Wikipedia:Troubleshooting

Cache problems with Internet Explorer A number of problems seem to arise from IE's fanatical tendency to cache pages.

Symptoms: page edits appear to disappear; pages such as recent changes don't update correctly, etc.

A quick and dirty way to at least temporarily solve this type of problem is to use the "Internet Tools:General:Delete files..." option in IE.

Apparently, it is possible to force IE to reload from the web rather than its cache by holding down Ctrl while clicking the "Refresh" button. This is a less drastic solution, but not absolutely guaranteed to work.

Try:

• Reload
• Ctrl+Reload
• Shift+Reload
• Alt+Reload
• Clear the browser cache
• Reinstall Windows

A recent change to the Last-Modified HTTP header may fix this for some users.

Firewall / Privacy Issues Symptoms: Images don't show up correctly, or the 'Wikipedia' logo graphic appears instead of referenced images; log-in does not 'stick', and the user's ip keeps appearing at the top right of pages instead of the user name.

Apparently, Wikipedia must make use of some more advanced cookie features. Make sure that any Firewall or Privacy settings (e.g., ZoneAlarm, IE privacy settings, etc.) let Wikipedia have more freedom to set cookies as it desires; in particular, for ZoneAlarm settings, you must allow cookies with private header information.

Too-Many Connections Problem Symptoms: Some contributors occasionally see error messages like the following instead of the page they requested:

 Warning: open(/tmp/sess_e3b9b5e8f5afa9cce2aa0066fca4a143, O_RDWR) failed:
 Too many open files in system (23) in /usr/local/apache/htdocs/w/wiki.phtml
 on line 7 

 Warning: Failed opening 'Setup.php' for inclusion        
 (include_path='.:/usr/local/lib/php') in  
 /usr/local/apache/htdocs/w/wiki.phtml on line 12

 Fatal error: Undefined class name 'outputpage' in 
 /usr/local/apache/htdocs/w/wiki.phtml on line 14

 Warning: open(/tmp/sess_e3b9b5e8f5afa9cce2aa0066fca4a143, O_RDWR) failed:
 Too many open files in system (23) in Unknown on line 0

 Warning: Failed to write session data (files). Please verify that the
 current setting of session.save_path is correct (/tmp) in Unknown on line 0

This is caused by the existence of a limit on the number of files which can be open at once, and at times too many users have been connected at once (essentially, this is Wikipedia becoming a victim of its own success). The limit has recently been increased to avoid this error occurring so frequently. However, some people's systems may have cached versions of the error message and so be continually redisplaying it; see "Cache Problems with IE" above.

Mozilla 1.2b bug note Just a note for Mozilla early adopters: the 1.2 beta contains a bug (http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=175582) that causes image description pages for uploaded .png images to display as error messages. This is fixed in the 1.2 final release (http://www.mozilla.org/releases/).

Other Problems I have a new problem that is not on this list. What should I do?

Post your question on the Village pump or ask one of the Wikipedia Administrators or Developers. Administrator and Developer Lee Daniel Crocker can probably answer most of your troubleshooting questions.

See also Wikipedia:Browser notes.