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 does Mosaic dump core every time I try to start it?

Try starting Mosaic with the '-ghbnie' command-line flag. If that fixes the problem, it means your system's networking is configured incorrectly (as the call to gethostbyname() to discover the full host name of the local system is bombing). You should contact your system or network administrator to have the problem fixed. (Setting the X resource gethostbynameIsEvil to True has the same effect as using the '-ghbnie' command-line flag.)

If you are using Solaris 2.2 and Motif 1.1, there is a bug in the Xt library that causes a core dump as the first window is being created (since Sun did not compile their Xt library with the MOTIFBC option). The solution (thanks to Jim McBeath):

  1. Copy Xt/context.c to xmosaic/src
  2. In xmosaic/src/Makefile, add context.c to CFILES and context.o to OBJS
  3. Add "#define MOTIFBC" to the beginning of context.c
  4. Add "-I/usr/include/X11" to xinc in the top level Makefile

Why does Mosaic core dump on XtKeysymToKeycodeList?

 Read all about it 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?

If you're running X11R5, you can set the environment variable XKEYSYMDB to a filename naming whatever XKeysymDB file you want to use.

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. The animated icon at the upper-right corner of the Document View window, new for version 2.0, acts as an abort button.

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, we don't know of any public NNTP servers.)

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. (Universities and research institutions almost never use firewalls, which is why this is not of critical importance to us.)

Here is the latest information on using NCSA Mosaic from behind a firewall.

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

If you're running on a Sun, try the Sun executable that we distribute called Mosaic-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.)

Why don't my multimedia X resources work anymore?

(or)

How do I configure Mosaic to use different image viewers or sound players than the defaults?

First, the multimedia X resources that worked with Mosaic 1.2 (e.g. gifViewerCommand, audioPlayerCommand) are completely ignored by Mosaic 2.0.

Second, you now have complete control over the types of data Mosaic can understand and what it does with each type, as well as the file extensions that correspond to each type (when communicating with a HTTP0 or FTP server).

Third, Mosaic now uses the MIME typing mechanism for naming data types (e.g., the MIME type for a GIF image is image/gif). This provides a substantial amount of interoperability with the present and future of multimedia email on the Internet, but will require a little readjustment on the part of users who are used to simply calling GIF files "type GIF", etc.

For more information, see: