Error Message Sometimes is True

Today I was trying to get my little open source project into googlecode's subversion repository. This was suppose to be a very easy task, but it turned out to be a rather difficult one and had took me several hours to finish. Well, what's all the trouble?

I set up my project on googlecode.com, it's very nice and easy. Google did a very nice job here, they really got the KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid!) rule nailed, well done. Now it is the time for me to import the code into my source repository. I open my lovely Konsole and execute 'svn import'. Shoot, it give me an error message 'could not resolve hostname'. Can't be, my network is working alright, no problem at all. Has been an active CVS user in the past and now trying to switch to Subversion, on top of my mind, I am thinking there must be something wrong with my local Subversion installation. After googling for a while, I found subclipse can work nicely with Eclipse. Open eclipse, update and install, add repository location, try again... Bang, same thing. What now?

Tweaking all the settings around for a while, no progress. Try to check out other people's code from googlecode, surprise, surprise, it works fine. Now what? Something remind me, living in this country, I always encountered problems of access to certain web site being blocked by that big famous firewall GFW. Could that be the problem? Is there any sensitive string in my project's URL cause the blocking? Create a new project with a different name. Try again, holla, everything works fine now.

Talked to one of my company's network guys about this. It turns out it is not the GFW blocking my connection, but my company's firewall.

One lesson learned: when it says 'could not resolve hostname', it means there is problem with the network. Sometimes, you have to trust the error message.