New build 4.0.812

[danb]

Build 4.0.812

Fix: Some messages were incorrectly identified as not existing and were not downloaded.
Add: Experimental cache service and server are in place. New option added to menu "File->Options->Download".  The option is currently disabled by default.

The experimental cache takes a little explaining but effectively it provides a non-blocking message download server for PG4.

The cache server works by building a cache of the messages submitted by users of PG4.  If you enable the cache server option then your PG4 will automatically submit all messages to the server cache downloaded from Y!.

Any other user of PG4 that attempts to download the same message will be able to quickly download the message from the cache server.

So as soon as one user downloads a particular group all PG4 users will benefit and the message will effectively have been downloaded from Y! only once.

Currently the default in PG4 (4.0.812) is that the cache server option is disabled.  But if you would like to assist in exercising this new feature please simply enable the single checkbox shown below. 

The current default server, and only server, is called "node1.file2.me" and may change in the future but your PG4 would be updated to point to any future server change. Also note that all PG4 network cache activity is encrypted using HTTPS.



Feedback and suggestions are welcome!  I'm curious if it provides any relief for Y! lockout problems. 

Feel free to post the names of any groups you are testing with as well.

Install: https://www.file2.me/pgoffline4/pg-offline-4.0.812-x86.exe

[Wilson Logan]

Hi Dan,

Just to be clear here... the file caching system uploads messages that are downloaded after enabling remote server caching OR it uploads all messages from your database?

Either way, this feature is a tremendous leap forward.


Cheers,

Wilson.

[danb]

Hi Dan,

Just to be clear here... the file caching system uploads messages that are downloaded after enabling file caching OR it uploads all messages from your database?

Either way, this feature is a tremendous leap forward.

Cheers,

Wilson.

When caching is enabled, newly downloaded messages will be sent to the caching server. 

Currently, any previously downloaded messages can not be submitted to the cache. The reason for this is that the cache is of the exact page response from Y!. So retrieving a page from the cache server is as if the response came from Y!.  Current messages in PG4 are a submit of the original Y! page. Which means the cache stores the message content, ID, topic ID etc.

On another topic, I made the cache server name configurable in the main application options with the intent that a user or group of users could run their own cache server, if desired.   The cache server source code could be made freely available. The technology of the cache server is all free open source; Ubuntu + node.js + MongoDB.

[Wilson Logan]

Hi Dan,

OK, I see. 

I have gigabytes of old messages from various groups. Is there any chance to have them uploaded to a server for sharing? Not necessarily the same server as the current messages, if there will be a format conflict.

The reason for this is that some groups have over 200,000 messages (e.g 7X10minilathe, some astronomy & programming groups, etc) and having to re-download that many with YG! current download restrictions would be a gigantic PITA.

Cheers,

Wilson.