Website up, then down, then up, etc.

Matthew Seaman m.seaman at infracaninophile.co.uk
Sun Oct 26 01:46:02 PST 2003


On Sat, Oct 25, 2003 at 05:07:31PM -0500, Charles Howse wrote:
> > 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.

> > 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?

As to what exactly the fault is, it would have to be pretty subtle to
only affect traffic on port 80.  The suggestion about making sure your
firmware was up to date by Chris Pressey elsewhere in this thread was
right on the mark.  Even so, the thing could have developed a bad spot
in it's memory or some such.  Or you may have inadvertently turned on
some peculiar feature that you really didn't want to.  As I've never
encountered a 'Motorola Surfboard 4-port Cable/DSL Router: SpeedStream
SS2604' in real life, there's not much coherent I can suggest though.
 
> Now I've told apache to listen on port 80, no joy.  Change back to 8080,
> perfect!
 
> > 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...
 
> Dyndns support just answered my last post to them, and basically just
> explained what DNS does as a way of denying that they are at fault, and
> I believe them.  To quote them, "DNS is just like the Yellow Pages.
> Your phone book doesn't know you are going through it, calling every
> number, and subsequently start deleting entries."

Yup.  I think they've been eliminated from our enquiries.

	Cheers,

	Matthew

-- 
Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil.                       26 The Paddocks
                                                      Savill Way
PGP: http://www.infracaninophile.co.uk/pgpkey         Marlow
Tel: +44 1628 476614                                  Bucks., SL7 1TH UK
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