nms support
This page gives you access to various resources that will help
you to fix problems that you are having with our programs. Please
work through these suggestions in the order that they are given
here.
Note: The resources on this page are aimed at people who
are installing and configuring one of our programs on their own
web site. If you are not doing this, then this page will not be
useful for you and you should go here
instead.
Frequently Asked Questions
You probably are not the first person to have the problem that
you're having. Solutions to the most common problems are in our
FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions).
Please read that before asking any questions on the support list.
Note that the most common question we are asked is the one
about getting an error that says "too late for -T option" when
running our programs on a Windows web server. That question is
discussed in great detail
in the FAQ and questions on this will be referred back there
unless you demonstrate that you have read that section.
Mailing List Archives
Even if your question isn't asked frequently, it's still very
likely that it has been asked before. All of the posts to our
support mailing list are archived, so it's well worth checking
through
the archives to see if it has been discussed before.
Yes, our archives contain a lot of spam. Unfortunately we need to
make our email address as accessible as possible and that means that
we end up on a lot of spammer lists. We are working on ways to cut
down on the amount of spam that we recieve.
Basic Web Program Debugging
We're aware that many of the people who use our programs are not
programmers, so we don't expect you to be experts in debugging web
programs. However, there are a number of simple things that you can
check. It's surprising what a large percentage of problems are
caused by one of these errors.
- If you transfered the program to your web server, did you
make the transfer in "text" mode?
- Is the path to "perl" in the first line of the program correct?
We have configured it to be the most common value, but your web
server may have the Perl compiler in a slightly unusual place.
You'll need to check this with your system adminstrators.
- Are the permissions correct? The program will need to be
executable by the web server user on your system. It's hard to
give any more specific advice, as the specifics can vary from
system to system. Your system adminstrators will know what is
required on your system.
- Is the path to "sendmail" correct? Our formmail program uses
another program called "sendmail" to actually send the email.
It's possible to tell formmail where to find this program by
setting the $mailprog variable. Once again, your system
adminstrators can tell you exactly what this should be set to.
Latest Version
Most of our programs are constantly being improved. If you're not
using the most recent version of our program then one of our first
suggestions will probably be that you upgrade. So it's probably a
good idea to try that anyway. You can always get the latest versions
of all of our programs from this site.
It's particularly worth noting that the versions of our programs
that are distributed by other sites are not guaranteed to be up to
date.
Reporting Problems
If your problem isn't discussed in the FAQ or the mailing list
archives then please use the form below to send an email to our
support mailing list. We only ask that you are follow a few simple
suggestions when posting to the list.
- As discussed above, mails to the list are publically archived
so that other people can read them. This means that you shouldn't
include in your email any thing that you wouldn't want to be
public knowledge. This particularly applies to usernames and
passwords.
- Please don't attach the whole of our program to the email. Many
off our programs are pretty large and we already know what they
look like. We only need to see the bits that you have edited. In
most cases, that will just be the "user configuration" section.
It's also a good idea to include the version number of the program
that you are using. That's found at the top of all of our
programs.
- Similarly, it's generally a bad idea to send us the whole of a
complex HTML page. It's a much better idea to just send us a link
to the page.
- Try to include as much useful information as possible in your
email. Just saying "it doesn't work" isn't much help to us. Please
tell us exactly what unexpected behaviour you are seeing. Send us
the exact text of the error message that you are seeing. If you're
getting a generic "500 error" or "internal error" page then there
will usually be more useful information in the web server error
log, please send us that too (note that we can't tell you where
your web server error log is, as that's down to the configuration
of your web server).
- All of the error messages that you will see are plain text.
This means that you should be able to paste the text of the
message into the your email message. There's never any need to
send us an image file. So please don't do that.
If you follow all of these suggestions then we'll be happy to help
you in any way that we can. However, you should realise that the
nms project is run by volunteers. We all
have day-jobs too so we can't guarantee any particular level of
support.
You can send an email to the support team by filling in the form
below.
Important Notes:
- Please do not use this form to report a problem with a site
that you do not own. Go here instead.
- Please read all of this page and follow its advice before
filling in the form.
- Please note that all messages sent with this form are publically
archived. Therefore you shouldn't include any sensitive information
like usernames or passwords.
- We only provide support by email. We will not telephone you.