Opera link, constant gateway error. Doesn't work!

Opera link, constant gateway error. Doesn't work!

So opera link is advertised as a feature of Opera mobile 10, however its seems to be some kind of smoke and mirrors. I've been tying for 3 days now and it constantly gives me a gateway timeout error. This is odd since I've tried it several times on Opera desktop at the same exact time I was trying to sync on my mobile and my desktop opera wasn't getting a gateway error. I've even tried it while synchronizing Egress, an offline rss windows mobile app. Egress was able to sync 280mbs worth of webpage cache while Opera link failed 8 times with the constant gateway timeout error.

It feels like a smoke and mirror trick to get me to sign up and use opera link. Is this the case or am I doing something wrong?

Thanks.

Edit: I am on a HTC Leo aka HTC HD2.

Bump!

Opera link has _never_ _ever_ worked for me, ever since it was introduced.
On the Windows desktop, I get "HTTP gateway timed out" when I ever attempt to access the bookmarks or the notes page on the Opera Link site.
The browser syncs without ever succeeding, and without ever finishing, and it uses a lot of CPU.

Searches of Opera's knowledgebase produce stupid and irrelevant answers because the Opera site's search engine is rubbish.

I have reported this error before and discussed in in these fora; Opera does not seem to care.
Many other people have also reported this.

Every time there is a new release, I try Opera again, and then, when Opera Link STILL does not work, I go back to continuing to use Firefox and Chrome.

Life goes on, but how long for Opera when they run it like this ?

Try to UNINSTAll Opera and manually delete ALL its data folders (or perform a hardreset) then install Opera again. This helped me in beta 2.

Hi,

silkshadow: When you say "it constantly gives me a gateway timeout error", do you mean when you go to the web interface in My Opera?

operattt: the problem with the My Opera web UI is not necessarily connected to the problems with the browser. Do you get any messages in the error console? Have you tried removing the files link_queue_*.dat inside your profile directory (make a backup first)?

All: if you still have problems, giving us permission to look into your traffic will most probably help discovering/fixing the problem. You don't have to do anything fancy, just say that you give us permission :-)

Hi.
Thanks for the replies.
Opera Link has never worked, either in the browser (accessing bookmark or notes gives long delay and then "HTTP gateway timed out"), or within Opera, consistently, on all of my machines, under both Win 2000 and Win XP Home and Win XP Pro.

Right now if I click on Opera Link => Show Status I receive a little window that says "Opera Link is running fine", which could not be further from the truth because it is not running and has never run. Frustratingly, there seems to be no way I can explicitly say "sync NOW" to it. I just have to watch it.

If I close down Opera, then I get a message that Opera Link is still syncing. This never goes away, because the sync never ends.

If I look in Tools => Advanced => Error console I get a very useless error display - useless because it seems _designed_ to _prevent_ my copying and pasting the error messages so I could display them here. Seriously, that error console needs to be fixed. There is a long series of error messages which I am not going to manually retype here, but they all seem to be CSS style sheet errors and I have no idea what they relate to.

I am dismayed that Opera does not provide better debugging or error messages or indications of what is wrong.

Yes, you can look at my traffic. No problem. When I posted previously in these fora, an Opera employee offered to look into it if I would e-mail him my bookmark file, which I did, and I never heard any more.

I have really tried everything. I have totally cleaned Opera off my machines - registry keys, every last system file - and done clean reinstalls, importing only the bookmarks and nothing else, and that makes _no_ difference to the problem. Nothing anyone has suggested has ever made any difference.

This has totally stopped me from using Opera, which used to be my favourite browser. I know that many other users have given up and walked away from Opera because of this.

Thank you.

operattt: Actually I can see you have (a lot of) data on your Link account, so it has worked at least once. The data set is fairly large, so that's why (as I imagined) you can't use the web UI on My Opera (that's a bug of course, I'm trying to get it prioritised).

You do have a way to force synchronisation (it's a "hidden" button you can add to the UI if you go to Customize -> Appearance), but I don't think it will help you in this case.

If you want to filter the messages in the error console to see only Opera Link problems, you can choose "Opera Link" in the first drop down (the one that defaults to "All"). And you can copy messages from there clicking with the right button and choosing "Copy" (I agree it's inconvenient, but you can do it).

