[Ifeffit] problems with automatic update of ifeffit on Windows

[Dominik Samuelis]

Hi Stefan,

 > we have some start-up delays (1 min) during some start-up's  of the
 > programs of the ifeffit packages. The systems are Windows XP systems.
 > It seems, that the software can't connect to the update Server. Since
 > our IT-Staffs deny to help to open the respective ports in the
 > firewall, if I can't specify them, I search here for help. Can anybody
 > specify the ports (out and in), which need to be open.

the port which needs to be open for automatic updates is the usual port 
for http access: 80/tcp (out). runner.exe just issues a regular http 
request to "http://cars9.uchicago.edu/~ifeffit/updates//current.dat", 
with a timeout specified by timeout_connect. As this port might be 
already open on your machines, the delays could also be caused by 
temporary network issues, either on your or on cars9 side.

All the automatic update stuff is configured in 
%IFEFFIT_DIR%/config/updater.ini . You have several options of 
decreasing waiting time, either by decreasing timeout_connect and 
timeout_test, or by setting timestamp to some future unix date, e.g. 
1500000000.00. This effectively disables automatic updates till May 2017 
(which possibly doesn't matter, as it seems, that automatic updates 
weren't used since 2006, roughly corresponding to the ifeffit1.2.9 
release for Windows XP). You could of course use less offensive settings 
for the timestamp. It's easy to compute, since it's just the seconds 
from 1-Jan-1970.

Cheers,
dominik
-- 
Dipl.-Ing. Dominik Samuelis
samuelis at pc.rwth-aachen.de
Physikalische Chemie I
RWTH Aachen University
Phone: +49-241-80-94840
Fax:   +49-241-80-92128
Landoltweg 2
52074 Aachen
Germany