The following is a list of frequently asked questions and problems regarding Ink Spot CE. If your problem is not explained here, please send us a report explaining what you were doing at the time of the error. Sending us a "transaction log" produced while experiencing the problem would provide additional insight into the source of the problem. You can create a transaction log by checking the "Keep transaction log" box in the Advanced: Server Debugging section of the Prefs, attempting to download news, and after your problem occurs, tapping the "Copy transaction log" button in the same Prefs section. Then attach the note containing the log to your mail message.
If you haven't yet, you may want to take a look at the on-line manual. If the problem isn't explained in the manual, or the manual is wrong, please tell us that too!
Note: Make sure you're using the latest version of Ink Spot CE. You can download it from Ink Spot CE's main web page. It may be that we've already fixed your problem.
Known bugs in the current version of Ink Spot CE are listed on the main Ink Spot CE page. Please check there before you look any further.
1.1: When I try to connect, I get the message "Unable to find host."
Either you never entered a news server name in the Connection Info section of the Prefs, or the name you entered is incorrect. This can also happen if you selected "none" as your connection method, and you don't currently have a connection established.
Ink Spot CE requires direct TCP/IP access to your news server (generally via a modem or ethernet card). It cannot use your PC to connect.
To make your PDA connect through your computer, you must have a proxy set up. If you don't know if you have one or not, then you probably don't. If you're interested in setting up a proxy, some basic information is available online at http://www.cewindows.net/wce/20/proxy.htm, and at http://palmpc.homestead.com/. We've also heard good things about VProxy, but we haven't actually tried it ourselves.
There are two basic types of proxies. The first involves setting up a piece of software to run on your PC to pass through specific kinds of traffic, potentially with some caching support. Generally, you need to specify different ports and/or services which you want to allow through for this. NetNews is 'NNTP' (NetNews Transfer Protocol), port 119.
The second involves what is also called "IP Masquerading" or "NAT" (Network Address Translation). This is seamless proxying, such as what SyGate provides - your PC will translate any network traffic that comes from your CE device and pretend to be that device on the network.
There are advantages and disadvantages to both of these schemes; either of them should work with Ink Spot. (If you have more information that you'd like to contribute to this FAQ entry, please drop us a line at info@dejavusoftware.com.)
You have checked the "Server requires an extra login" box in the Connection Info section of the Prefs. This should only be used when connecting to a secure news server that requires an additional level of authentication. It's possible your news server doesn't require this extra authentication. Try unchecking the box.
If that doesn't work, the news server is rejecting the username and password you're using. Since news servers are generally less secure than other servers, administrators usually assign users a username and/or password that is unique to the news server. That way, even if these credentials are compromised, your main account is still safe. Make sure you're entering your news server-specific credentials into Ink Spot CE. Contact your administrator to make sure you have the right ones.
Most secure news servers use secure password authentication (SPA), which comes in several different flavors. Ink Spot CE offers NTLM (NT LanMan) authentication, which is the only kind of SPA that is supported on Windows CE devices. If you're having trouble getting this feature to work, it may be that your server requires a different kind of SPA. Ask the administrator of your news sever if they support NTLM authentication. If you're getting a message like "503 NTLM authentication disabled," they probably don't.
1.4: When I try to connect, I get the message "Socket destroyed."
This could happen if your webserver is wrapped in SSL. Ink Spot CE doesn't know how to create an SSL tunnel so it doesn't know how to connect to these wrapped services so it just tries to operate normally, and the connection is eventually dropped by the server.
Otherwise, this is probably caused by a problem with your news server, or some kind of network error. Another possibility is that your device's IP address is not authorized to connect to your news server. For solutions to any of these problems, you should contact your network administrator.
1.5: When I try to connect, I get the message "RAS error 608."
Your connection preference is set to connect via a modem, and no modem is attached. If your device is currently connected to the Internet, you should set your connection method to "<none>".
2.1: Ink Spot CE didn't download anything.
This is probably because there are no new articles on the server since the last time Ink Spot CE downloaded. If there are, there are several possible reasons why they would not have been downloaded. Please check all of the following:
Keep in mind that that 50 is the total number of articles to store on your device, not the nuber to download each time. If you have 35 articles already stored on your device, Ink Spot CE will only download 15 more articles to that group.
Also, if you're "downloading newest", remember that Ink Spot CE only downloads articles that have been posted since the last time you connected, even if there is room on your device for more. If you're reading a low-traffic group, it's quite possible that only a couple of new messages (or none at all) were posted since your last connection. If you're trying to start over and just get the most recent 50, you need to delete all articles from the group and Mark Server Unread for the group.
2.3: Ink Spot CE downloaded duplicate copies of some articles.
If you check one or more groups in the group view and choose "Mark Server Unread" from the "Group" menu, or you are in the thread view and you choose this option, Ink Spot CE will reset its internal counter for the group(s). Thus the next time you connect, the oldest articles on the server will be downloaded, which may be the same as articles you currently have stored on your device.
Another possibility is that the author simply posted the articles twice by mistake. This just happens sometimes.
2.4: Ink Spot CE is "scanning" (skipping lots of articles) and it's taking forever!
'Scanning' only occurs when Ink Spot CE has detected that your news server is behaving poorly in an ambiguous situation. When a news article has been canceled, and it happens to be the first article that Ink Spot CE wants, then Ink Spot CE requests the "NEXT" article. There are three ways that the news server can respond. First, it can return the next valid article. This is obviously the desired behavior, and most news servers do this. Second, it can return an error code indicating that it could not retrieve the next article. This isn't fantastic, but at least it makes sense. The third thing it could do would be to send us the first article in the newsgroup. The second and third options are what your news server is doing. To compensate, Ink Spot CE has to look through the articles in the group to try and figure out where to pick up from.
We have an updated version of Ink Spot CE which works around this problem for certain news servers. This build is only for PocketPCs, and it's just the program (not an installer) so you'll have to copy it to your device manually.
This is an error message generated by your news server, not Ink Spot CE. Your server is configured to reject posts when the length of the quoted text is more than the length of the new text you've added. You will have to edit your post and try again.
Whoops, our fault. We mistakenly included the bzip2ce.dll for MIPS devices in this build on 12/28/2000. You'll need to re-download the version we posted at 10:15 AM EST on 12/29/2000 and install it on your device.
4.2: I'm still seeing that confounded error... what's wrong?
There are essentially three ways that you might see the "unable to load bzip2" error:
