Phex 0.6 released.
 

Phex 0.6 has been released.

You can download it here:
http://phex.sourceforge.net

The new Phex release brings you many major improvements for easier searching and sharing of files on the Gnutella network. The major improvements of this release are:

• Improved configuration of your download.
• Completly rewritten automatic search framework.
• Gnutella Protocol v0.6 support.
• Automatic check for new Phex versions.

This link may work a little better, some browsers will complain about the https part. Mine did.

http://phex.sourceforge.net

... and thanks for Phex, I try to grab every update. :)

Hi,
could you give details/URL to Gnutella Protocol v0.6 addition/changes?
Would you like to explain how 'Automatic check for new Phex versions' work?

Look at http://www.limewire.com/index.jsp/tech_papers into the Handshaking Protocol

Phex calls once a week a URL that returns a page that contains the version number of the current Phex release. Phex compare this version number to it's own version number. If the current version number is higher then it's own version number then Phex display a dialog and notify the user of the new Phex version.

Gregor

Ah thx 4 both. :)
I think you have the first gnutella client (?) that does not check for a new version by using broadcasts (with TTL=1), good to know.

nice to know
 

Hi Gregor,

nice to see you´re continuing the development with great effort and success. I really like the way Phex is heading, keep it up.

Bye,

Konrad

I've been using 0.6 last night, and it seems to work very well.
Up and downloads have improved a lot.
And the little counting bugs in the gui have gone. :p

I have a few questions.


-In the connetions screen, under status, What's the difference between connected and connected! ?

-Is there a possibility to change the default 120 sec waiting time ?
(in the downloads screen)

Thanks in advance, RaaF

Hi

0.6 has some bad issues that I didn't experience in earlier versions. First, when I switch to the 'Gnutella Net' tab, it quite often happens that the GUI freezes completely for about 15s (Phex stops refreshing its window, top show a 90% CPU-usage for java.)
Second, the algorithm for finding download candidates for a file seems to have a dramatically lower efficiency. The only files in my download list which actually have candidates are those for which I manually searched.

Guido

That was just a little indication that the connection is stable. Running searches are only resubmitted to connections once they get stable. To reduce network flooding because most unstable connections will be droped before they would be able to return search results.

Do you mean the time Phex is waiting for retrying of downloads?
I think the default is 30 seconds. If you don't have any importend configurations in your phex.cfg file you can close phex, delete the phex.cfg and restart. Your time should be 30 sec.
Or for advanced users edit the setting of mDownloadRetryWait. But it makes no sense to have it lower then 30000 you are only hurting the sharing hosts!

I try to find a reason for the GUI freeze. It might be that the repainting of the fast changing host list is to much for your CPU. I will look into it further and check if other people also have the same problem.


Please read the thread
http://forums.gnutelliums.com/showth...&threadid=5735
for a discussion about the new research behavior.

Okay, I've read the other thread. I've let 0.6 run while I was in school (which I did very often with earlier versions) and am still a bit disappointed by the results. (Though it maybe was just bad luck today)
But as I now understand that this step was necessary to prevent the network from being flooded with too many unnecessary searches, I'll stop complaining about it.

Seems very unlikely. I've got an AMD Athlon 1.4C and more than enough RAM.

After all the complaining I should probably also mention that Phex is still the very best choice for a Gnutella-servent that'll run under Linux. KUTGW!!

Guido

Hmmm...
 

If I save my downloads to the same folder I share out of, none of the items already in the folder show up in Phex. I didn't have that problem in the last version. Oh, and it also seems that Phex is somewhat un-friendly with my processor. (it seems to sit between 5 and 35% but occasionally jumps into the 90s)

Other than those two things, Phex is great!

Shared Files Not Showing
 

Hi,
I've been successfully using earlier versions of Phex (up to 0.5.6) under W2K with JRE 1.3.1. I installed version 0.6 by doing same as earlier versions--extracting phex.jar to Program Files\Phex directory (overwriting previous version). On loading (using shortcut which runs "C:\Program Files\Phex\phex.jar") previous settings, downloads, directories have always been picked up okay.

However, I now find with version 0.6 that it no longer lists my shared files (in G:\My Music\Downloads--same directory to which I download & directory shown in both Download Setup & File Sharing Setup). In fact the Share window shows Shared Files: (0/0 KB). Directory actually has >200 .mp3 files--which used to be listed & could be uploaded by earlier versions.

I've tried:
- deleting phex.cfg & configuring from scratch;
- changing download & file sharing setup to use a different directory on different drive--into which I had copied some files;
- changing include files from .mp3 to *;
- rescan of shared files (usually after config change);

Still, no files are shown as being shared (are they actually being shared or not?). Downloading still works.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by GregorK
[B]

I try to find a reason for the GUI freeze. It might be that the repainting of the fast changing host list is to much for your CPU. I will look into it further and check if other people also have the same problem.
[QUOTE]

I've got a similar problem:
If another window than phex has the focus and then I change back to Phex, it uses up as much of my CPU as it can get for about 10 seconds and the guy is frozen. After these 10 seconds cpu usage drops to about 10-15 %.

Another question: Is it possible to compile phex platform specific? So that you won't need the java runtime and that it performs much faster because the bytecode dosn't have to be compiled.

That would obviously not be very easy. You would need a java-bytecode to native or java-sourcecode to native compiler. The newest versions of gcc (3.x)
have such a feature, but AFAIK the support for several of the standard java libraries - especially the ones for graphics display - is still incomplete

Guido

No support of Long filename in shared folders
 

Hi!

I installed the new Phex 0.6 and I found out that it won't support long filenames in the shared folders! So it didn't find any shared file in "C:\Archivos de programa\Phex\Shared" but it did find the files if I type "C:\Archiv~1\Phex\Shared"!

I have it running now, but I didn't have time to see if it's more stable than 0.5.6 (after a day or two running I always got an exception in javalang.....) :(

Thanks!

And how does the software differenciate beteween stable and unstable connections?

By how long it's been connected, I'm fairly sure. I think >60 seconds is 'stable'.

Hi, is the "Sparky"-like Pong caching implemented into this version? It is still a little bit confusing for me what Gnutella v0.6 protocoll specification means exactly... I'm not sure which extension/suggestions are or will be in a Gnutella v0.6 protocoll.

Thx, Moak

What does 'Gnutella v0.6 protocoll' mean?
 

Which extensions to v0.4 protocoll does Phex support in particular?
Is a documentaion to each of this extensions available, where?

Thx, Moak

Phex supports the extended QHD extension and the gnutella 0.6 handshake specification.
Pong caching is not supported.

You can find extension specifications at the_gdf file section or the limewire website.

Thx, is there a direct link to 'extended QHD extension'? Couldn't find eigther in GDF files or Limewire's tech papers?

PS: Does Phey use a kind of GUID tagging? Which bytes/bits does Phex set and/or evaluate received from others?

Greets, Moak

Look at the end of the Gnutella Protocol 0.4 rev 1.2

No tagging is set and no evaluation is done. But if you look at the source and see how it's generated you are able to identify Phex if you received 2 Phex generated GUID from the same client. A portion of it will always be fix for that client.

Gregor