Please read this if you are planning to submit a contribution. This information may save you a lot of grief and may make the difference for getting your paper in on time.
Testing, testing.
Although the server is robust, there may be problems that we cannot handle because they have to do with the configuraiton of your system. We therefore advise that you click through to the submission pages a few days before the deadline. This way, you have a chance of fixing any problems that might arise before the deadline is upon you. You do not actually need to submit anything, but be sure your browser can open the page for uploading your contribution. If you have a draft of your paper, you can even submit it for testing purposes and later replace it by the final manuscript using the resubmission page.
Problem 1: Wrong browser.
Netscape 6.01, Mozilla, and Opera prior to version 6 do not work correctly. IE 6.0 and Netscape 6.2 work fine.
Problem 2: I cannot connect to the submission site
You may get an error message such as "503 service unavailable". If you can reach the main conference web site but not the submission site, then this is usually due to your firewall blocking connections to port 8080. Port 8080 is used by the web server accepting your submissions. Your system administrator needs to unblock connections to port 8080 in your firewall. This port should not normally be blocked. If you cannot convince your administrator to open port 8080 generally, then ask to open that port to the IP 129.13.10.111 only (this only applies for ICSE'2003). And please get this initiated a few days before the deadline, since administrators are a busy lot and may not respond right away.
Problem 3: Something goes wrong after I click "submit". It appears that my paper is truncated.
You may be exceeding the limit that your local system thinks you should be uploading. In that case, submit first the pdf version and then use the resubmission page to submit the postscript version, or the other way around. Also, pdf files generated on Linux systems tend to be much bigger than when they are created with Acrobat. Sometimes, postscript versions are huge. Check the sizes and make sure they are reasonable. If everything fails, submit ziped versions of your pdf and postscript files. Or get the limit raised.
Problem 4: I received no acknowledgement for my submission
If you submitted a contribution, but did not receive an acknowledgement even though one was promised, then this may be due to your server considering messages from us as spam! This can happen, for instance, if the hosts iraun1.uka.de or iraun2.uka.de (for ICSE'2003) are blacklisted by *your* mail system. (Yes, some people think we are spammers.) Ask your system administrator to remove the blacklist entry. Otherwise, our server simply cannot send you an acknowledgement.
Problem 5: Help, there is nobody here to fix these problems.
Finally, please do correct any problems on your site as soon as possible, because suppose your contribution is accepted for the conference. You don't want to deal with these problems again (nor do we) when submitting your final version.