Known problems and solutions
                     ============================

This document presents some problems that people may stumble onto
when installing Gnatsweb:

1. When I run 'make test ...', the connect test fails.

   This means that Gnatsweb is unable to connect to the GNATS server.
   The problem lies either in the password/username/database
   combination you supplied to 'make test' or with the GNATS server
   itself.  Try the following:

   - Read item 6 of the INSTALL document carefully.  Check that you
     gave an existing username, password and database combination.
   - GNATS may be denying access to the machine which the webserver
     runs on.  Read item 2 of the INSTALL document carefully.
   - There have also been instances where the GNATS server machine has
     had a hosts.deny file in the /etc directory, denying access no
     matter what GNATS has been set up to provide.  If this is the
     case, consult your system administrator.
   - If your are still unable to get the test script to connect, try
     telneting from your web server to port 1529 of the GNATS server
     and see if your connection is being accepted.  If you can connect
     by telnet, you should as a last resort try to do a 'make install'
     of Gnatsweb and see if it works even though the tests failed.


2. The attachment handling functionality in the Create PR and Edit PR
   screens is missing.

   The Base64 Perl module is probably missing from your system.  See
   item 4 in the INSTALL document on how to fix this.


3. Using Lynx for Gnatsweb login is broken.

   No good solution exists at the present time.  We believe that
   current versions of Lynx have some broken cookie/redirect
   functionality which causes this.


4. When you use the "Remember this query as" function, the query is
   stored as a cookie in your web browser. If the query is very
   complex, the resulting cookie might become larger than the limit
   imposed by the web server on cookie transfers. The following error
   will be issued by the web server when you try to access the GNATS
   database:

     Bad Request

     Your browser sent a request that this server could not
     understand.

     Size of a request header field exceeds server limit.

   Solution 1: A quick client-side solution is to delete the offending
   cookie from the repository of your browser (cookies.txt in
   Netscape, the cookies directory in the Windows user profile for
   Internet Explorer).

   Solution 2: A more permanent solution is the server-side one. If
   you use Apache, recompile and install it with the
   DEFAULT_LIMIT_REQUEST_FIELDSIZE setting in src/include/httpd.h of
   the Apache source tree increased from the default value of 8190 to
   something like 32768.


5. Getting help.

   - Go through the TROUBLESHOOTING document.
   - Try sifting through the GNATS-related mailing list archives at
     http://savannah.gnu.org/mail/?group_id=65
   - If you still have problems, try posting to the help-gnats mailing
     list.  Subscribe from http://savannah.gnu.org/mail/?group_id=65
     Please avoid posting until you are completely certain that there
     is nothing relevant in the mailinglist archives.