Greetings,

I’ve put up a pre-release of JBidwatcher 1.0.3 to deal with recent eBay changes. It’s available in the usual spot.

• Mac OS X – JBidwatcher-1.0.3pre2.app.tar.gz
• Windows – JBidwatcher-1.0.3pre2.exe
• Linux – JBidwatcher-1.0.3pre2.jar
• Source – jbidwatcher-1.0.3pre2.tar.gz

Please try this out and let me know how it’s doing! I can’t make a release without getting a feel for how it works for everyone else.

— Morgan Schweers, CyberFOX!

Morgan,

Running Windows XP home SP1. Loaded pre2 this AM and sniped successfully later in the day. I am able to add bids and all other functions seem to be fine so far. Have not attempted multi-snipe yet but may have a chance later this week to give it a try. That was the only function on pre1 that did not work correctly on this end.

Thanks for all your time on a great program
Franko

Thanks very much for this. Launches fine (OS X 10.5) and immediately asks to update to 1.02. which I ignored.

No problems as yet..

:)

Were installing it now! Will let you know how it works! Thanks for the fantastic (active) support!
ShowCase1

JBW 1.0.3pre2 works as v1.0.2. Still same annoyances.. . “bid failed. Check browser and last error”.
menu> advance> show last error> ( click )> ERASED: BLANK>no info shown. G4, Panther, Safari

Dear Morgan, I just installed JBW 1.0.3 pre 2 and I still cannot log in. I imagine that means I cannot snipe.
Also, the program will no longer load new items I’m watching. The only way it will recognize new items is if I manually drag and drop them into the list. This is a drag.
Until this happened, I was unaware of how wonderful your software has been—I don’t need to be attached to the computer or to make plans around an auction.
Be well and good luck for a “quick fix” or a fix anyway. Poodlgrl

Just loaded JBidWatcher 1.0.3pre2 hoping it would fix my Multisnipe problem but now the program doesn’t even attempt to bid at all. Using OpenSuse 10.3 (kernel 2.6.22.12-0.1-default) under KDE 3.5.7 “release 72.2”. These are the errors that show in the Errors.log files:

Error.24.log
Sat Nov 10 18:31:11 EST 2007: Getting the sign in cookie. [darstec@ebay: 10-Nov-2007 18:31:11 EST/10-Nov-2007 18:31:11 EST]
Sat Nov 10 18:31:11 EST 2007: MQ_Swing: Postponing Message: SNIPECHANGED
Sat Nov 10 18:31:16 EST 2007: Sat Nov 10 18:31:16 EST 2007: 130169013064 (Brand New GeForce 6200 Video Card AGP 8X) – Loading bid request… (1)
Sat Nov 10 18:31:17 EST 2007: Checking sign in as bid key load failed!
Sat Nov 10 18:31:17 EST 2007: Sat Nov 10 18:31:17 EST 2007: 130169013064 (Brand New GeForce 6200 Video Card AGP 8X) – Failed to bid. ‘Show Last Error’ from context menu to see the failure page from the bid attempt. (1)

Errors.25.log
Sat Nov 10 18:32:05 EST 2007: Getting the sign in cookie. [darstec@ebay: 10-Nov-2007 18:32:05 EST/10-Nov-2007 18:32:05 EST]
Sat Nov 10 18:32:05 EST 2007: MQ_Swing: Postponing Message: SNIPECHANGED
Sat Nov 10 18:32:06 EST 2007: Sat Nov 10 18:32:06 EST 2007: 130169013064 (Brand New GeForce 6200 Video Card AGP 8X) – Preparing snipe. (1)
Sat Nov 10 18:32:10 EST 2007: Sat Nov 10 18:32:10 EST 2007: 130169013064 (Brand New GeForce 6200 Video Card AGP 8X) – Loading bid request… (1)
Sat Nov 10 18:32:11 EST 2007: Checking sign in as bid key load failed!
Sat Nov 10 18:32:11 EST 2007: Sat Nov 10 18:32:11 EST 2007: 130169013064 (Brand New GeForce 6200 Video Card AGP 8X) – Failed to bid. ‘Show Last Error’ from context menu to see the failure page from the bid attempt. (1)

