xlobby2sd on remote hanging pc

[mfergusson]

Hi. I've been through the tutorial on setting up client server and in my case want to use a pc in another room to access the main xlobby server.

I've enabled the server and configured the servers.txt as suggested. However, when I run xlobby2sd , the pc hangs. (If the server isn't running, then as expected it reports that server is unavailable). Not sure why it is hanging. Tried 2 different machines. .NET (v2) is installed on both.

Am I missing something? Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance.

Mark

[Marbles_00]

This may sound silly, and sorry for asking, but your server.txt file resides on the client pc...correct?

Other than that, could you give us a little more detail on your network setup?

David.

[mfergusson]

Yes.

client directory with the server.txt and the xlobby2sd file on pc.

pc on same network as the xlobby server. Can ping, remote desktop etc no problems ...

Txs

[Marbles_00]

What skin are you using? Have you tried different skins? Not sure if it would really interfere (shouldn't), but you never know.

[Marbles_00]

Something else I thought of. The README.txt file I found is a little incorrect in the way to set up the servers.txt file. In the readme file, it states to format the servers.txt file like this:
<server ip or name>:<start screen>
Example:
192.168.0.XXX:menu (or ppcmenu for ppc screens)

I found that the above setup did not work. One that worked for me is indicated below:
server:192.168.0.XXX (IP Address of server)
screen:ppcmenu
resolution:auto
quality:100%
zone:1

I think that it is pretty much the default setup when you first open the text file. The other thing that you may want to check is that there is indeed a menu screen (called menu) and/or a ppcmenu screen (called ppcmenu. You can do this easily by going to the skin directory you are using and verify that .xml files exist, named menu and ppcmenu.

Maybe that is your problem?

Hope this was helpful.

David

[mfergusson]

Hi. Thanks for the responses. I still have the same problem.

I have a laptop and a pc - the main server. The pc is where xlobby is. If I try it other way around and make the laptop the server and run client from pc it works but not the other way around.

This is what I've tried:

- disabled/removed all firewall options
- used a loopback cable between pc and laptop
- copied the working directory from the laptop to the pc and just changed the xlobby.xml
- used same login and password on both machines
- tried using different skins.
- I have the exact problem when using another 2nd pc as the server
- But also have it working with another 3rd pc as the server and using the same laptop, so problem is not the client on laptop.
- Looked at a network sniff which shows TCP connections between laptop and server (port 1842 to 8000, and 8000 to 1842). There's about 8 of these, then stops ... this is the point where laptop freezes. I can't see anything obvious from the packets as to what's wrong.


I am at a complete loss as to what is different on the laptop and the 3rd pc that enables it to work when these are run as the server.
These (laptop and all pc's) are pretty "standard" Windows XP servers with nothing unusual as far as I can tell.

servers.txt on laptop is:

server:10.0.0.3
screen:menu
resolution:auto
quality:100%
zone:1

Any other suggestions as to what to try or to debug? This is driving me nuts!

Thanks in advance,

Mark

[Marbles_00]

I can understand your frustration. Windows XP machines can be a real pain to connect to, but it sounds as though it is some permissions setting on the server machine, and nothing really to do with any of your setup, or even with Xlobby.

This reminds me once when I tried to hook my brother's and dad's computers together a couple of months ago so they could share an internet connection. Both running XP, I could see both computers on the network, yet I couldn't get them to communicate, share files or access the internet from one through the other (using Winroute). I don't recall exactly what the setting was, but is was down in the network settings of the one XP machine.

After that, it was another reason for me not to upgrade to WinXP and just keep my Win2000 machines running.

As it sounds like it is totally something to do with the server machine, I would look very intently at its permissions and network settings almost scrutinze every setting and compare it to the third pc which appeared to work okay.

[sharp_1]

Try to use your server name instead of the IP address. i.e., server:"myserver" instead of server:"10.0.0.0.3"

Additional thin client help here:
http://www.xlobby.com/forum/viewtopic.p ... highlight=

Marbles:
Hmmm....I had a WinME machine that wouldn't work in server mode at all...had to switch to XP...no problem since.