Freeciv Proxy Settings

Read this if the Metaserver list in your Freeciv client is always empty.
==Why your Metaserver list always stays empty==
The Freeciv Metaserver is a webpage that lists all the publicly announced Freeciv servers on the Internet.
The Freeciv client also fetches this page and presents it in its Metaserver window.
This can go wrong. Many users cannot browse the web directly. Instead, their browsers have been instructed to fetch all webpages from a special webserver, a so-called web proxy.
The Freeciv client can do this, too, but unlike most web browsers, it doesn't yet allow the proxy settings to be configured in its GUI. Instead, it relied on the environment variable http_proxy to be set before it is started.
==What to do about it==
You do not appear to be viewing this webpage through a web proxy, so the Metaserver function in the Freeciv client should work OK. To be sure, check your web browser settings. If these don't display any proxy configuration either, you may want to file a Freeciv bug report.
Now let's suppose that your proxy server is myproxy.myisp.com with port number 8080.
Your Freeciv client is started as freeciv-gtk2 [options]& where [options] is either nothing, or a list of options, for example, -tiles trident -n Hasdrubal.
If you are using a Windows NT based os (That includes Windows XP), you can set a environment variable in My Computer/properties/advanced/environment. They can be set per user or computer, you (probably) need admin privileges to set the per computer ones, but both will work. The user ones (should) override any computer ones.
If you're on MS Windows and can't use the above method (because your on Windows 98), you have to make a batchfile (.bat) to start the client. See below for batchfiles.
If you're on MS Windows and uses a DOS batch file: Find the batchfile, edit it and prepend this line:
set http_proxy=http://myproxy.myisp.com:8080
freeciv-gtk2 [options]
If a (ba)sh shell script is starting it for you, find it, edit it and add these two first lines:
http_proxy=http://myproxy.myisp.com:8080
EXPORT http_proxy
freeciv-gtk2 [options]
You can of course put it in your shell init files if you don't want to make a separate script.
Use http_proxy, not HTTP_PROXY!
This is just a few of the ways to set enviroment variables, but these is the ones you probably need.
* Note: throughout this page 'freeciv-gtk2' is used to represent the name of the client executable.  Depending upon how you installed it, you might instead replace that with 'freeciv-sdl' or something similar.
Category:Older manuals