Never exit Freeciv when loading a file by the registry module. Remove the
function inf_token_required().

Reported by Jeremy Jacko (jbfrog) for the metaserver answer

See gna bug #14522

(Browse SVN revision 16624)

So both servers and clients freeze when there is maintenance break in metaserver.

Metaserver will move during either 2Q2010 or 3Q2010 and there will be longish break when it does not work. This bug should be fixed, and version with the fix released, before that.

As I were without Internet connection for some time, I know that being completely unable to connect metaserver does not crash the client. In that case there is no reply at all, so client cannot crash trying to parse it. With wrong http_proxy there is http reply which client cannot parse.

Nevertheless, I also observed that attempt to connect to metaserver blocks client for some time when there is no connection to Internet (probably dns query).

The client is working now, though the issue was not with the default_metaserver setting, which pointed to "http://www.cazfi.net/freeciv/metaserver/" by default. I had neglected to set the http_proxy in the windows shell prior to running civclient. After setting this, the client operates as expected. This was my error, but it doesn't make sense to me that the client would crash because it can't connect to the metaserver. Shouldn't it be possible to join a LAN game even if the LAN is not connected to the internet?

I have tried with and without the server running, and with and without the Windows firewall enabled. None of this seems to make any difference.

I am trying to use the windows client (2.1.9-gtk2) to connect to a linux server running on the LAN. When I click the "Connect to Network Game" button, the network connection window appears very briefly, but then the program closes with no on-screen error messages. The stderr.txt file in the freeciv program folder gives the message "0: Did not find token entry_name in (null) line 1".
I have found a few old references to this problem online, suggesting that the "default_metaserver=" line should be removed from .civclientrc (see http://www.mail-archive.com/freeciv-dev@gna.org/msg03350.html), but this did not help in my case. I have tried uninstalling freeciv and removing all related config files and folders, but upon reinstallation the problem persists. The SDL client works correctly on the same machine. I am attaching the stderr.txt file produced with the "-d 3" command line option.