[odf-discuss] Foundation's plugin: installation problems

[marbux]

On 1/28/07, Daniel Carrera <daniel.carrera at zmsl.com> wrote:
> On Sun, 2007-01-28 at 07:09 -0800, marbux wrote:
> > Back when I was doing a lot of WordPerfect tech support, corrupt
> > downloads of update service packs was far and away the most common
> > problem when folks couldn't get them to work. It's a common problem
> > for other downloaded software too.
>
> I can't remember the last time I had a problem like that. And I download
> 100% of the software I run. From the OS upwards. Alex tried downloading
> three times, and tried it on two different installations. I don't think
> this is a download problem.
>

If three consecutive downloads failed to install properly I agree that
it's unlikely to be a corrupt download.

Downloads, particularly HTTP downloads, used to be much more error
prone than they are today, but even FTP downloads could be corrupted
if you weren't using a downloader with error correction. You can
eliminate the risk of both these days by using a downloader that does
support error correction. I'm not aware of any browser downloader that
provides such support.

Even back when such problems were more common, they were fairly rare.
Only a tiny percentage of folks experienced such problems on a given
WordPerfect update. I was only exposed to the problem because quite a
few of those in that tiny percentage made their way to the web site
where I was doing tech support. Most often the problem traced to minor
corruption that disabled a given feature. Very occasionally it would
result in an inability to install the update.

It's been quite awhile since I knowingly experienced such a problem
personally. But anytime you're dealing with a download process where
packets can wind up in the bit bucket, you can't be confident of
getting an uncorrupted download unless you use a downloader that
verifies packet transmission integrity. It's always a good idea,
especially if you download a lot of bits, because many instances of
corruption will be fairly subtle, not stopping installation but
introducing the risk of data loss or other application malfunction
that can easily be misdiagnosed as an application bug, if the problem
is even noticed.

Aria2 is a command line utility for Linux that has the necessary
functionality. <http://aria2.sourceforge.net/>. If you're interested
in a GUI-fied approach, I use wxDownload Fast.
<http://dfast.sourceforge.net/>. Both automagically calculate MD5
checksums and have other useful features too, such as download
resumption and MetaLink support. <http://www.metalinker.org/>.  There
are others. I use wxDownload Fast because it was part of my
cross-platform app strategy for migrating to Linux. It's
cross-platform, so I was able to get used to using it before making
the leap.