a single connection sometimes?
  4.3 1 connection says "login rejected", but the rest are OK?		
  4.4 ProZilla says "Error while getting info from the server"? 
  4.5 ProZilla mucks up my file, it is corrupted....?
  4.6 I want ProZilla to try infinitely because of my bad connection?
  4.7 I am using 10 connections but I can only see 4 in the display?
  4.8 I hate to type in the URL every time I have to download something,
       isn't there any better way to do this? 	

5 FTPSearch Issues
  5.1 How do I do a FTP search? 

6. Miscellaneous
  6.1 Where can I get ProZilla?	
  6.2 Bugs / Where do I post bugs?
  
1 I'm in a hurry and I don't want to read all those *!@! docs....
*****************************************************************

_*Q*: I want to get started immediately, tell me what to do or else.....

*A*: OK, assuming that ProZilla is installed correctly using either the
RPM's or from the source, just type 
"proz commandline" from the command prompt, where commandline is the URL
which you wish to download and it will begin the download.

Example: 
prozgui www.gnu.org/xxx.jpj 
Will cause ProZilla to connect to
gnu.org and download the file xxx.jpg and save it in to the current
directory.

2 What systems does it run on?
*****************************************************************

_*Q*: What systems does it run on?

*A*: Currently it runs only on Linux, since that is the only OS that I
have access to, apart from windoze which doesn't count as a OS anyway..;)


3.1 Configuring ProZilla
************************

_*Q*: What on earth hapenned to the old ProZilla config files?

*A*: The GUI versions store there configuration file in the ~/.prozilla 
directory. The GUI versions ignore any /etc/prozilla.conf or 
~/prozilla.conf.

4.1  ProZilla says "Resume not supported"?
******************************************

_*Q*: Hey! Sometimes ProZilla says "Resume not supported" and proceeds
with just a single download...what is hapenning?

*A*: Well unfortunately there is no standardized way of getting the size
of a file under the FTP protocol, many servers support the SIZE command,
which is what ProZilla uses (and when this fails the LIST command) to get
the file size, and this works for most FTP servers. However there are some
very ancient FTP servers out there which don't support either of these
popular methods, thus when ProZilla can't get the size of a file it has to
use a single download method and get the bytes until the server says the
end of the file has been reached.

The other reason why it can say "Resume not supported" is that when the
FTP server doesn't support the REST command, which again is a problem with
ancient FTP servers. The REST command is used to ask the FTP server to
restart the Download from a certain file position, and as you may see when
the server doesn't support REST no resuming is possible.

4.2 ProZilla is using only a single connection sometimes?
*********************************************************

*A*: There  are sevral reasons for this all are unavoidable.

1. The server doesnt support getting the file in portions.

In this case we can't split the download, and have to use a single
conenction and get the complete file.

2. We are going throuh a proxy. (you have specified a proxy) 

Most proxies support specifying a range of bytes in a file to retreive, so 
this shouldnt be a problem unless your proxy does not allwo this basic 
functionality, if it does not support it then there is little you can do 
except try to use another proxy server or use a direct connection.

The other problem is that when you have specified the FTP proxy as a HTTP 
proxy, most of the FTP through HTTP proxies (Squid etc) do not support 
getting a FTP file in a range we want, so again prozilla has to use one 
connection and worse still it cant resume either becuase the HTTP proxy 
which is used for FTP does not support.


4.3 1 connection says "login rejected", but the rest are OK?
************************************************************

_*Q*: While downloading with multiple connections, I see that one
connections status is "login rejected", what do I do know, do I restart it
or watch and see what happens.


*A*: Please *don't* restart, just let the download proceed and you will
see that the connection resumes after sometime when one connection has
finished downloading it's portion.

The reason is that some FTP servers administrators have disallowed more
than n connections per IP address. where N can mean anything from 1 to the
number of connections that ProZilla is attempting.

So assuming that ProZilla is attempting to make 4 connections, and the
sysadmin (The *beep*!) has allowed only 2 connections per IP address,
ProZilla will begin with 2 downloads, and the FTP server will reject the
other 2 login attempts, however ProZilla will continue, and when one of
the current downloads has terminated, it will retry logging in and proceed
with the download, so there is no need to restart, please allow it to
continue.


