Blank line when entering the mud

Posted by Kyrs on Sun 29 Jun 2003 08:08 AM — 12 posts, 36,482 views.

Kyrs Sun 29 Jun 2003 08:08 AM #0

Ok, I've been scouring the helpfiles and these forums for 4 days straight but I still cannot find a solution to the problem I'm having. So hopefully you guys can help, I'd really appreciate it.

When I'm at work, I'm behind a firewall. I have to telnet to the firewall, put in the host info, my security info, and then it will telnet me to the host I entered. I normally telnet into a unix shell account and then onto the mud from the shell. It was working beautifully for a few days.

Well, all the sudden my shell decides that even though it's pinging the mud at 80 and has no problems connecting it wants to lag very badly. I'm talking upwards of 10 mins just for one command to go through. So I figure it's a router or something and decided to give it a while. This was 4 days ago btw, and it's still doing it. (but that's not my question!)

So I decided to try and connect to the mud directly from my firewall and I'm a bit confused about what's happening. The best I can figure is that the mud is inputting a blank line and that causes the mud to disconnect me. Here, take a look.


--- Connected on Sunday, June 29, 2003, 3:36 AM ---

Firewall Secure Gateway.

Hostname: Username: Enter Password: 

                        Alas ... you have entered the
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 [| Nivek/Edmond                                                          |]
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By what name are you known (or "new" to create a new character): 
--- Disconnected on Sunday, June 29, 2003, 3:36 AM ---
--- Connected for 20 seconds ---

I'm pretty sure it's inserting a blank line because when I telnet to my shell from mushclient it does this.


--- Connected on Sunday, June 29, 2003, 3:57 AM ---

Firewall Secure Gateway.

Hostname: Username: Enter Password: 

SCO UnixWare 7.1.1 pts/4)

login: 
login:

I tried stacking commands, but the blank line gets put in there before my character name still. I tried fiddling with settings. I tried the blank line gagging script a few posts back.. Now I must admit I have never scripted, I don't know anything about it, and the documentation on it goes way over my head. I initially got error messages when i copied the exact script that Nick posted. I finally got it so there were no error messages, but it may not be working.. i don't know.

Also I know it's not my firewall sending the blank line, because I can pull up hyperterminal and it will connect to the mud fine.. But telnet is for the birds :)

Ok, so after all that rambling.. Anyhow got any ideas?

Nick Gammon Australia Forum Administrator Sun 29 Jun 2003 08:15 AM #1

I would be looking carefully at the text in "send on connect" on the connecting screen. It can have a pretty invisible blank line in it. Make sure that that window is totally empty (click in it, select all, delete).

Neverwhere USA Sun 29 Jun 2003 08:34 AM #2

Unless I'm mistaken (which I was just proven a little while ago, damn my lack of sleep!), gag's dont actually prevent anything from going to the world. Gag's only prevent the user (in this case you) from seeing it on your screen. The actual imput is still there.

Nick Gammon Australia Forum Administrator Sun 29 Jun 2003 08:38 AM #3

The particular plugin did actually gag blank lines, it was a special case. By returning "false" it told MUSHclient not to send the line.

I think you are thinking of gagging text from the MUD. The text still arrives, you just don't see it.

Kyrs Sun 29 Jun 2003 08:39 AM #4

It's not the send after connected field. I just tripled checked to make sure. The select all feature wasn't even chooseable.

So, I don't know.

Nick Gammon Australia Forum Administrator Sun 29 Jun 2003 08:40 AM #5

However that plugin was to stop you accidentally typing a blank line, it did not necessarily stop all blank lines from going to the MUD (I would need to check the code to be certain about that).

What you could do Kyrs is to turn on "packet debug" (edit menu I think) and then connect. You will then see for sure what is being sent and when.

Kyrs Sun 29 Jun 2003 09:03 AM #6

It doesn't show anything being sent.

Nick Gammon Australia Forum Administrator Sun 29 Jun 2003 09:50 AM #7

It must be sending something. Your earlier post said:

Hostname: Username: Enter Password:

So it is answering those questions, right? Now is there another blank line after that?

Poromenos Greece Sun 29 Jun 2003 10:43 AM #8

Hmm, why does it only send a blank line after the password, and not after the username or hostname? If it was MUClient's fault, it should be all the same to it... Maybe it's a firewall problem? RoD DOES disconnect you if it gets a blank line as the name though... If, as you said, nothing was being output from MUClient to the mud, I would think it's the firewall's problem, unless I misunderstood something on the thread.

Poromenos Greece Sun 29 Jun 2003 10:47 AM #9

Hmm, yes, I just saw the telnet thing... When you're at the login prompt, try pressing enter.. Does it send one blank line or two? Maybe it's far-fetched, but unix blank lines are CR, and windows are CRLF... Maybe that causes the firewall to capture the CR and send the LF to the MUD? Not much chance of that being the problem though... I don't know, try "/World.Send vbCr" after typing the firewall password, instead of pressing enter?

Kyrs Mon 30 Jun 2003 11:53 AM #10

Nick: Yes, it was sending the packets back and forth for all the log in stuff, but after I sent the password info it didn't send anything else but it still disconnected me.

Poro: I thought it wasn't a problem with the firewall because it worked with terminal applications.

I've tried duplicating the problem at home and can't. It doesn't send the blank line. So it must be how the firewall is reacting to mushclient since it works with hyperterminal.

I originally thought that mushclient must have detected the connection and was sending the blank line, but I guess that isn't the case after seeing the packets sent back and forth.

Oh well, thanks for all the input guys :)

Nick Gammon Australia Forum Administrator Mon 30 Jun 2003 09:23 PM #11

You might need a packet dumper to see exactly what is going on here. MUSHclient reports what it is sending accurately but you need to compare it to Hyperterminal. Perhaps some telnet negotiation or something. I was going to suggest maybe the MUD is blocking your site, but not if you can go in via another program.

The firewall doesn't really "know" you are using MUSHclient but maybe the presence or absence of something in the way it is interacting with it is doing it. Can't think what exactly but maybe a "suppress GA" or something like that.