Topic: Local websites asking for password...?

[Jason Judge]

I have a website on an i-bay and have set it up for access from the Internet with a password. However, it still asks for a password when I try to connect from the local network.

Pinging the website from the local network gives the correct local IP address. Connecting to the administration page through my domain refueses connection - it seems to think that as a local user on the local network, I am still accessing the admin page from the Internet.

It never used to work like this. What could have happened? Where do I look to solve this?

-- Jason

[Jason Judge]

Well, it does seem SME 5.1.2 can loose some of its routing configuration. Here's how I fixed the problem, though I have no idea how it came about.

By a hunch, I created a local network. This was a non-existant network but it resulted in the correct templates being rebuilt. I then deleted the local network and hey-presto - local access from my local machine again!

[Jason Judge]

Am I the only one having this problem, or am I not explaining it very well?

Several times now, SME 5.1.2 has lost all LOCAL NETWORK Web connectivity to the i-bay web sites/applications. This means I cannot get to the server manager using //www.mydomain/server-manager and I cannot get to any of the other web applications unless they have been opened to the Internet.

This problem persists across reboots. It goes away ONLY (and immediately) after I create a dummy local network then delete it again. I still don't have a clue what I do to trigger the problem.

Is it just me?

-- Jason

[Jason Judge]

It's happened again folks! This time there were NO conguration changes. Last night I could access the server manager screens via the main domain URL from my local network, today it just returns 'forbidden' when I try to do so.

SME has lost the ability to recognise local machines connecting to its web sites from a local network (it thinks they are all external network users).

What on earth is causing this? How do I stop it happening? Am I the only one this is happening to?

[Jason Judge]

Okay - I think I've figured it out.

I use a cable connection and Zoneedit to manage my dynamic IP address when the cable modem gives me a new IP. This works fine.

Except: the IP address of the external network is hard-coded into the httpd.conf file. This means that access to the e-smith manager through the domain name (even from the local network) fails as soon as my external IP address changes since it looks like I am coming in from an external IP address - i.e. the REAL external IP address being returned from the SME internal DNS does not match the old IP address in the httpd.conf file.

To fix this problem, I need to rebuild the httpd.conf file from the templates each time a change to the external IP address is detected. I use ddclient to notify Zoneedit of the IP change - so can I use this to trigger an event on the SME server so the configuration files are rebuilt at the same time? Anyone got any experience of this?

I know what needs to be done, but not how!

-- Jason

[Des Dougan]

Do a search on these forums for ZoneEdit - there's some information going back a year or so on using wget and the custom configuration setting to update the IP.

Des Dougan

[Jason Judge]

Thanks, I couldn't find any entries in the forums that tell me more than I already know: setting up ddclient to monitor the external IP address and notify Zoneedit of any changes. This bit works.

What I can't find is any information on how to use ddclient to inform SME 5.1.2 (is this a 5.1.2 peculiarity?) of this change. I seem to remember earlier versions of SME/E-smith had Zoneedit as an option in the dynamic DNS list when installing, SME 5.1.2 seems to have dropped this, so maybe there are some technical reasons why this does not work.

I assume there is some SME event script to run from within ddclient after it has updated the remote DNS (i.e. Zoneedit)?

-- JJ