Errors.26.log
Sun Nov 11 01:52:43 EST 2007: MQ_Swing: Postponing Message: SNIPECHANGED
Sun Nov 11 01:52:43 EST 2007: MQ_Swing: Postponing Message: NOTIFY Failed to load all auctions.
Sun Nov 11 01:52:43 EST 2007: Sun Nov 11 01:52:43 EST 2007: 130169013064 (Brand New GeForce 6200 Video Card AGP 8X) – Preparing snipe. (1)
Sun Nov 11 01:52:43 EST 2007: Getting the sign in cookie. [darstec@ebay: 11-Nov-2007 01:52:43 EST/11-Nov-2007 01:52:43 EST]
Sun Nov 11 01:52:50 EST 2007: Sun Nov 11 01:52:50 EST 2007: 130169013064 (Brand New GeForce 6200 Video Card AGP 8X) – Loading bid request… (1)
Sun Nov 11 01:52:53 EST 2007: Checking sign in as bid key load failed!
Sun Nov 11 01:52:53 EST 2007: Sun Nov 11 01:52:53 EST 2007: 130169013064 (Brand New GeForce 6200 Video Card AGP 8X) – Failed to bid. ‘Show Last Error’ from context menu to see the failure page from the bid attempt. (1)

eRRORS.27.LOG
Sun Nov 11 02:05:04 EST 2007: MQ_Swing: Postponing Message: SNIPECHANGED
Sun Nov 11 02:05:04 EST 2007: Getting the sign in cookie. [darstec@ebay: 11-Nov-2007 02:05:04 EST/11-Nov-2007 02:05:04 EST]
Sun Nov 11 02:05:05 EST 2007: Sun Nov 11 02:05:05 EST 2007: 130169013064 (Brand New GeForce 6200 Video Card AGP 8X) – Preparing snipe. (1)
Sun Nov 11 02:05:09 EST 2007: Sun Nov 11 02:05:09 EST 2007: 130169013064 (Brand New GeForce 6200 Video Card AGP 8X) – Loading bid request… (1)
Sun Nov 11 02:05:10 EST 2007: Checking sign in as bid key load failed!
Sun Nov 11 02:05:10 EST 2007: Sun Nov 11 02:05:10 EST 2007: 130169013064 (Brand New GeForce 6200 Video Card AGP 8X) – Failed to bid. ‘Show Last Error’ from context menu to see the failure page from the bid attempt. (1)

NOTE: None of these errors reflect the items which I was multisniping. The all seem tied up with an earlier item that ended on November 7, 2007. This newest version is going backwards. The only difference I see in the logs is that they contain the HTML of some page, and that page is rendered with strange characters throughout.

Greetings,
Unfortunately, the ‘HTML of some page’ is actually what I need. :(

If you can email me that log file, looking at the HTML that was returned that JBidwatcher didn’t recognize will let me figure out what’s gone wrong, and how to let JBidwatcher recognize it.

— Morgan Schweers, CyberFOX!

Greetings,

Did the bid fail, and if not, what was the message on the item page? (Usually it’ll show an error or a message to you on the item page if you browse to it. Often that’s the same message as the bid result page which JBidwatcher is having trouble reading.)

If you have debugging and logging turned on, the HTML of the page that JBidwatcher didn’t recognize will have been dumped into the log file. That could be useful to me, so drop me an email with it if possible.

I also have another version; it’s a Very Early Alpha of the next generation of JBidwatcher, which (among other things) has a few tunings to the parsing system, and runs on top of an in-process database. Contact me by email if you really want to try it, as it’s very alpha, and I don’t want to spread it around much, because I don’t expect it to be completely stable yet. (Or even functional on all systems…)

— Morgan Schweers, CyberFOX!

Hi, 1.03pre2 does not work for me here (ebay.de). I can sign in without any problem but I can not even add an auction; neither via copy&paste nor via adding the auction number. The error-message (error.log) ist:

Mon Nov 12 09:00:13 CET 2007: Getting the sign in cookie. [wudelbrumpf@ebay: 12-Nov-2007 09:00:13 CET/12-Nov-2007 09:00:13 CET]
Mon Nov 12 09:00:56 CET 2007: Clipboard: System, valid flavors: [Ljava.awt.datatransfer.DataFlavor;@ee6681
Mon Nov 12 09:00:58 CET 2007: Failed to load auction title from header: ”##PERRY RHODAN-2300 – 2399-100 Hefte—ATLAN ## bei eBay.de: Romanhefte (endet 18.11.07 19:56:14 MEZ)”
Mon Nov 12 09:00:58 CET 2007: Failed to parse auction! Bad return result from auction server.

This is the same since several versions:
1.02, 1.03pre1 or 1.03pre2: all do not work here ( and yes; I used the tool in the past and it worked great)

If you need some more input let me know; I’ll try my very best

Greetings,

Crap. That means that eBay is redirecting you to your ‘native’ site. Ahh F__K. That makes this harder… Even more so because I don’t have any test accounts on non-US servers.

Let me look into this, and come up with a theoretical fix, and I’ll toss it around to some folks and see if it helps. :(

— Morgan

G’day Morgan
Success in loading auctions from ebay.com.au, this is first time in a while it has loaded. I will test bidding on an auction in a couple of days.

