Broken Connections to Apple Server
Broken Connections to Apple Server
- Subject: Broken Connections to Apple Server
- From: "Jonathan Levi, M.D." <email@hidden>
- Date: Mon, 18 Dec 2006 04:49:30 -0500
Hi,
By way of introduction, I'm having two problems using my dial-up
modem (stubbornly, I know) to download Apple's nearly-gigabyte
Developer Documentation and other .dmg's. There seem to be two
reasons: 1) the Internet connection breaks, and 2) the Internet
connection may hold but the server connection may be lost, a
different problem.
I've written an AppleScript to try to handle these two problems
automatically. The script has been successful for some time at
detecting and restoring broken Internet connections before the
connection to Apple's server times out. Recently, I've brought my
script to the point where it will detect a lost server connection and
restore this as well; however, from the moment downloading resumes,
there is now a big (>100MB) discrepancy between the length of the
download as reported by Safari, the browser I use for this purpose,
and the actual file length reported by the Finder.
A more detailed description follows: I'll be downloading a .dmg file
(example: Apple's December Developer Documentation in PDF,
dec06devdocpdf.dmg). Safari saves the partial download as a package
file, dec06devdocpdf.dmg.download, on the Desktop. I then run my
script:
1. The script makes a backup copy of the partially downloaded file
and names the copy, "dec06devdocpdf.dmg.bak.download"
2. Every minute, in an infinite loop, the script checks the Internet
connection and the server connection; every 5 minutes, the script
deletes the backup copy and makes a fresh one from the original.
3. If, during one of its iterations, the script detects that the
Internet connection is down, it calls Internet Connect to reconnect,
then tells Safari to resume downloading.
4. If the script detects that the server connection is down, it
a) Deletes the "group" containing dec06devdocpdf.dmg in Safari's
Downloads window;
b) Deletes the download files dec06devdocpdf.dmg.download. (Sometimes
the download file has already been converted to the disk-image file
dec06devdocpdf.dmg; the script deletes this as well.)
c) Renames package file dec06devdocpdf.dmg.bak.download to
dec06devdocpdf.dmg.download and has Safari open it.
Sometimes Step 4 almost works: downloading resumes. However, when
this happens, Safari has a much too small notion of the download
file's length, as I mentioned before. At other times, Safari's
Downloads window simply reads, "File doesn't exist", by which I
assume Apple's server is no longer willing to resume downloading. I
can't explain the variation in response.
Can anyone help me identify the most likely source of the problem?
Script? Safari? Something else? I haven't posted the script. because
it's fairly long and I don't want to ask people to wade through it,
if the problem seems likely to be elsewhere. If you think the problem
isn't with the script (I suspect it isn't) can you think of a more
appropriate list for this problem?
TIA,
Jonathan
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