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Troubleshooting
There are numerous reasons why you could experience a problematic connection when accessing SageMathCloud.
This FAQ/Help page consists of
- The 7-Step Process for Debugging Connectivity
- Question: I don't see any icons, but everything else works.
- Question: I can access some of my files/projects in my SageMathCloud account but not others in that same account. What's wrong?
Remember: if you don't find what you need, or if you'd like to ask a question, then please email [email protected] at any time. We'd love to hear from you! Please include a link (the URL address in your browser) to any relevant project or document, as part of your email.
Below are some ideas on what to check to diagnose the problem on your side, and most likely fix it:
Look in the upper-right hand corner of any SageMathCloud web page. You will see there the "wifi symbol" and to the right of it, a number of milliseconds (e.g. 43 ms). This means that you are connected to SageMathCloud, with a latency of 43 ms. (For those unfamiliar with the idea of latency, after your computer sends some data packet, it will take 43 ms to arrive at the SageMathCloud server.)
Many times, it can happen that your internet connection is cut off. For example, in a cafe or coffee shop, the internet access may be shutdown during peak hours. Alternatively, in a residence, a roommate might have inadverently unplugged the wireless router. When this happens, the wifi symbol and the latency indicator will be replaced by a red rectangle with the word "disconnected." If you restore your wireless connection, then you'll see a yellow rectangle with the word "connecting..."
Once a broken connection is re-established, your files will be saved and everything returns to normal. During the period of disconnection, the green "Save" button will be replaced by a red warning that says "NOT saved!" As you can see, you will always know whether or not your changes have reached the server.
The symptom for this malady is if you can load the page but it keeps timing out, or if it doesn't load up properly. If you are experiencing those symptoms, then either old copies of the page that you are working on are cached on some server, between yourself and the SageMathCloud server, or perhaps your browser is caching them locally.
In this situation, the fix is easy. Just reload the website with the Shift-key held down (that tells the browser to ignore your local cache), or clean your browser's cache directly via its interface.
Browser caches are an important way of speeding up your internet connection. However, the methods and strategies that work for static web content and relatively straightforward websites do not always work well for sophisticated and complex systems like SageMathCloud. For example, hotels often have aggressive cache servers, because a large portion of their guests will access the same handful of websites (e.g. to check the weather, get navigation, or print boarding passes.)
This situation can happen to users who are attempting to use two different SageMathCloud accounts, even if they are not attempting to do so simultaneously. We have an entire page devoted to strategies to make it easy to painlessly operate with multiple SageMathCloud accounts.
For a quick fix, try to connect to SageMathCloud by opening up a "new private browsing window" or "new incognito window." While inside those special windows, your old cookies will not be active and any new cookies you are given will not affect the main browser.
Another source of problems are installed browser extensions. Extensions might inject JavaScript code into the website. In such a situation, it is likely that the injected code does not play along well with the JavaScript code of SageMathCloud.
With Google Chrome, you can go to the Settings and disable some. Alternatively, you can run Google Chrome with the command-line switch --disable-extensions. Incidentally, extensions are disabled in "incognito mode", so "Step 3" above should have taken care of this.
In Firefox, it is very easy to disable add-ons by clicking on that link.
This is extremely unlikely. One of the advantages of cloud computing is that if a server goes down, then you can automatically be reconnected to some other server. Since SageMathCloud always has extra capacity, it is difficult to imagine something going wrong, though there were isolated cases in the early days of SageMathCloud.
This webpage will show you a bit of technical information about the running servers, but it is not very human-readable.
https://cloud.sagemath.com/stats
However, if that link were to time out, or if there is nothing to see, then there is a problem with either your internet connectivity or the SageMathCloud website. If your browser tells you about any issues while loading that link, then the problem is likely to be on your end.
If you experience issues like frequent reloads, see strange advertising banners across the page, or additional odd banners around the page, then you might be a victim of some tool or virus injecting additional html code into webpages in your browser. Such malicious software can serve several purposes (e.g. tracking you, showing you ads, just disrupting your connectivity), and is almost always considered highly undesirable.
For Google Chrome there is the Chrome Cleanup Tool which might help you fix this.
For Firefox, you might want to check the disable add-ons screen, which might display for you an undesired add-on that might have been installed on your browser without your knowledge.
It is possible that you might be a victim of some malicious software changing your DNS server and re-routing you through a bad proxy server. This is not always the result of hacking. It can be a bad configuration on your computer, the result of an over-zealous employer, or hotel.
Check your DNS settings and try setting 8.8.8.8 as your only DNS server to see if this helps. That's a free DNS service provided by Google.
You are most likely using a customized font or an extension to customize fonts via CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), in your web browser. This interferes with the font displaying the images for the icons.
The best solution is to disable the extension, in your browser.
Question: I can access some of my files/projects in my SageMathCloud account but not others in that same account. What's wrong?
Sometimes this can happen if you are using multiple SageMathCloud accounts in the same browser. This can happen even if you are not using two different accounts simultaneously.
We have a short help page, Tips for using more than one SageMathCloud account which discusses this. The suggestions there will make it work very smoothly for you.
Remember: if you don't find what you need, or if you'd like to ask a question, then please email [email protected] at any time. We'd love to hear from you! Please include a link (the URL address in your browser) to any relevant project or document, as part of your email.
This Wiki is for CoCalc.com.
A more structured documentation is the CoCalc User Manual.
For further questions, please contact us.