Something Doesn't Work Right

To whom can I send bug reports?

First, please read this FAQ list and the Mosaic documentation before sending in bug reports.

To send in a bug report, use the Mail Developers option in the Help menu; your bug report will be sent to the NCSA Mosaic developers. Or, send mail directly to mosaic-x@ncsa.uiuc.edu. Also please make sure you are using the latest available version of NCSA Mosaic; many bugs are fixed in each new release.

When I start NCSA Mosaic, I get all kinds of errors. Why?

Well, one class of errors you can get, generally on Suns, will be a bunch of run-time translation errors complaining about keysyms like osfBackspace and osfDelete. The solution to this problem is to plop a copy of the file XKeysymDB into /usr/lib/X11.

Another class of errors is complaints about missing fonts. For more information on this problem, see here.

Why doesn't backspace/delete work in NCSA Mosaic's text entry fields?

Because the Motif text widgets expect keysyms named osfBackspace and osfDelete to exist, and this probably isn't the case on your system. There is a two-stage solution to this:

Please note that these problems are endemic to Motif and are not limited to NCSA Mosaic in particular. (In other words, it's just not our fault.)

I don't have root access on my system and thus can't dump XKeysymDB in /usr/lib/X11. What can I do?

Legend has it that there's an undocumented X feature that lets you set the environment variable XKEYSYMDB to a filename naming whatever XKeysymDB file you want to use; that might be worth a try.

How come WAIS URL's don't work?

Mosaic currently does not provide native WAIS support. To make up for this, we are now running a WWW/WAIS gateway at NCSA. URL's of the following form should be used to access WAIS servers:

http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu:8001/wais.server:210/index-name? For example, the TMC directory of servers can be found at:

http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu:8001/quake.think.com:210/directory-of-servers? We will be adding native WAIS support to Mosaic this summer ('93).

Please also note in the meantime that WAIS URL's probably won't even work if you have an environment variable like WWW_wais_GATEWAY set; sorry, this will all be fixed soon.

I use a monochrome monitor. How can I run NCSA Mosaic in monochrome mode?

Just use the '-mono' command-line flag. (Note that there is no way to set this as an X resource, for stupid technical reasons.) You can also compile NCSA Mosaic to come up in mono mode by default; see src/Makefile in the source distribution (the '-color' command-line flag can then be used to throw NCSA Mosaic into color mode).

NCSA Mosaic hangs! Why?

NCSA Mosaic is a client that depends on a vast assortment of servers on the Internet to provide it with data. When a server is unavailable or working improperly, it can cause NCSA Mosaic to hang. We hope to improve this situation in the near future.

In the meantime, try hitting Ctrl-C in your shell window (i.e., send SIGINT to the NCSA Mosaic process) -- this might help (and it might also cause Mosaic to coredump, which is regrettable but not fixable).

NCSA Mosaic doesn't work through my company's firewall/gateway!

No, it doesn't. That's the whole point of firewalls, to inhibit normal connections with the Internet. The simple solution is to take down the firewall.

We don't have the development resources needed to add functionality to Mosaic to deal with firewalls/gateways; if it's really important to your company that Mosaic be able to do so, drop us a line and we'll talk about funding. (Universities and research institutions almost never use firewalls, which is why this is not of critical importance to us.)

I can't retrieve documents via Mosaic even though I can telnet and ftp anywhere on the network with no problem! What's the deal?

If you're running on a Sun, try the Sun executable that we distribute called xmosaic-sun-lresolv; it's here. It's linked to libresolv.a, which is necessary for some network clients on some Sun systems on the network.

If you're not running on a Sun, send us a bug report, and also tell us whether you can 'ping' www.ncsa.uiuc.edu. (If you can't ping www, then talk to your sysadmin and have him/her make that work; then Mosaic should work also.)

(Note also that if you're running from behind a firewall, all bets are off -- it's then up to your netadmins to make things work.)

How come NCSA Mosaic doesn't use my local NNTP server?

By default, NCSA Mosaic looks for an NNTP server named 'news'. Many sites have this aliased to their local NNTP server. If you don't, then just set your NNTPSERVER environment variable to the NNTP server of your choice. (No, I don't know of any public NNTP servers.)

How come I can't type into the Search Keyword text field?

First, make sure you place the mouse pointer inside the text entry field; you should see an I-beam cursor. (If no I-beam cursor shows up, and the 'Search Keyword' label is greyed out, then you are viewing a document that is not a search index and you cannot enter a search keyword.)

If you still can't type into the text field, and you're running on an HP system, then this is due to a bug in the HP Xt and Xm libraries (so says Chan Benson (chan@fc.hp.com) at HP Fort Collins). So it's not our fault.

If you're NOT on an HP, please send in a bug report (via the Mail Developers option of the Help menu, or directly to mosaic-x@ncsa.uiuc.edu) with information on your system configuration, window manager, and any relevant environment customizations.

(It currently appears as though this may be a general Motif 1.2 bug; I'm not sure yet, as we're not running Motif 1.2 on our development systems.)

How come I can't compile Mosaic under X11R5/Motif 1.2?

Beats me; we've never tried it.

How come directory listings aren't sorted?

Because some FTP servers don't return sorted directory listings and because the WWW library doesn't yet have code that does that. It's coming, it's coming...

Under OpenWindows, how come pressing 'Back' then causes a subsequent anchor press to look like 'Back' has just been pressed again?

This is an OpenWindows bug; not our fault.

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