BOINC couldn't resolve your computer's host name or IP address. Your firewall may be blocking communications on port 80, or you are behind a proxy server.
Solution: Make sure your firewall allows BOINC through on port 80. If using a proxy server, set it up in BOINC. If you are using your computer at work, ask your boss or IT department for permission to use BOINC.
enistein@home says that my computer has an ip address and an external ip address. is this the problem?
Yes, in so far that it can't determine your hostname.
When you check your computers under your own name (click on your own name in the forums here, computers), does it then show your internal IP address under Name as well?
You can still try Boinc 5.8.8, see if that fixes things.
When you check your computers under your own name (click on your own name in the forums here, computers), does it then show your internal IP address under Name as well?
on my "Your computers" page, it lists "localhost" under "Name", but it does not list an ip address.
on my "Computer summary" page, it gives an "IP address" and an "External IP address". i configured the "IPv4" using "DHCP" in the Network preferences. this is the ip address einstein@home calls my "External IP address".
enistein@home says that my computer has an ip address and an external ip address. is this the problem?
AFAICT those are respectively the address of the machine on the LAN (not normally visible from outside) and the address of the router through which it connects to the Internet. My ‘nameless’ Mac server shows a blank for the former, probably related to its “gethostbyname failed� problem; all my other hosts show both addresses.
enistein@home says that my computer has an ip address and an external ip address. is this the problem?
AFAICT those are respectively the address of the machine on the LAN (not normally visible from outside) and the address of the router through which it connects to the Internet. My ‘nameless’ Mac server shows a blank for the former, probably related to its “gethostbyname failed� problem; all my other hosts show both addresses.
my computer is not in a network. should i configure my ip address manually in the"Network" preferences? should i change it to the "IP address" listed on einstein@home? ...or should i just call my provider?
my provider tells me that einstein@home can not see my ip address because i have a dynamic ip address.
When I was connecting this G5 directly to the DSL modem (due to router problems) its name changed to a string of hex digits followed by what I believe to be the name of a server belonging to my ISP. But I didn’t look at its IP address(es) on the host page at the time, so I have no idea how it was identified.
If BOINC is able to send and receive work OK, I wouldn’t advise changing any of your network settings—or if you do, be sure to make a note of the configuration that’s (mostly) working now, in case you lose your connection altogether and need to restore the status quo.
i recently got this mac and conected it to the dsl modem. i seem to have configured it correctly, but what confuses me is the computer i used before this one did not have this problem. i have the same account with the same isp and the same modem. it seemed as tho einstein@home could originally see my ip address, but now, it can't.
i recently got this mac and conected it to the dsl modem. i seem to have configured it correctly, but what confuses me is the computer i used before this one did not have this problem. i have the same account with the same isp and the same modem. it seemed as tho einstein@home could originally see my ip address, but now, it can't.
I think I might be able to help you with this problem. Part of the reason why you haven't had a satisfactory answer so far is that you haven't really given enough information. Little by little you give snippets of information that make the picture a bit clearer. However you still need to give a bit more.
In an earlier message you said:-
Quote:
my mistake, the error message is "gethostbyname failed". how can i fix it? i have a macintosh - OS10.4.8 (darwin 8.8.4). einstein@home calls my computer "localhost".
I know nothing about Macs or their OS's but is Darwin 8.8.4 a "Unix" OS? If it is, then my next question is to ask you how DNS (Domain Name System) is set up on your machine. DNS converts machine names to IP addresses and IP addresses back to machine names and the "Rolls Royce" way to do this if you have a LAN of Unix machines is to run a DNS server like BIND on one of them. For a very small LAN or a single machine, you can get away without running a DNS server by putting the information (and maintaining it) in your /etc/hosts file (and setting up /etc/resolv.conf correctly).
I suspect that you (and Odysseus) will be able to get rid of these messages by putting appropriate entries in your hosts file. Do a "man hosts" and "man resolv.conf" from a command prompt to find all the gory details. If your OS is not "Unix" then your problem is still DNS related but you will need to find out how your OS does DNS queries. I imagine it is still some form of "hosts" file.
In another message you said:-
Quote:
enistein@home says that my computer has an ip address and an external ip address. is this the problem?
The answer to this is absolutely NO!! :). In your most recent post you indicated that you have a DSL modem (probably a modem/router) and this is the actual device that responds to the IP address that your ISP has assigned to you. This is your external IP address that everything out there on the internet can see. You can share your DSL connection (your external IP address) with as many internal machines as you like (within reason). Each machine inside your modem has a non-routable, internal IP address. Your modem probably runs DHCP (Dynamic Host Control Protocol) to assign a non-routable (ie it should never be sent out there into internet-land) IP address and your modem uses NAT (Network Address Translation) to convert each internal IP address into the single external IP address for every packet that is sent out. For packets coming back, your modem again uses NAT to translate the external IP address to the appropriate internal one so that the correct machine on your LAN gets the packet.
