Unable to check for mod updates

[usafphoenix]

screenshot: https://ibb.co/rZKS8Wm

last few releases, i've been unable to connect to mod portal API / game won't correctly scan for mod updates.
hovering over text, "Unable to check for updates" reveals " api call failed: (path: 'api/mods', status: 414)"

[DaleStan]

Do you have a proxy? (Possibly supplied by your ISP?) 414 is "Request too long", and one possible cause of that is a misbehaving proxy between your computer and and factorio.com. www.whatismyip.com may help you figure out if you have a proxy.

[Anson]

i have the same problem, not being able to update mods automatically, with the following additional info:
- when i use a stand alone installation of factorio, everything works fine.
- when i try to update mods in my steam installation, i get this "api/mods 414" error.
- i don't knowingly (on purpose) use a proxy
since i played only vanilla factorio on the steam installation, and a modded game on the standalone, it wasn't important to me yet, but the problem probably already exists since 0.17.0

some details about these two installations:
- the steam version updates to the newest experimental version fine, and i just verified the steam installation with the result that everything is ok.
- both installations are not in the usual locations, but in subdirectories on drive D:

- the standalone is in the directory D:\myGames\Factorio\Factorio_0.17.auto and has many subdirectories (bin, mods, saves, ...) and a config-path.cfg with the two important lines

Code: Select all

config-path=__PATH__executable__/../../config
use-system-read-write-data-directories=false

- the steam version is in D:\myGames\STEAM\steamapps\common\Factorio and has only 4 subdirectories (bin, data, doc-html, steam_shader_cache) and a config-path.cfg with the two important lines

Code: Select all

config-path=__PATH__system-write-data__/config
use-system-read-write-data-directories=true

and thus is probably using C:\Users\<myname>\AppData\Roaming\Factorio\mods as its mod directory

[Anson]

updating mods in the steam version seems to work now, after cleaning up my steam version of factorio by deleting the entire mod directory (almost 700 zip files with old mods from version 0.12 or 0.13 to 0.16, and two other files), and suddenly i no longer get this error.
maybe "Request too long" referred to a long list of so many mods ???

[Rseding91]

Do you happen to have the old mods folder that you could zip and upload somewhere that I can test with it?

[Anson]

since it was a huge folder with "historic" :-) versions of mods, i had made a backup first, before deleting it.
to be sure, i just copied it back and got the error again. thus I'll upload it now to my dropbox (link as PM)

hint: after several tests the log shows a linelength of 16800+ chars (>16KB!) for the http-query of so many mods.
after removing some mods and then some more, the length was 16300- (<16KB!) and updates worked.

i have mixed feelings about finding bugs, but love (successfull) bugfixing and also
reading in all the previous FFFs how the devs find and fix even the strangest of them.
thanks for the great game, the great FFFs, and your dedication to find and solve all problems !