Topic: External https access fails

[Tony Howden]

Hi All

I updated my main server on Monday to 5.5u6 from 5.5u2 and having dealt with a number of unexpected issues, I have just found that my https access to the server from the outside world is failing.

The symptoms are that the http access to the site works fine, but https fails as server not found. There is no prompt about the certificate at all.

From the server itself, lynx to the same https works fine.

Any clues please ? I am searchiing logs and scouring my httpd.conf for changes but cannot see anything that indicates what is happening.

TIA

cheers
Tony

[Tony Howden]

Hi All

I have further narrowed this down to being an issue with the external interface. From another machine on the lan the https site works fine. Its only not functioning on the external interface. Running nmap across port 443 states that it's there and filtered so I assume that the masq process for 443 is ok.

Still looking.....

cheers
Tony

[Tony Howden]

Hi All

Okay. 'twas my own error.

Just for the record if someone is trying to work out why something isn't processing correctly in the server, it's most likely that something you did recently is causing the problem. However when you do wholesale changes it's difficult to know where to look.

As it turns out the issue was that I had added in a comment line to the last line of one of my custom templates for masq. This should have been easy and the template was not directly related to the problem with https so it took me a while to finally read slowly through the masq file that results from the template and I found that the lack of a carriage return/line feed at the end of my comment line, meant that the e-smith template expander appended the first output line of the next template to my comment line.

As the next template was the one that allows https traffic on the external interface I was effectively commenting this line out. Damn!  

The lesson here is always put carriage return/line feeds at the end of your comments.

cheers
Tony

[Dave Liquorice]

> I found that the lack of a carriage return/line feed at the end of my
> comment line, meant that the e-smith template expander appended the
> first output line of the next template to my comment line.

If this is repeatable it is well worth reporting to smebugs@mitel.com. There are some funnies with template expansion in 5.6u4.

Cheers
Dave.