VROC Troubleshooting
Joining
Can't Join Races with [Join]
'I am unable to join any event via VROC. When I click on
[Join], it always comes back to say this "Race is no longer
available". The status changes from "Practice"
to "Race". However, when I do a refresh, Status turns
back to Practice and there are still plenty of slots left open.
What's wrong?'
When you attempt to join a race, the current version of VROC
does a "gping" to make sure it's still available. The
first thing to do is to make sure your GPL path in the VROC applet
points to your GPL folder, and that you have placed gping.exe
in this folder.
Sometimes races which are in practice mode don't respond,
in which case the applet thinks they've gone to racing mode and
won't let you join. If you try again, sooner or later it should
succeed. I see occasional failed gpings of this type.
Next, check to see if there is something about your computer
setup that would make it difficult for the remote GPL server
to respond to the gping from your machine. If your machine is
behind a gateway; see section 7.3 of Eagle Woman's GPL Online FAQ)
You can run gping.exe standalone from a DOS prompt, or get
gplping.exe from Eagle Woman's GPL downloads,
which does repeated queries. Ken Tarvin has also written a program called
GPL Net Agent, which does the same thing.
Doing this will allow you to see if a GPL server which you
have the IP address of is responding. Here are a some IP addresses
which have been publicized:
- John Burrowes: 24.108.0.140
- Randy Magruder: 24.1.109.254
- Mike Cerone: 207.175.251.73
You might also ask a friend to try running GPL in host mode
to see if you can raise a response using gplping.exe or gping.exe,
or even join via GPL. Or ask someone in the VROC chat to host
for you.
Timed Out Opening Communication Channel
'I just downloaded the gping.exe
file and put it in my GPL directory and I keep getting a "Timed
Out Opening Communication Channel" message when I try to
join a race. What's the problem?'
Randy Cassidy says:
Do you have more than one IP address
on your machine (both a LAN, and a dialup connection, for example)?
If so, after clicking on the host's IP address, look at the "Connect
Via" address on the left side of the screen and make sure
that it lists the IP address for your dialup. If it doesn't,
select your dialup IP address from the dropdown list.
If that's not the problem, next time
this happens write down the IP address of the host. Exit the
game. Open a DOS box. In it, use ping (the normal system ping)
to see if you get a response from the server (for example, if
the host's IP address is 1.2.3.4, enter "ping 1.2.3.4").
If you get a lot
of "Request timed out" messages, then you have a bad
connection to that server. If you always have this problem, then
you probably have a poor connection to the Internet. Look for
info on tuning your connection on the VROC Main
Page, and Alison's Web
site.
Also consider switching to a USB
modem.
You can also perform the gping or gplping test described above.
If gplping does not return a majority of positive responses from
a host which you know is currently hosting a GPL practice session,
this tends to confirm that you have a poor connection to the
Internet - or that the host has a poor connection.
If your machine is behind a gateway, see section 7.3 of Eagle
Woman's GPL Online FAQ.
Hosting
No One Joins
'I host a race, but no one joins it.'
This may be due to an incorrect IP address. Note that Netscape
does not reload your IP address when you close your DUN connection
to your ISP and reopen it later. If you have a dynamic IP address
(most people connected to the Internet through a dialup ISP do
have a dynamic IP address) and you disconnect and reconnect while
keeping Netscape running, Netscape will continue to report to
VROC the same IP address which you had when you started Netscape.
Thus, the VROC server will not be able to see your GPL server,
and will forever report you as "Starting".
To check this, run Winipcfg.exe in your Windows folder, and
compare it to the IP address reported in the upper right of the
VROC race list. If they differ, stop and restart Netscape, and
re-enter VROC.
If VROC consistently shows an incorrect IP address, you can
override this in VROC
Setup.
Other Resources
See also the VROC Technical Notes,
the known issues section of the
VROC Development Notes, and the VROC
Tech Support page. |