Phex 5.0
 

I have serious troubles running 5.0.
The first time I ran it, it connected but ,
- could'nt remove from dl window
- had to use crtl-alt-del to stop the programme.
The 2nd time It would'nt connect at all, the host catcher stayed empty and had to use the 3 magic win buttons again to stop.
Both times, the programme responded slow (or not at all) to mouseclicks.

All other versions ran perfectly on my system (winME - Java1.3.0_0.2)
I don't think the devolpment team would release such a buggy version, so i think I have to find the answers on my system, anny suggestions?

Thanks in advance, RaaF

Hi...

we never had problems like this.
We didn't change anything on the connection strategy or the host catcher.
Maybe you have problems with the old download list, which I doubt but you can try the following:
Search for 0and rename the file phex.dowload and phexdownload.xml to what ever you like.
Try to start Phex again. It should create a new fresh phexdownload.xml. But all your download will be lost. If this helps you then before you are happy take into account that all downloads are gone... sorry. If not you can restore your renamed files and the problem must be somewhere else...

Gregor

This sounds familiar to me.

I had similar problems and this is what you can do:

- start Phex with the "StartPhex.bat" file (if you have a Windows system)
or
- type "java StartPhex" at the command line in your Phex directory
or
- type "javaw StartPhex" at the command line in your Phex directory

You can no longer successfully start Phex with the "phex.jar", you have to use the "StartPhex.class" instead. At least this is unless you have Java 1.4beta, in this case you can still start Phex with the phex.jar.

Start Phex
 

Konrad,
maybe we should display a little notification dialog and exit when starting with the jar??

Hehe, you're right Konrad,

I was just starting Phex with the phex.jar , and just tried that, I was wandering a bit about the other .jar files but never gave it much thoughts .
And about Dos... Well I am a person that never got involved with computers untill some 14months ago , and I don't know much about it...I just use windows and a few dos commands to do a reinstall if needed....
So a little readme in the zip would help average users like me a lot.
And about the contents of the download zipfile :

- src.zip
- crimson.jar
- jaxp.jar
- license-Rl.html
- License-W3C.html
- pehx.jar
- StartPhex.bat
- StartPhex.class
- xalan.jar

there is a - src.zip in it.
Should i leave it a .zip or rename it to .jar ?
I ran the programme with the -src beeing a .zip and a second time with it beeing a .jar , but it doesn't seem to make any difference.

Oh and one more thing, I would love to see multiple search screens in a future release, that would make Phex really te best !
Keep up the good work lads.

Greetings , RaaF

comparisation....
 

OK 5.0 is running for about 1 hour .
but I am not happy with the search results, and i see a lot of ping timeouts .
so i closed and restarted 5.0, and started 4.6 as well .
the settings are identical,resetted the hostcatchers, and here are the results after 15 min after resetting the statistics ;
5.0:
112 hosts
1635 files
219.73 gb
search for "stones" 1293 results
best shared search count 1630
3 uploads

4.6:
5579 hosts
1811754 files
4.51 Tb
search for "stones" 2678 results
best shared search count 280 (same file as in 5.0)
no uploads

15 min later, after a complete reset of both clients I had the same sort of results
4.6 performs better for downloading than 5.0
and 5.0 performs better for sharing
I want version 4.8 ! :D

RaaF

About the files in the phex_0.5.0.zip:

- the src.zip simply contains the original uncompiled java-sources of Phex. They have to be included in the distribution because of the GNU GPL. You can even delete them if you like. All other files should rather not be touched at all.

About the comparison:

- this is fascinating, I will have to discuss this with the developers.
(But at least the new internal search engine is working!)

Re: comparisation....
 

I see a very similar pattern...
With v 5.0, I get very few successful downloads but, I have
many users sucking files off of my system. Under 4.6
the downloads were always successful and the uploads were
less frequent.

I'm going to try reverting to 4.6 to see if there is any difference...

Thanks for all of your hard work,
Cary

tune around
 

You can try to tune around a little.
Let's assume you have 100 K bandwith. You want to give uploads 45%, downloads 45% and connection communication 10% (you need this to keep up a couple of connection maybe 5-7 when you have lower bandwith then you should only maintain fewer connections).

Set up the following Phex configuration:

Network Setup-My Host Speed: 100 K
Download Setup-Max Bandwith: 45K
File Sharing Setup-Max Bandwith: 45K

This should maybe improve things in my opinion.
There need to be improvements done in this area. So I'm happy if you all can provide us with more experience reports.

Phex 0.50 generate I think huge query response back to the Gnutella network. More than the previous version. In Bearshare you can ignore query, if it is less than 5 character long. It make sense that you do not want to send response if user are looking for “a”. It is possible to select minimum length of the query string so that the Phex does not response to this ‘garbage’ query.

You wanted more exprience reports... How aboout this one, 5.0 shuts off intermittantly by itself and I can find nothing similar in any of the shutoffs. You don't even have to reboot to restart although I usually do.

Another problem I've had is it's lost my download list twice, "phexdownload.xml".

I'm running Win98SE
400PII
256m ram
32m video
The files I am attempting to download are always large movie files, and I have 5-7 on the list at any given time.

