[Webfunds-users] first attempt to use webfunds

Sun, 15 Apr 2001 14:13:40 -0700

> > You were right, it just required patience (a lot of patience).  I timed it,
> > and it took the SOX wallet exactly 3 minutes and 9 seconds to return the
> > java security keypair.  Interestingly, it only took the Trader wallet 37
> > seconds to return the keypair.
> 
> OK, but if you reversed that order, I'd suspect the long times would
> stay with the first one generated, because there is an extra step there.
> 
> > My processor is a pentium 100.
> 
> Wow!  Let us know whether writing payments or depositing seems slow.

I've been doing some testing, and by watching in the debugger, whatever 
process first shows this line in the debugger,
Crypto: generateKey() called
 takes about 2 minutes 30 seconds.  Thereafter, calls to that function go 
by fairly quickly, just a couple seconds or so.  It must be the java JIT 
compiler?  If my first action is an account creation, or a cancel payment, or 
a deposit, it doesn't matter, it is going to take about 3 minutes because all 
of those use the generateKey() function.  Thereafter, I have tolerable 
performance for other things I do.

Payments are never slow, even if it is the first thing I do when I open 
webfunds.  They only take a couple of seconds.  I guess payments must 
not call the generateKey() function.

However, just opening Webfunds is very slow for me.  From the time I click 
on the windows shortcut to the time I see the webfunds application on my 
desktop is 50 seconds.  I must say, I don't have very much enthusiam for 
Java.

> > Also, when I started the debug wallet, it said at the top line of the debug
> > window: Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM warning: Setting of property
> > "java.compiler" is ignored.
> 
> Ah, ok, that's an attempt to turn off the JIT so that stacktraces
> work properly.
> 
> > Does this mean the compiler is disabled and is that why it is so slow?
> 
> No, that would be the JIT, just-in-time internal optimisation phase.
> 
> (Odd, I can't find where that is set..., I thought we had removed it.)
> What are the surrounding lines in the debug file "stderr" ?

It does not appear anywhere in the stderr file.  However, I think it is coming 
from the run.bat file, because there are four lines in there with the switch 
 "-Djava.compiler=NONE"

> > I was able to add gold contracts to the SOX wallet accounts.  I tried adding
> > a gold contract to the Trader Wallet account I created, but it didn't work. 
> > I guess gold isn't supported yet on the Trader Wallet, right?
> 
> Gold is certainly tradeable.  When you create the account, you must
> add the right one as the money first.  So, what you need to do is
> create another fresh account, and do *not* add the suggested Glitter.
> Then, add Gold. It's a kludge, in that WebFunds doesn't know what is
> the "money".  So, there are some configuration files in there with
> hints, which are set to Glitter.  If you had downloaded the DigiGold
> distribution it would have set the default money to gold.  This is
> one of those artifacts of a distributed financial system...
> 
> (Also, check you have the right Gold, it should indicate in the contract
> that it is OpenPGP, not x509 certificate based, which is an old one.)
> 

I was on the old webfunds wallet (1.7.6) and the old trader (1.0.5).  I 
upgraded to the (1.8.0) and (1.0.6) and all is well.

> Glitter is the test money, pints of beer the test tradeable item, and
> that is set as the default for Trading.  You need to override the default in a
> new account, and set gold manually as the money.
> 
> Here's some Glitter...
> 
> 
> This is a payment for gl1 100.0
> to   <OPEN>
> 
> -----BEGIN SOX MESSAGE-----
> Version: 2.0.1
> Comment: SOX by Systemics
> 
> AAENUDk4NzM1MjgxMjYwMBS5CL2CokLihiGzUGY9mWoRttah
> 3QAUdjPjYjq+8kF51i9Q+wJVue8UhegAAAAAAAAD6AAA////
> //rZpAAAAADl7R0EIIEWMIGTMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBBAUAA4GB
> AAzXmWjKvgDoqtDHRXwYHuBkK6Z+M5yTYtRAlldP3KJ+67sO
> sb+XrqS9GXGGnxU43A0fN7LGOZTAAlkWqd3+7RSBAOfNJI7d
> Zh0HF9ppOubmv2wsIMg9zTjGI64rqzMGnsKyfleHC/yyIsGK
> jH2hXW1dNrbG8EfonwjdVQ1rZuaH
> =cZa6
> -----END SOX MESSAGE-----
> 
> If that didn't work, someone snaffled it first, ask me
> again in private mail :)

I recieved this, thank you, and have been transfering the glitter money 
around between accounts in my experimenting.  I've uncovered two bugs to 
report with the direct transfer from the trader wallet.

steps to reproduce:
1.  From trader wallet account, bring up payment dialog box
2.  enter amount and set target account
3.  Click direct transfer button.
At this point a confirmation dialog appears, which says:

Are you sure you wish to make this deposit?
(as the account is not controlled here, you
may never be able to access the funds!)
 ?

At this point, there are two bugs which can occur.  If you press NO, the 
confirmation box goes away, but it leaves a pending transaction that you 
have to go into the history and cancel manually.  It should not leave this 
pending transaction.

The other bug which can occur at this point is if I switch away to some 
other program which completely covers the screen without answering the 
confirmation box first.  Then the confirmation box disappears, and cannot 
be made visible again, yet I cannot click anywhere else on the payment 
screen or webfunds application, because the confirmation box has to be 
closed, but I can't access the box to close it.  Sometimes I can switch 
away to another program and switch back and the confirmation box will still 
be there, but if I do a little more switching around the confirmation box will 
disappear.  I haven't isolated the exact switching steps to reproduce this 
with absolute certainty, but it happen 99% of the time.

Another minor thing is that when I do a payment from one account to 
another, the account receiving the payment does not refresh the screen to 
show the new value in the confirmed column unless I switch away from 
webfunds to some other program that covers it and then back to webfunds, 
forcing windows to refresh that area of the screen.  From the debug window 
I can tell when the receipt of payment is complete because I see:
          Crypto: decrypt() called
      s 11 bytes in packet
When I see that, I just switch away and back again, and the new value is 
shown.  Before I learned to switch away and back, I wondered where the 
money went.

So how do I access this trading market between glitter and pints of beer?  I 
tried opening the book on the glitter, market, and pints of beer contracts, 
and I don't see any orders pending on any of them.  How can Rachael be 
persuaded to sell pints of beer for glitter money, anyway?  It seems she is 
on the losing end of any trades in that system.
--
Vincent