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• Troubleshooting Your Connection
• Reporting Problems
• MacTCP Q & A
• Domain Name Server Errors
• MacPPP Q & A
• InterSLIP Q & A
• Book 'Em, Danno

If you went through the various steps in the previous chapters to configure MacTCP and either InterSLIP or MacPPP and everything works, congratulations! Skip this chapter entirely, since it can get a bit technical in places and if everything works, there's no need to dwell on what might not work. Most people don't have much trouble, but there are some pitfalls to avoid and some tricks and tips I've learned since the first edition of this book. I'd like to share some of the problems and solutions with you here, and although I hope you don't need to read this section, if you do, I hope it helps. I've formatted the section along the lines of an Internet FAQ, or Frequently Asked Question, list. Within each section, I've tried to organize the question and answers roughly as you might experience them -- for example, there's no point in putting suggestions about improving performance before suggestions about how to get around a modem problem and connect in the first place.

Before I even begin to talk about what might go wrong, I want to say a few words about how you can best go about isolating problems and then reporting them on the nets or to tech support. If you ask for help on comp.sys.mac.comm by posting a note that says something like, "I'm connecting to the nets via SLIP and it doesn't work. What am I doing wrong?" you won't get any helpful responses. You probably won't get any responses at all, helpful or not, since people will have no clue what your problem is other than the fact that you don't know how to ask for help. If you follow the steps that I suggest when working through any problem, not only problems with MacTCP, MacPPP, or InterSLIP, you'll be better off.

When you've determined that you have a problem, do the following: Start over completely from scratch, removing from the System Folder all files related to MacTCP and MacPPP or InterSLIP, including preferences files.

Note: One quick way to find all these files for quick removal is to use the Find command in the Finder's File menu to search for "TCP" and either "PPP" or "InterSLIP." I recommend not actually deleting these files until you're up and running again, just in case, but that's why Apple created a persistent Trash.

After you've removed the old files, carefully follow each step in the instructions, noting anything that doesn't seem to mesh between your setup and what the instructions say. If you deviate from the instructions, note that, too. In many cases, following this procedure will either solve the problem or reveal where it lies. Taking something apart and putting it back together often fixes problems for no apparent reason. Don't think of this process as an unpleasant chore, because then you're likely to become careless and miss an important clue. Troubleshooting can be a lot of fun, since you learn a lot more about the topic at hand, and you get to solve a real-life mystery in which no one dies.

Unfortunately, because we're all amateur sleuths, we're not always able to find the solution to a problem and must consult others who are more knowledgeable or who have a different way of looking at the problem. If you are having trouble with a commercial program, the first experts to turn to should be the technical support staff at the company that produced your program. I've heard good things about most of the technical support staffs of companies that make Internet applications, although quality tech support is never guaranteed.

When dealing with telephone tech support people, keep in mind that they probably know a lot more about the program in question than you do, they answer a huge number of calls every day, and the job has a high burnout rate because it's so stressful. You're most likely to get the best help if you're polite and cooperate with what they ask you to do. If you call and announce that you're a power user and why doesn't this stupid program work anyway, you're unlikely to get decent help. If, on the other hand, you call, say that you're having troubles, and give the information the tech support person asks for, she can do a much better job. It never pays to alienate the person whom you're asking for help -- whatever is wrong is almost certainly not her fault.

If you are using a freeware or shareware application, it usually says whether or not the author is willing to help via direct email. One way or another, though, there are several places where you can ask for help from other users, many of whom are true experts. Also, the developers of many of the freeware and shareware utilities tend to hang out in these same places and help their users, even if they prefer not to be continually slammed by personal email. The best place to ask for help with Internet stuff is on the Usenet newsgroup comp.sys.mac.comm. There also are many knowledgeable people who hang out in the Apple Internet Users mailing list, which you can subscribe to by sending email to listproc@abs.apple.com with the command subscribe apple-internet-users Your Name in the body of the message. If you can post to a newsgroup, there are often newsgroups specific to your provider where local folks hang out and answer questions, like the halcyon.slip group at Northwest Nexus.

Note: If you don't read a newsgroup regularly, you should explicitly ask for replies via email so you don't miss any replies.

No matter what, if you want any of these people to help you, you must help them first by sending a complete report. In that report, you should include the following:

• List exactly what it is that you're trying to accomplish. This should be specific, since telling someone that you want to read Usenet news with NewsWatcher isn't salient to the problem of not being able to get InterSLIP to connect. Take each goal a step at a time.

• Mention the fact that you have carefully followed the directions. This fact tells people that (a) you're not a complete idiot and can read, (b) that you have gone through a certain set of procedures already, and (c) it tells them that you are capable of following any suggestions they make. If you haven't followed the directions carefully, don't bother posting until you do so.

• List the salient facts of your software and hardware setup. Include things such as what Mac you have, what modem you use, what version of the System software you're running, and any weird stuff that you can't eliminate from the testing (such as, for example, an Outbound user who had additional software from Outbound that was necessary for his machine to boot properly). Unless asked, don't bother listing out every extension and control panel on your hard disk. You should have already eliminated them in the process of testing by removing everything but MacTCP and either InterSLIP or PPP and Config PPP from your Extensions and Control Panels folders. Also, an unusually long report will turn many people off.

