What is the listbox with little icons inside for?

It is the state icon which represents your current state and gives your peers a general idea how you are being or what you are doing. For example, your can tell the other users that you're talking on the phone by simply selecting the classic black phone state icon. Or you can tell your peers that you don't want to be disturbed by showing them the "no entry" sign.

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Why I can't leave the status textbox empty?

Due to our connection policy, every connected user must have a brief verbal description to tell the other users that he/she is indeed connected to the network. If you leave the status textbox empty, a single word "Online" will be used to describe about your status.

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How do I change my nickname?

We don't encourage users to change their nickname often because it is the only way a user can be recognized. That is why we don't provide an easy GUI way to do the task. Nonetheless, if you really want to change your nickname, you can delete the whole configuration directory, then all settings will be re-initialized and you will be asked to enter the nickname again.

On Windows, the configuration directory is known as "%HOMEPATH%\.ezim".

On Linux, it is "$HOME/.ezim".

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Why does the state icon change to something which is not I have chosen when I open the plaza (public chat) window?

When the plaza window is open, a user is supposed to be chatting in the plaza instead of being away or whatsoever. The plaza state icon here works as an indicator which tells other users who is/are chatting in the plaza. When the user finishes chatting and closes the plaza window, the state icon will be restored to what is being selected.

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What are multicast group IP, multicast group port, and direct transmission port used for? Why should I care about them?

Multicast group IP (default: "ff15::657a:696d" for IPv6, or "229.0.0.1" for IPv4) and multicast group port (default: 5555) are used for network-segment-wide communications. This kind of transmissions will reach all the peers in the same network segment. Contact information retrievals, status change notifications, and plaza conversations fall into this category. In order to communicate with other peers in the same network segment, these settings have to match with your peers'.

Direct transmission port (default: 6666) is opened to receive communications which are destinated to you directly from the peers. You can change it to something else to avoid conflict if you have other applications alreadily listening to the default port.

If you have no idea what the above means, simply leave the settings to default and everything should work just fine.

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There are some funny entries in the Local IP dropdown list on the preference window. What are they? How can I get rid of them?

If there are entries like "(eth0) fe80:0:0:0:222:15ff:fe87:4287%2" in the Local IP dropdown list under the Network tab in the preference window, it simply means your machine is IPv6 ready. Those funny looking entries, which is composed of alphanumeric characters, colons, and ampersand, are actually IPv6 addresses. You can find out more about IPv6 at the following links:

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPv6

- http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2460.html

If you want to disable the use of IPv6 addresses on EZIM, you can invoke the special option on the command line:

$ java -Djava.net.preferIPv4Stack=true -jar PATH_TO_EZIM.JAR &

On the other hand, if you prefer IPv6 to IPv4, issue the following command when starting up EZIM to favor the use of IPv6 addresses:

$ java -Djava.net.preferIPv6Addresses=true -jar PATH_TO_EZIM.JAR & back to top

How do I add more recipients to, or remove recipients from the outgoing message I'm currently writing?

Recipients can be added by drag-and-drop from the contact list, or removed from the outgoing message one by one with the "Delete Last Recipient" button right next to the "To" textfield.

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Why some of the recipients are missing when the outgoing message window reappeared after an error is reported?

Recipients to whom the outgoing message has successfully reached are removed from the list for clarity. Recipients who reappear with the outgoing message window are those we have problems sending message to.

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Why I can't see other users?

First of all, make sure that you are on the same network segment with the other users. If you were in the same network segment with your peers, make sure your network supports multicast. If you have no idea about it, ask your network administrator. If all these are cleared and you still cannot see other users, try clicking on the refresh button to query the contact list manually.

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There are users on the contact whom I can't send message to, why?

Either the users you are trying to send message to have their firewalls blocking the transmissions, or there are firewalls in your machine preventing connections getting out.

In order to receive messages from the peers, the direct transmission port (default: 6666) has to be open for incoming direct transmission. If there is any firewall running on the system, you'll have to make sure the specific port is open to your peers.

On Linux, you can do something like this with iptables as root:

# iptables -A INPUT -i eth0 -p tcp -s 192.168.1.0/24 -dport 6666 -j ACCEPT

Or alternatively, you can change the direct transmission port's setting to avoid it from being blocked.

Also, if you can't see your peers, or the status update does not seem to work, check and see if the firewall is blocking any multicast signals. With iptables, see if there is anything like these, if so, remove it:

# iptables -A -p all -d 229.0.0.1 -j DROP
# iptables -A INPUT -m pkttype --pkt-type broadcast -j DROP
# iptables -A INPUT -m pkttype --pkt-type multicast -j DROP

NOTE:

The above scenarios are based on the assumption that all network settings are set to default.

If you have problem which is not listed here, please visit our help forum and leave us a message.

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The sound source is no longer available. How do I restore it back to default?

Simply empty the corresponding textbox and save it. It will be restored back to default next time when you restart EZIM.

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