Topic: disturbing occurances...

[zac]

hello all,

got a wee problem: recently changed my perfectly-working boxes internet connection - from isdn (using a router, assigning a permanent ip to the e-smith box), to adsl (using pppoe, again permanent ip, but assigned by ppp (duh)). no actual problems as such - web surfing, telnet, etc, etc...... all working beautifully. the problem? when you go to a non-existant web address, lets say, www.sdkjdshfjghseruhdfsughsdfgdfsgsdlgjkhsdfuighj.com, or any mis-typed address, it returns with the web page for the venue. (mail and web are hosted from the e-smith machine). if you consider that this venue is an internet cafe, this is less-than-wonderful.

so, i've gone through and checked all of the config files looking for a culprit - dns/resolver, squid and apache - to no avail. everything appears as it should. the only thing that's changed the config of the server was the process of changing to adsl - and i think that, perhaps, this would have done something to the config files to let this happen.

so; does anyone have a solution, or should i just bite the bullet and reinstall? meta-question: is the current release (4.1.1, i guess), actually stable for production usage? i've been reading about plenty of problems......

thanks for everyone's time,


zac

[Paul Miller]

zac wrote:
> the problem? when you go to a
> non-existant web address, lets say,
> www.sdkjdshfjghseruhdfsughsdfgdfsgsdlgjkhsdfuighj.com, or any
> mis-typed address, it returns with the web page for the
> venue.

Does the same thing occur when your client preference is set for a direct connection?

I experienced something similar once using e-smith 4.0.1 with a Netscape client set to use Manual proxy (squid.) I got the primary page I had set up for e-smith if that is what you mean by venue.

I don't remember for sure why this occurred but I vaguely remember going through the console and removing the primary and secondary DNS entries for my ISP following Charlie Brady's recommendation.

Around that time I discovered my ISP had abandoned a name server without notifying me. Apparently it is safer to use caching DNS and reference the root name servers that haven't changed for years rather than count on your ISP.

I do not currently have the problem using 4.0.1.

Hope this is of some use to you.

Regards,
Paul Miller

[zac]

Paul Miller wrote:
>
> Does the same thing occur when your client preference is set
> for a direct connection?

not entirely positive what you mean here ... the clients machines' browsers are set up with manual proxy servers (aka what you've said below)

> I experienced something similar once using e-smith 4.0.1 with
> a Netscape client set to use Manual proxy (squid.) I got the
> primary page I had set up for e-smith if that is what you
> mean by venue.

yah, well it's e-smith 4.0.1.... by venue i mean the internet cafe in question, but yes, upon failure the web browsers are going to the web page in 'primary' (the cafe's web page).

> I don't remember for sure why this occurred but I vaguely
> remember going through the console and removing the primary
> and secondary DNS entries for my ISP following Charlie
> Brady's recommendation.

arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh... unfortunately for me, there aren't any dns servers set ... uses dhcp to get all the settings.

could it possibly be an idea to tell it to use other (ie, another isps) dns servers as forwarders?

> Around that time I discovered my ISP had abandoned a name
> server without notifying me. Apparently it is safer to use
> caching DNS and reference the root name servers that haven't
> changed for years rather than count on your ISP.

unfortunately the root nameservers _do_ change - such is the reason for occasionally getting an updated root.cache (or whatever e-smith calls it) file. and my isp isn't *that* unreliable *grin*

> Hope this is of some use to you.

i'll try a few more things at this point. thanks for your help - if anyone has any other ideas, please tell me. the thing that's making me pull my hair out at the moment is that all the log files are blithely telling me that there aren't any errors whatsoever - if only i had an error to work with

zac