1. internet code
- Posted by gertie at ad-tek.net Jun 03, 2001
- 361 views
Hey all, Since the list is quiet at the moment, at least in my mailbox, i thought i'd write a novelette about my current internet programming results. (Contrary to popular belief, "- ette" means small, "-ess" means female.) I ran into a new puter trouble a month ago, and i couldn't find the reason. It seemed to go into a "suspend" mode, like powersavings, but it stopped the clock cold too. The screen might or might not have gone blank. If i moved the mouse, the screen would pop back up,, in the last state it was when it blanked, but nothing on it would be current in time, for instance, it would show me still online, when in fact the clock had stopped 10 minutes after i went to bed, and *nothing* had occurred since! It would take as long as two minutes before the puter realised it wasn't online, notify the internet apps, and ask me if i wanted to reconnect. Occasionally the screen would freeze, and i couldn't mouse or get a ctrl-alt-del window,,, or ctrl-alt-del restart the puter. This was Not Good. My first consideration was that i may have been trojaned, since this was a new occurance and i had changed no OS settings, and something hooked into the puter and was using the cpu at the lowest ring state and highest priority,,, but i really was offline, the firewall showed nothing on the highest alert settings or in logs, and puter scans showed nothing. I even checked the open files and verified what apps opened them, what other apps had been spawned, and what dll's they were linked to. I also checked the timestamp on some files, and compared that to the times some apps had been running. Nothing out of the ordinary showed up. I pulled the ethernet card, and unloaded all lan programs from the OS. I was getting nowhere. So after a couple weeks of this, i needed a rest, and pretty much shut down most of the mirc and Eu code. Strange.... the problem went away. So i began suspecting everything i had shut down: the http proxy, the Eu code, the mirc code, Pegasus, the new isp, the arrangement of the desktop, the harddrives,, nothing was beyond suspicion. Over the next week, i brought back everything one at a time, by itself. I tried everything in different configurations of the puter, lightly loaded, and with multiple instances of everything. I tried each suspect app with 80% puter resources available, and with 10% resources available. I tried each with 95% idle cpu up to 100% loaded cpu. I tried with heavy net traffic, and light net traffic, and not online at all. I tried with nothing much in memory (128megs SDRAM), and with everything loaded, including 100 megabytes of text files and 20 open IE sessions. Why was i doing this? Because i value reliability. If it's not there when i need it, then i don't need it. <rant_mode="on"> If the tool isn't there, then i can't say i can use it. Rather like powersaving settings in the OS, if i have the puter on, it better be doing what i told it to do,, and if i am not at the screen, by golly, i know where the power switch is. If i have code running, i don't want the OS kicking the harddrives out from under it. </rant> Anyhow, i think i have found the problem. At least, i am back online with no problems now. I had tried all the internet connection code for windoze in the archives, one at a time, and often at the same time. A lot of mirc code was online, and a lot of EInetLib_full.ew or EInetLib.ew code. A small amount of tcp4u code was running, and i had one winsock.e code running. The winsock.e was the first app i had stopped using in my efforts to find the problem. The tcp4u was the last internet code i had tried. I suspected the winsock.e because it *seemed* to be a lower level access to the OS, and therefore the most likely to not have safeguards,, and Jesus didn't seem to be supporting it anymore. The problem didn't go away when i shut down the tcp4u code. The "suspend" problem occured with EInetLib_full.ew. When the puter is in use intensively, it seems to *interact* with every other net application, IE5.x, the proxy, email, mirc, everything. By itself, one application, it seems to be fine. But it doesn't stand up to 24hr a day, 7day/week industrial duty use here (and i have been using it only for http access!). Well, we have been having a spate of active weather here, the last couple weeks it's unusual to not have hail and mesocyclones on radar in every 24hr day, so i have been on edge and not sleeping much. Right now, radar shows hail here. I decided to explore tcp4u some more, to exercize it and see if it would break like EInetLib_full.ew. Other than the two bugs i posted to the list, the parts of tcp4u i have tried are working, but i haven't used it all yet. One nite, i got the irc client on line, one nite i made it recieve email, and last nite it sent email. All along it was web mining using http. Right now, there are 8 instances of Eu code using tcp4u running (and the mirc code and Textpad, of course, and multiple IE, Pegasus, etc etc), and the cpu is only 10% loaded, and i have had no more "suspend" problems. Your mileage may vary. Has it? How are you using Eu to connect online? Under what circumstances? Kat, listening.