[TriLUG] road runner and the disappearing web site.

[skippy1 at hickorytech.net]

> Hello , I have been experimenting with eGroupWare and have run into some
> difficulty with....well I'm not sure.

Aren't computers fun?

> The set up is just for experimentation so it's nothing terribly robust
> or complicated. I have eGroupWare running on FC2, with up to date patch
> levels, using Apache, PHP, etc. As I noted, eGroupWare WAS working fine
> on this setup, I was able to access the site from work and home. Then
> this past week, over the weekend, all of a sudden I can't get to the
> site from anywhere but behind my NetGear RP114 router, i.e. 192.168.0.x.
> I can't do a traceroute from work, it times out with NO (0)
> hops...something I've not seen before. I have reset the RP114 back to
> default, re-entered everything as before (after taking careful notes),
> to include the port forwarding settings which was just port 80 anyway. I
> have tried changing the listening port for apache from 80 to 8080 to
> some other values, none of which worked (sorry for incorrect terminology
> regarding 'listening port' I am not sure what the correct term is).
> Tried road runner email support, ok I should have known better, but I
> didn't know that then. Being barely literate regarding networking I
> think I am barking up a tree until I can traceroute to the site. Oh, I
> almost forgot, I use DYNDNS for the web site domain,
> peekaboo.homelinux.net (208.11.191.109). I emailed the excellent DYNDNS
> support folks who responded promptly and attempted to provide advice as
> to ways to troubleshoot the problem even though DNS was proven not to be
> the issue. What a concept, support that actually attempts to help! I
> think I need to remove the NetGear and try going direct with the web
> server but thought I would poll the extremely knowledgeable trilug
> community first.

The trace I get from BellSouth starts dropping after:

ttl  13:  ICMP Time Exceeded from sl-smtr-1-0.sprintlink.net (144.232.190.22)
        54.466 ms       56.959 ms       55.990 ms
ttl  14:  ICMP Time Exceeded from host12.utelfla.com (205.244.126.12)
        54.791 ms       55.368 ms       57.702 ms
ttl  15:  ICMP Time Exceeded from host210.sprintnetops.net (206.107.113.210)
        62.892 ms       65.414 ms       64.042 ms
ttl  16:no response     no response

If you can get to it from the inside, its probably not the eGroupWare. 
You might try changing the port for apache and the port forwarding on the
router  to something random; if RR is blocking port 80 incoming they might
very well be blocking 8080.

If that doesn't do it, then the Netgear is probably the prime suspect. 
When you reset it, did you do a full power cycle (ie leave it off for 60
seconds or so)?  Sometimes those little boxes can get stuck in a funky
state and just redoing the settings might not fix it.

> I am not sure if I am being 'blocked' by road runner. I can't imagine
> why, the site has barely any traffic at all, I am the only user defined
> to eGroupWare, as I said it was for experimentation. A friend told me
> that if I have an open email relay they would block me. As far as I know
> there is no email server running on that box. eGroupWare has an email
> app that I have pointed at road runners POP/SMTP servers but that is it
> as far as email goes.  If I have stepped on road runner toes is there
> any way to find out what the issue is so I can fix it? I emailed
> security at nc.rr.com but they haven't replied (what can you expect for
> $40/month).

Well, personally I expect time responses from companies I do business
with, but I've gotten used to disapointment.  ;)

Skippy
skippy at skippylair.net