[Biopython] Entrez.efetch Service unavailable!

[Peter]

On Wed, Dec 16, 2009 at 3:52 AM, Kevin Lam <aboulia at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi I have been trying to use
> Entrez.efetch
> to download ~1000 bacteria genomes

Why not use their FTP site? They even make bundles available, e.g.
ftp://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genomes/Bacteria/all.gbk.tar.gz
ftp://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genomes/Bacteria/all.faa.tar.gz
etc. Note the folder is called Bacteria for historical reasons,
it is really Prokaryotes as there are plenty of Archaea in there.

> I read in the docs that biopython will auto take care of the delay and fetch
> via the preferred site for download scripts
> but I have been getting service unavailable  errors at GMT +8 1100am
> is this normal? Or should i edit the source to give a larger delay buffer?
> So far I have only managed to get 3 fasta sequences out

The NCBI were planning some Entrez work about now (updating
DTD files), so the downtime might be expected. I'd wait a day,
and then if it is still down email them.

Regards,

Peter