[cvsnt] Re: Stupid error message from CVSNT...

[Tony Hoyle]

Bo Berglund wrote:
> The error message "No connection could be made because the target
> machine actively refused it." is really both misleading and stupid.
> Could it not be changed to something more descriptive?
>
It's the system error message.  It tells you everything that you need to 
know.  The wording is defined by MS, and I'm not inclined to change it - 
typing the message into google is more than enough to get an explanation 
for it.

> I did the following test today:
> 1) I did not open the VPN tunnel to the network where the CVSNT server
> is located before ding an update. Thus the machine is not even
> reachable.
> Result: Error with the message above.
> Should have been: "CVS server not accessible, check network
> connections"
> 
> 2) I shut down the CVSNT service on a local CVSNT server and then
> tried updating a sandbox from that server. In this case noone is
> listening to port 2401 but the server is accessible.
> Result: Error with the same message.
> Should have been: "CVS service on <servername> at port 2401 not
> accessible, check server state."

How do you propose telling the difference between these cases?  Even the 
system doesn't know - that's why it uses the same message.  Something 
refused the connection - that could be a VPN, Firewall, Proxy, Wrong 
machine, Wrong port, anything.  It's imposssible to tell.

If the machine is really unreachable you'll actually get either:

"A socket operation was attempted to an unreachable host."
or
"A connection attempt failed because the connected party did not 
properly respond after a period of time"

however CVSNT has no control over when these messages can/should appear.

Tony