PAC Control "Open Outgoing Communication" command returning uncommon error code

Hi,

I’m trying to open an outgoing communication within a PAC Control strategy to a local web server. However, I keep getting the error code “-454” which I’ve never received before and which is not listed in the command reference guide as to what it means.

My communication handle is simply “tcp:localhost:80” and I’ve never had problems with this before. Please help me.

Thank you

Hi nathanspielman,

That error -454 means “Unable to connect to DNS server. Check DNS and gateway configuration.”
I’d try changing your comm handle to “tcp:127.0.0.1:80”

(I’ve seen Windows sometimes not correctly do the DNS, or Domain Name Service, to resolve ‘localhost’ into an IP address for reasons that remain a mystery to me.)

Thanks for letting us know about that missing error. In the meantime, you do know about the decoder ring in PAC Control, yes? In PAC Control (config mode) under: Help > Error Lockup.

NEAT-O! One of my favorite more modern additions to PAC Control.

Hope that helps!
-OptoMary

Ahh thanks Mary for that “Error Lookup” Screen.

I changed my Hostname to “127.0.0.1” instead of “localhost”, it solved the DNS problem but introduced another one. Now it is giving me the -412 code “TCP/IP Cannot Connect Error”.

It should be noted that I am not connected to the internet nor do I have Wi-Fi on this particular computer that I’m using to run this strategy. I simply have one ethernet connection and it is connected to a SNAP-PAC-R1. My local webserver boots up perfectly in a browser on the machine though so I’m not sure why the PAC Control strategy cannot connect to that local web server.

Any solutions for this?

Taking a step back here, I was assuming that you were running a webserver and SoftPAC on the same PC (“localhost” and “127.0.0.1” mean roughly: “talk to self”). But now it’s sounding like you have the webserver on a PC and this strategy running on a connected-nearby R1?

In that case, the comm handle should include the IP address of the PC. You can get this from a command prompt by typing ipconfig.

Guessing that the PC is the same one you use to download the strategy (so we know the PC & R1 can talk to each other)?

BTW, if you’re talking to a webserver, you might look into the new-ish commands like HttpGet which could be a little simpler than using a tcp comm handle, especially if you want to do ssl at some point. The “get” command looks like:

  nCommStatus = HttpGet(stDstStrTblBody, stDstStrTblHdr, stSrcStrTblHdr, 1, sCommand , nHttpStatus, 443, sURL); 

or in your case, unsecured, port 80, perhaps:

  nCommStatus = HttpGet( stDstStrTblBody, stDstStrTblHdr, stSrcStrTblHdr, 0, sCommand , nHttpStatus, 80, "you.pc.ip.here" ); 

Make sense?

Mary,

OMG forgot to change my IP so it would use SoftPAC. I’m so sorry for the second post, it’s been a long day.

Anyway, we fixed the DNS issue and it works. Thank you so much! Have a great day!