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zeebe · 09:46 AM

OK, I have a REALLY weird problem on my hands. I run a school's Tech dept. Small school, 27 lab computers, about 20 teacher computers, 3 office. We are slowly making the switch to the Intel iMacs for teachers. The office all has Intel iMacs.
Here is the problem,:
On one of the office Intels, I can access ANY web site EXCEPT Apples. When I try, I get this error:
"NSURLErrorDomain:-1005"
I tried with both Safari and Firefox (keep reading, this is MORE then an application problem). Now this is not a big problem, as the secretary who uses this computer never goes to Apple's web site, so I forgot about it.

Now I searched the forums before I posted and saw others with the same or similar problems, but the thing that REALLY makes this weird is I recently was upgrading all of the computers with Software Update, making sure everything is up to date, and this SAME computer finds the updates the computer needs, lists them in Software Update, gives me any Software Licensing Agreement forms (usually iTunes) which I can click on Agree to, but when it starts to download the software, I get a Network Error -1005, the same number as the NSURLErrorDomain above.

OK, now to make things even WEIRDER, I decided to make a new user, to see if this user can access Apple's site and Software Update, and guess what, THAT USER CAN!! So I have updated the computer, but I don't want to have to login to a new user each time I want to upgrade. All of our computers (except for the 3 iBook laptops) are HARD WIRED to the Internet. I even turned off the airport card in the Intel iMac so that wasn't conflicting with anything.

This computer is a 17" 1.83GHz Intel, with 1GB of RAM and 150GB Hard Drive.

Does anyone have ANY ideas what is going on???
Thanks

edge.it · Aug 22, 2007, 09:50 AM

anytime something funky happens i do a few things but dont ask why, over the years apple tech support has had me do a few things, so now i just do it automaticlly and hope it fixes it.

reset the PRAM -- APPLE+OPTION+P+R on boot
reset the NVRAM -- APPLE+OPTION+N+V
run diskwarrior on the boot drive if you have it
boot to the shell APPLE + S and type fsck -f
boot to OS X install and run disk utility -- repair volume and permissions

now here comes the more intelligen posters saying WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?! haah i dk i just do.

bearcatrp · Aug 22, 2007, 10:20 AM

Are you switching from pc's to intel macs or from PPC macs to intel macs? The reason I am asking is if your coming from PPC macs and you used migration assistance to transfer programs from one to the other, you may have some ppc software interfering. Just a thought.
Randy

zeebe · Aug 22, 2007, 10:27 AM

from PPC macs, but we didn't use migration software, the secretaries just backed up documents. I reinstalled the Apps (only 3, Office, Filemaker and Printshop). It has been working for about 6 months too, just started this about 2 months ago.

reader50 · Aug 22, 2007, 01:23 PM

It's possible someone added a firewall rule by accident. Open Terminal on the affected machine, and su to root. Then:

ipfw list

If the firewall has not been used localy, the only entry will be "65535 allow ip from any to any". If the firewall controls accessed via the Sharing pref pane have been enabled, there will be additional entries. Look for an IP or domain deny setting.

The weakness with this theory is it doesn't explain why the block is gone from another account.

zeebe · Aug 22, 2007, 01:32 PM

OK, checked the ipfw list, and it says "65535 allow ip from any to any" so no firewall enabled.

bearcatrp · Aug 22, 2007, 04:17 PM

Checked a few sites, look at these links to see if they help:
http://www.macfixitforums.com/php/sh...=5&o=31&fpart=

Hope this helps.
Randy

besson3c · Aug 22, 2007, 04:42 PM

Are you using any proxies?

zeebe · Aug 23, 2007, 12:12 AM

@bearcatrp - I will look into those solutions listed there, although I did try resetting Safari, and that didn't work.

@besson3c - nope, no proxies!

Thanks for the ideas everyone, still trying to get it to work!

zeebe · Aug 23, 2007, 02:36 AM

OK, the secretary left her computer on. I deleted the preferences (com.apple.Safari.plist and com.apple.internetconfig.plist and I am still getting that error!!

