{(sk:page-preamble "Welcome to Yenta" (ui:index-icon) (ui:index-icon-alt))}

# Caveats - Important info about this release

[ Prev | Next ]

## Yenta's user interface

Did the doors open in an icon above? If you reload a page and notice that one of the icons above has suddenly opened a pair of doors at you, this means that there is some news it is trying to tell you. Click on the icon for more information.

Once Yenta has started, you should follow a link, or reload a page, every so often. This version of Yenta does not automatically refresh the page when anything changes. If you don't occasionally do so, you'll never see any changes.

Yenta runs forever. Once you start Yenta, it will stay running, even after you log out, until you reboot the machine. You can manually shut it down from the Requests page, but you should leave it running if you can -- that way, it can find other Yentas even when you're not around. Be careful not to start a second Yenta if you left one already running; later releases will check this for you.

## Caveats and limitations in this release -- later releases will fix these

Don't scan more than 2-3 megabytes of files. This version of Yenta may not handle more than a few megabytes of input files without running out of memory -- some operating systems impose limits, and Yenta may use a lot of intermediate memory when determining your interests. Later versions of Yenta will remove this restriction.

If scanning takes a long time, you may have encountered a bug. In general, scanning a couple megabytes of mail on typical CPU's will take from tens of seconds to five minutes. During this time, the page-flipping animation will be running. If the animation ever freezes for a minute or more, then it's probable you have encountered a rare bug that causes Yenta to infinite-loop when determining your interests. Obviously, this will be removed in a later release; this is alpha-release software and this particular behavior may still exist. If this happens to you, kill Yenta from the shell (you'll have to find its process-ID with ps first), and then try again, scanning fewer files this time. Please send mail to bug-yenta@media.mit.edu if you encounter this bug, and you have our apologies in advance if you do.

Only one Yenta per host. If someone else starts a Yenta on the same machine before you do, your Yenta will be able to make outgoing connections, but not receive incoming connections. This may make it difficult to receive messages. This will be fixed in a later release. (A clue that this has happened is if Yenta selects any port that is not 15000 when it tells you what URL to use. This indicates that someone else's Yenta has already claimed that port.) Also, be careful not to start Yenta twice. You'll be in roughly the same situation as if someone else started a Yenta, but things may be even more confusing. In general, Yenta will run forever once started, so you should not need to restart it unless you reboot the machine.

{(ui:pitch-has-been-seen #t)} [ Want some more info? See the next page. ]

[ Prev | Next ] {(sk:page-postamble)}