Hi, everyone–
Total noob here with some questions about how the launcher downloads updates.
- Often the download progress X in the progress stat “Downloaded X / Y at Z/s” will drop. For example, it might say “Downloaded 205MiB / 1.2GB at 121.09KB/s” and then later, it will say “Downloaded 198MiB / 1.2GB at 145.03KB/s”
It will happen repeatedly throughout the long download where X climbs up, then drops a few MB, then climbs back up, then drops. Also, occasionally Y will change (usually downward, but sometimes upward) even though X has not reached Y yet. Often, it will sit there for hours, Y staying the same, but X churning within a fixed, small range (usually not more than +/- 10MB of a central number). Strangely, if I just walk away and let it sit for hours, it will eventually finish downloading everything it needs and let me play, but I have no idea of how many total bytes were downloaded or where I am in the progress at any given time.
Is this normal? It doesn’t make any sense compared to other download progress stats in other software. Is the download rejecting files based on them being corrupted or something? What can I do to fix this? (I am on a 4G LTE connection with a data cap, so having to re-download stuff I already downloaded is quite bad. If it’s actually failing and retrying over and over, I’m probably wasting a ton of my data cap.)
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Is it possible to pause the download? The total download often takes over a day and consumes all my slow bandwidth, so pausing the download would be useful during the day, letting the download run at night.
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If I close the launcher in the middle of a download, does it restart from 0B when I re-open the launcher? It looks like it does, but I wanted to make sure. If I had a way to pause the download I wouldn’t have to close the launcher.
Thanks!
I figured out what is going on by looking at the main launcher log files.
The churn in “Downloaded X out of Y” is that the downloads of chunks of Y are timing out often near the end of a chunk where the EVE CDN server stops responding, and then the launcher starts over downloading the chunk.
This explains why X drops a bit–the chunk is lost and then starts over. I saw this happen in real time when X dropped by about 80MB and began climbing again towards Y.
Y changes when the launcher decides that it will work on a new batch of chunks. Sometimes the batch is on a better server and the launcher blasts through the download; at other times the batch is on a bad server and it just sits and churns over and over for hours, not making much progress.
So yes, the worst case is happening: I am wasting a lot of my data cap downloading and re-downloading the updates. For example, let’s say an update is Y = 1.5GB. Due to the retries, I might be downloading 2.0GB or more in total.
The proper fix for this is for the downloads to use something that can pick up at the last byte downloaded (similar to rsync) rather than pick up at the last chunk downloaded. Also, it would help to have block-level differential downloads where if a large file is only updated by a few MB in places, the download only downloads the few MB that are changed, not the entire file, and not even the nearest-sized chunk.
I have not figured out whether closing and re-opening the launcher forces the re-start of the download at the batch size (Y) or at the nearest chunk size (X). It looks like it restarts the batch.
The launcher was much better before they improved it last year. I am one who plays this on Linux OS and I also install the game folder and files to a dedicated “gaming” HD - 2 TB Western Digital Black. Meanwhile the Eve launcher - for reasons - reads my Linux OS partition instead and tells me I don’t have enough room on the drive.
When it refuses to install, I normally end up doing a very complicated work around to install needed game files. All it really need do is warn a user;
There doesn’t appear to be room to install files on the drive. Continue anyway? Y/N.
But most of the time I get a fast install with my broadband. So far, this Linux OS user is still in the game.
Thanks, I don’t blame the launcher 100% on this, I am not using the intended OS. However it seems to me, they need an alternate OS liaison to cover the Mac and Linux crowd. I am aware of other lesser games have some developer, who pops into their Linux thread and keeps them balanced.
Well I threw this off topic yet again. I still get a kick out of these users who ask or state the game is dead or dying. The day you attempt to login and get no response should be pretty obvious.
Fly safe o7
