Hello,
I could be wrong, but all it may take is one server
(for whatever
reason) deciding that the download is problematic for the whole file
download to fail.
Our download servers support resume.
5) Is there some type of timeout command lying
somewhere which might
instruct the wikipedia server to quit a particular attempt to download
a large file if it is taking too long?
No.
It also seems like a good idea to split large files
up using a file
splitter (whichever one takes your fancy) as larger file downloads
would seem to be problematic for most people who have access to
networks with only a limited connection speed.
Our download servers support range requests, which are used by proper
download clients to resume the downloads.
Every modern HTTP client should support download resume and large
files - people are not running fat16 anymore either (you know, that
doesn't support >2GB either), why would network tools and delivery be
as ancient?
It occurs to me that, given the randomness of this
problem, this
response might also be correspondingly random. Still, how long might
it take to organise something in the way of a (perhaps unix script
automated?) file splitting for the larger wikipedia database download
files?
There is no need - we're using standards released 10 years ago to do
the work properly.
already the case – but, from what I gather, once an
incomplete
database dump is downloaded – it is pretty useless, unless someone can
correct me).
Use HTTP resume functionality:
wget --continue
curl --continue-at
BR,
--
Domas Mituzas --
http://dammit.lt/ -- [[user:midom]]