A byproduct of NAT is that you get a degree of firewall protection from the baddies out there. Everybody can see your external IP and if they attack that then it's your modem and not your computer that's being attacked. People refer to this as a "NAT firewall" or a "hardware firewall" and it's way better than having your machine directly on the internet :). NAT firewalls can be breached if the baddie is determined enough so it shouldn't be your only line of protection :).
So if your internal IP address is not supposed to be routed externally, how come it's visible on the EAH website and is this a problem? NO, it's not a problem at all because you are the only one allowed to see it. BOINC actually sends the value as an item of data deliberately for it to be recorded on your private page so that if you have several computers on your account you can easily distinguish between them even if the hostname is not visible or is recorded as "localhost" for each machine. The internal IP address will be a unique identifier.
If you have everything configured correctly at your end, you will see the correct local hostname and the correct internal and external IP addresses when you examine the page on the website for each of your computers. Anyone else looking at any of your computers will not see that sensitive information. If you don't see these three items or if your hostname is shown as "localhost" then you have some local configuration (DNS related) to perform. I'm not talking about modem configuration here.
See if any of this makes sense and then please ask further questions if you need to.
EDIT: When I referred to the file resolv.conf above, I was actually thinking of the file that causes IP addr hostname resolution to be performed preferentially either by DNS or by /etc/hosts. On a rather old version of FreeBSD that I have running at the moment, that file is actually /etc/host.conf. You will only need a correct resolv.conf if you are actually using DNS to do the resolution. You only need the functionality of host.conf if you have both DNS and /etc/hosts and you want to make a choice between them for name resolution. This might all be different for more recent or different flavours of Unix.
i think i changed something on this macintosh because einstien@home seemed to originally see my computer's name. also, i can still see the other computer i used to use on my "Your computers" page. it's name is still on the page, but only one ip address is listed. it is not the internal ip address listed for this computer. i have also tryed to select this computer in BOINC using the "Select computer..." command, but BOINC will not allow it.
yes, i used DHCP to configure the ip address. Darwin is the BSD enviornment on which OS10 is based. i wrote to someone at my service provider. she replyed and told me the addresses of the DNS servers. is that what i need?
i think i changed something on this macintosh because einstien@home seemed to originally see my computer's name.
My guess is that you need to add to and/or correct the information which is in your /etc/hosts file.
Quote:
also, i can still see the other computer i used to use on my "Your computers" page.
And so you should, even if that machine is no longer crunching. The website will continue to display whatever information was current at the time of last contact even if the machine is defunct now.
Quote:
it's name is still on the page, but only one ip address is listed. it is not the internal ip address listed for this computer.
Nor should it be. DHCP on your modem will have given your new machine a different IP from what the previous machine used, most likely. DHCP reads the hardware (MAC) address of your network card and ties the internal IP to that MAC address. This should prevent internal machines (which will have different MAC addresses) from being assigned conflicting internal IP addresses. The external IP address - the one assigned to you by your ISP and configured into your modem should be the same for both machines - unless your ISP has since assigned you a different (dynamic) external address. This can happen.
Quote:
i have also tryed to select this computer in BOINC using the "Select computer..." command, but BOINC will not allow it.
Firstly, you mean BOINC Manager, not BOINC (I think). Are you opening the Manager and then trying to "Select computer..." on the Advanced tab?? If so why are you doing that as you talk as if you only have one machine currently working?? The Manager is already showing you the details for that machine and you will not get anything different using "Select computer...". If you had a couple of different machines on a LAN then you could manage them individually from the one Manager session.
In theory, you should be able to reselect the machine by inserting either "localhost" or the actual hostname or the internal IP address of the machine itself. You will also need to insert the password stored in "gui_rpc_auth.cfg" (unless you use "localhost" where the password is auto-inserted). If you can't select it, this is consistent with not having a working method to do the hostname IP address resolution.
Quote:
yes, i used DHCP to configure the ip address. Darwin is the BSD enviornment on which OS10 is based.
OK, since Darwin is based on BSD Unix you should be able to fix things easily with a simple edit in /etc/hosts, unless you already have a DNS server running. You didn't answer that. Please check if there is a background process called "named" running at all. If there isn't then the following is appropriate. Have a read through your /etc/hosts file, particularly all the commented out stuff, and it will basically tell you what to do. There should already be a localhost entry there which says:-
127.0.0.1 localhost ...
you need to add an entry for any valid internal IP addresses on the inside of your modem. Examples of the format of an entry should be shown in the commented out lines and will probably look something like:-
where www.xxx.yyy.zzz is the non-routable internal IP address of a machine on your LAN, and myhost is its hostname.
