[Freeciv-Dev] Re: (PR#7046) bad packets on game start

["Jason Short" <jdorje@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

<URL: http://rt.freeciv.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=7046 >

Jordi Mallach wrote:
> <URL: http://rt.freeciv.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=7046 >
> 
> Hi,
> 
> With 1.14.1, when I connect to a server and the game starts, or I
> connect to a server that has an ongoing game, the client spews:
> 
> 1: Plugin esd found but can't be initialized.
> open /dev/sequencer: El dispositiu no és vàlid
> 2: LANGUAGE="ca-es"
> 1: received bad string in packet (type 16, len 83) from server
> 1: received bad string in packet (type 75, len 115) from server
> 1: received bad string in packet (type 75, len 91) from server
> 1: received bad string in packet (type 75, len 115) from server
> [and more lines like these]
> 
> I have checked that the Debian patches aren't causing this, and also got
> confirmation on IRC that it's happening to others using other
> distributions.
> 
> The messages are apparently harmless.
> 
> I am using the GTK2 client, and tried connecting to 1.14.1beta4 and
> 1.14.0 servers.

You are connecting to a remote server, I assume?

This happens because the character sets are not the same on server and 
client.  In previous versions of freeciv we just used latin1 and were 
done with it.  But this broke even for people playing local games, if 
they were using a non-latin1 charset (like utf8 in red hat).  With 
1.14.1 a quick fix was put into place that converts the game data at the 
server end when it is loaded from the ruleset.  But this will still run 
into problems if client and server don't use the same charset.

Genrally, the messages are not harmless.  Each corresponds to a message 
(city or leader name) that is in the incorrect charset.  This may result 
in showing a few garbage characters or may cause the name not to display 
at all.

jason