support thread for people trying to download freebies from dailyish email

I was able to download with no problem today. Worked fine the last time too.

First time I tried, it wouldn't open. Second time was a charm. It's huge! Thanks so much!

Valerie Dawnstar wrote:First time I tried, it wouldn't open. Second time was a charm. It's huge! Thanks so much!

Third time was the charm for me

Worked great for me, and I could open the PDF, no problems at all. So I stashed my copy somewhere that I can find it later!

Downloaded fine. Wouldn't open in Chrome, but opened in my pdf editor just fine. Thanks!

Registered a new email address (by mistake) and got sent the following email (see bottom of post). Links 2 and 3 download the same manual, file name: "RocketMassHeater-Annex6-letter.pdf"

Email Subject: subscribed to paul wheaton's permaculture

You did it! You signed up for my daily-ish email. While I think of what sort of practical jokes I can do with this precious information, here are your promised treats:

Permaculture Voices Presentations by Willie Smits-
http://richsoil.com/willie-smits.php

Rocket Mass Heater Plans-
http://richsoil.com/annex-plans.php

Rocket Mass Heater Operation and Maintenance Manual-
http://richsoil.com/rmh-manual.php

Rocket Mass Heater Podcast Gob-
[removed]
...

[edited by paul wheaton to remove link that should not be publicly shared]

Entering email send you to the download site and the pdf works fine. On a Mac using Safari.

I was able to dl the Rocket Mass Heater Manual, but when I opened it I received an error message about the document not being able to open. Hope this helps!

I'm getting the same problem as before. Adobe Acrobat says "Can't open this file. There's a problem with the file format."

This is on both my Windows 7 laptop and Windows 8 desktop.

To clarify: I was able to download it just fine the first time and this time, but have never been able to open the PDF.

Still had the old problems with the file downloading, but not being a valid .pdf.

Switched from Firefox to Seamonkey in lieu of clearing cookies, worked fine on 1st try after that.

First time I downloaded it a couple days ago it worked just fine.

Just now after getting a plotskateers email I tried again and while it downloaded successfully, when I tried to open it it said it was damaged.

Hope this info helps.

Worked fine in Safari/Mac/gmail. Than you. Nice to have.

My experience summary:
If you are using the CHROME browser and use "right click" and "save as"; you should download a full readable document.

System Details:
I am using the CHROME browser and windows 7 operating system (haven't upgraded yet).

How I got a readable PDF document:
First, I did the standard "left click" on the link directly. The document downloaded. I opened the document. Error "document is corrupt". (It was a blank document).
Then, I "right clicked" the download link and selected "save as". The document downloaded. I opened the full document (32-ish pages). Lots of nice information and pictures by the way!

I merged your stuff with the following thread. I hope that is okay by you.

Just successfully downloaded the Rocket Mass Heater Manual. The link worked like a charm, and I'm sure this little gem will come in really handy very soon. Thank you!

Hi Cassie,

I just attempted to download the Rocket Mass Heater Manual and it still appears to be corrupted... "Oh bother", said Pooh! And thanks for all your hard work, Cassie.

Just downloaded it.

I did get a good download a few days ago. But, I got the error message just now....windows 7 and firefox. It said 16.5 MB and loaded in just 3 or 4 minutes and when I tried to open I got the attached message. I started with the 'plotskateers' email and followed to the download.
I think the time that it worked, when I tried several times a few days ago, I cleared cookies, re pasted the url, entered email, and downloaded from there.....

I downloaded it twice and THAT worked, but then both times the file wouldn't open...there was an error message saying it couldn't open and couldn't be fixed.

So then instead of downloading the file, I selected "open" the file. This is in Firefox. The file opened just fine, and then I "saved as" it as a pdf to my computer and that one opens fine with Adobe on my computer (Windows 7 if that matters.) Maybe this will work for other who are getting an error?

I originally got the Annex 6 file when this first came out a few days ago by the way. So now I have both - I feel very lucky! THANK YOU!

Done in 60 seconds. Thanks

Worked for me using Google chrome on Android, twice accidentally...

Worked fine for me both last week and just now.

worked perfectly on Android and Windows;-)

Downloaded in about a minute and could open it with no problem, on my iPad using safari.

