getting out from behind the firewall... [SOLVED]

the.drizzle · Last edited by the.drizzle on Tue May 01, 2007 12:17 am; edited 1 time in total

Hi all!

OK, this is the first time I've ever had to work from behind a firewall, so this is all pretty new to me. That said, if I'm asking something that has been addressed 5018 times already, please don't bark at me, just point me to the solution, OK? Thanks!

That said, I've managed to get almost everyting working--browser, some streaming audio (minor problems still, but I'll leave them), etc. However, two *major* things are not working, and I'm stumped! In particular, I cannot seem to do an emerge --sync, the output is simply:

Hu · Administrator Joined: 06 Mar 2007 Posts: 23064

Whose firewall is it that you are operating behind? Can you contact the firewall administrator and inquire what it is configured to block?

The first thought that strikes me from your output is that the server you are contacting for rsync is either down, or blocked by the firewall. If the latter, it is probably blocked because it is the rsync port, not because of any specific IP address. This may simply mean that your network administrator has configured the firewall to deny all traffic he did not consider "legitimate." You may be able to convince him that using rsync is legitimate traffic, and get it allowed.

As for your problems with emerge-webrsync: have you checked that a web browser can connect out using those same settings? Are those variables actually in your environment?

the.drizzle · Posted: Mon Apr 30, 2007 7:28 pm Post subject:

Thanks for the input!

As for contacting the system admin, that's not going to happen. This is the work computer that "they" gave me, and the network is run by a 72 year old guy. When I asked to have my box changed to linux, he refused on the grounds that linux is unproven and insecure. Instead, I was supposed to use Windows 2000, which they recently upgraded to from Windows 3.x (I really wish I was joking about this).

As a result, this box has been set to access the local network, and hence the internet, via some sneaky means since it now has gentoo on it--somehow that happened!

So yeah, I cannot ask for help from the system admin.

However, I was wondering if you could tell me some more about using emerge-webrsync with a browser? Until yesterday, I have never even heard of this app, and being as it comes with no man page I am not sure what it is trying to do... Somehow grab a "mostly" current snapshot via http somehow or something like that? And how do I use it with a browser?

Thanks in advance!

***UPDATE***

OK, the problem with ping and rsync not working seems to be that the proxy server is a squid server, which means these features are not going to work. as for emerge-webrsync, further investigation indicates that I should let it run for 1-2 hours before I declare it as hanging, as it is apperantly quite slow at times, and provides no feedback while downloading the .bz2 file. It's running now, and if its all sorted in 3 hours, I'll mark this thread as solved.

Sorry for the hassle, but thanks for the input!

Cheers!

***UPDATE***

Yup, that did it. rsync and ping are out due to squid, and emerge-webrsync is just... really... slow... But that's OK--my bad for mistaking the zero feedback for a hung application (although it is understandable!).

Cheers!
_________________
But... it IS pointless!

Hu · Administrator Joined: 06 Mar 2007 Posts: 23064