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Update docs/troubleshooting.rst
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aandergr committed Sep 19, 2020
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21 changes: 11 additions & 10 deletions docs/troubleshooting.rst
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Expand Up @@ -9,10 +9,7 @@ Troubleshooting
---------------------

Instaloader has a logic to keep track of its requests to Instagram and to obey
their rate limits. Since they are nowhere documented, we try them out
experimentally. We have a daily cron job running to confirm that Instaloader
still stays within the rate limits. Nevertheless, the rate control logic assumes
that
their rate limits. The rate controller assumes that

- at one time, Instaloader is the only application that consumes requests, i.e.
neither the Instagram browser interface, nor a mobile app, nor another
Expand All @@ -21,7 +18,13 @@ that
- no requests had been consumed when Instaloader starts.

The latter one implies that restarting or reinstantiating Instaloader often
within short time is prone to cause a 429. If a request is denied with a 429,
within short time is prone to cause a 429.

Since the behavior of the rate controller might change between different
versions of Instaloader, make sure to use the current version of Instaloader,
especially when encountering many 429 errors.

If a request is denied with a 429,
Instaloader retries the request as soon as the temporary ban is assumed to be
expired. In case the retry continuously fails for some reason, which should not
happen under normal conditions, consider adjusting the
Expand All @@ -37,8 +40,7 @@ Too many queries in the last time

**"Too many queries in the last time"** is not an error. It is a notice that the
rate limit has almost been reached, according to Instaloader's own rate
accounting mechanism. We regularly adjust this mechanism to match Instagram's
current rate limiting.
accounting mechanism.

Private but not followed
------------------------
Expand All @@ -57,9 +59,8 @@ pointing the user to an URL to be opened in a browser.
Nevertheless, in :issue:`92` and :issue:`615` users reported problems with
logging in. We recommend to always keep the session file which Instaloader
creates when using :option:`--login`. If a session file is present,
:option:`--login` does not make make use of the failure-prone login procedure.
Also, session files usually do not expire and can be copied between different
computers without any problems.
:option:`--login` does not make use of the failure-prone login procedure.
Also, session files usually do not expire.

If you do not have a session file present, you may use the following script
(:example:`615_import_firefox_session.py`) to workaround login problems by
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