Reply to: Ubuntu Woes

[Peoplesoft bloke]

You run along and play with your Fisher Price computer, there's a good prawn

Update: BTW, Vista is susceptible to the same problems as those described for the latest Ubuntu kernel update, according to those nice people at Microsoft

PB, it might be worthwhile checking your Vista setup to see if you can configure it to trigger the same problem (not because you want the same problem, but just to help with diagnosis).

Prawn - I do use Vista when I have to, Ubuntu is just for the majority of the time when I want to actually get stuff done and can't wait the hours it takes Vista to be bothered to boot up and do things. (to be fair to it - it is bloatarama and I only have a low spec lappy)

Nick F - I know what you mean about trying to make Vista do the same, but since I can't be sure to get the bad routers every time, it might take some time until I got it to misbehave. I have configured Ubuntu not to use TCP windows scaling for now - I don't download huge volumes so I can live without it (if I've understood what it's for correctly) and so far (fingers crossed) it seems to be working - I am posting using Ubuntu/Firefox3.

Thanks to everyone for the help and suggestions

[NickFitz]

FFS, delete the crappy Linux OS, it never works and never will and use a real OS, with real applications that does the job in hand. Vista SP1 rules.

HTH

You run along and play with your Fisher Price computer, there's a good prawn

Update: BTW, Vista is susceptible to the same problems as those described for the latest Ubuntu kernel update, according to those nice people at Microsoft

PB, it might be worthwhile checking your Vista setup to see if you can configure it to trigger the same problem (not because you want the same problem, but just to help with diagnosis).

[NickFitz]

OK it appears that there's a wrinkle to do with the way some routers handle linux traffic - the problem is to do with the routers not linux, allegedly - but it's all a bit propellor head stuff for me - I was going to try the fix suggested here but the blighter has suddenly started working again

I think the problem might be this but I'm not sure.

That sounds like a promising line of enquiry, given that your problem arose after a recent update, and the fact that it works OK sometimes (suggesting that on those occasions there's no broken boxes upstream of you).

[DimPrawn]

FFS, delete the crappy Linux OS, it never works and never will and use a real OS, with real applications that does the job in hand. Vista SP1 rules.

HTH

[Peoplesoft bloke]

I think the problem might be this but I'm not sure.

[Peoplesoft bloke]

OK it appears that there's a wrinkle to do with the way some routers handle linux traffic - the problem is to do with the routers not linux, allegedly - but it's all a bit propellor head stuff for me - I was going to try the fix suggested here but the blighter has suddenly started working again

[voodooflux]

The problem with raising a ticket is that it plainly (to me) isn't a three problem - since I get pretty much 100% reliability uising the exact same connection method and hardware in Vista - if I complain that I only have a problem in Ubuntu they will no doubt tell me to use Vista (there's probably even a list of supported stuff somewhere that excludes Ubuntu).

I agree that it doesn't sound like a Three issue, but they might be able to offer some insight into the problem - hopefully you aren't the only Three Mobile Broadband customer using Ubuntu.

I think this is going to turn out to be something daft and esoteric about my Ubuntu installation

Yep, I think you're right.

Another question (which you might have already answered, apologies if so): does this problem only manifest with HTTP traffic e.g. can you use FTP, resolve hostnames with nslookup, etc.

[Peoplesoft bloke]

It certainly wouldn't hurt to raise a ticket with Three and see if they have any ideas. They've seemed pretty competent when I've spoken to them in the past, once you get past the initial "scripted" responses anyway.

I've also had intermittment network issues with Three, usually manifesting as a good few hours worth of network timeouts despite having what appears to be a stable HSDPA connection. This was with Windows XP though. Surprisingly these issues always seem to resolve themselves within minutes of raising a support ticket

----

As a complete aside, I'm on Three Mobile Broadband "Monthly" contract and I appear to be connected through a proxy i.e. my local ip address as reported by ipconfig is different to that reported by something like "whatsmyip.com". However, my nephew is on Three Mobile Broadband PAYG, and he doesn't appear to be behind a proxy i.e. his local address is the same as his public facing address. Just thought that was "interesting".

The problem with raising a ticket is that it plainly (to me) isn't a three problem - since I get pretty much 100% reliability uising the exact same connection method and hardware in Vista - if I complain that I only have a problem in Ubuntu they will no doubt tell me to use Vista (there's probably even a list of supported stuff somewhere that excludes Ubuntu).

I think this is going to turn out to be something daft and esoteric about my Ubuntu installation but I don't have enough background to know where to look really.

[TimberWolf]

Dunno, but one annoying thing I get in Ubuntu with Firefox is that when I right-click to open a link in a new window, about 1 time in 4 Firefox/Ubuntu will do some other random thing instead. Luckily not something terminal such as wiping the hard drive. I've seen this feature being discussed on the fora but didn't spot a resolution.

[voodooflux]

It certainly wouldn't hurt to raise a ticket with Three and see if they have any ideas. They've seemed pretty competent when I've spoken to them in the past, once you get past the initial "scripted" responses anyway.