Thanks for your hard work, you are a legend.

What’s the problem with 1.0.2?
I haven’t checked the forum for a while and have been bidding using 1.0.2 – you know ‘fat, dumb and happy’ as they say.

I just completed three snipes on ebay.de – won one, lost one (legitimately, not a JBidW issue) and won one item of the six I wanted in a dutch auction – also no JBidW issue.

So should I update to 1.03pre2?????

The reason I logged in right now is to ask a question about changing the snipe timing…......I’ll post that separately.

Windows .exe working great so far on Ebay UK, tested:

Multisnipe: perfect (successfully sniped, reported correctly (won), aborted others)
Syncing with Ebay: perfect.

... actually there’s one bug – deleted items keep coming back when an auction ends.

Repro: delete all completed items, wait for a current auction to end. It attempts to move it to the completed, but instead all the deleted items are resurrected.

... there’s a more serious (probably related) bug. It just fired and won a snipe I cancelled earlier today, and which was no longer showing as pending! It’s not a disaster but a pain, especially if this happens even with seemingly deleted entries.

When I select ‘Show Information’, it only shows this:

Sat Nov 24 16:38:24 GMT 2007: Failed to load from server! (4)
Sun Nov 25 05:50:17 GMT 2007: Cancelling snipe. (1)

Argh, I just happened again. Only this time I went back to 1.0.2. Again I cancelled a bid earlier that day, again it sniped (and won! – and I really didn’t want it), and again the information only shows that I cancelled it! What the hell is going on?

Greetings,
Is it possible you have a different copy of JBidwatcher running someplace? (Maybe even on the same computer?)

If you launched it twice, one would have the snipe information still in it, since it never reloads it from the xml save file.

— Morgan Schweers, CyberFOX!

Hello From Germany.

Just tried 1.0.3pre2 to bid on a auction in the near future, failed for unknown reason. then went back to 1.0.3pre1, still works fine for me on ebay.de !

With ebay.com (with a valid US account), I also get a “failed” bid/snipe—here is the “show information” and the “show last error” page shows an eBay login page (see below).

Tue Nov 27 21:02:24 EST 2007: Loading item… (1)
Tue Nov 27 21:02:26 EST 2007: Done loading item… (1)
Tue Nov 27 21:02:26 EST 2007: Loading bid request… (1)
Tue Nov 27 21:02:27 EST 2007: Failed to bid. ‘Show Last Error’ from context menu to see the failure page from the bid attempt. (1)
Tue Nov 27 21:02:27 EST 2007: Bidding $10.49 apparently failed for an unknown reason. Check the auction in the browser, to see if the bid went through anyway. (1)

Here’s the login page:

ad: cancelled snipes firing anyway

A simple workaround I’m using anyway since I can’t delete auctions from the commandline: To deactivate the snipe, set the snipe amount to a “safe” amount that will not win the bid anyway. Bidding from the commandline can be achieved with a simple script employing wget or curl.

I’m actually using the decimals to categorize and priorize items into groups like watching only, pickup/local sellers, bid only if prior item won, etc.

Hey Morgan,

I took another look shortly after posting, and found another instance of javaw.exe running, so I think you were right about another instance running. However this instance had no visible window or tray icon anywhere, that’s why I didn’t detect it.

I did start and close jBid a few times that day, so it’s probably caused by that in some way (maybe accidental double-launch?). Does it make sense to allow multiple instances on the same machine though? I think it would be best if jBid terminates if it finds another instance running (usually accomplished with a mutex on win32, not sure about Java).

Greetings,
It’s harder to do in Java, and I’d need to do it on a ‘per user’ basis in some way, since some people get around the lack of multiple user support by running it twice. (Actually, I wonder how well that mutex solution works in the ‘fast user switch’ mode…)

— Morgan Schweers, CyberFOX!

G’day Morgan
I am very happy with 1.0.3pre2, using the Windows version I have just successfully used the multisnipe function on ebay.com.au with about 40 of the same item listed over a couple of days I finally got a cheap price. Until this release I haven’t been able to get JBid to work since August on the Australian sight.
Thanks mate

(re. multiple instances) I never use user-switching, but I guess you could just append the name of the user to the mutex, so a different user would be allowed to run another instance. Can you do something similar in Java?

The real problem is of course both instances sharing the same auction data, that is never a good idea – so you could check if the instance is using the same data files and not allow that. Or just exclusively lock the data files for the duration of each instance, then the 2nd will fail with an error.

I was lucky in that I got out of the sale an it wasn’t a huge amount either way, but it could’ve been real nasty.