Re: package download failure

[Peter <sw98234 hotmail com>]

On Fri, 07 Mar 2008 22:39:38 -0500, Brad Allison wrote:

> I keep getting this error - over and over - everytime i do a "make
> paranoid-install"
> 
> 
> 
> [===== NOW BUILDING:    docbook-xsl-1.72.0    =====]
>  ==> Grabbing download/docbook-xsl-1.72.0.tar.bz2
>      ==> Trying file//files/docbook-xsl-1.72.0.tar.bz2
> make[10]: *** [file//files/docbook-xsl-1.72.0.tar.bz2] Error 1
>      ==> Trying file///docbook-xsl-1.72.0.tar.bz2
> make[10]: *** [file///docbook-xsl-1.72.0.tar.bz2] Error 1
>      ==> Trying
>      http//dl.sourceforge.net/docbook/docbook-xsl-1.72.0.tar.bz2

snip...

 wget -cv http://internap.dl.sourceforge.net/docbook/docbook-
xsl-1.72.0.tar.bz2
--06:53:07--  http://internap.dl.sourceforge.net/docbook/docbook-
xsl-1.72.0.tar.bz2
           => `docbook-xsl-1.72.0.tar.bz2'
Resolving internap.dl.sourceforge.net... 69.88.152.3
Connecting to internap.dl.sourceforge.net|69.88.152.3|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 1,594,244 (1.5M) [application/x-tar]

100%[====================================>] 1,594,244    281.37K/s    ETA 
00:00

Hey Brad.

I appreciate your enthusiasm and the frequent posts of supposed problems, 
but you know, life around here is more than just reporting bugs. 

Firstly, you neglected to note which version of Garnome this occurred in.
Without this information, it's very difficult to assess it properly. If
you are running 2.21.92, then do not expect much bug support since this
is a development, not production version. I would wait until 2.22.0 is
released.

Secondly, could you please stop sending HTML cruft with each of your
posts? Usenet is text based and seeing two copies of each message,
one in plain text, followed by HTML gobbledygook is plain wasteful.
Either use a newsreader (e.g. pan) or send plain text email ONLY.

That said, I spent around 5 minutes, and was not only able to reproduce
that it's hard to download from dl.sf.net using wget, but I also found
three workarounds.

1) go to sf.net/docbook and download the file manually
2) cut and paste http://dl.sourceforge.net/docbook/docbook-xsl-1.72.0.tar.bz2
into your browser and the file will download immediately.
3) use wget and direct it to a mirror site directly.

I mean, you could have just downloaded the file into the download directory 
and then continued on. You could have investigated a solution and wrote "I 
was unable to complete the download for xyz.bz2, but here is a fix."

There are a lot of moving parts to Garnome. Things like downloads are
mostly out of the control of the Garnome devs. There could be server
issues, your ISP could be getting in the way, round robin server assignment
issues, a wget bug, or just perhaps even a bug in the download command.

However, yelling "fire" every time you stub your toe is both annoying
and unproductive. I doubt you're seeing anything none of us have ever
seen before.

My $0.02? Become a part of the solution. Step back and try and figure
out what the issue is, develop a workaround, and report THAT. Otherwise
you risk becoming a person whose posts and reports are largely ignored.

Garnome is a wonderful tool and has helped many users be quite
productive. Some, like me, do some pretty strange things with Garnome.
I tend to look at Garnome in a micro sense -- app by app, library by
library. So, from a user POV, I am pretty familiar with how Garnome
works.

Do things need to be tweaked at times? Absolutely! But remember that

Joseph and Karsten are extremely able and receptive to all manner
of support and yes, bug reports.

It's important that you are on a MAC platform and a lot of useful
information can be learned from you. Just TRY and be more of a part
of the solution going forward.

-- 
Peter