Couple of weird side notes, I can access the iTunes music store, but nothing else Apple. What are some of Apple's foreign web sites? I want to check those out and see if they work.

Thanks again for all of the help!

reader50 · Aug 23, 2007, 03:02 AM

Checking Apple's Developer Section reveals that "NSURLErrorDomain" is a Cocoa class error specific to URL handling. -1005 can be found in the header files, though I got this from their Foundation Constants PDF reference file:

NSURLErrorNetworkConnectionLost = -1005

Check System Preferences -> Accounts -> Login Items. See if there's something there that could "claim" calls to a particular domain. I'm not thinking of any, but this has to be something specific to the problem user account. Alternatively, drag their Preferences folder to the Desktop, then Logout/Login. See if the blockage vanishes.

If not, drag new Preferences to Trash and old Preferences back where it belongs, then Logout/Login again. If the problem goes away, add prefs back a few at a time until the problem reappears.

If it's not sensitive to the Preferences folder, try the Application Support folder. You could try using Activity Monitor on a fast update setting, to try and catch anything that goes active while blocking Apple URLs.

zeebe · Aug 23, 2007, 03:06 AM

OK, I will try these ideas in the morning, as I shut down the computer for the night.
Thanks again for everyone's help!

zeebe · Aug 23, 2007, 09:37 AM

OK, no login items was clean. I took the preferences folder out, same thing, replaced preferences folder. I took the application support folder out, same thing, replaced application support folder.

Can you explain to me what you mean about the activity monitor?

Thanks for the ideas!

pinenuts · Aug 23, 2007, 09:54 AM

Can you ping apple.com? Also, run "host apple.com" and see what comes up. Should be a bunch of listings.

I am thinking DNS issue.

besson3c · Aug 23, 2007, 09:54 AM

zeebe: I don't have time to research this further, but I see a ton of seemingly relevant results when I Google "NSURLErrorDomain:-1005". Have you done this research yourself?

besson3c · Aug 23, 2007, 09:55 AM

Originally Posted by pinenuts

Can you ping apple.com? Also, run "host apple.com" and see what comes up. Should be a bunch of listings.

I am thinking DNS issue.

Yes, and see if the IP address being pinged matches the IP address returned by DNS lookups.

zeebe · Aug 23, 2007, 11:35 AM

OK, I pinged apple.com, below is a picture of the results (note, I am doing this from home connecting to the secretary's computer.

How do I run "host apple.com"?

@besson3c - Thanks for all of your help so far, I wasn't expecting you to research it completely for me. Yes I did search google before I asked here, as well as searched these forums, but all of the problems other had sound different then mine. I have not found any post anywhere that deals with Software Update not working.

besson3c · Aug 23, 2007, 11:49 AM

zeebe: is it possible that there is a hardware firewall blocking connections somewhere else? If so, we can test this over your SSH session by doing a:

Code:
telnet www.apple.com 80

If you do not see:

Code:
Connected to http://www.apple.com.akadns.net

your connection is being blocked.

zeebe · Aug 23, 2007, 12:16 PM

OK, I did that, but got a little bit different response. Mine says this:

Code:
Trying 17.112.152.32...
Connected to eg-www.apple.com.
Escape character is '^]'•

I am not using SSH but Chicken of the VNC to connect to our server, then use Apple Remote Desktop to connect to the secretary's computer. We do have a router, but it is not blocking anything to do with Apple, plus, if the router was blocking this computer, it would block all.
Thanks again for the help!

besson3c · Aug 23, 2007, 12:21 PM

Okay, try typing in:

Code:
host www.apple.com

into your SSH session now, please...

zeebe · Aug 23, 2007, 12:23 PM

OK, got this:

Code:
www.apple.com is a nickname for www.apple.com.akadns.net
www.apple.com.akadns.net has address 17.112.152.32

pinenuts · Aug 23, 2007, 02:39 PM

Take the IP address of 17.112.152.32 and put it into firefox and see what you get. I get Apple's site.

