Thomas,
This is the "endless download" bug spoken of "just a second ago" on the
list.
To answer your questions:
1. I went there & found the bug
2a. No, not ill luck
2b. Yes, bug & page
I have another page that routinely gives me problems like this. Maybe
some day someone can get together a collection of page codes for the
"problem children" and figure out why Arachne misbehaves so badly on
certain js pages?
There is a fix, and something to watch for to know that the "emergency
bailout" is called for.
1. These pages always download in chunks of X,000 bytes; not all
pages that download in chunks of X,000 bytes are bad but the
bad pages *ALWAYS* do. So be warned if downloads start that way;
2. Watch the bottom line; if it clears for no reason and then jumps
in size of current download by 40-60,000 bytes, this is a buggy
page warning. For me the CDW page jumped from 88,000 to clear
line to 148,000 bytes.
3. When that jump occurs, hit "I" for Inbox or "H" for hotlist. The
download may not stop immediately, but you should at least see the
size of the download increment by 1 byte each time you hit "I" or
"H" (I just noticed that yesterday<G>)... from 148,000 to 148,001
etc.
It may take 3 or 4 tries, but eventually the inbox or the Hotlist
will load. At that point, hit the "back" arrow and you will see
the message "Loading Page from Disk" on the status line; you will
also see that a number of other files are being downloaded (if you
have in-line images at YES). At that point a pageUP or pageDOWN
or even the space bar will write the guilty page to the screen and
you can then decide if you want to allow graphics to continue
downloading, or stop the download and view page "as is."
It would be great if someone at Arachne Labs paid a bit of attention to
this problem. :< Even the behavior I've outlined about *might* help
someone who cared figure it out.
But until there is a fix, there is at least a way to handle it.
l.d.
====
On Wed, 23 May 2001 04:29:10 -0400 (EDT), Thomas Mueller wrote:
> I just tried to browse http://www.cdw.com with Arachne, running on a VDISK
> (which is DR-DOS's name for ramdisk) in DR-DOS 7.03, and it downloaded until it
> passed 8000000 bytes, when it paused to buzz my Iomega Zip 250 (which is drive
> C as currently configured with regular hard disks inaccessible), then downloaded
> some more, in several steps, alternating with buzzing the Zip 250. When it
> passed 8400000 bytes, it stopped with memory allocation error. I hit a key to
> continue, got fatal.ah (3 skulls & crossbones), exited to DOS but not for long
> before the computer hung with DOS Lynx386. I had to hit Reset. Maybe someone
> else might want to see if Arachne can handle http://www.cdw.com ? Is it just my
> ill luck, or a bug in Arachne and/or http://www.cdw.com ?
-- Arachne V1.70;rev.3, NON-COMMERCIAL copy, http://arachne.cz/
