Can't use "www" url to webserver on LAN?

Last night my ISP switched my bridged ethernet ADSL connection to PPPoE.
<sob!>

I left the modem in bridged mode and installed roaring penguin. The install
went well and I am back online. Everything works; sendmail, vsftpd, ipop3,
and sshd. I have an unusual situation now that I really cannot figure out for
the life of me. I use no-ip.com for DSN. Previously, I could access my web
server as www.<FQDN>.com from Internet Explorer from the two XP machines on
my LAN. The linux box is a router for these two machines. Now, I can no
longer access the web server this way unless I drop the www part and do
<FQDN>.com. The web server is accessable to anyone outside the LAN with the
www.prefix. The linux box itself can access the web serve with the www prefix
in the URL.

Out of frustration, I downloaded and installed lynx for win32 on one of the
XP LAN machines and it has no problem with the www prefix in the URL. I can
still access the site on the two XP LAN machines, but only without the www
prefix in the URL.

When I try to use www.<my FQDN>.com, I get an "Under Construction" web page
that tells me there is no default page for this site. Also by trying to
access any page on the domain with the www prefix, I get "page not found"
messages and these are not apache messages but appear to be MS pages. Also,
the messages sometimes do not come at all and I get a timeout error.

I really do not understand this, nothing has changed but for switching from
bridged ethernet to a PPPoE ADSL connection. no-ip.com gives me DNS for the
www prefix, lynx has no problem with this, yet IE will not find the actual
site if the www prefix is used on either of the two LAN machines.

I could just skip the www prefix in the URL for local browsing but this
really is bugging the crap out of me because I just do not understand what is
going on, nor how to fix it. Can someone help please?

--
~Ohmster

Ohmster wrote:

> Last night my ISP switched my bridged ethernet ADSL connection to PPPoE.
> <sob!>

[ snip ]
> I could access my web server as www.<FQDN>.com from Internet Explorer from
> the two XP machines on my LAN. The linux box is a router for these two
> machines. Now, I can no longer access the web server this way unless I
> drop the www part and do <FQDN>.com. The web server is accessable to
[snip]
> Out of frustration, I downloaded and installed lynx for win32 on one of
> the XP LAN machines and it has no problem with the www prefix in the URL.
> I can still access the site on the two XP LAN machines, but only without
> the www prefix in the URL.
[snip]
> I really do not understand this, nothing has changed but for switching
> from bridged ethernet to a PPPoE ADSL connection. no-ip.com gives me DNS
> for the www prefix, lynx has no problem with this, yet IE will not find
> the actual site if the www prefix is used on either of the two LAN
> machines.

Have you tried clearing the IE cache?

Peter F <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in
news:yJc%b.975$(E-Mail Removed):

> Have you tried clearing the IE cache?
>

Hmmm, didn't think of that, but the strange "under construction" page was
never in the cache to begin with. Trying it now...

No luck. Took forever to try and access the site and then timed out. Dropped
the www suffix and it found the site right away. ...damn!

That was a pretty good idea to try anyway, thanks Peter. Anyone got any other
ideas? This is really bugging me. <grrrrrrr>

(lynx for win32 still finds it right away.)

--
~Ohmster

Ohmster <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message news:<Xns949AE0830917Dmybigone@216.77.188.18>...
> Peter F <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in
> news:yJc%b.975$(E-Mail Removed):
>
> > Have you tried clearing the IE cache?
> >
>
> Hmmm, didn't think of that, but the strange "under construction" page was
> never in the cache to begin with. Trying it now...
>
> No luck. Took forever to try and access the site and then timed out. Dropped
> the www suffix and it found the site right away. ...damn!
>
> That was a pretty good idea to try anyway, thanks Peter. Anyone got any other
> ideas? This is really bugging me. <grrrrrrr>
>
> (lynx for win32 still finds it right away.)


Try Mozilla, Netscape, Opera and others.

From what, or where, IE should get/read 'www' part?

"Ohmster" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:Xns949AD7BE59782mybigone@216.77.188.18...
> Last night my ISP switched my bridged ethernet ADSL connection to PPPoE.
> <sob!>
>
> I left the modem in bridged mode and installed roaring penguin. The
install
> went well and I am back online. Everything works; sendmail, vsftpd, ipop3,
> and sshd. I have an unusual situation now that I really cannot figure out
for
> the life of me. I use no-ip.com for DSN. Previously, I could access my web
> server as www.<FQDN>.com from Internet Explorer from the two XP machines
on
> my LAN. The linux box is a router for these two machines. Now, I can no
> longer access the web server this way unless I drop the www part and do
> <FQDN>.com. The web server is accessable to anyone outside the LAN with
the
> www.prefix. The linux box itself can access the web serve with the www
prefix
> in the URL.

