Forum OpenACS Q&A: browser question

Posted by David Kuczek on 10/09/01 12:06 AM

On my computer (RH 6.2) that I use to connect to our server it
happend from time to time that Netscape stalled right after I opened
it. So I installed Mozilla and it didn't stall anymore.

But today I connected to the internet, opened Mozilla and it didn't
stall but simply didn't find a single web-page on the internet
instead (i.e. yahoo.com)... I could still connect to our server via
ssh, so there was definitely a connect to the internet. Netscape
couldn't connect to a web-page either.

I rebooted couple times, but nothing changed... Is there a weird
process running that is blocking my Mozilla (maybe some problems with
dns???) and that I have to kill?

Has anyone seen this before?

2: Response to browser question - little off topic (response to 1)

Posted by Jerry Asher on 10/09/01 12:46 AM

What happens if you bypass DNS by typing the IP address directly into the URL?

http://216.115.108.243/~~[goats.cx~~yahoo]

On several of my linux servers, I will often times find in the aolserver logs messages that gethostbyname has temporarily failed. I can't imagine why it would fail aside from bad isp (or maybe bad sysadmin (me)), but I would think that if DNS is failing for whatever reason, that would be a good reason for Mozilla to choke.

And what happens to Opera, Lynx, or Konqueror at those times?

3: Response to browser question - little off topic (response to 1)

Posted by David Kuczek on 10/09/01 01:00 AM

I typed in the IP of our server directly into the URL and the Mozilla sign on the top right kept rotating, but didn't load the web page...

The same happend as I put in the IP that you posted (Yahoo...)!

I don't have Opera or Lynx installed on my computer, I guess, but I could install those browsers and try again...

4: Response to browser question - little off topic (response to 1)

Posted by Jerry Asher on 10/09/01 01:29 AM

If typing the IP address in directly doesn't take you there, I would think it's a network problem not related to DNS. Yahoo is pingable. What happens when you ping it? Or /usr/sbin/traceroute it?

[reno4gov@web foo]# /usr/sbin/traceroute yahoo.com
traceroute: Warning: yahoo.com has multiple addresses; using 216.115.108.243
traceroute to yahoo.com (216.115.108.243), 30 hops max, 38 byte packets
 1  gateway (209.233.238.254)  15.017 ms  16.224 ms  14.435 ms
 2  core3-g2-0.snfc21.pbi.net (206.171.134.130)  15.762 ms  15.504 ms  15.195 ms
 3  edge2-g1-0.snfc21.pbi.net (209.232.130.3)  14.844 ms  15.410 ms  14.435 ms
 4  bb1-pos3-0-oc12.sntc01.pbi.net (63.203.35.2)  16.315 ms  18.188 ms  18.126 ms
 5  bb1-p6-0.pxpaca.sbcglobal.net (64.161.1.18)  18.340 ms  16.559 ms  20.359 ms
 6  * * *
 7  ge-3-3-0.msr1.pao.yahoo.com (216.115.101.42)  16.334 ms ge-1-3-0.msr1.pao.yahoo.com (216.115.100.150)  17.053 ms ge-1-2-0.msr2.pao.yahoo.com (216.115.100.154)  17.598 ms
 8  vlan28.bas1-m.snv.yahoo.com (216.115.100.122)  19.558 ms  18.512 ms vl20.bas1.snv.yahoo.com (216.115.100.225)  19.253 ms
 9  img3.yahoo.com (216.115.108.243)  18.585 ms  18.093 ms  19.415 ms
[reno4gov@web foo]#

5: Response to browser question - little off topic (response to 1)

Posted by Jerry Asher on 10/09/01 01:31 AM

Oh. Definitely install Opera. (You're sure Lynx didn't come preinstalled?) It's always good to have different implementations of the same layer, to isolate problems. In this case, underlying network problems, but at other times to determine if some page ugliness was caused by you, or a browser bug.

6: Response to browser question - little off topic (response to 1)

Posted by Jonathan Marsden on 10/11/01 11:10 AM

I'd suggest testing access to port 80 of the desired web server using telnet:

10:06:13 jonathan@jm1:~$ telnet 64.58.76.224 80
Trying 64.58.76.224...
Connected to w3.dcx.yahoo.com (64.58.76.224).
Escape character is '^]'.
GET / HTTP-1.1

HTTP/1.0 200 OK
Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2001 09:06:40 GMT
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/html

<html><head><title>Yahoo!</title>...

[lots of HTML output snipped]...

...</body></html>
Connection closed by foreign host.
10:06:43 jonathan@jm1:~$

You need to press Enter twice after typing in the GET command. If you can't telnet to the web server's port, your browser won't be able to connect to it either, for the same reason. This is therefore a handy and 100% browser-independent test that you have appropriate connectivity to the web server concerned.

7: Response to browser question - little off topic (response to 1)

Posted by David Kuczek on 10/11/01 11:22 AM

This might be a German problem. I have pppd and pppoe installed in order to make DSL working...

My brother had the same problem with RH7.1 yesterday. He also connects to German Telecom via DSL.

The weirdest thing is that without having done anything everything went back to smooth the next day...

Thanks for the advices anyways. I will try those the next time my browser goes crazy again.

Forum OpenACS Q&A: browser question - little off topic