Ubuntu Woes

[NickFitz]

I guess trying to debug this when it's happening could be worthwhile - your explanation sounds credible - if I can execute a few things from the command line to try and chase this down, I'd be happy to give it a go.

For debugging HTTP, try Charles - it's available for Windows, Linux and OS X and allows you to inspect the HTTP traffic between your browser and the net, allowing you to check headers and so forth. The trial version puts up the occasional nag screen and only runs for thirty minutes, but that's probably all you need anyway - if you can see that a file which contains some particular content doesn't have a Content-Type header, but when accessed from Windows it does, then it may be an Ubuntu problem.

The tricky bit is that, if some of 3's network is misconfigured, you don't know if you're connecting to a working bit or not, so you'd have to disconnect and reconnect several times to see what's going on.

 

[NickFitz]

You might want to try disabling IP6 - it seems that some people have had problems with Firefox wanting to use it when it shouldn't.

 

[Peoplesoft bloke]

For debugging HTTP, try Charles - it's available for Windows, Linux and OS X and allows you to inspect the HTTP traffic between your browser and the net, allowing you to check headers and so forth. The trial version puts up the occasional nag screen and only runs for thirty minutes, but that's probably all you need anyway - if you can see that a file which contains some particular content doesn't have a Content-Type header, but when accessed from Windows it does, then it may be an Ubuntu problem.

The tricky bit is that, if some of 3's network is misconfigured, you don't know if you're connecting to a working bit or not, so you'd have to disconnect and reconnect several times to see what's going on.

Thanks - I will take a look at this and the Ipv6 thing - of course, it's working perfectly at the moment, the swine.

[edit] Charles looks like the Fiddler - but the Fiddler is Microsoft only - interesting.......

 

[NickFitz]

[edit] Charles looks like the Fiddler - but the Fiddler is Microsoft only - interesting.......

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

 

[lilelvis2000]

Right I have checked this. It appears that Network Manager doesn't recognise connections made via an external modem - so it doesn't know I'm online (even though I am). This is why firefox always thinks it's offline at first and I have to change it so that firefox is set to online - at which point it works (if it's going to). That's a side issue though, I think. So to answer, no, I'm not using network manager. To initiate the connection I use pppd from the command line using a provider file I created using instructions I found on some geezers blog ages ago.

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.

 

[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.

 

[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/newreply.php?do=newreply&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]

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

 

[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]

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