Basic Checks

The most common reasons for connection failures are:

• The server isn't running... This is obviously the first thing to check. A connection from the same machine is much more reliable as it does not rely on a working network connection, try that first to verify that the server is running OK. (and unless you have modified your server configuration, it should be available on all your network interfaces - barring firewall restrictions)
• The server is not automatically detected: see these mDNS FAQ entries
• One of the machines (client or server) is not connected to the network... This is also fairly obvious, but always worth checking
• A firewall is blocking access to the server. Ensure that Window Switch is allowed through the firewall.
• If you are using SSH tunnelling (not applicable on MS Windows), also ensure that sshd is running on the server and that connections are allowed by the firewall

Linux Specific Checks

The server has no way of knowing if the firewall is active or not, so in most cases you will find that the server has chosen to require all clients to use SSH tunnelling.
If your server is not using a firewall or if that firewall will not be blocking access to the ports required, you can remove the need to use ssh tunnelling by setting:

ssh_tunnel=False

In your server configuration (and restarting the server process). Conversely, if this switch off but you then add a firewall to your system, you will need to toggle this switch.

Advanced Checks

If you can connect to the server via ssh but winswitch cannot, please try to ssh to the server from the command line then once logged in to the server, launch:

winswitch_stdio_socket

This is what winswitch does to talk to the remote server, starting it if necessary. If this does not connect to a server, then your installation may be broken.

If you are not using ssh tunnelling, then you can simply telnet to the server port to check connectivity. To find out which port the server is listening on, you can:

• Look for the contents of the file ~/.winswitch/server/lock/server_port
• Use the server_portinfo script
  (this script is part of the software installation on most platforms - but not your $PATH, use locate to find it)