I'm surprised that you can connect using the www prefix at all. My
no-ip.com DNS record does not contain an "A" record pointer for www.
Attempting to ping or otherwise connect using a www prefix results in an
unknown host error.

JW

"Jacob Westenbach" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news9q%b.4089$(E-Mail Removed)...
> "Ohmster" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
> I use no-ip.com for DSN. Previously, I could access my web
> > server as www.<FQDN>.com from Internet Explorer from the two XP machines
> on
> > my LAN. The linux box is a router for these two machines. Now, I can no
> > longer access the web server this way unless I drop the www part and do
> > <FQDN>.com. The web server is accessable to anyone outside the LAN with
> the
> > www.prefix. The linux box itself can access the web serve with the www
> prefix
> > in the URL.
>
> I'm surprised that you can connect using the www prefix at all. My
> no-ip.com DNS record does not contain an "A" record pointer for www.
> Attempting to ping or otherwise connect using a www prefix results in an
> unknown host error.
>
> JW
>
When you use www., you're telling the browser to go look for host (or
virtual host) www on domain <myfqdn>. Try putting the hostname of the
web server box in front of the fqdn. (e.g., I'd have thunderbird.myfqdn.net,
vehicle.myfqdn.net, and entheos.myfqdn.net.) I've found that sometimes
omitting the www in IE, it picks it up, presumably because that's what
the server calls itself.

It sounds like, in this case, things are opposite of what we've all
come to expect - i.e. IE is doing exactly what it's told, and your
other browsers "take care of it for you." ;-)

Good Luck!
Rich

"Rich Grise" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in
news9r%b.11430$(E-Mail Removed):

> When you use www., you're telling the browser to go look for host (or
> virtual host) www on domain <myfqdn>. Try putting the hostname of the
> web server box in front of the fqdn. (e.g., I'd have
> thunderbird.myfqdn.net, vehicle.myfqdn.net, and entheos.myfqdn.net.)
> I've found that sometimes omitting the www in IE, it picks it up,
> presumably because that's what the server calls itself.
>
> It sounds like, in this case, things are opposite of what we've all
> come to expect - i.e. IE is doing exactly what it's told, and your
> other browsers "take care of it for you." ;-)
>
> Good Luck!
> Rich

Hmmm, the machine name before the FQDN does not work in either lynx or IE. If
I try to do this with IE, I get page not found. If I try this with lynx on
win32, I get "looking for "www.<machine name>.<FQDN>.com", "guessing", and
then a dial up prompt appears, asking me if I would like to dial out to try
this. WTF, I am on a LAN fer Chrissakes, what the heck do I want to dial out
for?

Look here:
http://ohmster.com/~ohmster/test/snap011.gif

(You can probably use the www prefix for this URL, I cannot on my LAN since
switching to PPPoE) This is the setup page at no-ip.com for my domain. See
how www.ohmster.com points to my current IP. Also the domain itself, the
prefix "mail", and the prefix "ftp" all point to my current IP.

Look here:
http://ohmster.com/~ohmster/test/snap013.gif

This is what I sometimes see if I use the "www" prefix when viewing my site
from my LAN on IE. That is an MS server page and not an apache page, I am
almost sure of it unless IE is generating the page, it might be.

Look here:
http://ohmster.com/~ohmster/test/snap014.gif

This is the current site as it should appear and probably would appear if you
do it from your location with the www prefix as in:
http://www.ohmster.com

If I try http://ohmster.ohmster.com with IE or anything else from my LAN (The
actual hostname of the machine is "ohmster", the domain is "ohmster.com".), I
get a 400 error, page not found. If I try this with win32 lynx, lynx
indicates that "www.ohmster.ohmser.com" cannot be found, and then starts
"guessing" with www.ohmster.ohmster.com, www.ohmster.ohmster.net,
www.ohmster.ohmster.edu, etc. and finally dumps me at "yeah.net" and give up.
Also while all of this guessing is going on, I get windows prompts for me to
use my dial up to connect to the internet. This never, ever happend with
bridged ethernet. Man this PPPoE really does suck.

Don't get me wrong, I am not whining to the newsgroup, I am really puzzled by
this and some of the finest networking brains in the world can be found in
comp.os.linux.networking (This is very true). It would be really neat to
figure this out and try to find out what is really going on here. Oh sure, I
can just shup up and drop the www prefix but what is really important to me
is the learning process and the "how come this is happening". I hope that
some of you would like to come along for the ride to see if we can beat this
bugger down and figure it out or is it just that PPPoE really does suck the
big one and I have to live with it or dump my ISP and pay the extra 10 bucks
a month to swith to a decent provider in my area that gives a static IP
address, real bridged ethernet, and really does not care what you do with it
as long as you don't but the hell out of everyone running spam factory, etc.

