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Date: Fri, 1 Sep 95 11:38:28 EDT
From: jeffa@sybase.com (Jeff Anuszczyk)
Message-Id: <9509011538.AA07071@teak.sybgate.sybase.com>
To: bobb@netcom.com
Subject: Getting Netscape running...
Cc: questions@freebsd.org
Sender: questions-owner@freebsd.org
Precedence: bulk

Recently I had trouble getting Netscape to run.  The symptoms were that
Netscape would startup, however as soon as I selected the Options menu, it
would pop down and then the entire X Window session would hang (can't change
focus, iconify anything, etc).  Well, after a bit of work I finally tracked
down what the problem was.  I'm hoping that someone can shed some light
on why things are happening this way.

First, the fundamental problem was my network was not setup totally
correct.  Even though the host.conf file lists "hosts" and then "bind"
apparently Netscape ignores that and only queries the DNS server.  My
problem was I defined my machine name "zorak" to be 127.0.0.1 even though
the DNS stuff has a real IP address.  The theory (okay so I'm probably 
thin in the head) is I want anything addressed to my machine to just go
to the localhost.  True, a route setup correctly would handle this for
me.  However my only connection to the internet is via a ppp session that
is not always active.  I often use the system without connecting to the
net so I haven't gotten around to setting everything up totally correctly
(actually I have questions about this and iijppp that I'll need to follow
up on).

In any case, Netscape would query my DNS stuff and get the proper IP address
and then try to connect to it.  Bingo instant hang.  Why this happens is
a bit of a mystery.  Don't you normally get "No Route to host" type of 
messages?  Of course, now that we have the tunnel devices real connections
can get a bit gray.

In any case, I've found that if I have any active links/sockets open over
a tunnel/ppp device and the telephone line hangs up for some reason the
application hangs completely.  It doesn't learn about the closing of the
link.  Hmmm.  It's especially bad if I launch an X windows app from a 
remote system directed to my PC at home.  If the link goes down there is
nothing I can do (at least I haven't figured it out) to kill the window.
The only thing I've found so far is to go back to CTRL/ALT/F1 and issue
a KILL -KILL on the process.  However alot of times the window manager
gets screwed up and then I have to do a CTRL/ALT/BS to kill X.  Yuk.

Any thoughts or ideas from anyone.  This is a change from V1.1.5.1 which
would allow graceful dropping of the apps.  The system I have is a P100
running FreeBSD V2.0.5-R with XFree86 V3.1.  

Thanks for your time,
   - Jeff