Now that we have permission to look at your traffic, I'm monitoring it and I'll see if I can see anything that helps in debugging this problem.

One more question: I see that you do have a lot of information in your account, so using a new, empty profile (ie. don't add or import any bookmarks) and connecting to Link should give you all your data. Doesn't that work?

operattt: I've been monitoring your traffic for a while, and the requests seem completely normal. There are no changes in them though. Could you do some change, like add some bookmark, change a title, move a bookmark no another folder, etc.?

BTW, why do you say it doesn't work? You don't get your changes in other Opera installations or something similar?

I saw a modification just now (maybe you read my post and tried?) and it still keeps completely normal. The modification is sent, and the client is "updated" in the next request.

I also see requests from you from the web interface. Those will fail, but it only means that you can't see your data on the web interface: Link is apparently working and your data is stored on the servers, so when that bug is fixed you'll be able to see it on the web UI. I'll insist again and try to get this bug fixed.

Thanks!

Zoso,
Thanks again for your reply.

I have made a couple of deletions in the bookmarks.

I have found the Sync Now button (thanks for that - it's well hidden), added it, and am about to try it.

I have found the "opera link" drop-down in the error console (thanks for pointing that out) and I can see an error message which I have found a way of copying (right-click) which was not apparent before (it's a bit strange compared to a simple text window):

Opera Link
SYNC_ERROR_COMM_FAIL
Unable to communicate with the Opera Link server

I remember that I've seen those in the past.

On the page http://my.opera.com/operattt/account/link/bookmarks/ if I click on Bookmarks, there is a very long wait and then the "HTTP gateway timed out" message.

If I click on Notes, there is a long delay and then "No notes found. You can synchronize your notes from the Opera browser and show them on this page using" and an "Add note" link. If I click "add note" there is another long delay, and a notes window opens. I write something in there, and then click "save note", the page becomes busy for another long delay and then it re-displays "No notes found. You can synchronize your notes from the Opera browser and show them on this page using..."

I have in the past experienced, with previous Opera releases, very high CPU usage which crippled the machine during the long sync attempts; that seems to be no longer happening at present.

I have never had a successful sync to another PC. I have in the past had a couple of massive duplication and triplication of bookmarks, which was very painful to fix. I don't know if that was a machine-to-machine sync failure, or a sync-with-self failure.


I'm re-enabling and trying again.

On the first machine, I now have the error
Opera Link
SYNC_ERROR_PARSER
An error has occurred while parsing data from the Opera Link server

... and there is a yellow triangle over the green sync button.


On a second machine, similar effect, with the green sync indicator repeatedly revolving, stopping, revolving, stopping.
Error console on that machine shows slightly different errors from the first machine (but always the same messages on that second machine):

Opera Link
SYNC_ACCOUNT_USER_UNAVAILABLE
The user information is currently locked by the Opera Link server, but it will be available shortly
Opera Link
SYNC_ERROR_PARSER
An error has occurred while parsing data from the Opera Link server
Opera Link
SYNC_ACCOUNT_USER_UNAVAILABLE
The user information is currently locked by the Opera Link server, but it will be available shortly


I have no evidence that either machine can access the Opera Link server.

Thanks again for your interest. I hope this helps.

Zoso,
I've just seen another question you asked,

"One more question: I see that you do have a lot of information in your account, so using a new, empty profile (ie. don't add or import any bookmarks) and connecting to Link should give you all your data. Doesn't that work?"

In the past I did try that with a fresh, empty profile and it failed in exactly the same way. I don't have time to try it right now but I will as soon as I can.

Thanks again.

Zoso,

On the second machine, when in the My Opera portal, if I click on "Bookmarks" I am not getting the "gateway timed out" but, after a short delay, I am seeing a web page with the message "there are no bookmarks in this folder".

If something is massively failing it should be giving an explicit error message, not simply assuming there is no data.

I'll continue to post evidence as I find it.

Hmm... *now* I'm seeing something interesting, some very strange errors on the server side. We'll investigate and I'll post back when/if we find anything else.

Thanks a lot for your help, hopefully we'll finally find this bug, which is apparently affecting a lot more people...

There seems to be a further problem.
A few times a day, at apparently random intervals, when Opera is running but not being actively used, I receive a warning from my firewall to the effect that
Opera wants to act as a server, and wants to accept incoming connections on or from a source IP of
169.254.155.212:4571 (on one occasion)
169.254.155.212:4566 (on another occasion)

The disturbing thing that I don't have any devices with IP addresses in that range. The LAN in this case on on private IP space 192.168.xxx.xxx and all devices are in that range.

