[ale] www.starbucks.com

[Bob Toxen]

On Sun, Nov 30, 2003 at 02:10:39AM -0500, Jim Popovitch wrote:
> This is sooo freaking weird it has been driving me crazy.  Mozilla 1.4
> hangs and ultimately timesout.  You would think that I had an iptables
> entries blocking it.  Very weird.  I have checked /etc/hosts, iptables
> --list, monitored firewall connections, tracerouted, and nothing
> indicates a problem on my side. 
...

> also a telnet:
> telnet www.starbucks.com 80
> Trying 64.14.140.210...

This is a very reliable way to determine if the problem accessing a site
is due network/firewall problems vs. browser/web server problems.

If you get the "Trying a.b.c.d" and nothing more then the initial
TCP 3-way handshaking failed.  Thus you have no network end-to-end
connection.

If you get "Connection refused" then there is no server listening on
that port.  I.e., the web server crashed.

If you then get "Escape char is" but when you then type a line of
random characters and two newlines but no response then the site probably
is choosing to ignore you.

If your text and *two* newlines gets a response in HTML (usually complaining
about bad request) then the web server is responding to you.


This technique works well for most TCP services.  I use it a lot with
SSH.


> -Jim P.

Bob Toxen
bob at verysecurelinux.com               [Please use for email to me]
http://www.verysecurelinux.com        [Network&Linux/Unix security consulting]
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Quality Linux & UNIX security and SysAdmin & software consulting since 1990.

"Microsoft: Unsafe at any clock speed!"
   -- Bob Toxen 10/03/2002