245347 - temporary directory should not be used for downloads on OS/2

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(SeaMonkey :: Download & File Handling, defect)

Description

[Julien Pierre]

On OS/2, when downloading files (regardless of the source - HTTP, or from a
local disk!),  a copy first gets stored to %TEMP% . Then, the file gets copied
to the actual destination, which can be on a different drive letter, on a
completely different drive.

The above logic has the following problems when downloading large files :

1) the %TEMP% location may not have enough space to store a copy of the file,
even though the final destination does . For example, there may be 500 MB left
in D:\TEMP, but 150 GB left on E:\ . Then you can't download a 1 GB file to E:\

2) even if there is enough space in %TEMP%, the copy from %TEMP% to the final
destination will take a long time, which is unnecessary

3) some files can never be stored in %TEMP% . If %TEMP% is on an HPFS volume, as
it usually is on OS/2, then only files less than 2GB in size can be stored in
%TEMP%. But the user may be attempting to save large files greater than 2 GB in
size to a JFS volume, which accepts such files. In that case, the download to
%TEMP% will always fail. We shouldn't require the user to change TEMP to a JFS
volume, because the temporary copy of multiple gigabytes of data will always be
slow, and other programs are known to break if TEMP is on a JFS volume (Acrobat
is one).

I propose that the same scheme be used for OS/2 as on Unix - download the files
to a temporary file on the target volume (filename.part1), and rename that
temporary file upon completion.

Comment 1

[Mike Kaply [:mkaply]]

We're not really doing OS/2 work anymore, so these bugs will have to be fixed by
you or someone else.

Comment 2

[benc]

there are probably similar bugs for this already, but don't let anyone dupe this
UNLESS they target and OS/2 bug.

Unless we get a unified "use of disk space" philosophy, we will have to handle
these problemd platform-by-platform.

Comment 3

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

Julien, what build are you testing on OS/2?  We should be doing the .part thing
on all platforms in current builds -- it's implemented in cross-platform code.

Comment 4

[Mike Kaply [:mkaply]]

Current mozilla builds do this.

In the location where are going to download the file, you will see a file called
filename.part