I've also had intermittment network issues with Three, usually manifesting as a good few hours worth of network timeouts despite having what appears to be a stable HSDPA connection. This was with Windows XP though. Surprisingly these issues always seem to resolve themselves within minutes of raising a support ticket

----

As a complete aside, I'm on Three Mobile Broadband "Monthly" contract and I appear to be connected through a proxy i.e. my local ip address as reported by ipconfig is different to that reported by something like "whatsmyip.com". However, my nephew is on Three Mobile Broadband PAYG, and he doesn't appear to be behind a proxy i.e. his local address is the same as his public facing address. Just thought that was "interesting".

[Peoplesoft bloke]

Hmm well on arrival at clientco this am, I couldn't get any websites at all to load . I disconnected from 3g and reconnected, but still the same prob. I was getting timeouts on everything I tried (basically this site and google mail)

I tried pinging the primary DNS listed on the details from syslog ;

local IP address 10.56.121.***
remote IP address 10.6.6.6*
primary DNS address 172.31.140.**
secondary DNS address 172.30.140.**

Script /etc/ppp/ip-up started (pid 6272)
Script /etc/ppp/ip-up finished (pid 6272), status = 0x0

(I've put the stars in cos I'm paranoid)

Got no response from ping

tried reboot and reconnect - no joy so rebooted into vista - everything works fine (using firefox to do this):

PPP adapter Nokia N73 (2):

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Nokia N73 (2)
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . :
DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : No
Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes
IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 10.56.128.***(Preferred)
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.255
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 0.0.0.0
DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : 172.31.140.**
172.30.140.**
NetBIOS over Tcpip. . . . . . . . : Disabled

Interestingly (or perhaps not) the local IP is different (I guess this is just cos they allocate them each time I connect), but the DNS addresses are the same and I get timed out trying to ping them - however, everything works in Vista but not Ubuntu - I am still at a loss and it would help if I had any idea what I was doing. I've had no useful responses on the unbuntu forums

[NickFitz]

I suspect the forum actually timed out as it got tired of waiting (but I am in no way an expert) what d'ya reckon?

The odd things are:

a) It doesn't always do this
b) It never does it if I use Vista and the same phone connection.

Umm... I can't remember what the default timeout setting is in PHP (which might in any case be changed by vBulletin, which CUK runs on) but given that you mentioned that it all worked before a recent Ubuntu update, and the response error you posted, one is driven to speculate about the possibility that somewhere in the protocol stack, the request is going off via good old IPv4 and then something that changed in the update is butting in and trying to default to IPv6 (for reasons that I can't explain). But I may be heading off down an overly-complex blind alley there. Or not.

I'm tempted to speculate further, but without detailed evidence of what's going on I'd just be guessing on the basis of no evidence, so maybe it's better to say that I haven't got a clue at this stage, but given the evidence (including your post subsequent to the one quoted above), it may be an IP versioning issue involving the interaction of some core components of the latest Ubuntu update.

Or not.

(BTW, I'm trying to win a prize for the greatest number of uses of the word "evidence" in one sentence.)

[Peoplesoft bloke]

Right - config changed to ignore IPv6 and so far so good - fingers crossed (and thanks)

[Peoplesoft bloke]

Yup, it's the same kind of thing, but Charles has a whole bunch of useful extra features which you have to add yourself via scripting on Fiddler.

Giving a presentation on HTTP recently, I used Charles to show the BBC News homepage with the ITN logo at the top

Ok this is interesting - Charles tells me the reason I get the offer of a php download is as (almost) you predicted - no header download because the connection was reset before it was delivered:-

URL http://forums.contractoruk.com/newre...reply&p=595653
Status Failed
Failure Remote server closed the connection before sending response header

I suspect the forum actually timed out as it got tired of waiting (but I am in no way an expert) what d'ya reckon?

The odd things are:

a) It doesn't always do this
b) It never does it if I use Vista and the same phone connection.

I broke all the rules by changing two things - I tried altering the Firefox settings so it doesn't use IPv6 but that didn't seem to make any difference - I am wondering about changing the settings for unbuntu as a whole so I'll try that next.

As for Gmail - that never loaded so I never got a report from Charles after it sent the "get"

I'm posting this in Vista but using the Nokia/3 connection.

[Peoplesoft bloke]

Well NetworkManager is the Linux doohicky that's "supposed" to maintain a network connection at all times. Mainly geared for WiFi users, so don't doubt you that by using a bluetooth connection it buggers up. Its not a very good piece of software IMHO. Oh yeah its that icon in the top right that looks like a network.

have you seen this link
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BluetoothDialup

http://www.spiration.co.uk/post/1307

Hope these can help you out. I don't use wifi and Linux so can't provide anything more.

Thanks anyway, but those links just tell me how to set up the bluetooth connection - mine already works fine. (I think the problem lies beyond the phone modem as it used to work fine.