PayPal History Report Download Timeout Fix!

[BrainOpener]

Hi PayPal Peoples,

If you can't download reports form the PayPal history tab because it timeouts, you can use the following command on a Mac to make it work:

sudo sysctl -w net.inet.tcp.keepidle=10000 net.inet.tcp.keepintvl=5000 net.inet.tcp.always_keepalive=1

That's telling your Mac to send "keepalive" packets to PayPal to keep the connection from timing out.

Here's a video showing the whole thing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8jPvIGX6aw

I tried finding a similar fix for Windows but, alas, it does not seem possible.

[poslathian]

THANK YOU KIND SIR!

Seriously, paypal history downloads are a huge headache, and this is a clever and very functional fix. FYI on linux, the settings are slightly different, with seconds instead of milliseconds as the arguments and different keys:

sysctl -w tcp_keepalive_probes=8 tcp_keepalive_time=10 tcp_keepalive_intvl=5

should give you the same configuration as you have shown for mac/bsd

[johnse]

Thanks, poslathian! Your tip inspired me to try the same thing on GNU+Linux.

The sysctl variables are slightly different :

sysctl net.ipv4.tcp_keepalive_time=10

sysctl net.ipv4.tcp_keepalive_probes=8

sysctl net.ipv4.tcp_keepalive_intvl=5

Note that if you want these settings to survive a reboot, you need to edit /etc/sysctl.conf