[Webfunds-users] first attempt to use webfunds

Sun, 15 Apr 2001 23:13:35 -0400

Vincent Youngs wrote:

> 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?

No, what it is doing is generating a good source of random
numbers which is critical for some of the algorithms needed.
Once the PRNG is set up, it doesn't need much time to crunch
out the needed numbers, but it is always tough to set up.

> 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.

Hmm, not sure why that is...

> 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.

Yes, although, bear in mind that a) we win with Java because the same
code works in Unix, Mac and DOS, and b) by far the largest portion of
development is done on Unix machines, and c) if you had the current
standard 1GHz Athlon machines, you wouldn't be so fussed :-)  But, yes,
it takes a goodly 20 seconds for mine to start up, and I have to start
it 100 times a day :(

> 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"

Right, ok, didn't look there.  If you like, delete that switch and
see if it makes it faster.  There are several lines that might be
your line, you'll have to work out which one.

> 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!)
>  ?

(OK, that's maybe a bug and maybe not.  The SOX wallet knows
nothing about the Trader wallet and v.v.  It occurs to me that
we might be able to fiddle the Address book to provide that
information, but it's not an area we've really touched since
it was written.)

> 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.

Hmm, yes.  A bug.  A systemic bug, if you'll pardon the pun:  the code
that does that is in one area, and the check is in another.  This requires
some thought.  It has been somewhat clear that the approach taken here
is flawed, time for a rewrite (which probably means it will be deferred
until the new VM comes into play).

> 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.

That'll be a Java/Swing platform bug.  There is little we can
do about that, although I had considered making those warning
dialogs as non-dominating.  I'm not sure if that's a polite
thing to do though.

> 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.

That's an area I'm at sea with, it relates to events which I've
never looked into.  Right now, I haven't an answer, but keep up
the prodding!  I keep all these mails and try and fix them sometime.

> 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.

Did you hit the "Update" button at the bottom?  (It has
been suggested we do that automatically....)

> 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.

It is very hard to persuade Rachel to part with pints of beer
on any terms, but, as I'm on the vino tonight, here are some:

This is a payment for BEER 2
from Lager Lout (b908bd82a242e28621b350663d996a11b6d6a1dd)
to   <OPEN>

-----BEGIN SOX MESSAGE-----
Version: 2.0.1
Comment: SOX by Systemics

AAENUDk4NzM5MDYxNDUyMBS5CL2CokLihiGzUGY9mWoRttah
3QAURarm3YDGkcXgwKsqoApxlyG6gecAAAAAAAAAAgAAAAAA
AAABMtgAAADl6jixvIEWMIGTMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBBAUAA4GB
AIDIowiJyb5PyQuEEc8tw/ohqtehYjCKiFKD8m8oYcMrI60T
KXs5MOaZUjuahrOueQ+f96LDwk6hXQFfIIl/axGMMGTlzUf5
TQIYyjG9de/E9N4sD7ASViyGvoezpt7HpIAFHbD1Re6Fbv8i
+QoEHDh5b9MGrrGsx7LZEOKJe8up
=VEzW
-----END SOX MESSAGE-----

If the Update button doesn't give you satisfaction, let me know.

-- 
iang