FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions

How does this program work?

When a suspected heimdall issue arises, the normal course of action is to make sure you can connect to all 6 of them, and that all of them are connected to a horton/tribble. This is normally done by constantly re-connecting to Furcadia, typing `which and checking the information returned. Manual analysis of this sort can be quite frustrating and take a long time. That's where the Heimdall Tester comes into play.

The program takes the login information of all the characters you wanted to use for the scan, then keeps on (re-)connecting them to Furcadia until either enough data is collected for all the heimdalls, or the reconnection limit is exceeded in case of an endless loop. The operation roughly looks like this for every character available to us:

Connect to Furcadia Game Server.
Log in with the character's credentials.
Send a 'which request.
Send a 'ping request 1 second later to know more-less that we aren't lagged and that the server is likely done handling our 'which request.
Handle incoming information:
- If we receive a Heimdall-related 'which response, write down its ID and QTEMP value.
- If we receive a Horton-related 'which response, assume heimdall is connected to horton and write down horton's QTEMP value.
- If we receive a Tribble-related 'which response, assume heimdall/user is successfully connected to a tribble/dream and write down its QTEMP value.
- If we receive a "Pong", assume the server is done, disconnect and report "Ready" state so the program collects information and re-uses this character to make another request if necessary. Any un-received horton/tribble lines will be assumed as lack of connectivity between heimdall and said servers (which is why 'which requests of regular users always give "FAIL" here).

The main window of the program launches off these requests and when they are done, collects information from them and visualizes it to you so you can see what's going on and handle any problem or suspicious behavior as necessary.

Does the program store anything on my computer?

This tool uses your Windows Registry in order to store settings and character login information, so you could re-use them next time you start the program instead of having to re-configure the settings each time. The information is only stored if you click the Save button in the Settings window instead of OK.

If you wish to remove the settings from your registry and clean up before getting rid of this program, click the Remove from disk button in the Settings window and all the stored settings will be deleted. If this button is greyed out, then there are no saved settings to begin with.

Besides this, the program should not store anything else on your computer. Your Operating System might mention it in places like histories and cache, as it does with any other application you run. This, however, is not something that we can (or should) control.

Where does this program save the character passwords I gave it?

The login information is saved in your Windows Registry, as are other settings. The passwords are saved in a scrambled form to avoid unnecessary exposure. This is not a good or safe security measure (since this is open-source software), but given that Furcadia itself stores your passwords in plain-text in your INI file, it's still somewhat reasonable.

The registry path for the settings (assuming Windows 7) is: {"HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\IceRealm\HeimdallCheck"}

Why does the program not save/remember my settings when I click OK?

Because it saves them only if you click Save, not OK.

Why do I always get a "FAIL" status for Horton and Tribble?

Assuming that Furcadia works as it should at the time this happens, this simply means that the character you used for the scan is a "regular" character. Regular users usually get a bit less information in their 'which request than characters with access to certain beekin groups (i.e. Bugge Hunters). If you can, please use characters with an extended `which, as it will give you more accurate information.

Avoid mixing between regular and "irregular" characters if you know what's good for you...

What is a heimdall/horton/tribble?

If you have to ask this, then chances are you are in the wrong place all together. However, if you'd like to learn more about Furcadia's inner server architecture, check out the Furcadia Wiki - it may give you a rough idea of what are we talking about here.

What are the likely consequences of having a Heimdall with a Horton FAIL?

If you see such a heimdall (or a couple of them), then people connected to them may not be able to perform Furcadia-wide operations, which may include:

Trasmission/Reception of whispers to/from people on other heimdalls (server will claim the user is offline or do absolutely nothing about it).
Join/Summon requests to/from people on other heimdalls (server will claim the user is offline or do absolutely nothing about it).
Interaction with Furcadia channels (for instance, the beekin channels will not function - just the badge). If you seem to be having such symptoms, please report this to the bugge hunters so they can check this further, and try reconnecting to Furcadia until you are on a different, better-working heimdall.

Note: If you get Horton and Tribble FAIL on every heimdall, this is likely +NOT+ a problem. See related answer above!

What are the likely consequences of having a Heimdall with a Tribble FAIL?

This is a more rare case and might not indicate any major problem in itself. This simply means that your character was not placed in any dream and is "hanging" in the middle of nowhere until you try and go to one of the dreams manually via dream buttons, 'gomap, or 'fdl (more likely to work than 'gomap in such cases). To verify that there is indeed a problem in such cases, one should try (re-)connecting themselves and see if something is wrong.

If you have a reason to be concerned, please contact the bugge hunters and tell them what you found.