Forum OpenACS Q&A: Errors outside local network

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Posted by Brad Ford on
I've just got my installation running at www.physworx.com. I can access everything fine from within my network using the 192...:8000 ip. When trying from outside the network, the front page shows up (no, I haven't done any customizing at all yet) but I get a url not found error when trying to login or register. Any thoughts on what might be causing this? Feel free to try registering.
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Posted by James Harris on
It seems to work fine when I register and login.  Do you have access to a browser external to your network so you can test your network settings?
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Posted by Matthew Walker on
Works OK for me too.
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Posted by Brad Ford on
Thanks guys. I've been asking around and it seems that most people can now access properly since I upgraded to 4.6.3. Still a few people that can't even see the page but probably due to dns not propagating yet...
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Posted by Brad Ford on
Hmmm. Some interesting behaviours trying to access from the office. It could be related to being behind a firewall which accesses a proxy server. When I access the site using ie6, front page shows up ok, then the url not found error  - seems to be pointing to the login-expired page. So for whatever reason, the login is expiring - I verified this using Firebird (very nice) which put up a the proper login expired page. Could this be related to caching on the proxy?

Next, I tried hitting the login/register link and that let me login and view my profile and whatnot but, when I click the main site link it puts me back to the index page but not logged in - yet I can access all the admin links and it shows me logged in.

Interestingly when I tried to login on openacs.org, It seemed to let me log in ok but when I tried to post, it booted me back to login. I changed a setting in ie to check for new versions of pages automatically instead of every visit and was able to post here ok. The new setting didn't help with logging in on physworx.com - same problem.

In another thread, it was suggested I telnet to my site to see what the http headers are but I don't have telnet installed on the box as it was my understanding that it's a nasty security hole. Any other thoughts?

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Posted by Jade Rubick on
It's okay to install telnet, just not the telnet daemon.
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Posted by James Harris on
IE does have caching issues and it seems like this may be causing your problem.  I use Mozilla Firebird and certainly haven't looked back (for this reason and MANY others).

As Jade said, installing the telnet client isn't a security risk, it's the server that can cause problems.  Just remember when using the client that all data including usernames and passwords is sent in clear text.  When debugging a server connection this is no problem.

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Posted by Brad Ford on
Ok, so it turns out that all my woes were due to running the server behind a router. With the help of a friendly networking guru, I installed shorewall (www.shorewall.net) firewall on the server and hooked it directly to the net. With a bit of futzing, it seemed to clear up all the problems. Luckily, my isp provides me (unbeknownst to me til now) 2 more or less static ip's. So, off to the store for a hub - then I'll have the server going directly to the hub, to the modem and serving directly to the net. the router will continue as is but with the hub between it and the modem. Check it out tomorrow night to see if it all works out...