Is this a figment of Opera's imagination, as I suspect ?

I don't think that can have anything to do with Opera Link. Are you using Opera Unite?

No, I'm not using Opera Unite. I have the maximum number of options turned off.

I didn't think the port issue was to do with Opera link, but ... it's very odd behaviour of an application to request to become a server.
The only one I can think of that legitimately does this is Skype. I'm just trying to understand what Opera is doing. Its behaviour is different in this respect from other browsers, none of which request permission to be servers.

Thanks again for replying.

operattt: Hi. With what I have found, it would be really useful for me to be able to compare the data I'm receiving with your actual bookmarks. Could you send your bookmark file to estebanm AT opera.com? It seems that the client is somehow sending references to data that doesn't exist. Maybe if I see the source of the data (your bookmark file) I'll be able to figure out why.

Thanks in advance!

Hi zoso,

Done as requested.

Hi,

Just wondering, as I still have the same ongoing problems,
I know that problems can't be fixed instantly but it's just that the thread has gone quiet.
Is there reason to hope that this may lead to fixes for these bugs, or will this bug report sink without a trace as it did when I went through this same process including providing a copy of my bookmarks files to another Opera employee in 2008 ?

i have the impression that Opera management possibly can't get to recognise a problem. It could be 2020 before we have a solution ??

Just thinking out loud. I have been monitoring this thread daily in case I can help further, but, if it's going to take a long time, I won't spend time constantly monitoring it.

Thank you

operattt: yeah, I'm afraid it could take a while to fix it. We're talking weeks here, not days I'm afraid. I may be wrong, just don't hold your breath. We have gotten the information we need (for now at least) so it's ok that the thread is silent.

About recognising the problem, don't worry: we do, we have a task filed for it, and it's actually already in the works. It's just that it's not a quick fix. I know it's frustrating getting hit by a bug like this, but there's not a lot more I can say right now.

And about monitoring the thread, you can just subscribe to it so you don't have to come back all the time. That, or use the RSS feed...

Hi zoso,

Thanks for your reply; at least you have confirmed that it is in the queue.

By the way, re "And about monitoring the thread, you can just subscribe to it so you don't have to come back all the time"
- I think there is a user interface problem in the forum which prevents this. I have noticed other people also saying "I have subscribed but I never get notified" and I think I know why (always assuming that function works in the first place):

As I am writing a reply like this, the "subscribe to this topic" field below is indeed ticked, so, OK, I can assume it is being take care of.
BUT if, rather than doing a "submit", I do a "preview" and edit my text, I notice that the default switches to "subscribe to this topic" being UNticked.
As I am concerned about the text, I don't notice this until just after I have hit "submit", and then it's too late.
The same happens if I post then notice an error in my text and choose to edit the post; "subscribe to this topic" is again OFF, even though it was originally on by default.
In both these cases I do not get notified. I think this is a forum user interface bug and that it is probably catching a lot of people.

You might like to have a look at this problem and either change the default to be ticked at each stage of the edit, or make the initial choice persistent over both preview and subsequent re-edit of the post.

Also, there seems to be some flakiness in the editing of text in the forum in general. I have just come to the end of the open window and it refused to scroll and refused to show me the text I am now typing. I had to cut out the whole post and edit it in WordPad and I am going to paste it back in to the forum window.

I have tried using Opera a bit again recently, and Opera seems flakey on stuff like this. I have just re-tried it on Gmail and Hotmail - it doesn't work well with either of those. There were these issues with Opera years ago and they seem to be still there. I know there is an argument about who is more standards-compliant, but it's just a disincentive to use Opera when it doesn't work as expected (and the way many other browsers do indeed work) with major sites like Gmail and Hotmail.

Thanks again for your efforts.

Re "That, or use the RSS feed..."

I must be so dumb. I am looking and looking and can not find any RSS feed anywhere in these forum pages.

Hm, that's strange. You should have the RSS icon in your address bar if you're seeing this reply in the forum thread page. Anyway, the URL for the feed (RSS 2.0) is http://my.opera.com/community/xml/rss/topic/568961 . If you prefer Atom, change "rss" by "atom"...

