Firefox refusing to connect to many sites

[marek_online]

So I'm in the odd situation of finding it easier to connect from behind a proxy than directly.

When at work, connecting through the proxy there, everything works swimmingly. At home, with no proxy, firefox will connect sometimes, but often will not (the error page is simple "Could not connect to ...").

I use the Switchproxy extension to change proxy settings, but get the same problems even if I uninstall Switchproxy and change from "Manual proxy settings" to "Direct connection to the internet" in the Connection Settings dialog by hand.

Why I know this is a Firefox problem, is that Konqueror has no problems connecting while I'm at home.

The Firefox I'm using is the one from the standard repositories. Anything obvious I'm missing?

[jakykong]

Re: Firefox refusing to connect to many sites

I can't say i have any idea what's happening. However, I can offer a couple "just-for-kicks" ideas of what you might be able to do to isolate the problem (so that other people who know a little more might be able to help you. Can't say for sure whether these will reveal any useful information, but they might ):

1. try running it as root. It doesn't sound like a problem that would be fixed by this, but you never know (don't go to any unknown site as root... that could be a security risk)

2. If possible, try connecting to a different connection. Obviously, not always possible -- but if you have some other way to connect to the 'net, try it.

3. you might try saving your bookmarks (/history/whatever else you need to...) and purging then reinstalling firefox. This has helped me before, and what you can learn from it is whether the problem is with firefox or something else on the system. This suggestion might not be very useful since konqueror seems to work.

Hope it helps!

[marek_online]

Re: Firefox refusing to connect to many sites

Thanks for tips. Just figured out what it is.

The problem had nothing to do with the proxy, and everything to do with the difference between the networks.

At home, the wireless network config would wipe /etc/resolv.conf and leave 192.168.1.1 (the router) as the only DNS. Adding two reliable DNSs and locking /etc/resolv.conf with:

sudo chattr +i /etc/resolv.conf

fixed the problem. Not sure why some sites loaded and others didn't, but the problem has gone away now at least.

Cheers.