[pca] Downloading big patches

[Martin Paul]

Laurent,

> I'm sure this has been discussed before, but I can't find it: my pca 
> proxy fails on downloading 120186-17. It does start, but I think it's 
> getting a timeout because it's big; and taking too long. I tried to 
> increase the Apache Timeout parameter to 1200, but still no go. Is that 
> the right parameter?

I've done some experiments on a Solaris 10 (apache 2.0.63) system now to 
verify that Timeout indeed affects CGI scripts. I've used a simple 
sleep.cgi:

   #!/bin/sh
   sleep 30

When setting "Timeout" to e.g. 20, apache will log "Premature end of 
script headers: sleep.cgi" after 20 seconds, and the client will fail 
with an HTTP error code of 500 (internal server error). Everything is 
fine if the Timeout is >30.

So it's definitely the "Timeout" parameter which you have to raise to 
make pca-proxy.cgi work with huge patches. For me, 1800 has been 
sufficient in the past, but 3600 might be even safer. I've seen no ill 
effects of raising Timeout on my web server. If you're worried, you can 
always setup an apache instance solely for pca-proxy.cgi.

Martin.