Strange errors = bad.

[liljim]

Alright, this isn't so much a programming question, more of a question related to strange server behaviour....

As of about 3 weeks ago, we started to get a problem when uploading files to whatever server (this seems to occur with whichever server we're uploading to).

4 computers share a DSL connection in one of the offices at work. 3 PC's, 1 Mac. The computer from which the connection is shared is just a slave, and sits happily behind a firewall.

Whenever one of us uploads something to a server (we have one main one, and I occasionally upload to a couple of personal accounts), all pages on that server become unavailable to each of the computers sharing the connection. For example, I open a file to make some changes, upload the file, then hit refresh to see how the changes look... the screen goes white, and sits waiting.... and waiting..... and waiting. Occasionally after a minute or so, the page will act as if it has reloaded, yet none of the changes appear on the screen. More often though, the page will just hang for ages, then go to the irritating, "page cannot be displayed" message. This tends to happen more frequently with the php and perl based files... for instance, files with .html and .shtml extensions appear immediately (as long as you specify the full path to the file).

Of late, I've resorted to reconnecting to our ISP, then pressing refresh.... which refreshes the changed files immediately (as you'd expect it to). However, with other machines sharing the same connection, this isn't practical (and doesn't solve why it's happening in the first place).

I know that the problem is a local one (ie that it relates specifically to machines on the network using that particular connection), as other people outside the office are able to connect and serve up the pages when we're not. In fact the technicians who look after the server we have the most problems with have told me as much (though they didn't even dain to offer a solution, which is why we're in the process of moving to a dedicated server).

This happens with different ftp programs, so I don't think it's anything to do with settings in the ftp programs. I suspect it's more likely to be something to do with the firewall, though I've checked through all the settings (it's a software based network firewall) and nothing jumps out at me as being wrong from that. The question is, what? It's driving me fucking nuts!

[aladinsane]

At 7/25/01 04:05 PM, liljim wrote: Quite a bit

Hmmm sounds interesting. I have a similar, possibly related problem at work. Are you on BT Openworld by any chance?

Our problem sounds almost the same but it's not just when we upload, it' pretty much permanent. We have 8 computers connected through ADSL and we just cannot access any sites on our own servers through it without routing through a proxy server. Every other site in the universe is just fine except the ones we really need access to.

The explanation from BT is that somewhere between their servers and ours there is some kind of block on the IP address of our server, but that is bullshit because we just switched to a new network, with totally different IP's, and we still have the same problem.

It's got me totally stumped too :(

[liljim]

At 7/25/01 06:31 PM, aladinsane wrote: Hmmm sounds interesting. I have a similar, possibly related problem at work. Are you on BT Openworld by any chance?

Yes! We are!

Don't tell me this problem's with Openworld. I might have known it'd be down to those bastards. :(

Let me know if you find a solution.