FAQ

General

• Where can I get help if my question is not answered here?
• I have downloaded xnap but i can not open it.
• I don't have java.exe on my system. Can I run xnap anyway?

MacOS X

• Can I run XNap under Mac OS 9?
• I'm running XNap under MAC OS X and can't select any folder in the preferences dialog to set the right directories for downloads, incompletes and uploads.
• I'm running XNap under MacOS X. When I select the library panel, XNap's GUI freezes and it's become unusable.
• The directory chooser and font chooser dialog comes up blank. What's wrong?

Search

• When I perform a search it says "no search started; load plugins". What do I have to do?
• When I perform a search I get the status messages "not connected to OpenNap server" What do I need to do?
• How come I don't get any search results or only a few with new versions of XNap?
• How come the title of the search results panel says there are over hundred search results, but the table only holds a few.

Browse

• What is the difference between "Browse" and "Direct Browse"?
• I sometimes get a message starting with "Your client issued a server based browse command in the chat panel, it recommends using XNap, but since I already use XNap, I do not understand what it means.

Download

• I get lots of search results, but when I try to download the download does not start and remains in the "waiting xx seconds" or queued state, what's the problem?
• I can almost never get any downloads, although uploads seem to work without problems.
• Very often my downloads are slow (although my internet connections is fast).

Upload

• How do I share stuff on the network, in other words, how can I make my files available to others?
• All my uploads timeout with "Listener Timeout". What does that mean?
• I am behind a masquerading router and cannot receive incoming connections. Which ports must I forward?

OpenNap plugin

• Sometime the server status changes to "blocked". What does that mean?
• Sometime the server status changes to the server name and it does not change anymore. What does that mean?
• Why is my list of servers not restored on startup?
• Some of the servers fail to connect. The status is set to "invalid nick". My username, email and password are correct. What should I do?
• How many files should I share? Some networks want you to share as many files as possible, while others flood the console screaming that I share too many.
• Should I search out and queue up as many files as possible and let them sit for weeks on end or should I only download a few files at the same time?

Debian

• I installed java manually not using the blackdown jdk. Everytime I run a dist-upgrade the XNap package is removed because of unresolved dependencies. What's wrong?

Where can I get help if my question is not answered here?

See http://xnap.sf.net/contact.php.

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I have downloaded xnap but i can not open it.

You probably tried to double click on xnap.jar and it did not start up. Sorry, you need a recent JRE. Download it from http://java.sun.com/.

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I don't have java.exe on my system. Can I run xnap anyway?

No, you really have to download some JRE.

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Can I run XNap under Mac OS 9?

Unfortunately XNap is not able to run on Mac OS Classic. The current and future versions of XNap require Java 2 Standard Edition version 1.3 or above which is only part of Mac OS X. For Mac OS Classic the Java support stops with version 1.1.8. There seems to be no efforts by Apple to support higher Java versions for Mac OS Classic in the future either, so you really have to find another P2P client for this platform.

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I'm running XNap under MAC OS X and can't select any folder in the preferences dialog to set the right directories for downloads, incompletes and uploads.

This is a bug in MacOS' own look and feel, please select another look and feel in the settings menu and start XNap anew.

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I'm running XNap under MacOS X. When I select the library panel, XNap's GUI freezes and it's become unusable.

This is a bug in MacOS' own look and feel, please select another look and feel in the settings menu and start XNap anew.

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The directory chooser and font chooser dialog comes up blank. What's wrong?

This is a bug in MacOS 10.0, modal dialogs are broken. Please update MacOS to the latest version.

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When I perform a search it says "no search started; load plugins". What do I have to do?

Open the Preferences Dialog and activate the OpenNap plugin in the plugin sections. Close the Preferences Dialog and switch to the newly added OpenNap Panel and make sure you are connected to at least one server.

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When I perform a search I get the status messages "not connected to OpenNap server" What do I need to do?

In order to use the OpenNap network to perform searches, switch to the OpenNap Panel and connect to some servers. This can be done automatically every time you start XNap if you choose "Use Autoconnector On Startup" in the OpenNap preferences dialog.

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How come I don't get any search results or only a few with new versions of XNap?

Make sure the option "Max Search Results" in the transfer settings contains a reasonable value and set the mediatype to "Anything" when searching. Most clients don't send the correct media type when sharing files, that's why there are only a few results.

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How come the title of the search results panel says there are over hundred search results, but the table only holds a few.

It looks like you've activated "Double filter results" in the transfers preferences panel. The invisible results did not exactly match your search request.

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What is the difference between "Browse" and "Direct Browse"?

