NIU Department of Mathematical Sciences
Netscape Issues

You can normally use Netscape without worrying about its configuration. Still, there are situations when you will want to change certain settings. Some of the specifics below are relevant to Netscape 3.0 under Unix, but the rest applies to all systems and even to other browsers.

Mail

To send mail from Netscape (e.g. by clicking on a "mailto" link on a Web page), you must specify your return address. Pull down the "Options" menu, select "Mail and News Preferences", go to the "Identity" section. Fill in at least the "Email Address" field.

Note: If you are very privacy-conscious, you may want to think twice about this. Even if it isn't usually the case right now, it's quite conceivable that future versions of Web browsers might be allowing Web servers to access this information the minute you connect to them. This would be a real boon to businesses and junk e-mailers.

Netscape also needs the name of a computer that handles our mail. While you have the "Options"/"Mail and News Preferences" in front of you, go to the "Servers" section and type mail in the "SMTP Server" field.

If you are normally using one of the standard mail clients such as elm or pine to read your mail, be very careful about experimenting with Netscape's mail reader (which can be accessed using the "Netscape Mail" menu under "Window", or by clicking on the small envelope icon in the bottom right corner). When Netscape first accesses your mailbox, it moves it to a non-standard place and modifies it in such a way that most other programs cannot later read it. Restoring it to the original location and format isn't trivial. Note that sending e-mail from Netscape doesn't do that.

News

Netscape has a built-in Usenet news reader. Parts of it are a bit quirky, but if you want to try it, you must tell it which news server to use. Again, go to "Options" -> "Mail and News Preferences" -> "Servers" and type news in the "NNTP Server" field.

If you are currently using another news reader under Unix, e.g. trn or xrn, you may want to make a backup of your configuration file before you try Netscape: 

cd ; cp .newsrc .newsrc.saved

Netscape crashes

A bug in certain versions of Sun's operating system causes Netscape to crash when it accesses certain Web servers. If this happens to you repeatedly, and you do need to access the information, do the following. First check that the problem is indeed caused by the older operating system: type /usr/etc/showrev and look for the "Release" information. If it says "4.1.4" or higher, you've discovered a mysterious new bug! Please notify the system manager; do not remove the core file, if one was created.

If the system revision says "4.1.3_U1", proceed as follows. Assume you are sitting in front of machine called "montblanc" (substitute suitable name!) From one of the windows login to a computer running the newer OS, e.g. rlogin sinai or rlogin eiger. Important: on the remote computer type displ montblanc (it tells the other machine to send output to the screen which you are viewing). Finally, start Netscape on the remote computer.

Please use this procedure only when you must. Netscape places quite a burden on the computer it is running on - you should not often use other people's machines for this. Some time in the future all our workstations will be updated and the problem will go away.

Lock file problems

When Unix Netscape starts up, it creates a lock file which is meant to prevent two or more processes from accessing and possibly corrupting certain configuration files. When Netscape crashes (which is not unusual), it fails to remove that file. Next time you start it up, you will get a warning message.

If that happens and you are reasonably sure that you didn't leave Netscape up and running on another workstation, simply remove the lock file: cd ; rm .netscape/lock You should also check for a large file called `core' in the directory where Netscape started. Follow the instructions on handling those.

Cache files

Most browsers keep many cache files which allow them to redisplay pages quickly, without always reloading them from the server. This speeds things up, but at the expense of disk and memory usage. You may want to reduce the size of the cache that Netscape uses. Go to "Options" -> "Network Preferences" -> "Cache" and enter - say - 1000 in the "Memory Cache" and "Disk Cache" fields.

Even after you do that, Netscape isn't always good about cleaning up after itself. Once in a while you may want to check the directory where those files are stored (type cd ; du -s .netscape at the Unix prompt), and if it's over 2000 KB or so you should clean it up by pressing the "Clear Disk Cache Now" button.

Helper applications

Those are external programs which Netscape invokes when you click a link that cannot be handled directly. For example, an attempt to view a PostScript file should automatically invoke a viewer such as ghostview.

If you often use links that represent telnet sessions (library catalogs etc.), you probably noticed that the Unix Netscape opens a telnet window with very small type. You can change this as follows: go to "Options" -> "General Preferences" -> "Applications"; in the "Telnet Application" field enter verbatim 

xterm -aw -ut +s -tn vt100 -j +sb -fn 9x15bold -e telnet %h %p
Back to the NIU Math Department Web page
Last modified: 4/23/97 by webmaster@math.niu.edu