rld 1.0 documentation

Known problems

  • Threaded news is not supported (but may be).
  • Folder downloading is not supported (and probably won't be; rl already does folder downloads well).
  • rld logs state changes (active -> idle) as user changes.
  • You can't move files between volumes. This also means that if the trash directory (see server.trashdir) is on a different volume than the home directory (server.homedir) you won't be able to delete files (ie. move them to the trash).
  • Login is pretty slow, especially when many people connect simultaneously (e.g. using rltest). Needs profiling.
  • People who are using rl to upload to a drop box (or other unreadable directory) get a (harmless) "You are not allowed to view drop boxes" error message. The upload proceeds normally. The bug here is that rld returns a task error when it should return an empty list.
  • If you can view your drop box you can also download from it, which is not exactly how Hotline behaves. Drop boxes are a bit broken anyway; use different home directories for different accounts instead.
  • The transfer queue is not really fair: people can monopolize all the downloads in the server (leech file after file) by simply occupying all the queue spots in order. The best solution would be to interleave requests in such a manner that all users get their requests serviced more or less fairly.
  • rld does not notice it when somebody cancels a queued transfer. This means the queue is not updated until an active transfer completes (or is aborted).
  • The creation time of a file is always identical to the last modified time of a file, and may (depending on the platform) be bogus altogether (there is no way in Java yet to reliably get the last modified or creation time of a file).
  • Make alias is not implemented.
  • There is no support for Windows shortcuts or Macintosh aliases. Unix symlinks work, however.

25 october 2001