I have never had this issue before in years of running the same setup, the
only difference now is that I no longer have a bridged ethernet connection
and have to run Roaring Penguin now to connect with linux. The Westell
Wirespeed 2100 modem will log in for me and act as a router if I wish but
then I will get stuck with a NAT address and cannot run servers anymore.
There is another option in that the modem will also offer an IP
passthrough/DMS (whatever that means) but I am not sure how this would work.
The modem setup that is done with http://launchmodem or http://192.168.1.254.
This is done in XP by setting your TCP to DHCP, fully automatic. For some
reason, this never works in linux with any browser. Clicking on the IP
passthrough will offer to set this up on the current PC (drop down box lists
corrent PC or "User configured PC" and offers this message:

"NOTE: If “User Configured PC” is selected, a local PC must be manually
configured to have the Passthrough IP address."

I dunno if this will "fix" this issue, I really do like having full control
of the network connection directly from linux. This is a bitching modem
though, you can do all sorts of port forwarding and routing with this modem.

Thanks for jumping in there and offering this explanation Rich, I really do
appreciate it and this oppertunity to discuss this with my peers and my
mentors. Thank you all for such wonderful support and discussions. You guys
are the *best* in the whole world!

--
~Ohmster

"Jacob Westenbach" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in
news9q%b.4089$(E-Mail Removed):

> I'm surprised that you can connect using the www prefix at all. My
> no-ip.com DNS record does not contain an "A" record pointer for www.
> Attempting to ping or otherwise connect using a www prefix results in an
> unknown host error.
>
> JW

Look here:
http://ohmster.com/~ohmster/test/snap011.gif

and here:
http://ohmster.com/~ohmster/test/snap015.gif

This shows the account at no-ip.com. There is an "A" pointer for
www.ohmster.com. What does "A pointer" mean, Jacob? This always used to work
before with bridged ethernet, now using PPPoE it does not seem to work.
Shoudn't this "just work" as it always had? PPPoE really does suck, doesn't
it, it's not just me that feels this way, is it?

By the way, this newsgroup and this discussion is my linux "University". I
cannot afford college, either finacially or for the time, what with paying a
mortgage and supporting a family. All of this discussion, whether it actually
"fixes" the problem or not, is very much appreciated.

Also see my reply to Rich, much more detail there. Thanks for helping and
for your time, Jacob.

--
~Ohmster

(E-Mail Removed) (hiwa) wrote in
news:(E-Mail Removed) m:

> Try Mozilla, Netscape, Opera and others.
>
> From what, or where, IE should get/read 'www' part?

I have Mozilla, Konqueror, lynx, and Galeon on my linux computer. I want to
keep IE for the XP box, althoug I wish they would hurry up with that IE
service pack that will finally offer to block popups and do some of the other
neat stuff that Mozilla has long since embraced. (I swear, I really think it
takes a few sticks of dyanamite up their asses over there at MS to make them
actually give people what they want and what they need. They sure are slow
about this in general. <g>) This is not such a terrible issue, to not be able
to use the www prefix on my LAN to access my site, it is more of a buring
desire to learn what is actually going on here. What does this statement
acutally mean, HGA?

"From what, or where, IE should get/read 'www' part?"

This always had worked before on my LAN with IE when I used a bridged
ethernet ADSL conection, now with PPPoE, it just "isn't the same" anymore.
Lynx for win32 actually does not have a problem with the www part, althoug
lynx does seem to "try harder" to find a URL, it will do quite a bit of
guessing and trying if you put an invalid URL in the goto line.

Hey thanks for jumping in there, HGA, I really do appeciate the feedback,
suggestions, and comments.

--
~Ohmster

Ohmster wrote:
> This shows the account at no-ip.com. There is an "A" pointer for
> www.ohmster.com. What does "A pointer" mean, Jacob? This always used to work
> before with bridged ethernet, now using PPPoE it does not seem to work.
> Shoudn't this "just work" as it always had? PPPoE really does suck, doesn't
> it, it's not just me that feels this way, is it?
>
> By the way, this newsgroup and this discussion is my linux "University". I
> cannot afford college, either finacially or for the time, what with paying a
> mortgage and supporting a family. All of this discussion, whether it actually
> "fixes" the problem or not, is very much appreciated.
>
> Also see my reply to Rich, much more detail there. Thanks for helping and
> for your time, Jacob.
>
I also had the same problem.
The solution I found was to edit Windows's hosts-file
(C:\WinNT\system32\drivers\etc\hosts on my machine).
Just adding:
<ip> www.<fqdn>
works like a charm