Page 1 of 1

No list on metaserver using an iMAC

Posted: Sat Jun 08, 2013 1:34 am
by Lawrence
Tried various things after extensive internet searches but so far, nada.

Using Safari with firewall off and Auto Proxy Discovery checked.

Any ideas what to do?

Thanks,

Lawrence

Re: No list on metaserver using an iMAC

Posted: Sun Jun 09, 2013 12:41 pm
by cazfi
Do you mean that your server does not appear in http://meta.freeciv.org/metaserver.php or that your client shows empty list, or both?

Server to appear on the metaserver, you need to start if with commandline option "-m"

If you've got empty list client-side, check from the webpage that there is compatible servers in the first place. Client will not show incompatible servers (any 2.3.a is compatible with any 2.3.b, and 2.4.0-beta1 is compatible with 2.4.0-beta2).

Re: No list on metaserver using an iMAC

Posted: Mon Jun 10, 2013 11:05 pm
by Lawrence
When I start Freeciv(GTK2) I press "Connect to Network Game" and then press "Internet Metaserver". No list of servers appears. When my son was visiting he introduced me to the game and installed it on my MAC so we could play together. (He's 2,000 miles away.)

I'm not technically sophisticated enough to know how to tell when a server is compatible. I assumed we would both use one of the free servers to play together.

Lawrence

Re: No list on metaserver using an iMAC

Posted: Tue Jun 11, 2013 12:07 am
by zorn
I don't know if it's related, but the metaserver is failing for me too. I'm using 2.3.4 that I compiled myself on Linux. The webpage shows some 2.3.4 servers.

I use "Connect to Network Game", but at the bottom of the network dialog the following text appears:

Failed to parse the metaserver data from http://meta.freeciv.org:
In secfile_from_input_file() [registry.c:590]: secfile '(anonymous)' in section 'NULL':Expected entry name
file "(anonymous)", line 1, pos 0
looking at: '<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0//EN">'.

Clearing .freeciv and .freeciv-client-rc-2.3 doesn't help.

Re: No list on metaserver using an iMAC

Posted: Tue Jun 11, 2013 12:19 am
by JTN
Lawrence wrote:When I start Freeciv(GTK2) I press "Connect to Network Game" and then press "Internet Metaserver". No list of servers appears. When my son was visiting he introduced me to the game and installed it on my MAC so we could play together.
Hm. All the prebuilt packages we offer for Macs are unfortunately rather elderly. The newest of any kind is 2.3.0, and depending on what kind of Mac you have, you might be stuck with a version as old as 2.2.2; and there are no public servers running for 2.2.x any more. (But there are plenty of 2.3.x public servers.)

(That's not to say that it's impossible that your son could have installed a newer version than what we offer as prebuilt packages; I gather there are ways of doing this; but I don't know what they are, not being familiar with Macs, or I'd ensure that the instructions were somewhere prominent.)

It would really help to know what version of the Freeciv client you are running. It should be on the front screen (with "Start New Game", etc). This will help us distinguish a genuine lack of servers to play on from some hiccup with fetching the list from the metaserver.

Re: No list on metaserver using an iMAC

Posted: Tue Jun 11, 2013 12:22 am
by JTN
zorn wrote:I don't know if it's related, but the metaserver is failing for me too. I'm using 2.3.4 that I compiled myself on Linux. The webpage shows some 2.3.4 servers.
[...]
Failed to parse the metaserver data from http://meta.freeciv.org:
In secfile_from_input_file() [registry.c:590]: secfile '(anonymous)' in section 'NULL':Expected entry name
file "(anonymous)", line 1, pos 0
looking at: '<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0//EN">'.
I don't see this (with my own self-compiled 2.3.4); it works for me. Perhaps some proxy or filtering by your ISP?

Re: No list on metaserver using an iMAC

Posted: Tue Jun 11, 2013 12:27 am
by zorn
JTN wrote: I don't see this (with my own self-compiled 2.3.4); it works for me. Perhaps some proxy or filtering by your ISP?
Probably not my ISP. I guess I'll investigate it further.

Re: No list on metaserver using an iMAC

Posted: Tue Jun 11, 2013 1:28 am
by zorn
I found my problem. It turns out that if .freeciv-client-rc-2.3 doesn't exist, it creates it by copying .civclientrc. In my .civclientrc, I had "default_metaserver="http://meta.freeciv.org/metaserver/", which appears to be outdated (I haven't played in a while.) The weird error that I got is simply freeciv's way of reporting a 404 error.

Re: No list on metaserver using an iMAC

Posted: Tue Jun 11, 2013 7:19 am
by Lawrence
JTN wrote:
Lawrence wrote:When I start Freeciv(GTK2) I press "Connect to Network Game" and then press "Internet Metaserver". No list of servers appears. When my son was visiting he introduced me to the game and installed it on my MAC so we could play together.
Hm. All the prebuilt packages we offer for Macs are unfortunately rather elderly. The newest of any kind is 2.3.0, and depending on what kind of Mac you have, you might be stuck with a version as old as 2.2.2; and there are no public servers running for 2.2.x any more. (But there are plenty of 2.3.x public servers.)

(That's not to say that it's impossible that your son could have installed a newer version than what we offer as prebuilt packages; I gather there are ways of doing this; but I don't know what they are, not being familiar with Macs, or I'd ensure that the instructions were somewhere prominent.)

It would really help to know what version of the Freeciv client you are running. It should be on the front screen (with "Start New Game", etc). This will help us distinguish a genuine lack of servers to play on from some hiccup with fetching the list from the metaserver.
Problem found but not yet solved. I have an old version, 2.2.3 which apparently has no servers. I'll try to find a later version to download to my MAC. Thanks for the help!

Re: No list on metaserver using an iMAC

Posted: Tue Jun 11, 2013 6:33 pm
by cazfi
Lawrence wrote:When I start Freeciv(GTK2) I press "Connect to Network Game" and then press "Internet Metaserver". No list of servers appears. When my son was visiting he introduced me to the game and installed it on my MAC so we could play together. (He's 2,000 miles away.)
While there's no other public servers for 2.2, maybe your son can run the server for your game (especially if you want only two of you to take part in the game). Then it doesn't even need to be public game on metaserver, but you could connect to your son's computer directly by name and port number.