Arch Linux

RonObvious

Member

Registered: 2014-07-01

Posts: 4

Connection times out to freedeskop.org, x.org, nowhere else?

I'm observing a problem that has me at wit's end.  It's not that urgent, but I can't explain it... 

I noticed -- starting on 24 or 25 Feb -- that git can no longer connect to anongit.freedesktop.org.  I checked www.freedesktop.org to see if it was down, and the connection timed out, so I assumed the site was, in fact, down. After a couple of days the site was stilll "down", which no longer seemed plausible.  I noticed that ping could reach the site.  On a lark, I tried the web site with the tor browser, and lo and behold, the tor browser can reach the web site -- no problem at all.

The only other web site I've found that I cannot reach is x.org.  archlinux.org is available, obviously (since I'm writing this).  Not sure which others to try.

So, what's different with tor? Two things occur to me: DNS and firewall. DNS seems to be oK on my machine -- drill gives me an ip4 address that other web sites confirm as correct. Firewall? I am indeed using UFW, but turning it off doesn't help, and I don't see anything in the logs (journactl, dmesg, /var/log/* -- etc.).

I checked which packages I've updated lately, and there were quite a few, but the only one that seems obviously relevant was libssh.  This might explain https problems, but git and http? And only these two sites?

I can't think of what to try next -- apart from asking the forum.  So here I am.  Any help at all would be appreciated.  Maybe it will be plain to someone out there, but I'm stumped.

Thanks in advance!

Last edited by RonObvious (2016-02-28 16:26:11)

x33a

Forum Fellow

Registered: 2009-08-15

Posts: 4,587

Re: Connection times out to freedeskop.org, x.org, nowhere else?

Perhaps your ISP is to blame? Install mtr and give the output of

mtr freedesktop.org

RonObvious

Member

Registered: 2014-07-01

Posts: 4

Re: Connection times out to freedeskop.org, x.org, nowhere else?

OK, now this is really weird.  The problem went away after I installed (and ran) mtr. 

Could that be anything other than a coincidence? This morning, before your reply, the problem was still there, now it's gone.

So --- thanks! If mtr somehow has magical properties, thanks for suggesting it. Looks like something I will want to understand better.

On the other hand, if it was pure coincidence, thanks nonetheless for bringing good luck.     ;-)

Of course, this might only be an intermittent break.  I'll keep an eye on the problem over the next few days, but at the moment, git is busy "receiving objects", so I'm happy.

P.S: I assume there's no point giving the output of mtr now (correct me if I'm wrong).

x33a

Forum Fellow

Registered: 2009-08-15

Posts: 4,587

Re: Connection times out to freedeskop.org, x.org, nowhere else?

Perhaps your ISP was monitoring the forum posts and upon realizing that their evil plan will be caught, they just fixed the problem. Or it could simply be a coincidence