Topic: Can't view website from inside LAN

[julian]

Hi All
I have an organisation that uses E-smith 5.1.2 as it's gateway and mail server. They have their website hosted externally, but they can't see any of the changes to such when they are made. Graphics, text changes etc are missing. It seems  to be looking at an old site and won't refresh. Other viewers outside this network are able to see it  and any updates OK.
The e-smith is not running as proxy - so the browsers are going directly to the web
I have checked that the Hostname setting in server manager is correct for this site - www, is locally visible, is remotely located with correct global  IP address for that site. The other fields are blank.  This is correct for another organisation with exactly the same setup,  and we have no problems there.
Have ensured that the temp internet folders on the client machines are empty so as to remove any  caching issues at all.  A ping from all client machines to the www address pings the correct web IP address, so DNS seems to be OK........

Anything else that I may be missing in all of this? Am reluctant to reboot, but may have to to see if this solves it.  Is there a cache on the e-smith that I can clean out ?

Thanks
Julian, Australia

[Neal Collins]

A lot of ISP's run transparent proxy caches nowadays and there really is nothing you can do about it other than wait (or change ISP, some proxies seem to be better than others). In my experience the problem usually resolves itself after a day or 2. Can be a pain if you are trying to maintain a web site however!

[Paul Nesbit]

julian wrote:
>
> [...] They have their website hosted
> externally, but they can't see any of the changes to such
> when they are made. Graphics, text changes etc are missing.
> It seems  to be looking at an old site and won't refresh.
> Other viewers outside this network are able to see it  and
> any updates OK.
> The e-smith is not running as proxy - so the browsers are
> going directly to the web

Unless you explicitly disabled transparent proxying on the server, the server is proxying and caching http requests.  Your browser/workstation may also be caching data.  

To refresh the content from the source (and refresh the content in all caches in between) use your browsers "refresh from source" feature:  

  MS IE:  ctrl+refresh
  Mozilla/Netscape: shift+reload

Cheers,

  Paul, Canada

[RayG]

Try viewing the web site with Netscape. Once the page comes up, hit the reload button and Netscape will instruct all the proxies in the path to grab a fresh copy from the source.

This function used to be available with Internet Explorer by doing a CTL-R but does not seem to function properly these days.

With a newer version of e-smith, you can set up specific web sites that will be passed directly without being cached by squid. The server manager panel that provides that functionality does not work in SME 5.1.2.

[julian]

Thanks for that guys - I have tried the refresh side of things, so I think that I will have to take RayG's advice and update the e-smith installation.

Cheers
Julian

[RayG]

If the refresh with Netscape isn't working, then the problem is with the cache on the server offering up the pages. In that case, upgrading SME will not help you.

Making the move to SME 5.6 is well worth the effort for other reasons though.