Website up, then down, then up, etc.

[Charles Howse]

> > > On Sat, Oct 25, 2003 at 02:25:54PM -0500, Charles Howse wrote:
> 
> > > Hmmm... It's not the basic "look up the IP number" part as that's
> > > working just fine.  You don't seem to be using their (dynDNS) web
> > > redirection service (ie. howse.homeunix.net resolves to 
> 66.168.145.25
> > > which whois reports belongs to Charter Communications).
>  
> > Correct, I'm not.
> > I can't get 'homeunix.net' as a domain using WebHop.
> > Shouldn't need it anyway, things were working perfectly 
> without it until
> > last week.
> 
> Right.  That eliminates a bunch of stuff that could go wrong.
>  
> > > I think that dynDNS would seem to have managed to pull off their
> > > datacenter move without much noticable fallout.  That's pretty
> > > impressive...
> 
> > > If Charter are denying any interference with the port 80 
> traffic at
> > > all, then they are almost certainly correct.
> 
> > > I think you've established that your FreeBSD box is 
> working correctly.
> 
> > There's no possibility that I've hosed anything like 
> /etc/hosts.allow or
> > one of the files that restricts connections?
> 
> Unless you're updating hosts.allow every 5 minutes I don't see how a
> mistake in that file could result in the on again, off again behaviour
> you've been seeing.  The same goes for any of the flat files in /etc
> -- or at least, I can't think what you could possibly do to any of
> them that would result in the effects you're seeing.

Well, that's true, however it's completely dead now.  No off and on.
Points again to the router, eh?

> > > So, I guess, by a process of elimination you might have a 
> problem with
> > > your cable router/modem?  Is this a device that has a 
> HTTP interface
> > > that you can configure it with? -- since it seems to be working
> > > perfectly well for all of the other ports, there must be 
> some reason
> > > for it to do nasty things specifically to the port 80 stuff.
> 
> > Yes, the router has a web interface for configuration.  It 
> had been set
> > to forward requests on port 80 to the webserver on port 80. 
>  That was
> > working perfectly for over a year.  I've now set it to port 
> 8080, in and
> > out, which is, of course, working.  I have also enabled the 
> DMZ, which,
> > AFAIK, places the server outside the firewall, thereby eliminating
> > it...?
> 
> Hmmm... At the moment I'd lean towards the theory that you have a
> fault in your router.  Does power cycling the router make any
> difference?  Can you get hold of a spare router you could swap in to
> test if that makes a difference?

I have power cycled the router and the modem, which BTW are separate
pieces of hardware.
No joy.
I can set it back to the defaults, no problem.  I'm not doing anything
special with it.
I *might* be able to borrow another one to test with, but it would be a
different brand.
That shouldn't make any difference.

I have a hub I can install in place of the router.  Can't remember right
now whether it's 10/100 or just 10.
I'll check.
 
> > > It certainly is perplexing.
>  
> > It is, isn't it?
> 
> Yes.  I've had similar impossible problems in the past.  One time it
> turned out to be a broken network cable, and the other time it was
> just my inability to fathom the somewhat obscure way a particular
> device implemented packet filtering.  Once you know what the answer
> is, you'll wonder how it took you so long to realise something so
> obvious...

Been there, done that, got the T-shirt.  :-)
I'm currently installing Apache2 on larry, the secondary FBSD machine to
see if it works from there.
That should give me a clue, and won't hurt anything at all.