Problem accessing PHP/PostgreSQL app from behind a firewall

pablogosse

Hi all. I've got a job board built in PHP/PostgreSQL, and some people accessing it off-campus (myself included) seem to be having problems accessing it if they're behind a firewall.

In my situation, running McAffee's firewall program, if I go to any page which access the PostgreSQL database it takes at least 4 or 5 minutes for the page to load.

However, the instant I shut down my firewall, the same page loads instantly.

Can anyone give me an idea as to where the problem most likely is?

It doesn't seem logical to me that it would be a problem with the code, as I was accessing PHP/PostgreSQL apps which are locaed on another server with no problems, even with the firewall running.

The url is http://www.unbc.ca/jobboard/ and the link which needs to be followed is the "Students" link. If anyone behind a firewall could test this by going to this page and seeing if it loads slowly I'd really appreciate it.

Does anyone have any ideas as to what could be causing this?

Thanks in advance,

Pablo

jerdo

I went to it and got a blank middle page when I clicked on the Students link. I would say your script is trying to get information from the users computer that the firewall is blocking.

pablogosse

Hey Jerdo. Thanks for your prompt reply.

I was thinking that as well, but then I went to the script and there seems to be nothing that would be doing that.

I've attached a textfile here with the code on the students page.

As you can see, there is nothing trying to access information from the users computer (that I can see anyways) and the four files included close to the top of the script just define the server name, database system, and the name of the database.

However, one thing I just thought of is that this site is in a frameset, and the top and bottom frames are coming off a different server (www.unbc.ca) than the actual job board (web.unbc.ca).

Could THIS be the problem?????? Can you try going to http://web.unbc.ca/webapps/jobcentre/students/index.php directly and telling me what happens? It's the page that comes up blank within the frameset after clicking the Students link.

Thanks very much for your help here. Greatly appreciated.

Cheers,
Pablo

jerdo

Coming from a different server could cause a problem make sure you have setup a user in the db with access privileges from that server. I tried going to the index.php you linked in the last post and it came up with nothing. Also I didn't see that text file attached.

pablogosse

Sorry, here's the attachment.

Regarding setting up a user in the db with priveliges for the other server, the files from the other server are just straight html for a page header and page footer (they're pulling from our main site) and have no dynamic capabilities or db functionality built in.

Thanks again.

pablogosse

Here's another url if someone could try it:

This one pulls everything from the same server.

http://web.unbc.ca/webapps/jobcentre/students/index2.php

ultraslacker

I am behind a firewall and all the links work for me - I was able to search the job database.

Can you go to any static html page (no db code) without the delay? And do the apache logs tell you anything?

jerdo

That last url did the same thing as the first one.

pablogosse

Weird. Here's a page with just the html output:

http://web.unbc.ca/webapps/jobcentre/students/html_output.html

Everything works fine for me from here, so I'm going to have to wait until I get home tonight to test it behind my firewall.

I'm going have a test machine set up in the next couple of days and try and see if we can isolate the problem further.

Thanks everyone for all your help.

Pablo

jerdo

I put myself in the DMZ and everything comes up fine. I can't find anything that should mess with a firewall in the text file you sent, so you might want to check the include files to see if they are doing anything.

pablogosse

DMZ? (De-militarized Zone??????)

The include files just define named constants for the following:

name of the database
the server it's running on
what type of database it is (PostgreSQL or MySQL)

The other include file simply outputs a search panel, looping through the results of the queries on that page.

Would you mind trying one more url? In it I've changed the server from the name of the server to localhost to see if that makes a difference (though I doubt it will)

http://web.unbc.ca/webapps/jobcentre/students/index_localhost.php

Thanks again.

Pablo