The problem operattt describes affects me too...I've not read all the error messages from my browser, but the "symptoms" are exactly the same even changing machine (same OS) and using a bright new installation of Opera. So I'll follow with a lot of of concern this discussion.

zoso: Thanks for the RSS link. Most web pages that provide RSS feed have the RSS button on the web page, and that is where I was looking. Why don't Opera web pages have this anywhere ?
Now that you tell me to look in the browser address bar, I can say that usually the orange RSS link is not there as I navigate the forum, but *sometimes* it is. I don't understand what is going on. I have managed to catch it while it is visible and managed to subscribe; but it is a sensitive thing and, if I click anywhere in the browser address bar, the RSS icon disappears.

I have to say that this is all *way* more difficult than it should be. In the past I had referred a lot of people I help with the PCs to Opera, and every single one has given up and gone to Firefox. Opera is just too flakey, just too hard to make it work intuitively and simply. It's a battle !!


andreat: I'm not surprised. When I first tried to get Opera's attention to this in 2008, many people were reporting similar problems and, as far as I could see, at that time we were all ignored. Here is one of the threads from that time:
http://my.opera.com/community/forums/topic.dml?id=236049
http://my.opera.com/community/forums/topic.dml?id=249461&t=1275681137&page=1
http://my.opera.com/community/forums/topic.dml?id=258692

operattt:
> at that time we were all ignored

let's hope it's the right time!

Hi zoso and everyone, I hope that this error is similar to this one below as I get it all the time:

"The user information is currently locked by the Opera Link server, but it will be available shortly"

I get that all the time for several months now and even Opera Mini/Mobile does not sync correctly. And if you wanted more debugging info, you could always check my traffic, my Opera Link has gone to hell. Awaiting the fix!

Cheers.

For me, your message
"The user information is currently locked by the Opera Link server, but it will be available shortly"
is the message Opera _always_ gives me on one of my machines. I hope that zoso is looking at this; it's definitely part of the same set of bugs as far as I can see, dated back to 2008 or further.

Thanks for confirming that you have it, too; I'm sure many are affected but don't bother to post. Hopefully Opera will do something this time.

Incidentally, assuming it relates to the same bug, I'll repeat here what I mentioned in another thread. I attempted to enable Opera Link on my mobile device ...

Opera Mini - I enabled Opera Link, and logged in on the mobile device.
Opera Mini said "synchronising your data" for about 30 seconds, and then "parsing failed" followed by:

"Save transaction failed - DBD::mysql::st execute failed: Lock wait timeout exceeded: try restarting transaction at /opt/Link/Link/PullRequestHandler.pm line 313."

My mobile device show that Opera Link is ON, but, having been advised in the above error message to restart transaction - there seems no way I can do this.

aashish108: thanks for your comment, it's probably the same problem.

operattt: nevermind the "try restarting transaction", you shouldn't have been shown that error message to start with. When that happens, there's nothing you can do, really (apart from reporting the bug as you did of course ;-) ).

As I said, we are already working on a solution for this. It's not a quick fix, so it will take some time until you can see the results. When we send the fix live, I'll ping this thread to check if it fixes your problem.

I am having the exact same problem with the gateway time-out as operattt and silkshadow. I think it is related to the bookmark file size (mine is over 1MB), but even still, all the features on the opera link website do not work (be it bookmarks, notes, etc)

When I synced on my phone, the speed dial and searches synced, but no bookmarks.

What I would like to know is if I can completely reset my opera link info on your server. i.e. remove my data completely. this way I can start a new sync from my desktop browser only for the elements I know will work (everything but the massive bookmark file).

Thanks!

antonop: I think the My Opera team has finally fixed that bug (that 1Mib "limit" for Opera Link), so it will probably start working in the next My Opera release.

I don't think the phone problem is related to My Opera though... but it's hard to know what's going on without more information. If you give us permission to monitor your Opera Link traffic we might be able to find the problem.

There isn't any way to reset an Opera Link account, but I imagine that you can access your data without problems from Desktop? If that's the case, you can remove data yourself (just remove bookmarks and empty the Trash and it will be deleted on the server too). HOWEVER, I don't think that will help with your phone problem. It will with the My Opera problem, but I think they're going to fix it anyway, so you just have to wait until the next release.

