#776 Cannot get bid key Bid uiid not found

[ABK]

esniper encountered a bug. Please go to:
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=add&group_id=45285&atid=442436
paste this into "Detailed Description":
Automated esniper bug report.
esniper version 2.35.1
libcurl/7.29.0 NSS/3.36 zlib/1.2.7 libidn/1.28 libssh2/1.4.3
Error encountered in function preBid in auction.c line 352

[Michael S.]

Are you using the latest sources from the git repository ?

In case of actual sources: Please attach the html file created by esniper.
We need the html source, if something has changed by ebay.

[ABK]

Yes, I got it from git. Please see attachment.

[Michael S.]

Do you also have the log file ?

[ABK]

Attached.

[ABK]

I think it is the usual confirmation hiccup - ebay wants to confirm the phone number, etc.
Should work OK after answering the prompt.

[Michael S.]

The page does not contain the requied items uiid, stok and srt, but a string 'Resume bidding, if the page does not update immediately'. Maybe ebay has changed something in the bidding process.

The refered url differs from the url, that esnipers calls
https://offer.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?MakeBid&fromPage=<pageid>&item=<item>&fb=2</item></pageid>

[Michael S.]

I have analysed your log and the html source:
esniper missed the end of auction about 7 seconds. The page esniper gets contains 'The listing you're looking for has ended.' From the log I can see, that the latency varys from 1 up to 129 seconds. That meens, that the prebid action tooks to long and no bid could be placed. I recommend a higher value for 'seconds' in your configuration file.

[ABK]

Thanks for your advice. 2 minutes latency, I would not want to bump seconds by that much. What do you think the deal is with latency? Does it have anything to do with slow DNS response? In other words, what can be done to improve it?

[Michael S.]

esniper measures the time between sending the http(s)-Request to the libcurl-library and getting the response. This includes e.g. name resolving, open a connection, ....

[ABK]

It feels like we need to "warm up" a connection a few seconds prior. I thought the idea was to bid based on seconds, in other words a connection should already be established. I'm not familar with intricacies of the behind the scenes work though.

[Michael S.]

As you can see from the sources (auction.c line 1022 ff.)

             * Setup sleep schedule so we get updates once a day, then

              * at 2 hours, 1 hour, 5 minutes, 2 minutes

a 'warm up' takes place.
I think, your problem is an unstable internet connection.