Quote:
i wrote to someone at my service provider. she replyed and told me the addresses of the DNS servers. is that what i need?
This is what your modem needs and you would have already inserted those DNS server addresses into your modem configuration or else you wouldn't be surfing at all. However those addresses are not needed for your internal machines because your ISPs DNS servers are contacted through your modem and not directly by an internal machine. You can check the configuration of your modem by opening a browser and surfing to its internal IP address and following the links once you get there. You must have done this at the time your modem was first installed. The user guide for your modem should tell you exactly how to do this.
EDIT: Another thing to check on - do you have any firewall software running and have you made any changes to it recently??
RE: RE: BOINC couldn't
)
Yes, in so far that it can't determine your hostname.
When you check your computers under your own name (click on your own name in the forums here, computers), does it then show your internal IP address under Name as well?
You can still try Boinc 5.8.8, see if that fixes things.
RE: When you check your
)
on my "Your computers" page, it lists "localhost" under "Name", but it does not list an ip address.
on my "Computer summary" page, it gives an "IP address" and an "External IP address". i configured the "IPv4" using "DHCP" in the Network preferences. this is the ip address einstein@home calls my "External IP address".
RE: enistein@home says that
)
AFAICT those are respectively the address of the machine on the LAN (not normally visible from outside) and the address of the router through which it connects to the Internet. My ‘nameless’ Mac server shows a blank for the former, probably related to its “gethostbyname failed� problem; all my other hosts show both addresses.
RE: RE: enistein@home
)
my computer is not in a network. should i configure my ip address manually in the"Network" preferences? should i change it to the "IP address" listed on einstein@home? ...or should i just call my provider?
RE: enistein@home says that
)
my provider tells me that einstein@home can not see my ip address because i have a dynamic ip address.
RE: my provider tells me
)
When I was connecting this G5 directly to the DSL modem (due to router problems) its name changed to a string of hex digits followed by what I believe to be the name of a server belonging to my ISP. But I didn’t look at its IP address(es) on the host page at the time, so I have no idea how it was identified.
If BOINC is able to send and receive work OK, I wouldn’t advise changing any of your network settings—or if you do, be sure to make a note of the configuration that’s (mostly) working now, in case you lose your connection altogether and need to restore the status quo.
i recently got this mac and
)
i recently got this mac and conected it to the dsl modem. i seem to have configured it correctly, but what confuses me is the computer i used before this one did not have this problem. i have the same account with the same isp and the same modem. it seemed as tho einstein@home could originally see my ip address, but now, it can't.
RE: i recently got this mac
)
I think I might be able to help you with this problem. Part of the reason why you haven't had a satisfactory answer so far is that you haven't really given enough information. Little by little you give snippets of information that make the picture a bit clearer. However you still need to give a bit more.
In an earlier message you said:-
I know nothing about Macs or their OS's but is Darwin 8.8.4 a "Unix" OS? If it is, then my next question is to ask you how DNS (Domain Name System) is set up on your machine. DNS converts machine names to IP addresses and IP addresses back to machine names and the "Rolls Royce" way to do this if you have a LAN of Unix machines is to run a DNS server like BIND on one of them. For a very small LAN or a single machine, you can get away without running a DNS server by putting the information (and maintaining it) in your /etc/hosts file (and setting up /etc/resolv.conf correctly).
I suspect that you (and Odysseus) will be able to get rid of these messages by putting appropriate entries in your hosts file. Do a "man hosts" and "man resolv.conf" from a command prompt to find all the gory details. If your OS is not "Unix" then your problem is still DNS related but you will need to find out how your OS does DNS queries. I imagine it is still some form of "hosts" file.
In another message you said:-
The answer to this is absolutely NO!! :). In your most recent post you indicated that you have a DSL modem (probably a modem/router) and this is the actual device that responds to the IP address that your ISP has assigned to you. This is your external IP address that everything out there on the internet can see. You can share your DSL connection (your external IP address) with as many internal machines as you like (within reason). Each machine inside your modem has a non-routable, internal IP address. Your modem probably runs DHCP (Dynamic Host Control Protocol) to assign a non-routable (ie it should never be sent out there into internet-land) IP address and your modem uses NAT (Network Address Translation) to convert each internal IP address into the single external IP address for every packet that is sent out. For packets coming back, your modem again uses NAT to translate the external IP address to the appropriate internal one so that the correct machine on your LAN gets the packet.