I am a little concerned for the lack of results with your host of apple.com. I get 10 or so results.

besson3c · Aug 23, 2007, 02:43 PM

What happens when you try visiting the following sites in either web browser?

Code:
http://www.apple.com.akadns.net
17.112.152.32

zeebe · Aug 23, 2007, 02:48 PM

I get apple's web site, but VERY limited. The pictures aren't there, not much of the structure either (links on top and stuff)

besson3c · Aug 23, 2007, 02:50 PM

So it's probably not a networking problem...

The exact same error message results from both browsers?

besson3c · Aug 23, 2007, 02:53 PM

Originally Posted by pinenuts

Take the IP address of 17.112.152.32 and put it into firefox and see what you get. I get Apple's site.

I am a little concerned for the lack of results with your host of apple.com. I get 10 or so results.

Good point.. Didn't the poster say that other machines are working though? I"m assuming they are all using the same DNS server.

pinenuts · Aug 23, 2007, 03:02 PM

Could be a DNS caching issue...

Do you have an OS X Server running doing DNS? Are you just using your ISPs DNS?

zeebe · Aug 23, 2007, 03:11 PM

Yes, all of our other 40 or so machines can access Apple and software update, even the OS 9 machines!

I have a server running dyndns update for our web site. We have a windows (run by the parish, not me, Catholic School) server who deals out IP addresses. The only thing you have to remember is, I can get another user on the same computer to access those sites and software update. Just this user does it....

pinenuts · Aug 23, 2007, 03:13 PM

Ahh...it's a homedir issue. Hmm....

If you use a "broken" user on a different machine, does the problem persist? Are you running an OS X Server as OD Master?

zeebe · Aug 23, 2007, 03:19 PM

What do you mean by broken user?? What is OD Master. The only thing our OS X server runs is our web page and soon our email server (once I upgrade to OS X 10.4 server), we are currently using OS X 10.2 (latest update, not sure what number) on our server (if you want to see our web site, you can click on Sacred Heart School in my signature!)

besson3c · Aug 23, 2007, 03:30 PM

Does this problem occur with a different user account on the same machine?

pinenuts · Aug 23, 2007, 03:32 PM

Zeebee,
You seemed to indicate that this issue of Apple.com not resolving is limited to just a few users. I am curious if you are using a server of any type (Open Directory or Active Directory) in order to centrally manage your logins. If this is the case (meaning you can go from Mac to Mac and log in with the same account and password), then I suggest that you identify one of the "broken" accounts, go to a known working Mac, log in using the broken account and try to go to Apple.com.

Are you authenticating via Active Directory? NetInfo? I *highly* suggest you bring up your OS X Server as an Open Directory Master. It's very useful.

zeebe · Aug 23, 2007, 03:34 PM

This problems on happens on 1 machine with 1 user. This user is limited to this computer. I do not have any kind of directory, just computers. We are too small to worry about this.

pinenuts · Aug 23, 2007, 04:04 PM

Gotchya....

In that case, I might suggest backing up the users ~, deleting and creating a new ~ for them. You can continue to troubleshoot it, but I highly suggest the former.

As far as directory services, if you have anything more than 20 machines (and you said you already have an OS X Server which services mail) then you really should consider setting it up as an Open Directory Master. It will allow you to set groups, preferences and allow the users to be truly portable.

zeebe · Aug 23, 2007, 04:21 PM

Is that easy with OS X Server 10.4 (I am asking about 10.4 server as we will be updating to that next Tuesday)? I don't know too much about OS X Server... Is there a tutorial on Apple's web site?

pinenuts · Aug 23, 2007, 04:27 PM

It really is pretty easy. I went from very little knowledge of OS X Server (tons of Client, tho) to having a fully functioning OS X Server in about a week. If you already have the OS X Server 10.4 then you're half way home.

You'll need this PDF from Apple: http://images.apple.com/server/docs/...tory_v10.4.pdf

This is an amazing resource:
Apple - Server - Documentation