So my recommendation is waiting for the My Opera release and let us track the problem with your phone. If you're using Opera Mobile, have you tried 10.1 beta? It has fixed some issues, and I think that includes an issue similar to yours.

I'm using Opera Mobile 10 and Opera Link does not work. I had the same problem with the beta as well. It works fine on Opera Mini though.
After entering my username and password and clicking login, it first saying "Loading failed". If I try again, a small box with the words "Logging in..." comes up and stays there doing nothing. After a few minutes I get "Loading failed" again.
I am trying to synchronize my 'Speed Dial' from Opera Mini to Opera Mobile.
Using HTC HD2 (Windows Mobile)

ciby22: do we have permission to monitor your traffic? Otherwise it's very hard to figure out what the problem is...

I don't use opera mobile, but opera sync doesn't work for me too.

It works fine on desktop and doesn't work on all other devices in the same network. I've discovered that opera (jy “problem” devices) cannot open url https://link-server.opera.com and hence cannot fetch/update sync entries (other browsers open this url just fine). Maybe this will help

Originally posted by zoso:

ciby22: do we have permission to monitor your traffic? Otherwise it's very hard to figure out what the problem is...

yes you have permission..I use both opera mini and 10 but mini a lot since I can't use opera link to sync my speed dial from opera mini to 10.

just tried today and it synced fine

cancel: hmm... that's strange. What exact error message do you get?

Hi, I just tried Opera Link after many months and the error message is still the same: "The user information is currently locked by the Opera Link server, but it will be available shortly"/

Still no solutions? I tried a new profile with the same login details for Opera Link, still the same problem. Its messed up from the server side!

aashish108: we'll have to take a look at your concrete case to see what's wrong. Can I have a look at your data and traffic?

Opera 10.63 and I keep checking, but still no fix ... this still does not work.

I try Opera once or twice every time there is an upgrade, since 2008, but then I don't use it while this still doesn't work.

Sad.

operattt: the problem is on the server side, so just upgrading Opera is very unlikely to fix the problem. We are on it, but as (I think) I have said before, it's non-trivial. My original estimation (can't remember if I posted it) was way off, but we're still on it, we haven't forgotten!

OK, I hadn't realised it was all server-side.

Thanks for remembering.

Originally posted by zoso:

aashish108: we'll have to take a look at your concrete case to see what's wrong. Can I have a look at your data and traffic?

HI Zoso, yes, please look! As I just installed Opera 11 and still Opera Link fails! Cheers

aashish108: I've turned on monitoring for your traffic, I'll post when I have some news. But as I said, it's probably going to take some time still (it's not a trivial problem).

Hi there aashish108,

I'm looking at your traffic, and it seems a bit strange. I see bursts of activity, but they don't last that long. It seems that for some reason Opera can't reach the Link servers (only occasionally). Let's do two things:

1) Can you tell me when you have been using Opera uninterrupted for, say, one half an hour or one hour? Then I'll check that day and time and see what traffic has been generated (knowing for sure that you have been using Opera and Link at that time, and knowing you didn't have network problems).

2) The next time you get the "The user information is currently locked by the Opera Link servers", can you tell me the day and time it happened? Also, when it happens, can you try to connect to https://link-server.opera.com/ and tell me what you get?

Hi, I noticed the message "The user information is currently locked by the Opera Link server, but it will be available shortly" at 17:35 today but shortly afterwards it disappeared.

I tried to connect to that link-server and the message I got was Service not found / t16-02-v01 even when the warning icon disappeared from the opera link icon.

Thanks for the help!

Hm, this is really interesting: I can see some requests for your user at that time... but I can't see anything at that exact minute (or that error message being returned around that timeframe). I'm pretty sure it has to be the correct timezone, because I can see that right after you went to the URL I gave you...

Thanks for the help, I'll keep investigating.

Originally posted by zoso:

Hm, this is really interesting: I can see some requests for your user at that time... but I can't see anything at that exact minute (or that error message being returned around that timeframe). I'm pretty sure it has to be the correct timezone, because I can see that right after you went to the URL I gave you...

Thanks for the help, I'll keep investigating.

Hi Zoso, what about now? I just had to reimport the bookmarks and the error message keeps appearing:

The user information is currently locked by the Opera Link server, but it will be available shortly

Cheers!

sync works for me with my HTC SPV M3100 and opera 10 but not with mini 5.1 or 6

aashish108: Are you using Opera 11.10? I'm afraid we have some small problem now with that build, we can't log its traffic. We'll probably fix today.

