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

["Vasco Alexandre da Silva Costa" <vasc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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

> [jordi@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx - Fri Dec 05 14:33:47 2003]:
> 
> 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.

The problem is caused by using different charset encodings in the server
and client. You need to make sure they are the same.

Use the FREECIV_NETWORK_ENCODING enviroment variable to set the network
charset encoding you which to use. e.g.:

export FREECIV_NETWORK_ENCODING=ISO-8859-1

Then run the client.