Please test http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~bebot-devel/bebot/stable-0.6/annotate/head%3A/main/14_Tools.php
It should default to curl if it is available, and should also timeout normal socket operations.

testing this fix now as well

Just for the record. I highly recommend upgrading from PHP 5.1 to at the very least PHP 5.2.11, and preferably PHP 5.3.1

PHP 5.1.6 which was the last release in the 5.1 series is 3 years old.

Just to clarify. The fix is not to remove the error message. (the error still occurs just as before, Funcoms servers does not respond)
The fix is to prevent the bot from freezing up for 60 seconds at a time when Funcom servers does not respond (which seems to be most of the time atm)

Since this seems to be confusing i modified the code (untested atm) to supress the PHP error messages and user our own error messages instead which should be more informative.

Please give this a whirl:
http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~bebot-devel/bebot/stable-0.6/annotate/head%3A/main/14_Tools.php

Please note, it will spam just as much, most likely, it will just be the bot handling the error message output instead of PHP.

Done

Quote from: Temar on November 03, 2009, 06:42:32 am

the sockets function doesn't seem to have a timeout in it
on my bots i changed the setting under !set tools
to use cURL which does have a timeout

I did this for my bots and it has helped them not hang also.

hum... this setting of the tools seems to have broken the !items module. "cannot connect to the database"

I am still running the 0.6.5 bot... is this fixed in the 0.6.6 code? Anyone else seeing this behavior?

The response for the items module has always been pretty quick. but now the error is even faster

Yes, This is the default items module... the one that has the icons... against vhab's database I think.

/*
* Central Items Database v1.1, By Vhab
* Latest version can always be found at: http://bebot.link/index.php/topic,380.0.html
* Details about the database itself: http://aodevs.com/index.php/topic,84.0.html
*
* BeBot - An Anarchy Online & Age of Conan Chat Automaton
* Copyright (C) 2004 Jonas Jax
* Copyright (C) 2005-2007 Thomas Juberg Stensås, ShadowRealm Creations and the BeBot development team.
*
* Developed by:
* - Alreadythere (RK2)
* - Blondengy (RK1)
* - Blueeagl3 (RK1)
* - Glarawyn (RK1)
* - Khalem (RK1)
* - Naturalistic (RK1)
* - Temar (RK1)
*
* See Credits file for all aknowledgements.
*
*  This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
*  it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
*  the Free Software Foundation; version 2 of the License only.
*
*  This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
*  but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
*  MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
*  GNU General Public License for more details.
*
*  You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
*  along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
*  Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA  02111-1307
*  USA
*
* File last changed at $LastChangedDate: 2008-11-30 23:09:06 +0100 (Sun, 30 Nov 2008) $
* Revision: $Id: Items.php 1833 2008-11-30 22:09:06Z alreadythere $
*/

I set tools back to Sockets and all is working once more... might be something wrong with my cURL application. I'll look at that later and let everyone know.