Ed

I had this problem too, I'm using Mandrake Linux 8.0, so I went back to version 0.4.1

well, i´m another linux (suse) phexuser. i have similar problems with version 0.5. everytime i close the program my downloadlist is lost and i have to rebuilt it manually (nasty!!).

bleonging the host thread from RaaF:

well, i´ve got a quite similar impression, but if phex is running long enough i`ll reach my 11000 host and 7TB. but it takes quite long until 0.5 phex finds good hosts.

to konrad_h: nice program!! keep working

greetings

afriend

I have been running phex 0.5.0 on Win2k sp2 with JVM 1.3.0_01 (that comes as the netscape 6/mozilla java plugin) and under MacOS X 10.0.3 that comes with java 1.3 also.
I can't get the StartPhex.bat file to work under win2k, it comes up with an error: Java Virtual Machine Launcher
Could not find the main class. Program will exit!
I can run it successfully under win2k by double clocking on the phex.jar file. I have all the files from the zip archive in the same directory.
Under MacOS X it is the same situation, I can only get it to run by double clicking on the .jar file.
After this it runs fine, until you exit it.
Then then next time you run it, it has lost it's download list and all of it's settings.
This happens on both MacOS X and Win2k.
I can recover to an older version of my download list by deleting the empty file named phexdownload.xml.
Then, the next time I launch phex it has it's settings back and the download list populated, but with a very old download list.
It is possible I am missing some xml classes that are required for the new preferences file format? In which case, how do I get them?

Under win2k if I change the command in the StartPhex.bat to be javaw -cp . StartPhex then it works. Looks like the windows java requires manual class path specification for the working directory.
I would guess that is the case under MacOS X too.

Ok, here is a fixed and working StartPhex.bat.
Change the file to read as follows:
start /D"C:\Program Files\phex" javaw -cp . StartPhex
Change the C:\Program files to whatever firectory you have phex in.
This batch file with start phex in with java in the background and the correct class paths.

startup
 

When you lunch Phex with double clicking on the jar file then the required XML libraries are not loaded right. This is way you don't have a download list when you restart Phex.
Please start Phex with the StartPhex.bat or in the way Jon Trott described in this thread.

We need to work on this some more to improve the startup of Phex...

Actually it can be made to work by double clicking of the jar file if you make the Manifest.mf file like this...

Main-Class: phex.f
Class-Path: crimson.jar jaxp.jar xalan.jar

I think the proper syntax is to simply have spaces seperating the classes. Some one should give this a try (unzip it, change the manifest file and rezip it), I already have the libraries installed, and so it would not make a diffrence for me, I could probably remove the libraries to test it. I'll do that...

Yep, I gave it a try and it works when you change the "manifest.mf" file. Otherwise (with out it) it locks up when you exit.

start
 

I tried yoour new phexstart.bat:
Change the file to read as follows:
start /D"C:\Program Files\phex" javaw -cp . StartPhex
and got invalid switch /D"C:\Program , then I tried adding a space as follows: Change the file to read as follows:
start /D "C:\Program Files\phex" javaw -cp . StartPhex
and then got invalid switch /D

I'm Ed from before in this same thread

any ideas?
Ed

Sounds like you are on Win98 on Winme.
For these operating systems, the /D switch is invalid.
You will need to make a shortcut to the StartPhex.bat file.
Change the contents to be:
javaw -cp . StartPhex
And set the working directory for the shortcut to be the directory with phex in it. Also set it to close on exit.
That should work for you.

?
 

If Phex plans on getting popular, they are going to have to get rid of the stupid .bat method of loading the program. We aren't living in the old DOS days.

Limewire is java based, and doesn't make you do this.

Not to mention the fact Phex keeps locking up on me whenever I do a search.

You would be surprised how many applications still use batch files (even commercial software), it really isnt a Dos thing. Windows makes it convenient to just double click them, same as a shortcut... As a matter of a fact, you can even create a shortcut in windows to do the same thing as a batch file (especially for one liners). Anyway batch files are a convenience, they make things easier (when they work right), they are not a problem. A user doesnt know an exe from a lnk, they are not going to know the diffrence of a bat.

The only thing they can do to make it easier is make/use an installer.

Also Limewire is 7 megabytes, a 5 megabyte download (not sure about the autoupdate size). In reality its about 600 or so kilobytes. What is making it so large is the Virtual Machine you download with it.

And on another forumn I read that some people didnt like the file size, in comparison to other gnutella clients... Even Bearshare is rather small in size (1.3 meg download).

Phex is 1.7 megabytes total, a 1.6 megabyte download. It used to be 600 kilobytes (phex 300kb plus source code 300kb), but now that they added the sun XML parser it added 993 kilobytes. Suns XML libraries will eventually be a part of the standard Java2 library and phex will reduce in size again.

I dont mind that they release their source code, quite frankly in my own (Open Source) projects I am seriously considering doing the same thing because some people will just step all over you otherwise, I have found some of my files scattered every where before some with the binaries and others with the source code, very few sites had both, some even deleted the readme files, but this was a long time ago.

Personaly I like to treat the VM like a driver, like directx for example. You install once, and update as the software you use needs it.

Its also possible to create an exe file with out the VM overhead where you still need to have the VM installed before hand, but I dont know how to do it, personally, I have seen it used in the JXTA network project demos (atlhough it wasnt working when I tried it).

Anyway I still prefer

startphex.bat
 

Is there any reason you can't add "exit" as the last line in startphex.bat?