Last updated 23 August 2002

These are the questions most asked by people who are using EarthTrax services.  Some of these are questions about specific issues that customers have encountered; others are general questions about our products and services.  We update this list periodically. If you have a question which is not answered here, let us know at support@earthtrax.com, and we will add it.

Questions about All products  BugTrax  Internet Service  EarthTraxMail

All products

1. What browsers are supported by EarthTrax products?

We support Internet Explorer 5.0 and later on all platforms, and browsers based on Mozilla 0.9.1 or later on all platforms (including Netscape 6 and 7 releases). We do not support Netscape 4-based browsers, or other browsers such as Opera (sorry).  Please contact us if you want to request support for a new platform.

BugTrax

1. In BugTrax, you are supposed to be notified of new bug reports by Yahoo Messenger.  I have a Yahoo Messenger account, and don't receive notifications.  How do I fix it?

Yahoo Messenger support is built into the currently available ASP version of BugTrax (2.0), but you need to turn it on for your account first (otherwise we don't know what your Yahoo Messenger ID is.)  On the left-hand menu, click on "My Account", then select "Notifications" from the top menu. Fill in your Yahoo Messenger ID in the box provided, and press Submit.  Your account is now enabled for notifications.

Note that we cannot guarantee that you will receive notifications (the Yahoo Messenger network is not under our control, and experiences periods of delay or inaccessibility.)  If you have enabled notifications but fail to receive them for an extended period of time, and you know you should have, contact us at support@earthtrax.com and we will investigate.

2.  I like BugTrax but I don't want to sign up for ASP service. Will you sell me the product standalone?

We are planning to make the BugTrax software available directly to customers.  Stay tuned for future announcements about this.  If you want us to notify you when we have more news about this, drop us a note at info@earthtrax.com.

3.  I want to integrate BugTrax with some other product.  Do you support that?

EarthTrax provides XML interfaces and various API libraries to help your BugTrax system communicate with other products in your company's infrastructure, or to assist with migration from another bug tracking system to BugTrax, or to use the BugTrax system as the back end database to a different application. Please send us a note at info@earthtrax.com and let us know about your specific requirements.

4.  What about security?  I don't want my proprietary data to leave my site!

If you are using our ASP service, communication with BugTrax is over secure, encrypted connections, on a highly managed and firewalled network, and you have your own separate dedicated database which cannot be accessed by anyone else. The server is running on a separate network which is only accessible by an extremely limited set of EarthTrax system administrators (general EarthTrax employees including software developers have no access to that network), in a physically separate data center which is professionally secured 24x7.  So, your data is very secure.  In addition, even more secure options (such as VPN-only access) are available upon request for an additional charge.

However, if you still decide you would rather keep your data locally, you should buy your own copy of the BugTrax software and install it at your site (later in 2002.)  Contact us at info@earthtrax.com if you want more information about availability.

5.   Why are bug numbers skipped sometimes?

Bug numbers may not be consecutive.  Occasionally, the BugTrax server will use bug numbers for its own internal purposes.  It is normal for bug numbers to be skipped on some occasions.  They are guaranteed to be unique, though.

Internet Service

1. I can't FTP - it just hangs.  Why?

The EarthTrax network is unusual in that it does not allow passive FTP's.  This is for reasons related to our security infrastructure. We are investigating fixes to this problem and are expecting it to be resolved soon.

In the meantime, disable passive FTP in your client and it will work fine.  In a command-line FTP client, just type "passive" and passive FTP will be toggled off.  In various clients such as CuteFTP, there are configuration preferences to disable passive FTP.

EarthTraxMail

1. What is the maximum size mail message I can send with my EarthTrax Mail account?

20 megabytes.  Be careful, if you try to send more than that, you will have to wait for the whole message to upload and THEN you will get an error saying we can't deliver it.  Sorry.

2. When I send mail using my EarthTraxMail account, why do I get the error "Relaying denied"?

Your mail program must be sent to do SMTP authentication. How to enable it depends on which mail program you are using. If you are using Outlook, for example, you would go to Settings, and under "Outgoing Server", check the box "My outgoing server (SMTP) requires authentication", and select "Use same settings as my incoming mail server". Do NOT select "Log on to incoming mail server before sending mail" - that will not work.