Did the download just change? When I got the email it was originally downloading "rocket-mass-heater-manual.pdf" (which wouldn't open, as discussed previously). Now after a page refresh it's grabbing "RocketMassHeater-Annex6-letter.pdf" which is working flawlessly.

Am I right that it seems that the majority of the people that are having problems are using windows 7?

Tyler Young wrote:Did the download just change? When I got the email it was originally downloading "rocket-mass-heater-manual.pdf" (which wouldn't open, as discussed previously). Now after a page refresh it's grabbing "RocketMassHeater-Annex6-letter.pdf" which is working flawlessly.

No, clear your cookies and you will get the manual.

For people that are having problems, could you please tell us the exact file size of what is on your disk, in bytes? This will give us a huge clue in what might be going wrong.

Cassie Langstraat wrote:
No, clear your cookies and you will get the manual.

Bingo.

Also, this time I right-clicked the link and hit "Save Link As". It opens! For kicks I clicked the link normally again, and the resulting download worked.

I wonder if other people having troubles with opening it would benefit from clearing their cookies.

Hi Cassie,

I'm new here but I just downloaded the heater manual with no problems. Thank you very much!!

Nancy ;D

paul wheaton wrote:For people that are having problems, could you please tell us the exact file size, in bytes?

My broken version is 17,338,392 bytes.

Working version (after clearing my cookies, right-click -> Save Link As) 17,341,647 bytes.

Tyler Young wrote:

paul wheaton wrote:For people that are having problems, could you please tell us the exact file size, in bytes?

My broken version is 17,338,392 bytes.

Working version (after clearing my cookies, right-click -> Save Link As) 17,341,647 bytes.

Here is a guess at a possible explanation:

1) For text files, windows systems will end a line with "a carriage return and a line feed" - two characters. And linux, unix and macs will use "a line feed" - one character. So when moving a text file from one to the other, there could be a modification to the file so it will look okay on the receiving end. Basically, every time a line feed pops up, it will be replaced with a carriage return and a line feed. When going the other way, it will simply remove all of the the carriage returns. Our host, http://evolutionhosting.com popped in and changed our code to make sure that it said "this is not a text file, so don't try those conversion tricks. Send the file over exactly the way you found it." So if the file size is slightly different, this could be the reason.

2) On the second attempt, it is possible that the browser decides to help out by not downloading the same thing twice. And maybe there is all sorts of other wackiness that could have happened along the lines of software trying to be helpful.

Both 6" annex and manual worked fine on my chromed robot turd aka android phone

17,341,647 bytes


This is the file size I received and my copy worked fine.

If your file cannot be opened, we need to know what size the file is on your computer. Even if it is exactly the same as mine.

I assume clearing cookies means going to browsing history and selecting clear cookies? If I do that does that mean I have to re-enter my usernames into all the different websites I sign into?

Nope, didn't work for me. Just tells me the pdf failed to load.

paul wheaton wrote:
1) For text files, windows systems will end a line with "a carriage return and a line feed" - two characters. And linux, unix and macs will use "a line feed" - one character.

CRLF haunts me enough in my day job! But yeah, it seems likely given that all the Mac users report no problems. At least we aren't dealing with character encoding!

I dug my non-working version out of the recycling bin and in properties it says the size is 16.5 MB (17,306,272 bytes)

and the size on disk is 16.5 MB (17,309,696 bytes)

Hi Cassie,

Well, as you have suggested on today's paul wheaton daily-ish I tried to download the Ernie and Erica Wisner's Rocket Mass Heater Manual again, just for a test and my results are:

I've done two attempts, both downloads completed fast and the file sizes are the same.
On my first attempt I was unable to read the .pdf. Got a message saying "...PDF document is damaged..." by my pdf reader.
But on my second attempt I rename de file (as rocket) before download it, then the file opens perfectly.

I don't know why does it occurs, but I needed to do the same on my successful attempt early this week. This time I didn't cleaned my browser's cookies.

Both downloads were fast for me.
I'm using Firefox and Ubuntu Linux.

Thanks once again!
Greetings from southern Brazil
Joao