Digital Art Zone

I’ve been looking a bit into what’s going on on the server, and found some things that may explain some of the problems people have experienced, like missing zip extensions for downloaded files etc.. Attached a screenshot of a file header (the info the server sends to a program when it tries to download a file) as it used to look, and one as it looks now after the changes on the servers during the last couple of days.

It appears that it’s currently CloudFlare that handles the files instrad of the DAZ servers, I believe that’s just a temporary measure because of problems with the DAZ server, but it’s probably what causes some of the the problems as the file headers it sends are missing some parameters:

the Content-Length parameter which reports the size of the file in bytes
the Content-Type parameter which reports the file type

This may confuse some programs when you try to download a file with them, causing different kinds of problems.

Maybe someone could forward this to the server admins, in case they’re not aware of it…

I’ve been having a terrible time trying to download files.  It shows that I have 4 remaining, but after one attempt (which always fails), it shows that I have 0 left.  I guess I’ll just have to be patient and wait until things settle down.

This is ridicules I can’t download a thing! Last nite I got errors and today it stops before it has the full file. So of course then the exe won’t run because it is not complete.

There are certain PA’s I am trying to support here when I can, those that include Poser in their offerings. But if Daz doesn’t finally get their act together I will have to stop that. Nothing is more maddening than buying something and not being able to get it when you want.

Why does Daz keep shooting themselves in the foot with horrible service and a really lousy web site? Doesn’t make any sense to me.

I would hope that all members have a right to their opinions and mine is that this place, that use to be so nice, now really sucks big time!

Hey, Taozen, is this related, or meaningful? (Or old news?).

Happened at the login attempt.

Edit: Every file in the list is showing unavailable. That makes a little more sense.

This thread reminded me to download… I wasn’t going to get in on the PA sale, but they got me.

Well firefox is unable to read anything from the Daz site. luckily i managed to download most of it yesterday. Now to install and see if it’s working properly.

Daz,

Windows 7 64bit and Firefox latest version. I can get into the home page from a link in the newsletter but that is all. Yesterday the same. Today I can get to the forums though.

In the store I cannot get to the store pages. I get a list of links down the left side, but they don’t work.

Bummer, wanted to grab a couple of items from the sale and have been unable to. The site worked for a couple of hours yesterday evening, but no go today.

I hope you extend the sale again if you can’t get it working by tomorrow?

Have you tried clearing your cache etc and rebooting firefox. I can get to the store and am currently downloading some purchases. I live across the pond from DAZ 3D, and am also in one of the 12 worse areas for broadband speed in our country, and am downloading at the moment at almost the top speed I get for downloads anywhere. I am using firefox latest version as well.

I have it set to empty my cache on shutdown.

My Cache clears every time I close. It worked for a couple of hours last night, but pages loaded really slowly. I can open the home page by clicking on the link in the newsletter and the forums open fine from the links in the dropdown.

I click on “Shop” and the main page opens, but I click on a link (in this case animals) I get the attached image and links do not work.

It did work fine for a few hours yesterday as I said but then today it’s back to not working right again.

I have the fastest speed cable broadband that I can buy and no issues. All other sites work perfectly and pages load almost instantly, but not here.

when you get that page try clicking on the back button and then try again.

That does nothing. I also cleared my cache but I know that not the problem. I get that page anyplace beyond the shop page in the store. Forums are just fine. I just can’t shop.

OK, tested with latest version of IE and it’s exactly the same. The problem is simply not at my end. Forums work fine. If I click on the daz3d.com link in a search engine I get a sorry the page cannot be found page and then if I click on the homepage it loads OK. Something is messed up. I’ll check back tomorrow.

So there IS a reason I either can’t download my purchases-or they do download-and the zips won’t open.

Blaine91555 - 29 September 2012 03:32 PM

OK, tested with latest version of IE and it’s exactly the same. The problem is simply not at my end. Forums work fine. If I click on the daz3d.com link in a search engine I get a sorry the page cannot be found page and then if I click on the homepage it loads OK. Something is messed up. I’ll check back tomorrow.

I had to clear cache and Daz cookies, to get rid of the site-down pages with Firefox today.

Far as I know, though, IE clears all the cookies.

I’m gonna go try downloading again…
Edit: Nope.

Eric Walters - 29 September 2012 03:50 PM

So there IS a reason I either can’t download my purchases-or they do download-and the zips won’t open.

Taozen’s downloader fails (see above), but I can download fine through Firefox. That’s an unexpected twist.

That’s how most of these Daz site bugs have gone. They hit some people, not others.

Weird stuff here too. On top of the site’s glacial slowness the last couple of days, yesterday for a while I was getting nothing but the text-only pages shown upthread. Two of the files I downloaded (also yesterday) were cut short and wouldn’t run, so I had to re-download tonight.

Also tonight, the Wishlist link at the top of all pages isn’t there on any of the top-level store pages. Seems to be there in sub-pages, but… wait… it’s just reappeared again. < sigh >

Something else tonight I’ve never seen before — I read the forums by getting a New Posts list, which is normally three or four pages long, which I always open all at once. This time when opening a new page from that list, I got a “no posts match your search” error several times, before finally getting the next page of the listing.

There’s a lot of weird stuff happening recently. Could it be those DDoS attacks someone speculated about yesterday, or Magento tossing its cookies (again), or some other problem with the DAZ servers? And yes, the problem does seem to be limited to DAZ, all other sites I visit regularly are working as normal.

T Jaiman - 29 September 2012 01:36 PM

Hey, Taozen, is this related, or meaningful? (Or old news?).

Happened at the login attempt.

Edit: Every file in the list is showing unavailable. That makes a little more sense.

No it’s not related to the server problems, just a minor change on the download page which broke some of the code, and it’s fixed now. However, the server problems are causing other errors because the server don’t report the file size as it use to do. 

I’m just testing a workaround for this though, and it seems to work, so I’ll put up a temporary version people can use if they like. The file integrity check and other stuff is disabled though as it depends on the file size info, but file download is working OK. And no corrupted files among those 80 files I’ve downloaded and tested so far. in general it’s extremely rare I encounter corrupted files with the program, but with the current server problems I don’t know if things are as stable as they use to be. Looks like it though, as far as I can tell.

OK, final test over. 113 zip files downloaded without any problems and testet 100% OK with WinRAR. One file not downloaded because of a temporary server timeout. Unless you have a poor connection and often experience corrupted files, I believe it’s fairly safe to use.

Clearing files seems to take much longer than it use to though, I guess this is also server related.

Those who want to try it, can download it here:

http:/taosoft.dk/software/3dcdl-daz/updates/ContentDownloaderDAZ_TEMP_FIX.zip

If you already have a previous version installed just drop the file into the existing program folder and run it. Otherwise create a new folder and put all the files in it.