Index Log Error Messages

When you press the button on the last panel of SiteSurfer Builder, the program will display a dialog that shows a summary of what pages were indexed, as well as other helpful statistics about the index and the site.

The log also shows informative error messages about links that were not valid or caused other problems. The presence of these error messages does not mean the index creation was unsuccessful. Rather, they are there to help you diagnose problems with the web site. Each error message grouping includes the problem address, the address of the page that links to the problem address, and a short description of the problem. These items are labeled the Link, Parent Link, and Nature of Problem, respectively. The most common descriptions are:

• Page not found. This means that the page at this address could not be found. This common error usually shows up as a 404 error in a web browser when loading a URL via the HTTP protocol. The most likely causes of this error are that a link is misspelled, or the resource it references has been deleted or moved. This may be corrected by editing the page at the Parent Link address to change the bad link.

• Access forbidden. The server has refused to comply with a request for a page. This is equivalent to a 403 error in the HTTP protocol.

• Unknown Host. The host referenced in the address does not exist.

• No route to host. The host computer has a valid IP address, but it cannot be contacted. This may indicate a routing error, or perhaps the host computer has crashed or is turned off.

• Timed out during address lookup. This error probably indicates that a name server stalled while translating a host name to a numeric IP address. This often occurs when part of a network has been physically cut off from the rest of the network.

• Timed out retrieving data. A packet of data took too long to transfer. This could happen for a number of reasons. First, the server hosting the page may be overloaded or busy with something else. The network connection between this computer and the server may have too much traffic to deliver data in a timely fashion. Finally, other processes on this computer may be starving SiteSurfer from completing tasks within a reasonable amount of time. If you get this error while indexing files on your hard drive, it is likely that the computer is swapping too much memory or starving SiteSurfer for CPU time. Try to stop other CPU- or memory-intensive operations before running SiteSurfer again.

• Socket error occurred. This means that an error has occurred in the underlying network protocol, such as a TCP error.

• Protocol error occurred. The host computer's response to a request did not conform to the expected protocol, e.g., garbled HTTP.

• Authentication failed. The page at this address is protected by an authentication scheme, but the user did not comply with a valid user name or password. When SiteSurfer Builder receives a 401 or 407 HTTP response code, it will prompt the user for this information. If you enter the wrong authorization information or dismisses the dialog without typing the correct password, SiteSurfer will note that event in the log.

• Service temporarily unavailable. The server may be overloaded or undergoing maintenance for a short time. This error indicates that the request cannot be fulfilled right now, but it may work if you try again later. This is equivalent to 503 HTTP response code.

• Server error occurred. The host server has encountered an internal error while processing a request. This corresponds to an HTTP response code of 500 or greater, except 503 as noted above. If you can duplicate the error in a web browser, the administrator of the server should probably be notified so that corrective action may be taken.

• Communication error retrieving data. Some other kind of I/O error has occurred. The server may have closed a socket before all data was read.