#59: Problems with lime-management.co.uk and Galileo

I got an interesting phone call last week at work. An colleague at one of our offices couldn’t get into a certain website (http://www.lime-management.co.uk) to make bookings. They could see the front page, but whenever they tried to log in, the site would just “stop” and then eventually time out with a “Page cannot be displayed” message.

I tried the site in my office, as well as at home and on a couple of other IP addresses, and there was no problem with it at all. Using different browsers created no problem at all, and even different operating systems (I tried from both Linux and Windows) weren’t a problem. The only issue that the boss and I could come up with that it was some kind of bizarre group policy setting, because the colleague’s office all runs on a Windows domain, whereas my office does not. However, this theory was disproved when I tried a PC at the remote office that wasn’t a member of the domain and the problem persisted.

I decided to try a different internet gateway in the hope that there was some issue with the primary router at my colleague’s office. Obviously this would still be a major issue, but at least it might offer some explanation as to why this problem was manifesting itself. We have multiple internet connections to each office, not just for redundancy but due to historical reasons, so this was a good time to test one out. Unfortunately the problem was still there.

After scratching my head for a minute or two, I tried out a couple of traceroutes. The first was directly to the website itself (194.154.164.72) and completed without a problem. I’d noticed that the login to the site handed off to booking.lime-management.co.uk (57.66.83.59) and so tried that as well.

This is where the problem became apparent. The traceroute halted on the second hop with a message: “192.168.0.252 reports: destination net unreachable”. This surprised me, as that IP belongs to the router which deals with that office’s connection to the Galileo GDS system. It was here that I realised that a slight oversight had been made with the configuration of the primary router. Galileo servers use IPs in the range 57.8.x.x, and we’d added a static route to the primary router to offload any traffic for 57.x.x.x to 192.168.0.252, without bearing in mind that the entire class A 57.x.x.x range did not belong to Galileo.

I changed the offending route and subnet mask to 57.8.x.x and 255.255.x.x respectively, and the website promptly started working with no problems.

(this entry has mainly been put here in case anyone else ever has a similar problem and searches for it)

#58: It seems we’re human after all

The panto has been and gone, and you can see me hoofing about a bit here if you have me added on Facebook and have the “Video” application. I’m the guy who comes on stage after the dog and then dances at the very left-hand side of the video. If you don’t have me added on Facebook, search for “Gus Luxton” in the London network. My picture is of me posing in a mirror in a stripey shirt and pinstripe trousers.

My birthday (last Wednesday, December 12th) was brilliant - many thanks to anyone who sent me birthday wishes by any medium at all! Being 23 is a little scary though. I logged into last.fm a couple of days ago to look at my recommendations and it came up “Male, 23, Hertfordshire” at the side… I actually had to do a double take as I realised that I was old.

I am seriously looking forward to Christmas and having some time off work. I enjoy my job and it’s been very rewarding of late, but I am shattered and just need a week or so off to actually draw breath and get back to feeling human again.

Sorry for the short sentences and the formal style - I’ve just updated Livejournal for the first time in about two months with an absolutely massive post, and I don’t have much wordiness left in me.

It’s the Secret Santa at work tomorrow, and I have to say that some of the people upstairs are absolutely ruining it. They watch the present box like hawks, and as soon as anyone brings a present up, they’ll run over and check who it’s for so that they can make a note of who bought what for who, and hold them accountable at a later date. For those who aren’t familiar with the concept of Secret Santa, it’s where you put everyone in an office/club/group’s name in a hat and randomly draw one each, so you get someone to buy a Christmas present for. There’s a budget of £5 in our office, and the (unofficial) idea is usually to get embarassing or amusing gifts. The main point of the whole thing is that you don’t tell anyone else who you have, though - that’s why it’s a “secret” Santa and you can get away with buying some very amusing things indeed. I am currently devising a scheme where I will be able to get my gift into the present box without them noticing.

I met up with Xsara this evening for the first time in a while. She’s doing alright and looking well. I thought she’d disappeared off the face of the earth but no, I was wrong. It’s a good job I didn’t eBay the DVDs she left at my house like I was planning to…

#57: Fish hat

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIdcHkMCzQw

The first time I watched this, I couldn’t stop laughing. It still makes me chuckle on the fourth viewing… sheer awesomeness.

#56: “Oh no it isn’t”

There is one week to go until the first night of the pantomime. This fact is a little bit scary, but also rather exciting.

It’s not coming together too badly. I’m still a bit hazy on a few of my cues, and the actual content of my lines is not always the same, but we’ve got most of it right. The dancing was the part that scared me the most, but I think I’m actually going to be OK with it all now. We’re certainly a lot more together than I ever thought we would be!

The only issue with this is that we’ve rehearsed every day since Sunday, and I’m pretty tired at the moment. What with having been to Bulgaria last Friday, having my work Christmas party on Saturday night and then rehearsal for most of the day on Sunday, I am shattered. Definitely looking forward to Saturday when I can finally get myself a nice lie-in and catch up on my rest.