[Xitami] Console.log msgs

[Ewen McNeill]

In message <000201c126ae$3b7a99a0$0300a8c0@cashmachine.atl.mindspring.com>, "Ted Heske" writes:
>> Is it likely that your machine 192.168.0.2 accessed your Xitami server?
>
>I do access the server from its host machine, but for maintenance only (I
>log into the web admin tool).  I test my website by accessing from a
>different machine with a different IP address.  I looked up www.isi.edu and
>their IP address is nothing like 192.x.x.x (it's 128.x.x.x).  

192.168.xx.xx is an address range reserved for private internal networks.  
As a public service isi.edu (and ep.net, it seems) offer a
DNS-of-last-resort for 192.168.xx.xx to help avoid long timeouts for
people who are using those addresses internally, but haven't configured
their network properly:

bash-2.05$  nslookup -type=NS 168.192.in-addr.arpa
Server:  localhost.panix.com
Address:  127.0.0.1

Non-authoritative answer:
168.192.in-addr.arpa    nameserver = BLACKHOLE.EP.NET
168.192.in-addr.arpa    nameserver = BLACKHOLE.ISI.EDU

Authoritative answers can be found from:
BLACKHOLE.EP.NET        internet address = 198.32.1.116
BLACKHOLE.ISI.EDU       internet address = 128.9.64.26

If you are using RFC1918 addresses internally you should at least put
these addresses into the hosts file on each machine, and preferably you
should provide your own authoritive records to your local DNS server for
the RFC1918 addresses you are using, so that the "default" ones provided
as a public service by isi.edu and ep.net aren't touched.

>When does the RDNS feature actually try to translate addresses?  I see no 
>evidence that it has looked up any other addresses in the past and my 
>server gets accessed all the time.

If you have enabled RDNS translation, Xitami will try to look up the IP
addresses of machines that connect to your webserver before it writes
out the log entries.  Generally this will work, and the entries will be
logged after a short delay.

In this instance because you're using RFC1918 addresses without setting
up proper DNS records, and for some reason Xitami has taken a disliking
to the "default" ones (perhaps because they weren't what it expected to
hear back), you're getting error messages logged because Xitami is
having problems dealing with those ones.

Either set up the correct DNS records locally, or turn off RDNS in
Xitami (and, eg, resovle the addresses later, or not at all), or ignore
the messages for now.

>I do get lots of script errors while using the web admin tool so maybe 
>I shouldn't be using this version.   

What webbrowser are you using?  The webadmin portion was last updated
quite a while ago, and it's possible that it is not quite compatible
with the Javascript expected by some newer browsers.  You can turn the
Javascript off in the web based admin, and it'll basically work without
it, although occassionally you have to click on more "go" like buttons.

Ewen

-- 
Ewen McNeill, Technical Consultant, iMatix Corporation  www.imatix.com