hda.com

[vincentr]

hi,

i was wondering if anyone knows the reason for the following behaviour;
when i type hda in my browser (or http://hda/) to take me to my amahi dashboard, it instead takes me to http://www.hda.com. After a few mins if i try it again, it then works properly and takes me to my amahi dashboard. I've also noticed that when i install applications and try to go to it (for example http://tflux for torrent flux) straight away it doesnt work, im taking to a search page with OpenDns at the top of the page. Again, after a min or two it then works properly.

Any ideas on whats going on?

thanks

v

[cpg]

that means your dns resolution does not work the same all the time.

any chance your router's DHCP is still on?

if so, your client might get one lease from the HDA, and some times another from the router ...

what client(s)?

[vincentr]

hi cpg,

no the router's DHCP is switched off for sure. Would this perhaps be to do with my switching the hda off at nights (for the time being until i can get a smaller case/quieter fan etc)??


I also have the problem that when i use either freeNx or puTTy to log in to the hda, it sometimes times out ie i wont be able to log in (puTTY = nothing happens freeNx = says cant connect). If i ping the hda at this point it fails. This usually corresponds to me getting redirected to www.hda.com when i type http://hda in my browser, hence i thought it might be related. Any ideas?


cheers for the help!

v

[cpg]

can you check /var/log/messages for warnings or errors?


also, when this happens, check the client settings with ipconfig /all.

again, what client?

[moredruid]

can you reach the hda by IP and not by hostname?

[nemolomen]

vincentr, I believe you hit the nail on the head when you asked "Would this perhaps be to do with my switching the hda off at nights (for the time being until i can get a smaller case/quieter fan etc)??"

I recently built a new HDA and experienced the same thing until between 5 and 10 minutes after power on. My new system has been on continuously for the past 3+ days and I have yet to encounter the problem again.

There are quite a few things happening during boot and, even on a fast machine, they take time.

[cpg]

really?

it should only take a few seconds at most after boot for things to work!

dns does not work?

wait, is your client still on a lease from the router at that point?

[vincentr]

thanks for the help people!

i havent had time the past few days to check if there's any errors in /var/log/messages.

When this problem happens i can neither ping the server by host name or by IP

Im using a laptop with windows 7 on it, there's also another laptop on the network with Vista on it. I always make sure the hda is switched on 1st before booting up any of the laptops. I also have 2 iphones connected via wifi, but since im not too bothered wether or not they actually connect, i usually dont bother switching them off and on again once the hda has been switched on/off. Maybe this is the problem, the fact i switch my hda off at nights,along with the laptops, but dont bother to disconnect the wifi on the iphones, so that when i do switch on the hda the next day, along with the laptops, there might be some sort of conflict with the iphones that havent been disconnected from the wifi/switched off? Ill have to troubleshoot this and see if that is the cause.

v

[nemolomen]

really?

it should only take a few seconds at most after boot for things to work!

dns does not work?

wait, is your client still on a lease from the router at that point?

Answering for my own system, When I made the switch from old HDA to new HDA, I did not enable the DHCP on the router. It was early enough on a Sunday morning that I was the only one awake while I was switching the servers.

I simply shut down the old server, removed the data drives, installed the data drives in the new server and booted twice with mouse, monitor and kb attached before moving the new server to it's permanent location. I did that to ensure there were no hardware issues prior to making the server headless. In fact there was an IDE drive issue and I had to change a jumper to get the system working properly, hence the second headed boot.

Once I moved the new HDA and made it headless, that is when I noticed the DNS issue, but within a few minutes everything was working fine.

The time lag between old server down and new server up was between 1.5 and 2 hours.

The old HDA and the new HDA used the same installation code and there were no changes to the HDA setup on amahi.org.

The one difference is that the old server was F9 and the new server is F10. I'm aware that this also implies a newer HDA platform because of the OS differences.

The 5 to 10 minutes may have been less but I was in a time crunch because things were taking longer than planned (mostly due to a couple of mistakes I made like installing the wrong drive), I had to get to work, and didn't want to leave the house without getting the server up. So I may have been suffering from "apparent" time dilation.

[joeaverge]

Not sure if the question has been answered. The last post was a little unclear and other posts talk about waiting and the issue goes away.

Thought I'd bring up my own issue with DNS and some point to ponder when troubleshooting.

DNS:
This is a simple service that runs on the Amahi server. The Amahi servers DNS it is responsible for ONE thing. Resolving Fully Qualified Names (FQN) to IP addresses. The Amahi server responsible for, or Authoritative, for one Domain which is ussually home.com. Unless you setup your Amahi with a different domain. ALL Client on your home network get it's IP and DNS server IP from Amahi DHCP. SO...All computers will ask the Amahi for the IP address of all FQN. If the Amahi is not authoritative for the domain then it will forward the address to another server and wait for the answer back to give to the computer asking for the IP. I belive the DNS server on the Amahi sends these to Open DNS.

So...Ask the right question and Amahi will give you the answer. If the Question is hda.home.com? Amahi is authoritative for this and will answer the question with the IP. If the question is www.google.com then the Amahi is not authoritative and will forward to the Open DNS to get the answer for it then when it gets an answer back iot will send the IP to the requestor(the computer that first asked)

Seems Open DNS is setup to give a bad answer when asked for a FQN that does not exist. Not 100% sure but it seems to send back an IP that redirects your to a page that gives alternate suggestions or asks if you want to register this unknown FQN.

If you are getting a redirected from Amahi about Open DNS then is seems Amahi is getting the WRONG question from your computer.

I found the issue (in my case) was actually my computer and NOT the Amahi server. Other programs I had run or installed had left DNS suffixes in my network configuration.

Why would this be a problem? Amahi can only answer FQN name questions. If you ask ( in a web browser) for "HDA" the it has to figure out what the FQN. FQN includes Domain, Server Name and published website plus any subpages. your computer take the suffix and appendes it to the HDA you typed and and sends it to Amahi DNS service. the HDA you typed in suddently becomes hda.home.com.

If additional suffixes are present then your computer will send other FQNs to the Amahi DNS service asking for the IP. It does this in order(from top to bottom) until it gets an IP then stops.

Example IP config of Suffixes:
somewhere.org
home.com

you ask for HDA in the web browser.

Your computer asks for hda.somewhere.org first. the Amahi DNS service is NOT authoritative for this and sends it to Open DNS. Open DNS cannot find this address so instead of sending an error it sends an IP which redirects you to a page give suggestions on FQNs or asking if you want to register the FQN. You computer NEVER gets a chance to ask for hda.home.com because it asked for a different name first and it got an IP so further name resolution stops. If Open DNS gave an error then the error would go back to your computer and your comuter would then ask for hda.home.com which your computer is authoritave for and give you the IP. because Open DNS is involed then your computer must be asking the wrong question to Amahi DNS.

I had to remove suffixes from my TCP/IP configuration. The ONLY suffix I left was home.com. This resolved my problem. Also...I re-setup my Amahi with the domain "home.local" I still get the occational problem when the alternate suffixes get added but I do not get the Open DNS errors.

Just my 2 cents and maybe this helps.

Joeaverge