Weird Intranet Issue

[Jimi_l]

Hi all,

I realize this topic has been beat to death but I did search here (and elsewhere) and have not found a similar issue to help me out.

I have an all Windows LAN of about 6 PC's running off of a Freesco software router. I set up Abyss Web server on one of them and access VIA the Internet works slick. In house however from the other machines I can also access the site and I can do that several ways I.E.-
http://machine name
http://machine IP

However from there no links (except external) on any page work. If I type the secondary page's or any page's address using either format I can access it, but not by clicking any links. It simply hangs indefinately.

Keep in mind all pages and links work over the Internet from outside the LAN. The Web server machine is also a file server that all the other machines in house use everyday with no problems. I can ping and VNC and share files all over the place no problem. Windows firewall is disabled

Does anyone have any idea what is going on here?

Jimi_l

[MonkeyNation]

Perhaps it seems slightly obvious, but are your links correct?
I'm thinking you made all absolute links to your outside address.
That would explain when you type http://internal.addr/ it shows the page, and when you click a link, which goes to http://outside.addr/ it doesn't.

(This theory is also running under the assumption you have no loopback to your web server.)
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[Jimi_l]

They are indeed linked to the outside address, as is the whole site, but I don't know how you could make them link to both at once.

It seems that I could fix it that way but it would make the site internal or external only but not both.

Jimi_l

[MonkeyNation]

Actually, all you have to do is make relative links.
I.E. <a href='list.do'>List of files</a> would be list.do in the current folder, whatever that might be. Should you prefix it with a /, it will mean from the document root.
http://localhost.localdomain/orly/owls/index.html to get to list.do could be either a link to list.do or /orly/owls/list.do, and would work for any host.
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[Jimi_l]

I'm a little confused (but that is no secret).

http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/index
Where xxx-etc is our external IP address is the first page of the site and it's link. Subsequent pages and their links look similar -
http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/page2.html

All the files for the pages are in a sub folder of the server software folder-
C:/program files/webserver/html

How would this be correctly re-writen to follow your guideline?

Thanks for the help,

Jimi_l

[MonkeyNation]

When you create a relative link, the browser will inturpret it and insert the relavant path before it.
Say I have mypage.html on http://monkeynation.org/shortforms/lol/, in order to link to http://monkeynation.org/shortforms/lol/page2.html OR http://192.168.1.2/shortforms/lol/page2.html, I would could use <a href='page2.html'>Clicky</a> OR <a href='/shortforms/lol/page2.html'>Clicky</a>.
Just entering a filename (Which we'll call method one, for now.) would goto any directorys/files in the same directory/further up from this one. While starting with a / (Which we'll call method 2) goes from the root of the domain.
Examples:

[Jimi_l]

I suspect you are absolutely correct.

My links all directly refer to the external IP and therefore will not route in house. I am betting if I change them and leave the resolution to the server it will work.

Thanks,

Jimi_l

[Tom Chapman]

Could you not just edit the hosts file on each computer you access to it from? I think I understand what your question and if I'm right this would most probably to my knowledge be the by far easiest way.

Cuse me typos!

[Jimi_l]

I have now tried both techniques and neither work.

It must have somthing to do with the Freesco router but I'll be darned if I can figure it out.

Thanks for trying guys, I'll let you know if I ever figure it out. If you think of anything new let me know.

Jimi_l

[MonkeyNation]

[Jimi_l]

Hi All,

I checked all the machine settings and they do indeed point to the Freesco machine and not the ISP for DNS resolution. I can ping, VNC, file & print share all machines from all machines. I have tried re-directing using hosts files on the local machines with no luck. I am not convinced that I have the correct syntax on that though.

I went ahead anyway and installed YaBB, hmail server and squirrel mail. All of which work flawlessly VIA the Internet.

Here's what happens when trying to surf using ANY machine on the LAN BUT the server-

If I go to the web index page, or any page on that site using the machine name of the server in the address it routes-
http://<machine name>/index.html
http://<machine name>/page2.html
etc, etc
However no links work on any page most likely due to using absolute links as suggested previously. That is to say once a typed in page loads, clicking on any subsequent page link hangs it.

If I go to the forum-
http<machine name>/cgi-bin/Yabb.pl
http://<machine name>/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?board=general
etc, etc
It will not route at all (any page, any link). It starts to load and actually shows the page title of the forum at the top of the browser but hangs forever after that.

BUT (and this is the odd part) if I go to the Squirrel mail login-
http://<machine name>/squirrelmail-1.4.5/
http://<machine name>/squirrelmail-1.4.5/src/login.php
etc, etc
Everything works fine including links that are absolute. I can also send and recieve mail both in house and externally.

Now this begs the questions why would some pages work sort of, some completely and others not at all? More importantly why would all the squirrel mail links (that seem to be absolute externally but relative locally) route in house but not any of the others? Obviously I did not code squirrel mail or the forum but one seems to switch link types on the fly and the other does not. Can I somehow edit the forum and Web pages to mimick this behaviour?

All the files for all of these sites are in the same folder which is the public HTML folder located within the Web server file structure.

Jimi_l