WeBuilder deletes files

[dlecke]

Here is the problem: I have two identically named files in two different directories open for editing. One of the files gets deleted.

/contacts/index.html
/support/index.html

I can edit the files just fine and save them but eventually Webuilder gets confused and deletes one of the files. At first I thought this was a fluke, but it has happened repeatedly.

[syrupcore]

probably unrelated but I'll post it here, just in case they are related.

I had a similar heartbreak last night. I was saving a file to FTP (one of my favorite features) and webbuilder got stuck. After 10 minutes (it was a css file!) I did a ctrl+alt+del and closed webuilder. When I restarted and FTPed in to open the file it was 0 bytes!

I'm only working off the server cause I'm putting together a wordpress site and cant seem to get MySQL to play nice on my machine (I'm sure it's just cause I'm tooooo sloooow to figure it out). Luckily I was able to find an older back up but....

I really dunno if it was webbuilder or my server or solar flares or what. I had Filezilla open too so there might have been some sort of authentication error that cause webuilder to freakout. It's usually no problem. So, ya know, I just got drunk.

Will

[Karlis]

I did as you said, created two folders and saved identically named files, opened and then tried everything, and could not reproduce the problem. Probably you can provide detailed steps to reproduce this. I also did walk throug code and it seems thet there should be no possibility for files to get deleted. It seems just impossible.

Please try updating to the version 6.2, probably it is some old problem from the early releases, if you are using one of them.

About the FTP, it could be that instead of receiving the file and then replacing it, FTP server first deletes the file and then only tries to receive the updated version. I hope it was an FTP server problem, but in case it happens repeatedly, we will need to look into this deeper.

[chrisjlocke]

Just to repeat SyrupCores problem with the FTP. This has happened several times now where when uploading a file to FTP, WeBuilder will just 'die'. It seems mainly on the 'Logging in' section, and just waits and waits. The cancel button doesn't do anything, so the only thing to do is CTRL ALT & DEL poor WeBuilder. This also deletes the file on the server you were going to upload, which is a bit of a bugger!!

Haven't managed to replicate it 100% (some days its fine) but its not happy about some responce its got back from the server, so just loops.

[Karlis]

I would need such an FTP account where you can reproduce this in a few tests. It is otherwise impossible to tell what is wrong while everything seems fine Can you help?

[chrisjlocke]

I'll have to test it on my 'test' site, but if it fails on that one too, I can give you those FTP details.

[Karlis]

OK.

BTW I tried it one more time and could not reproduce on differrent FTP servers. This kind of problems is killing me...

[chrisjlocke]

I know the feeling! To make matters worse, it doesn't do it every time. I've used the feature a lot (at home) and found it useful, until it 'murdered' a file in cold blood!
I now take backups in case it does it again - losing a file on the main server is bad.

[elwood]

I just had the same problem. I was working on a site using WeBuilder's FTP and all was going well. I tried to save a page and the FTP locked up while trying to log in and wouldn't do anything. I finally had to close WeBuilder using the Task Manager and when I reopened the page was blank.

The only observation I can make is that my computer was probably low on resources. At the same time, Task Manager showed that CPU usage was at 100%. I don't know if that helps, but thought I would pass it along.

Elwood

[docdave]

A friend turn me on to your software and I have been trying it for a few weeks now to maintain most of my sites. (Great Software!) I have to say the FTP bug is quite anoying; I have not lost files but I do have the FTP lock up on me at random. When it does I simply use an external FTP program and keep going, everything works fine. Like I said this is a random accourance and I have been trying to determine if it is my server that causes the problem.

[gLes]

I'm using WeBuilder 6.2 and fortunately haven't met this issue so far, but...

I can't actually see into your code but as I see the FTP is handled in several seperate threads (I see the number of threads increase in the Taskmanager when connecting to an FTP site). Thus I would say maybe a more "brutal" thread terminating method would solve this.
I mean sometimes the Terminate method of a TThread might not be enough due to the fact that it actually does nothing besides setting the Terminated property to True which is only a sign to the thread code itself to stop itself
On the other hand there's the very effective basic Win32 API call TerminateThread which shoots first and then asks questions.

Sorry for poking my nose into your coding, but these problems really annoy me too as a programmer as well as an everyday user. I'm ofcourse only guessing that you are developing in Delphi

Btw. answering a lot of posts before: yes it is likely that this issue is caused by one (or more) specific behavior of the FTP server but even thus the program should be able to avoid hanging and produce an error message instead

[Karlis]

gLes, indeed this does not happen with all FTP servers, so it is difficult to reproduce and trace out. We use 3rd party component for FTP here and it initially had some problems then we enhanced the code, made a few fixes, but apparently it was not enough.

[gLes]

Since we're already talking about the FTP again, I'd have another issue:

I've set the ASCII mode filter to * so that all the files would be downloaded in ASCII mode, but sometimes from the FTP panel it still doesn't work (I get an extra empty line after each real one), but if I use the Open from FTP in the File menu, it seems ok...maybe you should look on that too

[Karlis]

gLes, wildcards have never been implemented for FTP ASCII extensions, so you will have to list all the extensions. "*" just won't work.