• Talk a bit about what you have already tried, whether or not it worked, and whether you noticed anything strange happening at any time during the process. If you encounter error dialogs at any time, report exactly what they say.

• Be nice. The last thing you want to do is insult an expert's favorite program, since they're less likely to help you at that point. When you're in trouble, it doesn't help to alienate anyone.

Before anything else, let me emphasize that you may need to reinstall a clean copy of MacTCP at various times to solve problems. Thus, you must keep a clean copy that you have never opened on a locked floppy. The copy that comes on the disk with this book qualifies as a clean copy of MacTCP.

Note: At some point you may want to set aside a clean, unused copy of MacTCP to facilitate reinstallations. To do so, move your existing copies of MacTCP and MacTCP Prep to the desktop, restart with extensions off, run the ISKM Installer and install just a new copy of MacTCP.When forced to restart, again keep the extensions off. This ensures that you have a clean copy of MacTCP in your Control Panels folder. Put that copy of MacTCP on a floppy as a backup. Then replace your old MacTCP and MacTCP Prep files and restart to return to your previous state.

Also, let me recommend that if you have FTP access, you get a copy of Peter Lewis's free MacTCP Watcher. It includes another document on troubleshooting MacTCP connections, written by Eric Behr. It's in:

ftp://ftp.tidbits.com/pub/tidbits/tisk/tcp/

Anyway, on to the questions and answers about MacTCP!

Q: I don't see an icon for InterSLIP or PPP in my MacTCP control panel.

A: Install InterSLIP or PPP in your Extensions folder, and try again.

A: Make sure that you select InterSLIP or PPP and not LocalTalk in the MacTCP control panel.

A: Ignore it unless you're on a subnet, which means you'll have a network administrator who can tell you what to do there.

A: No. Only enter a number there if you use a Manually-addressed account.

A: Your gateway address is determined by your server when you use Server addressing, which is why you can't type in there. InterSLIP fills it in for MacTCP, but it makes no real difference.

However, one reader found that in using VersaTerm SLIP, the first time you log in you must enter a Gateway address and your IP address into VersaTerm SLIP, via either the fields in the upper right of the configuration window or a small pop-up menu in VersaTerm AdminSLIP's terminal window. With Northwest Nexus, the Gateway address in this case is the first of the two IP numbers that the machine provides after you enter your login name and password, something like 198.137.231.150. Your IP address for that session is the second of the two numbers. Other providers may be similar.

A: MacTCP creates them when you restart, to store various settings and preferences. You can throw them out at any time with impunity, since MacTCP recreates them with the same settings when you restart. Note that you must restart after throwing them out since MacTCP applications require MacTCP DNR to work properly.

If you reinstall MacTCP without throwing out these files, MacTCP retains the settings it had before you reinstalled. This can be useful for moving copies of MacTCP around, but they also tend to retain any corruption.

A: I would completely reinstall MacTCP (throwing out MacTCP DNR and MacTCP Prep as well) and reconfigure to be safe, but I don't think you should worry too much. Anti-virus software like SAM can sometimes gets persnickety about MacTCP creating the MacTCP DNR file, and I could see that perhaps causing the problem.

In fact, I hear that if the MacTCP DNR files becomes corrupted, some anti-virus software, such as Gatekeeper, could possibly prevent MacTCP from updating it, which is a bad thing. If you use sensitive anti-virus software that tries to prevent unknown actions (Disinfectant is fine), to be very sure it isn't causing problems, turn it off, delete MacTCP, MacTCP DNR, and MacTCP Prep, reinstall a clean copy of MacTCP, restart, turn the anti-virus software back on, and restart again.

A: That's really weird, but one reader reported a reproducible conflict with a control panel from Apple called CPU Energy Saver. Try removing it and restarting. MacTCP should create a new MacTCP DNR file on restart if it's not present.

A: First, try opening MacTCP, changing something and then closing it. That should force the creation of a MacTCP Prep file in the Preferences folder. If that doesn't work, restart without extensions, particularly anti-virus programs, and try reconfiguring MacTCP again.

A: Possibly. First, connect again to see if Fetch works. If it does, you're fine. If it doesn't, throw out the MacTCP DNR file and restart. Try Fetch again. If it still doesn't work, completely reinstall MacTCP from scratch. This isn't usually necessary, luckily.

After a truly nasty crash, you may find it necessary to reinstall InterSLIP or MacPPP as well. If you use InterSLIP, remove your modem configuration file from the InterSLIP folder before reinstalling InterSLIP, since it's worth trying with your old configuration file before you toast it as well.

A: Yes and no. I seldom do it, but frankly, if anything goes wrong, reinstalling MacTCP is worth trying. Make sure to throw out MacTCP DNR and MacTCP Prep, too, since they can harbor the corruption that caused MacTCP to have problems in the first place. Always keep a copy of MacTCP on a locked floppy disk, to facilitate reinstalling.

A: Sure, why not? I personally haven't seen any problems in 2.0.2 or 2.0.4 that were fixed in 2.0.6, but others have, and it's a free update that's stored on: