Mac OSX Web Services Unavailable 1

[artfulbodger]

I hope someone can help me on this one.

I have a Mac OS X server that I have placed on our DMZ to act as a webserver for one of my clients. The problem is, it cannot accept any incoming or outgoing web connections. Specifically, if I try to browse to something like "

http://www.apple.com,"

it will simply not connect. Also, if I point another machines browser to it, it will not display the webpage it is serving.

Here is the catch... I can ping both inside and outside of our network. I can also FTP inside and outside our network. I can also ping the Mac server from other machines. I can log in via SSH to a remote console through a VPN connection. Therefore, it is safe to assume that all of my network settings are in place. I just cannot browse or host http traffic

Here are some other pertinent facts:

1) There is also a Win2K3 SBS Server on the same DMZ - it works fine - incoming and outgoing http traffic has no issues.
2) It was working fine prior to our Mac "expert" coming in and telling me that none of the networking was configured properly and taking it upon himself to rewire a few switches.

Is there some sort of configuration in the Mac's or some sort of internal firewall that can block http traffic? Is there a setting that I am missing? I am pretty familiar with Linux so OSX isn't that hard to understand...I just can't seem to get my hands wrapped around this one and any help would be greatly apprecieated.

 

[ObviousTroll]

Some questions:

1. Is the Mac's DNS working correctly? You say you can ping out of it. Can you do a "traceroute

http://www.apple.com"?

2. Did you accidentally turn on (or off) the proxy server settings in the network preferences?

3. On the server itself, what happens when you open the browser and point it to "

http://localhost/"?

 

[artfulbodger]

Thanks for the response...

To answer your questions....

1) a traceroute gives me about 15 or so hops until it resolves to the IP for "

http://www.apple.com."

2) I took a look at the proxy server settings in network preference. It was on, so I turned it off. However, when I went back in, it was back on. Hmmmmmm

3) When I do

http://localhost,

the web site that I am trying to serve comes up.

I keep going back to my SonicWall as the problem, but I have allowed any and all services to come in and go out....everything works but HTTP.

I am at a loss....

 

[ObviousTroll]

So, we know your web server is up and running, so that theory is eliminated.

It kind of sounds like the proxy settings are the problem - are you sure you hit "apply" when you turned them off?

Also, if you have more than one network adapter, you have to set the proxy settings for each one and apply the changes on each one.

To figure out for sure if it's the Mac or the firewall, try this. On the Mac, open a terminal and type in:

telnet localhost 80

and press return a couple of times. You should get a "connection established" message which means you just opened a telnet session to the HTML socket on your web server. Type control-D to get out and then type in

telnet

http://www.apple.com

80

If the same thing happens then the problem is definitely with the Mac's network settings. If you *don't* get a connection (connection refused or similar) then something on the network is blocking port 80.

 

[artfulbodger]

Obvious Troll,

Thanks to your suggestions, I was able to get it fixed. I was not able to telnet to either the local host and to apple.com through port 80 so I decided to look at the firewall a bit closer. I disconnected the Mac from the network, gave my laptop the same network configuration and browsed with no problem. That ruled out the firewall since the rule was based on IP address. After looking around a bit, I found that the resident Mac expert (and I use that term very loosly) set up the Mac to use a Web proxy, but he had no proxy defined. I disabled that, and lo and behold it started to browse.

The incomming port 80 issue had to deal with Earthlink hosing up the IP somehow (they are still working on it). I simply recreated a NAT policy to a different external IP and the web server started working again.

Both were port 80 problems, but had nothing to do with each other. It is just sheer coincidence they both would fail at the exact same time.

Thanks for all the help! It is greatly apprecieated!

 

[ObviousTroll]

No problem. Glad you figured it out!