# [SOLVED] Can't access school sites

## IronGland

Hi. I'm not sure how much help i'll receive from this but it's worth a shot. For some reason in gentoo I am not able to access flashline.kent.edu or flashmail.kent.edu. Those are my universites email sites (so to speak). When I try and access them in gentoo from either home (on my desktop or laptop) or from school (on my laptop) it just says waiting in the bottom left corner of the screen in firefox and nothing ever comes up. Same thing happens to a friend of mine as well. Any ideas on why I can't access these sites?Last edited by IronGland on Tue Oct 31, 2006 9:21 pm; edited 1 time in total

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## swooshOnLn

if yourfriends having the same problem, its more than likley on the server end and not yours

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## IronGland

It isn't the server end because I can access them in Windows. I can also access them from the schools Red Hat machines. And another friend of mine who uses Gentoo (different person) can access those sites as well.

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## swooshOnLn

are the sites pure html, or is it alot of facy flash, java, etc?

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## Enverex

 *swooshOnLn wrote:*   

> are the sites pure html, or is it alot of facy flash, java, etc?

 

He linked them in the first post.

They don't load for me either, Firefox just sits there trying to load but nothing ever happens.

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## swooshOnLn

Internet Explorer on Windows: works

Firefox on Windows: somebody check

Firefox on Linux: does not work

Konqueror On Linux : does not work

If somebody could check if it works in firefox on windows we could help pin-point the cause of this problem. So far it seems that the page will only render in Internet explorer (will be awnsered if somebody can check those site on firefox in windows). However, it could also be a java problem (since the site uses java). I will check firefox on windows as soon as my roommate gets back, unless somebody bets me to it.

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## Enverex

It's not that it doesn't render, it just doesn't load at all. It resolves the domain name to an IP then just halts as if you've suddenly lost your internet connection and you're waiting for it to time out.

Doesn't work in Firefox in Wine either (which reports Mozilla on NT5).

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## swooshOnLn

Im curious to see if it works on REAL windows w/ firefox. If to doesnt, then the website was made to work with only Windows IE, or at least wasnt made to be compatable with anythign else (there is no reason for the page NOT to load on fiefox on linux, or firefox on windows, unless it simply isnt compatable.)

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## Enverex

Sounds eerily like it may be doing a check for Windows serverside and just stopping if it doesn't detect it...

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## Kaste

 *Enverex wrote:*   

> Sounds eerily like it may be doing a check for Windows serverside and just stopping if it doesn't detect it...

 

That's impossible if he says that he can use it from a Red Hat server at school. 

It's not working on Opera under linux either. I tried several identification strings.

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## IronGland

It does work in firefox under windows. Thats my primary browser on windows (and on linux  :Smile:   ). Also, the red hat machines at school use firefox and I can access the sites on firefox in red hat. There is no flash involved but they do use Java.

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## smlgbl

Could it be, that you need to use a vpn or maybe just a proxy of the school to let you onto those sites? That's the case with my university. To access internal pages, you need to connect via vpn, but it used to work also with just using their proxy.

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## IronGland

Nah, I don't think so. We do have a proxy server we can use because some professors do not let outsiders access some of their material but that is not needed for flashline.kent.edu or flashmail.kent.edu. And I do not use a vpn or proxy in windows so I don't believe I should have to use one in linux. Plus a friend of mine who also uses gentoo is able to access those sites w/o a vpn or proxy but yet another friend of mine who also uses gentoo is in the same boat I am.

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## smlgbl

I just tried to access the site with firefox 2.0 under windows, and it gives me this first:

```
Browser Problem

Warning:

The browser you are using is not supported.

This site uses technologies (i.e., JavaScript, Cookies, and Java) that may not be supported in this browser. You do not need to use a supported browser to enter, but it is highly recommended.

Supported Browsers are listed below.

    * Windows

        Internet Explorer 5.x (latest version) and 6.0 SP2

        Netscape 7.2 and 8.1

        Firefox 1.5.0.1 and 1.0.7

        Mozilla 1.7.12

    * Macintosh

        OS 9

          Netscape 7.0

        OS X v10.3

          Netscape 7.2

          Mozilla 1.7.12

          Firefox 1.5.0.1

          Safari 1.3.9

        OS X v10.4

          Netscape 7.2

          Firefox 1.5.0.1

          Safari 2.0
```

But when I click on continue, it does so. Maybe this helps, as it might be a redirect, that doesn't work properly or so.

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## richard77

Being unable to contact some hosts is usually related to routing problems.

You cound try this iptables rule:

iptables -t mangle -A POSTROUTING -p tcp --tcp-flags SYN,RST SYN -o eth0 -j TCPMSS --clamp-mss-to-pmtu

(for backgroup look here)

Or is related to a bug of some routers being unable to handle window scaling in TCP connection

The bug is made apparent by new default settings in recent (>=2.6.17) kernels.

To restore previous behavior use this line:

```
echo 4096 87380 174760 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_rmem
```

(You would lose the setting with reboot).

To make them permanent put this line in /etc/sysctl.conf:

```
net.ipv4.tcp_rmem = 4096 87380 174760
```

(some background:

http://www.netdomination.org/~stkn/index.php?/archives/25-2.6.17-network-trouble.html

http://kerneltrap.org/node/6723

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-508541.html

)

(PS: @header: I don't think that message is related to the problem, to me it looks like they did not update the supported browser list).

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## grissu

I had the same (or similar) problem regarding the homepage of my university:

Suddenly I wasn't able to load certain websites (one to be precise). Nothing helped, I tried all available browsers, it was all the same. The page would load until a certain point an then the browser would be stalled. Firefox, Konqueror, Epiphany, Opera, Lynx ... any browser would show the exact same behaeviour and brake at the same point. However this page was known to load perfectly in the past. The exact time point when this problem started could not be exactly determined (retrospectively it was the kernel update).

On other Linux-machines it wasn't a problem, even when both machines were connected behind the same router, the page would load as expected.

I was very happy when I found this posting on the board.

Thank you, richard77 !!!

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## IronGland

Also, now that you brought that up, apparently the 2.6.18 kernel fixes the issues I had as well. With the solutions provided by richard77

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