Troubleshooting & FAQs

Table of Contents

  1. Frequently Asked Questions
    1. Does FeedTree work behind a NAT or firewall?
    2. Are there any signed feeds that use the publisher?
    3. What's that gray box doing at the bottom of all my feed entries?
  2. Troubleshooting
    1. I started the proxy software, but now what?
    2. I get errors like "can't bind socket" or "couldn't create node factory" on Linux.
    3. My node waits forever and never connects to the network.
    4. Why don't I get pretty graphs in the web interface under Mac OS X?

Frequently Asked Questions

Does FeedTree work behind a NAT or firewall?

Yes, but you do need to ensure that the FeedTree port (by default 29690; you can change this on the FeedTreeProxy command line, or in the FeedTreePublisher config file) is forwarded from the Internet to your host. FeedTree will detect the port forwarding and automatically figure out your external Internet IP for use when communicating with other nodes.

This requirement is comparable to the demands of other current peer-to-peer applications. For example, the popular BitTorrent file distribution system requires a port to be opened in order to function correctly. Each NAT or firewall device has an administrative interface that can be used to open port 29690 to your host running FeedTree. You may find the instructions at http://www.portforward.com/ helpful.

Are there any signed feeds that use the publisher?

Because FeedTree is almost entirely distributed, there's no way to get a list of feeds being signed and pushed by the author using the FeedTreePublisher. The FeedTree news weblog is definitely being published this way; users of the FeedTreeProxy should receive new entries on its feeds (Atom, RSS) instantaneously.

What's that gray box doing at the bottom of all my feed entries?

See SecurityFooter.

Troubleshooting

I started the proxy software, but now what?

You need to tell your RSS reader to use the proxy. See ProxySetup.

I get errors like "can't bind socket" or "couldn't create node factory" on Linux.

Example: (taken from ticket #34) 

Feb 21, 2006 10:38:39 PM net.feedtree.proxyapp.WebProxyClient main
INFO: Version: 0.7.0 
Feb 21, 2006 10:38:39 PM net.feedtree.proxyapp.WebProxyClient main
FINER: Running on Linux (i386) 2.6.12-10-686
Feb 21, 2006 10:38:39 PM net.feedtree.core.client.Client start_node
SEVERE: error: couldn't create node factory; bailing

Check to make sure your /etc/hosts file doesn't include an incorrect IP address for your computer. It should include two lines like the following: 

127.0.0.1       localhost.localdomain   localhost
1.2.3.4     yourhost.domain.com        yourhost

(When trying to look up your local IP address, Java on Linux trusts the values in this file over your actual network configuration, so this file needs to be up-to-date. This is a longstanding "bug" with the way InetAddress.getLocalHost() works on Java on Linux.)

My node waits forever and never connects to the network.

There are potentially many things going on. The first thing to do (if using the FeedTreeProxy) is to turn on maximum debugging output (the --verbose-max command-line flag) to look for clues. Some things to check:

  • Are you behind a NAT but didn't set up port forwarding?
  • Did FeedTree pick the wrong IP address or network interface for your machine?

Also, be sure to be using the latest stable version of the FeedTree proxy (see Downloads).

Why don't I get pretty graphs in the web interface under Mac OS X?

There's some sort of bug in Apple's JVM. Use of the AWT BufferedImage class causes a message to appear: 

        ** ATTENTION ***
        Please Attach Debugger : No Autorelease pool exists
        Press any key to continue...

The AWT and AWT_Shutdown threads freeze up (according to Eclipse), causing the whole app to grind to a halt unless you can somehow send a keystroke to the controlling terminal. Not practical for a background application. (According to a thread on Apple's Java mailing list (1 2), this is a "known bug".)

(Aside: This may relate to "headless" operation; I haven't tried re-enabling the graphs under OS X when there's a GUI application involved.)