AAM: Locked Out of One Website

Last Monday you’ll remember I posted a request to any Apple Matters readers who could possibly help with one of two problems our users have come across. I’m glad to say that thankfully you guys delivered and have given one user a much better chance of finding success with his problem.

The question at hand is one where regular Apple Matters reader, Beeblebrox, discovered he was unable to access his website on his Macintosh computer, but was fine in viewing the website on his PC and other PCs outside of his network. Other than what was already posted by Beeblebrox, we do know that the website fails to load and eventually times out, and that has given a little helping hand to woz1984 and Michael Croft, who have both given some brilliant answers this week, and thus have given me no choice but to post up two Answers of the Week. Thanks, guys, for your input!

For the curious ones out there, the other question involving a Sleepless Macbook, as posted by Andrew Clark, was eventually solved by taking the MacBook to the Genius Bar at a local Apple store. For those wanting to know more, feel free to view the thread Sleepless Macbook.

Thanks again for everyone’s input over the last two weeks, and don’t forget to keep those questions coming in by posting your problems in the Ask Apple Matters forums.

Until next week!

Question of the Week

I’m locked out of one website

By: Beeblebrox

A couple of days ago, I stopped being able to access at least one website on my Mac.

It’s my own domain so I haven’t been banned or blocked.

Everyone else can access the site, so it’s not down.

I can access the site from the PCs in my house, so it’s not an ISP issue.

I cannot access it from FTP, Firefox, Safari, or anything else on my Mac, so it’s not a browser issue.

I can access every other site I’ve tried, so it’s not an internet issue.

I’ve repaired permissions. I’ve rebooted several times.

What gives? Any ideas?

UPDATE: I just tried it on my brother’s computers on the SAME network. His PC could access it but not his Mac. So it appears isolated to Macs on this network.

Weird.

Answer of the Week #1

By: woz1984

Question: Do you use any VPN-connection?

I always have the problem of being locked out of certain websites when I use a specific VPN tunnel. The reason seems to be that the maximum packet size (mtu) is usually in Mac OS X 1500, which is bad for my specific connection, I have to lower it to 1400 & then everything works fine. Maybe you have a similar problem, maybe even not with VPN, but with your router?

If you’d like to give this a shot, lowering works this way:

- If you’re connected to your network by cable (ethernet): Go to System Preferences - Network, select your connection, choose tab “ethernet,” set mtu to 1400.

- If you use your internal Airport card: Open Terminal.app (Applications/Utilities) and type at the command prompt

sudo ifconfig en1 mtu 1400

& enter. You’ll probably be asked for your administration password to execute this command.

If all of this doesn’t help, you may easily reverse the settings (ethernet: put mtu on standard again, for Airport just execute the command again with 1500).

Answer of the Week #2

By: Michael Croft

Here are a few good things to try in Terminal:

1: curl -v http://www.yourserver.com/
—do that and post the result here
2: traceroute http://www.yourserver.com
—that will see if you’re even able to reach your server.
2a: On the windows machine, use tracert http://www.yourserver.com. The last entries should match.
3: more /etc/hosts
—look for an entry in there that points the server name at another IP.

Here are things to look for outside of terminal
1: Do you run brickhouse or another firewall? Temporarily disable it.
2: Are you connected wirelessly or via a hub? Temporarily connect the Mac directly to the internet.
3: (assuming the server is apache…) Do you have shell access to the machine your site is on?  look for a file called .htaccess in the htdocs (or similar) directory. See if it says something about denying access to your IP.
4: Speaking of IPs, try http://123.123.123.123/, where 123… is the IP address of your webserver.

Have a technical question? Drop by our dedicated forums and leave a message. You’re sure to get a reply from one of our regular readers or even a member of our staff.