4.4 ProZilla says "Error while getting info from the server"?
*************************************************************

_*Q*: I tried to start a download but ProZilla aborted with the strange
message "Error while getting info from the server", is this a bug with
ProZilla?

*A*: Well this is most probably due to a data transfer error, it maybe a
bad connection, or a incompatible server, or it maybe that you need a
user/name password combo to access the server. Usually there is a small
message above this which indicates why this happened.

However if another downloader like netscape or wget works with the URL and
ProZilla does not, this is most probably a error with ProZilla and I would
appreciate it if you could post the URL and the error you received to
<kalum@genesys.ro>, so that it can be removed from the next release.

4.5 ProZilla mucks up my file, the file is is corrupted!
********************************************************

_*Q*: I downloaded this zip(tar,gz etc) file using ProZilla and when I
tested it on my system the file has CRC errors, is this a bug?

*A*: There are three possibilities, the file on the server maybe corrupted.
The way to do check this is download the file using a single connection,
either using "ProZilla -1 URL" , or using GNU wget or netscape, and test
the file, if the file still has CRC problems it means that the file on the
server is corrupt and there is no problem with ProZilla.

Another one is that you are downloading from multiple servers after a 
ftpsearch and ping. Well if one server has a bad file then necesasrily the 
download will be corrupted.

The other possibility is that there is a bug in ProZilla, the way to check
this is that after a single connection download, if the files CRC checks
out correctly, and the corruption only happens when you use ProZilla, then
it is a bug and it kindly should be reported to <kalum@genesys.ro>,with
the URL so that it can be removed from the next release.

4.6 I want ProZilla to keep on trying more than the default attempts!
********************************************************************

_*Q*: Oi! I have this really bad connection and ProZilla gets a lot of
errors and eventually say that "connection x has been tried x number of
times" and quits, what can I do about this! I am too lazy to get a better
connection and I want ProZilla to continue to keep trying until it dies!

*A*: There are several things that you can do, you can ask prozilla to
make unlimited attempts at getting a succesful download, by using the
--retries=0 options.

Or you can try to increases the delay between each try by using the
--retry-delay option, for example to make ProZilla delay 60 seconds before
retrying a connection, please specify --retry-delay=60.

4.8 I hate to type in the URL everytime I have to download something!
*********************************************************************

_*Q*: ProZilla is good but I hate to type the URL everytime I have to start
a download, isn't there anything that I can do about this.

*A*: You can in netscape select "Copy URL Location" and then open up 
prozilla's open url dialog box and press CTRL-V to paste it in from the 
clipboard.

The other method is to ask your browser to launch prozilla whenever you
want a URL downloaded, this can be done for galeon, and it should be
possible on other browsers. If anyone does this please tell me the methods
so as I can add them to this FAQ so others can do so too.

5 FTPSearch
*****************************************************************
_*Q*: How do I run a ftpsearch, it seems to be off by default??

*A*: FTPSearch can be turned on by default by clicking in the box in the 
preferences dialog in the FTPSearch tab.


_*Q*:What is this Pinging and why is it not working when I am using a FTP 
Proxy?  

*A*: As you know prozilla pings a list of ftpsearch returned servers to 
determine their suitability to be used as downloads, since prozilla runs with 
the normal user priviledges the real PING cannot be performed and thus 
prozilla does a tcp ping to port 21 on the target server, thus if your 
ISP/Firewall has blocked acess to port 21 on remote machines this will 
neccessarily fail. If you have any ideas on how to solve this issue please 
contact me.

6 Miscellaneous
*****************************************************************

6.1 ProZilla homepage / Getting Prozilla
*********************************************************

_*Q*: Where is the homepage for ProZilla...

*A*: http://www.prozilla.genesys.ro is the ProZilla homepage
where you can get the latest versions and updates about ProZilla.

6.2 Bugs / Where do I post bugs?
*********************************************************

_*Q*: Where do I post bugs?

*A*: The prozilla developers mailing list <prozilla-dev@disconnected-by-peer.at> will 
wellcome them.