[Novalug] Arlington County Public Schools website: Windows only? (2nd attempt)

[Craig Pennington]

Thanks all for the responses. Given everyone's reply I'm thinking it
may have something to do with my FIOS router (though the people who
got it working under linux all seem to be using firefox 1.5 so I'm
going to try that when I get some time.)

The OS/Browser combos I've tried:

The working:

XP + Firefox 2.x

The not working:

Gentoo + Firefox 2.x (both with & without User-Agent spoofing)
Gentoo + Opera 9.25 build 687 for linux (both with & without
User-Agent spoofing)
Gentoo + Perl + IO::Socket replaying the sniffed working (XP+Firefox)
request exactly

Mac OSX 10.3.9 + Firefox 2.x
Mac OSX 10.3.9 + Safari (whatever version was the default)
Mac OSX 10.3.9 + Internet Explorer 5
Mac OSX 10.5.1 + Firefox 2.x
Mac OSX 10.5.1 + Safari 3
Mac OSX 10.5.1 + Opera 9.25

I've sniffed the "not working" traffic from the Gentoo box, I get a
response that is 8 bytes exactly and then no more. The bytes seem to
be dependent on the request structure -- i.e. the same request
generates the same bytes from the gentoo box (however the bytes DO NOT
match the 1st 8 bytes of the working response even though the request
from the Perl script is identical at the byte level.)

Cheers,
  Craig P

On Feb 4, 2008 11:32 AM, Shawn Wells <swells at redhat.com> wrote:
>
>
> Craig Pennington wrote:
> > My daughter is an incoming kindergardener in the Arlington County
> > Public Schools which inspired my wife to want to research various
> > topics on the school system's website
> > (<http://www.apsva.us/aps/site/default.asp> or
> > <http://arlington.k12.va.us/aps/site/default.asp>) a few months ago.
> > She couldn't get there from her old iMac using firefox -- it just
> > hung. I tried my iBook w/Safari and the again w/internet explorer.
> > Same thing. Then on linux w/firefox, opera and a few others, with &
> > without User-Agent spoofing. No luck.
> >
> > Then I fire up the trusty VMware instance of XP I have for when I
> > absolutely must do something on Windows. The site works fine in
> > firefox and ie. I fire off a note to the webmaster letting them know
> > their site is borked and get a response that they're aware of it and
> > working on it etc. OK, I forget for a few months.
> >
> > But I tried again last week and it still wasn't fixed. So I fire up
> > the VMWare instance again and set up tcpflow on the host to record the
> > traffic between XP and the server. I then replay the initial request
> > generated by firefox on XP from a simple perl Socket client. Hangs
> > after 8 bytes. To repeat, I make exactly the same request
> > (byte-for-byte -- I double checked with tcpflow again) and get
> > different results. So it looks to me like it is at a lower level than
> > HTTP that things are broken.
> >
> > Does anyone recognize these symptoms?
> >
> > Does this site work for anyone on a non-MS operating system?
> >
> > Does anyone have any ideas on how to diagnose this?
> >
> > Attached is the 1st request & 1st response for both the Firefox/XP
> > session and the Perl/linux session as captured by tcpflow.
> > (NB: I've omitted the XP response since it is too large for the list.)
> >
> > Any pointers are greatly appreciated.
> >
> > Thanks,
> >   Craig P
>
> What *specific* OS and browser versions are you attempting to connect
> with?  I'm on RHLE5u1, Firefox 1.5.0.12, and everything works.
>
> --
> Shawn D. Wells
> Solutions Architect, Federal Team
> swells at redhat.com
> Cell: 443-534-0130
> Office: 703-748-2250
>
>
>
>



-- 
Corollary to Clarke's Third Law:
    Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently
    advanced.