Hi Steve,

Most of the time when a large download fails, it fails by not
being complete. Check the file sizes. I would bet that the
one that goes over your POTS line is truncated. The file server
gets tired of waiting for an acknowledgment from Netscape, and
goes on to other things. Netscape decides enough time has gone
by, and declares the file downloaded... and lies about the number
of bytes too! (I stopped using Netscape and went to Mozilla/Seamonkey
for that very reason.)

RH6 is a bad place to stay with linux. Go over to
Debian Stable, and you will do much better. It is just as
fast, if you avoid the super fancy Gnome and KDE windowing
features.

The problem with RH6 is it has serious problems in its kernel
that allow you to be rooted easily. It is the only version
of linux that I have ever used that got hacked. And then it
was hacked over a dialup line that was only up when I was
using the machine.

-Chuck

Straydog wrote:


On Wed, 23 Jan 2008, Steve H wrote:

Straydog wrote:




I just moved the file to a different box with AR ver 5, which says it
is trying to repair the file, then bombs off with a subsequent
message that the damage could not be repaired.

Does this mean I need to try another big download?

Since I posted this the download speed from that site slowed to a
crawl, It should speed up in a day or two when everyone had downloaded
everything on the site.
I use Adobe reader V8 and had no problem reading any of the files.
Yours was probably corrupted due to the download server over loaded.
Only takes a few seconds to download on ADSL Max but it's a huge file
on dial up.

Steve H


I went back to the website using Unix LYNX and downloaded a second copy
into my unix shell account root directory. This happend at 120 KB/sec,
and executed normally. Then I FTPed a copy of that file to my root
directory at a second Unix ISP (that happend at about 1 megabit/sec),
and downloaded, again, the file over my dialup (another 1 hr 20 mins
[sorry, I'm in the country and can't get anything but dialup, might
someday look into "wireless" since we have a nearby cell phone tower]),
and the file still geneates errors with AR 4 and 5.

Another guy said he could open the file with xPDF on his Linux box. I
have RH Linux 6.2 (probably the best distro in terms of hardware
compatibility with older hardware and low hardware spec needs) in an hda
partition on my same box with FAT-16/Win98SE partition, so downloaded a
third copy of tt4.pdf, used mtools to copy the file from the FAT-16 to
the Linux partition, and tried to open it with xPDF and it would not
open (no error messages, either).

I have an XP box (that I really hate to use) and am considering tring
once more (since it has whatever version of AR that needs XP) to read
the file.

I can tell all you guys that not all hardware/software combinations work
100% right all the time. I've had successes with things that other
people failed at and vice-versa. I've also had reproducible problems of
all kinds. I have a copy of Excel2000 that will absolutely not install
on one of my Win98SE boxes, but installs fine on all other of my Win98SE
boxes. And, the Win98SE box that refuses to install Ex2000 will install
everything else I have and run all of everything else. I have lots of
these stories to tell. Even for Linux (and I've had every version of Red
Hat from 4.2 up to the workstation [Taroon]).