A byproduct of NAT is that you get a degree of firewall protection from the baddies out there. Everybody can see your external IP and if they attack that then it's your modem and not your computer that's being attacked. People refer to this as a "NAT firewall" or a "hardware firewall" and it's way better than having your machine directly on the internet :). NAT firewalls can be breached if the baddie is determined enough so it shouldn't be your only line of protection :).
So if your internal IP address is not supposed to be routed externally, how come it's visible on the EAH website and is this a problem? NO, it's not a problem at all because you are the only one allowed to see it. BOINC actually sends the value as an item of data deliberately for it to be recorded on your private page so that if you have several computers on your account you can easily distinguish between them even if the hostname is not visible or is recorded as "localhost" for each machine. The internal IP address will be a unique identifier.
If you have everything configured correctly at your end, you will see the correct local hostname and the correct internal and external IP addresses when you examine the page on the website for each of your computers. Anyone else looking at any of your computers will not see that sensitive information. If you don't see these three items or if your hostname is shown as "localhost" then you have some local configuration (DNS related) to perform. I'm not talking about modem configuration here.
See if any of this makes sense and then please ask further questions if you need to.
EDIT: When I referred to the file resolv.conf above, I was actually thinking of the file that causes IP addr hostname resolution to be performed preferentially either by DNS or by /etc/hosts. On a rather old version of FreeBSD that I have running at the moment, that file is actually /etc/host.conf. You will only need a correct resolv.conf if you are actually using DNS to do the resolution. You only need the functionality of host.conf if you have both DNS and /etc/hosts and you want to make a choice between them for name resolution. This might all be different for more recent or different flavours of Unix.
Cheers,
Gary.
i think i changed something
)
i think i changed something on this macintosh because einstien@home seemed to originally see my computer's name. also, i can still see the other computer i used to use on my "Your computers" page. it's name is still on the page, but only one ip address is listed. it is not the internal ip address listed for this computer. i have also tryed to select this computer in BOINC using the "Select computer..." command, but BOINC will not allow it.
yes, i used DHCP to configure the ip address. Darwin is the BSD enviornment on which OS10 is based. i wrote to someone at my service provider. she replyed and told me the addresses of the DNS servers. is that what i need?
RE: i think i changed
)
My guess is that you need to add to and/or correct the information which is in your /etc/hosts file.
And so you should, even if that machine is no longer crunching. The website will continue to display whatever information was current at the time of last contact even if the machine is defunct now.
Nor should it be. DHCP on your modem will have given your new machine a different IP from what the previous machine used, most likely. DHCP reads the hardware (MAC) address of your network card and ties the internal IP to that MAC address. This should prevent internal machines (which will have different MAC addresses) from being assigned conflicting internal IP addresses. The external IP address - the one assigned to you by your ISP and configured into your modem should be the same for both machines - unless your ISP has since assigned you a different (dynamic) external address. This can happen.
Firstly, you mean BOINC Manager, not BOINC (I think). Are you opening the Manager and then trying to "Select computer..." on the Advanced tab?? If so why are you doing that as you talk as if you only have one machine currently working?? The Manager is already showing you the details for that machine and you will not get anything different using "Select computer...". If you had a couple of different machines on a LAN then you could manage them individually from the one Manager session.
In theory, you should be able to reselect the machine by inserting either "localhost" or the actual hostname or the internal IP address of the machine itself. You will also need to insert the password stored in "gui_rpc_auth.cfg" (unless you use "localhost" where the password is auto-inserted). If you can't select it, this is consistent with not having a working method to do the hostname IP address resolution.
OK, since Darwin is based on BSD Unix you should be able to fix things easily with a simple edit in /etc/hosts, unless you already have a DNS server running. You didn't answer that. Please check if there is a background process called "named" running at all. If there isn't then the following is appropriate. Have a read through your /etc/hosts file, particularly all the commented out stuff, and it will basically tell you what to do. There should already be a localhost entry there which says:-
127.0.0.1 localhost ...
you need to add an entry for any valid internal IP addresses on the inside of your modem. Examples of the format of an entry should be shown in the commented out lines and will probably look something like:-
www.xxx.yyy.zzz myhost.my.domain myhost
where www.xxx.yyy.zzz is the non-routable internal IP address of a machine on your LAN, and myhost is its hostname.
This is what your modem needs and you would have already inserted those DNS server addresses into your modem configuration or else you wouldn't be surfing at all. However those addresses are not needed for your internal machines because your ISPs DNS servers are contacted through your modem and not directly by an internal machine. You can check the configuration of your modem by opening a browser and surfing to its internal IP address and following the links once you get there. You must have done this at the time your modem was first installed. The user guide for your modem should tell you exactly how to do this.
EDIT: Another thing to check on - do you have any firewall software running and have you made any changes to it recently??
Cheers,
Gary.