MystaMagoo: that's likely a different problem. Can I have a look at your requests? Do you get any error message, what happens exactly?

Hmm... today Opera gave mi nice:

The user information is currently locked by the Opera Link server, but it will be available shortly

uhm... what does it mean?!

lwiczek: lately the Link server has been overloaded, we're looking into it. For the time being, it will say that from time to time.

*If* that happens every single time and the synchronisation doesn't work at all, *then* it's a different problem, and needs more investigation.

Well, it seemed like an incidental cases... thanks for the response thow

Edit: humpf, happening again... hope you will resolve the issues soon-ish

I'm getting the same error in mini and mobile when I try to run the first sync:
Link:: DB connect('database=link:host=.....: port=......','sysdba',....) failed: Can't connect to MySQL server on '.........(111) at /opt/link/Link/pullrequesthandler.pm line 186 -

I've uninstalled both and tried again. No luck.

Operaanon: please try again, we had some problems yesterday.

well i have never faced problem with opera link

in opera mini,opera mobile and opera desktop

Opera Link has barely worked for me since its launch. Also bothered their so little help available on this or any fault, glitch, error, problem that one may encounter with Opera. Its taken some effort just finding this post!

I've traced the problem in part to my bookmarks which if left out of the syncs list then only speeddial but not in the expected order or exact item shows up.

Web access always fails with a useless error message for all items bookmarks, notes, etc.

For Opera Link this error message - " Error: The bookmark server did not respond. Please try again later."

For Opera Link notes responds with " No notes found. You can synchronize your notes from the Opera browser and show them on this page using Opera Link."

For Opera speeddial, the sync works some via the opera browser's speeddial, web access to speeddials thinks for 90 seconds times out, responds with this useless page https://my.opera.com/CADutch/account/link/speeddial/

Opera staff is welcome to peek at all of my Opera Link data for userid CADutch.

CADutch: you have *many* duplicates, and a huge data store on the server (because of the duplicates). My guess is that everything will go back to normal when you use the duplicate removal utility on My Opera (that'd be https://my.opera.com/CADutch/account/link/bookmarks/merge/ for you).

If you have problems running the duplicate removal from My Opera, I can do it for you.

I am trying to use opera link on my android and I continually get an error stating that my password in incorrect. I have reset my password three times now and each time my pc works fine but not my phone. Any suggestions?

Jennifer

Originally posted by zoso:

CADutch: you have *many* duplicates, and a huge data store on the server (because of the duplicates). My guess is that everything will go back to normal when you use the duplicate removal utility on My Opera (that'd be https://my.opera.com/CADutch/account/link/bookmarks/merge/ for you).

If you have problems running the duplicate removal from My Opera, I can do it for you.

Hi Zoso! I posted my Opera link problem on 8th June 2010 and I have come back from Firefox to see I still get Opera Link problems!

At the moment, Opera Link is fluctuating between Opera Link error (The Opera Link server reported an error while parsing data sent by Opera) and Opera Link busy. Is this intended behaviour?

Also, I deleted all my bookmarks and checked the opera link site that this was done - then uploaded a new set of bookmarks only for the opera link site to have the old set of bookmarks loaded onto it instead of the new ones!

Any ideas as to what is going on? You can check my account if you want to!

Cheers

Opera Link still does not work for me.

The problems are the same as those I have been reporting in this and other threads since 2008.

Opera browser still reports "Opera sync is working fine" but that's rubbish.

On the Opera portal, I still cannot see the bookmarks most of the time, although occasionally I can see some briefly but get a timeout if I try to edit.

Most of the time I cannot see notes, although, maybe once in two weeks, I can occasionally see Notes. I have attempted to create many and apparently I have, on the server side, but they are not accessible in the browser and, if I try to delete one via the portal, the portal then times out.

The duplicate removal tool offers to do a cleanup but times out.

Right now I'm trying to access bookmarks via the Opera portal, using Chrome browser, but it hangs and then times out just when I use the Opera browser to access it, "504 Gateway Time-out".

3 years of this, and no change. Opera people have said they'll tell me when it is supposed to be working; no-one has ever got back to me.
I assume that the server-side problems are all still there.