Dan Jacobson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> Maybe wwwoffle could resist wiping out the cached version when
> encountering a 404, 500 etc. when fetching a new version.
> 
> Silly me, many Debian sites are down today due to a security check.
> And instead of monitoring getting me sightly updated versions of some
> pages there, it just blows away my perfectly usable freshest previous
> copy, in exchange for a framed "Problem Report There was a
> communication problem."

When I have been to the Debian sites this weekend I just get the
standard WWWOFFLE error message telling me that the server could not
be reached.  The page also tells me that there is a backup copy stored
and reloading the URL will go back to that copy.  Is this not the
problem that you have been seeing rather than a 404 or 500 error
message?

> Sniff, if only wwwoffle could do something different when staring a
> 404, 500 etc. in the face.  At least if the code indicates a
> 'temporary problem condition'.

The 404 message specifically is stated not to have an indication of a
temporary or permanent error (see the HTTP/1.1 specification).  For a
500 error code the body of the reply should tell you if it is
permanent or not, there is no mechanism to mark it as permanent or
temporary.

> I don't know if wwwoffle has the flexibility to somehow mark which
> pages didn't get downloaded and why this time, without a separate
> index or page summarizing oddities encountered last fetch.

I think that what you are looking for is the patch that Paul Rombouts
produced.  At the time Paul made the patch available it was at
http://www.phys.uu.nl/~rombouts/wwwoffle_patches.html and I presume
still is.  This will keep the old page in case of an response that is
an error rather than just a failure to get a response which is the
current WWWOFFLE behaviour.

I have already said that this is likely to be included into WWWOFFLE.
The way that things are going it will probably be in version 2.8b.
Version 2.8a is ready to release, but I was hoping that I could have
got version 2.8 uploaded to subsite/metalab/IBiblio first.

-- 
Andrew.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Andrew M. Bishop                             [EMAIL PROTECTED]
                                      http://www.gedanken.demon.co.uk/

WWWOFFLE users page:
        http://www.gedanken.demon.co.uk/wwwoffle/version-2.8/user.html

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