[retawq] Messages

retawq Documentation
Messages

As mentioned in the user guide, the bottom line of the screen might be used to display messages. This documentation page details a few of them and suggests solutions for errors.

Normal Messages

"Saving": you started saving something in a local file, and no error occurred so far; the message won't disappear by itself, so don't wait for this to happen; unless you save a very big chunk at once (say, more than one megabyte) or on a very slow medium, you can just continue your work immediately.

Error Messages

"Keyboard command not handled": you pressed a key which represents a keyboard command, but it wasn't handled because you used it in the wrong "context", e.g. for the wrong window kind.

"Key not handled": you pressed a key which doesn't represent a keyboard command and also can't be handled in any other way in the given situation.

"This element is disabled": you tried to use an element of an HTML form, but the element has been disabled by the web page author and presumably shouldn't be used; if you want to use it anyway, apply the keyboard command "E".

"Redirection problem": there are basically the following different kinds of problems. 1. Too many automatic redirections occur in a row; you might be able to solve this problem by setting the run-time configuration option "redirections" to a high value. 2. A server tries to redirect retawq to the same URL which was originally accessed; this would cause an infinite loop of redirections.

"Feature ... was disabled at compile-time", "Scheme/protocol disabled": retawq might generally be able to do what you tried, but the respective compile-time configuration option was disabled. To solve this problem, rebuild the program with the option enabled and try again.

"Can't read/write file/directory": this is a collective error message for several kinds of actions. There are basically two causes: 1. you tried to read from a file/directory which doesn't exist; make sure that you entered the correct path, e.g. without typographical errors. 2. retawq doesn't have the necessary access permissions on the file system to read or write a file or to read the contents of a directory; check the permissions of the file and its parent directories.

"Can't lookup hostname": the libraries on your computer were unable to transform a server hostname to a numerical IP (Internet Protocol) address. The most likely reason is that the hostname contains a slight typographical error - check the name. Or maybe your DNS (Domain Name System) database nameservers are currently down or temporarily "forgot" the hostname due to technical problems - try again later. Depending on the networking setup of your computer, you might try to change the nameservers in /etc/resolv.conf (but do this only if you know what you do).

"Connection refused": you tried to access a server/portnumber where no server program is "listening"; maybe the server is currently "too busy" or down for maintenance or due to a crash, try again later; or maybe you used a service (e.g. wrong portnumber) which is never offered by the server.

"Server response invalid": the server sent a "syntactically malformed" response. This might happen due to server bugs, or maybe you tried to access e.g. an FTP service on an HTTP portnumber.

"Server closed connection", "Connection reset by peer": the server program seems to have closed the connection prematurely, or a problem occurred somewhere in the network; try again if you think that you e.g. didn't receive a complete document from the server.

"TLS-related error": you tried to access a URL using TLS/SSL, but e.g. the library couldn't be initialized (maybe it wasn't installed/configured correctly) or the TLS handshake failed. In many cases, further error information is presented in the message line, especially when you use the GnuTLS library; for example: "ciphers" can mean that client and server couldn't negotiate a common cryptographic algorithm (maybe it helps if you enable more ciphers in the library); "packet" means that a malformed or unexpected packet was received (might be a server or library bug; or maybe you tried to access an "ftps" service on an "ftp" portnumber, e.g. because you used the TLS method specifier "tls" with the run-time configuration option "ftps-method" for the wrong server or portnumber); "handshake" means that the TLS handshake didn't succeed (maybe due to a TLS packet of an unexpected kind).

"Forbidden by configuration": you tried to do something which has not been explicitly allowed in the run-time configuration. This might occur when you try to do something which might cause security problems, e.g. the execution of a local CGI script.

"Hostname missing": you entered a URL which 1. doesn't contain a hostname but 2. uses a scheme which requires a hostname. To solve this problem with the schemes "news"/"nntp", you can use the run-time configuration option "news-server-default"; for other schemes, correct the URL and try again.

"Can't execute program": you tried to execute a program (e.g. a local CGI script) from within retawq, but this failed; check whether you actually have the necessary file system permissions for execution of the program and whether you can launch it from a shell.

This documentation file is part of version 0.2.6c of retawq, a network client created by Arne Thomaßen. retawq is basically released under certain versions of the GNU General Public License and WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY. Copyright (C) 2001-2006 Arne Thomaßen.