
COMMON-PROBLMS,v 1.1.1.1 1995/01/11 21:11:36 polk Exp

List of Common Problems:

0.  XRN does not link on a SUN under Open Windows:

    SunOS 4.1.2 includes patch number 100170-06 (ld). It then discloses other
    bugs in OW3.0 libraries Xmu and Xt. You can order patch number
    100512-02 and 100573-03.

    If you use X11R5, check your configuration file (mit/config/sun.cf) and be
    sure you defined SunPost411FCSLd to YES.

1.  You get the following message:

	XRN: serious error, your NNTP server does not have XHDR support.
	Either you are running a pre-1.5 NNTP server or XHDR has
	not been defined in 'nntp/common/conf.h'
	XRN requires XHDR support to run.

    Do what it says.  Actually, there is some sort of timeout bug in 
    XRN that will sometimes excite this message... if you know your
    NNTP server has XHDR support, ignore the message.

2.  You get the following message:

	Current XRN Application Defaults file is not installed.
	Some XRN functionality may be missing.

		or

	Current XRN Application Defaults file is not installed.
	Some XRN functionality may be missing.
	Application defaults version: xx, XRN version: yy

    You have not installed the correct application defaults file for XRN.
    Copy the file XRn.ad to /usr/lib/X11/app-defaults/XRn (or for Motif, 
    copy the file XRnMotif.ad to /usr/lib/X11/app-defaults/XRnMotif).
    /usr/lib/X11/app-defaults may be in a different location on your
    machine, if after you copy the defaults files, you still get the
    above message, contact your system administrator to find out where
    the defaults files should be installed.

    OpenWindows requires that the application defaults be in the directory:

		$OPENWINHOME/lib/app-defaults

3.  The scroll bars do not appear.

    You have not installed the correct application defaults file for XRN.
    Copy the file XRn.ad to /usr/lib/X11/app-defaults/XRn (or for Motif,
    copy the file XRnMotif.ad to /usr/lib/X11/app-defaults/XRnMotif)

4.  That Stupid Information Box - how do I get rid of it.

	xrn.info: off

	or 

	xrn -info

5.  There are too many buttons.

	Check out the *ButtonList Xresources in the XRN man page.

6.  Infinite Loop

	You've found a bug, try to get XRN to dump core and then
	send us the backtrace (see the xrn.dumpCore option).

7.  You get the message:

	"Caught signal (XX), cleaned up .newsrc and removed temp files"

	You've found a bug, try to get XRN to dump core and then
	send use the backtrace.

8.  Your spawned editor does not seem to be using any of your initialization
    environment variables (for example, EXINIT and vi).

	Make sure you are setting EXINIT in your .cshrc file, not your
	.login file.

9.  Your spawned editor does not appear on your screen.

	If you are running XRN remotely, the editor is probably trying 
	to display on the remote machine.  Use the %D setting in the 
	editorCommand resource.

10. X related Questions:

    a. Changing the font size

	    XRn*font: 	new-font
	    XRnMotif*fontList:  new-font-list


11. News System related Questions:

    XRN is a news reader and poster - there are many errors or weird
    situations that you may encounter that are do to the news system
    itself, not XRN.  If possible, please make sure that the problem
    you are reporting is due to XRN and not a news system problem.

    If you want to create a group, find out why a group has been deleted, 
    find out how to subscribe to a group that your system doesn't receive,
    etc. talk to your site news administrator (in many cases, you site 
    administrator is on the 'usenet' mail alias on your news server machine).

12. You posting does not have a 'Lines' field in the header.
    XRN does not generate the 'Lines' field in the header.  This is 
    the responsibility of INEWS.

13. XRN immediately core dumps on OpenWindows systems.

    Make sure your DISPLAY environment variable is set correctly.  We have
    had reports that XRN will core dump on OpenWindows systems if the
    DISPLAY environment variable is not set.

14. XRN does not use my .mailrc file.

    By default, XRN uses sendmail for postings mail messages.  Sendmail
    does not use mail front end alias files (such as .mailrc).  To use
    those files, change the default mailer that XRN uses - either by
    changing SENDMAIL in config.h or by using the -mailer option
    (or .mailer resource) at runtime.  See the files contrib/ALT-MAILER*
    for examples of alternate mailers.

15. XRN sucks up lots of memory.

    XRN builds up an array for all articles in a group based upon what
    the NNTP server returns about the group size in response to the
    NNTP "LIST" command.  If the server says that a group has a first
    article at 1 and the last at 78000, XRN will allocate a
    78000-entry array.  If a lot of groups are like this XRN will grow
    very large.  This problem is normally the result of a
    misconfigured NNTP server which is not configured to renumber its
    active file after expiring old articles.  Talk to your news
    administrator and see if you can get him/her to update the
    configuration of the NNTP server so that the active file is
    renumbered after old articles are expired.  Otherwise, recompile
    XRN after removing the FIXED_C_NEWS_ACTIVE_FILE definition in
    config.h.  This will cause XRN to go a little bit more slowly than
    otherwise, but it will take up a lot less memory (because it uses
    the NNTP "GROUP" comand, which is more accurate than the "LIST"
    command, to check each group before allocating space for it).

    If your NNTP server is configured correctly and intentionally
    keeps many thousands of messages if newsgroups that you read,
    there's no way around it -- XRN will be a memory pig.