A "Browse" queries the server for a list of files for the user that is browsed. Whereas a "Direct Browse" only asks the server to establish a connection to the user and transfers the list of files directly peer to peer. The later is the preferred way to browse, because it does not waste server bandwidth. Only few clients like XNap and Lopster support it though. WinMX and AudioGnome do not support direct browses.

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I sometimes get a message starting with "Your client issued a server based browse command in the chat panel, it recommends using XNap, but since I already use XNap, I do not understand what it means.

First of all, you can safely ignore this message; it just explains that a server is restricting server based browse commands because they're drawing up too much of his bandwidth. You can try to "direct browse" people via the entry in the users menu, but most clients do not support this efficient client-to-client browse method.

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I get lots of search results, but when I try to download the download does not start and remains in the "waiting xx seconds" or queued state, what's the problem?

It's really hard to say where exactly the problem lies if downloads do not work, or do not work well. First of all, if you really never ever managed to download a single file, it might be that something is misconfigured on your side, like for instance that you are firewalled, but haven't activated the "Firewalled" setting in the preferences. It is also possible that only certain ports are blocked and you can try to select a port that is still free for incoming connections in the Opennap plugin preferences. If you've managed to download files but the ratio between attempted and completed downloads is very bad, there are some things that could be responsible for this:

• the files you are trying to download might be very rare on the network and thus difficult to obtain
• the files you are trying to download might be requested by many people at once, which leads to monstrous queues on the side of the peer having the file
Always remember, if people restrict upload speed or the number of uploads too much, the quality of the network decreases inevitably. Unfortunately there are many people who share nothing or almost nothing (you can block these people if you want, with the leecher control within XNap, see the Opennap preferences for more details). Imagine a network where everybody wants files but nobody has or wants to give away upload capacities! Sometimes this situation does not even have to be due to to bad intentions, but simply because in many cases people have a lot more bandwidth available for downstream then they have for upstream, this is for instance the case whith most DSL connections.
• the last point in this list, is that there is of course always the possibility that there are bugs within XNap or within other P2P applications that prevent successfull transfer communication. Therefore you should always try to upgrade to the newest XNap version (if you haven't already done so) in the hope that general bugs or even bugs which are triggered by your specific configuration and setup have been fixed.

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I can almost never get any downloads, although uploads seem to work without problems.

Look at the answer to the question above, more or less the same applies here.

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Very often my downloads are slow (although my internet connections is fast).

Unfortunately download speed is something XNap cannot influence in any way since it solely depends on the outgoing bandwidth of the person you're downloading from.

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How do I share stuff on the network, in other words, how can I make my files available to others?

You have to find the folder containing the files you want to share, by browsing through the root or the home folder shown in the library panel. Once you located the right folder right-click on it and select "share folder". (if you only have a one button mouse, you can emulate right-clicking if you hold down the control key while pressing the mouse button.)

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All my uploads timeout with "Listener Timeout". What does that mean?

Your network settings are propably not correct. See below.

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I am behind a masquerading router and cannot receive incoming connections. Which ports must I forward?

You can either use firewalled mode (Network preferences) or you can forward your incoming port (OpenNap preferences) to your firewalled machine.

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Sometime the server status changes to "blocked". What does that mean?

XNap allows searching of OpenNap servers only every 30 seconds to avoid too much server load.

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Sometime the server status changes to the server name and it does not change anymore. What does that mean?

It probably means "No route to host" or something like that. Some of the java error messages texts are not very verbose. You can try to reconnect but the status will most likely change to "connecting..." and back to the host name very quickly so that it appears to be stalled.

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Why is my list of servers not restored on startup?

Save the list to a file called ~/.xnap/hosts (which is the default in the save dialog).

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Some of the servers fail to connect. The status is set to "invalid nick". My username, email and password are correct. What should I do?

The format of the hosts file has changed. Open the "Edit Server Dialog", uncheck "Customize" and save the hosts file again.

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How many files should I share? Some networks want you to share as many files as possible, while others flood the console screaming that I share too many.

You should not have to care about that overly much, in general sharing as much as possible is the best thing you can do. Servers that do not want users to share more than a certain amount of files simply stop accepting more files when you try to send them, so there's no harm done.

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Should I search out and queue up as many files as possible and let them sit for weeks on end or should I only download a few files at the same time?

We've tried to mitigate the problematic effects of huge download queues in XNap 2.4, so it shouldn't matter all that much how you distribute your downloading.

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I installed java manually not using the blackdown jdk. Everytime I run a dist-upgrade the XNap package is removed because of unresolved dependencies. What's wrong?

Put the following line in your /etc/apt/sources.list: deb http://people.debian.org/~leist/debian ./
Then run
"apt-get update && update install dummy-java2-runtime", this will install a dummy package to circumvent apt's overly strict dependency checking.

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