st: Stata updates and caching

[ariley@stata.com (Alan Riley)]

After the Stata 11.1 update was announced yesterday, a few listmembers
reported that their copy of Stata 11 was telling them that it was
fully up-to-date, and was not showing the 11.1 update as being
available.

Some large organizations run all of their internet access through
a proxy server, and, to save bandwidth, some of them have their
proxy servers cache files from the web.  We see this most often
outside of the U.S., but we also see it within the U.S. occasionally.

When this happens, Stata asks for an update file from www.stata.com,
the proxy server intercepts that request, and the proxy server gives
Stata an older, cached, version of that file rather than the latest file
from www.stata.com.  This makes Stata think that an update is not
available even though it is.  Unfortunately there is nothing we at
StataCorp can do in this case.  The good news is that this caching is
always temporary, and typically the proxy server will expire its own
cache within no more than a day.

As of the Stata 11.1 update, if you type

   . update query

then all three components of Stata (executable, ado-files, and utilities)
should show a 'latest available' date of '03 Jun 2010'.  If you
type -update query- and see a 'latest available' date earlier than
'03 Jun 2010' for any of these three components, then you are behind
a caching proxy server.  In this case, you can merely wait a few hours
and try again.  If the problem persists, you should check with a
system administrator at your organization to ask if they can force
the proxy server to expire its cache.

You have the Stata 11.1 update fully installed if, when you type
-update query-, you see '03 Jun 2010' as the 'currently installed'
date for all three components.  If you do not see this date for all
three components, then you have not fully installed the Stata 11.1
update.  In this case, you should type

   . update all

   . update swap

to make sure that all three components of Stata are updated to
'03 Jun 2010'.


--Alan
(ariley@stata.com)
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