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You are here: MacNN Forums > Software - Troubleshooting and Discussion > macOS > accounts with Parental Controls can't access web at all

accounts with Parental Controls can't access web at all
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Zoom
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Mar 11, 2011, 05:16 PM
 
Somewhere in the last month or so, my two daughters' Mac OSX accounts have all of a sudden had problems connecting to the internet. Originally, I had their Safari applications locked down hard - purely a white list of sites. Then they couldn't get to any of them - timeout, no connection at all, as if there was no internet service. So, I tried changing it to "allow non-adult sites". That didn't work, either. But if I switch to my personal account (with no controls), I can use Safari to get to the internet just fine.

I tried Firefox on one of my daughters' accounts, too, and it also failed. It's like there's no network connection on her account at all.

I brought up the Network Utility under her account. She had an IP address and was "connected". I could use ping and lookup (I used "google.com" for all of these tests) - those were fine. But traceroute hung after it looks like one hop. I only let it run for 10 secs or so, but it shouldn't take that long.

I should say - the box is running OSX 10.6.6.

What's going on here?
( Last edited by Zoom; Mar 11, 2011 at 05:26 PM. )
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Zoom  (op)
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Mar 12, 2011, 11:05 PM
 
Update... I was actually able to do trace route from my daughter's account, it just took a long time. (It took a long time for a complete trace on my admin account, too - appeared to be the same.)

WTH is going on here? This definitely used to work. This has stopped working sometime in the last month or so. Maybe broken in 10.6.6?

HELP!
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ibook_steve
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Mar 14, 2011, 03:38 PM
 
Have you tried temporarily disabling parental controls on the account, just to make sure it's not a hardware issue?

Does email still work (with Mail.app if that's what your daughters are using)?

Have you made any recent changes to your router?

Steve
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Mar 14, 2011, 04:55 PM
 
I have not made any recent changes to my router. Yes, actually, email does work. But like I said, using Network Utility, I can do ping, lookup and traceroute. It appears to be only HTTP traffic. Amazingly, it even blocked Firefox (a non-Apple web browser), so this is probably handled at the Firewall, not in the app - which makes good sense.

Quick background, to be clear: I used to use the most restrictive Parental Controls settings for "web", which is a "white list" of web sites (you can go to these sites, and that's it). Then it stopped working (the whitelisted sites wouldn't load), so I tried the next level, which is "allow anything that's not adult-oriented". I don't personally trust that, but I was desperate. But until today, I hadn't tried unrestricted access - because I would never allow that for them, so it wasn't a solution.

But it's an interesting test case, as you point out. So I did it. It worked - pages were now loading. No surprise, that should work. Then I started restricting it again, and it worked like it used to work. I went back to the most restrictive white list setting, and the approved web sites loaded with no problems! (And unapproved web sites didn't load.)

So... something was stuck somewhere, and switching to unrestricted and back seemed to set it straight again. We'll see how long this lasts, though. After all, it was working before, too.
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Mac Write
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Mar 17, 2011, 01:31 AM
 
You might also want to dump ~/Library/cache/Safari (Users Library folder) or even go as far as to delete Safari Preferences ~/Library/Preferences/Safari/preferences.plist). It could be corrupted.
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Zoom  (op)
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Mar 25, 2011, 11:28 AM
 
I may have to try that, Mac Write - it's back to not working again. This is VERY frustrating. I tried the trick that I thought fixed it last time (removing restrictions and adding them back), and that failed. I had to let my daughter use my account, which is wide open. I don't like that.
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ibook_steve
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Mar 25, 2011, 01:40 PM
 
Because you say that your account works OK, you could also try setting up brand new user accounts. They're kids. They may have messed something up. Try new user accounts and see it things work OK. If so, move all their stuff to the new accounts and delete the old accounts.

Steve
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Apr 1, 2011, 09:22 AM
 
Originally Posted by ibook_steve View Post
Because you say that your account works OK, you could also try setting up brand new user accounts. They're kids. They may have messed something up. Try new user accounts and see it things work OK. If so, move all their stuff to the new accounts and delete the old accounts.

Steve
Well, I can see the logic here, but honestly I shouldn't have to do that. I don't want to have to do this every time it fails. I'd much rather figure out how to fix it.
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Zoom  (op)
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Apr 1, 2011, 10:23 AM
 
I opened a thread on Apple's support forums for this. There's more info there if you care to read it.

Apple - Support - Discussions - Parental Controls now blocking all HTTP ...

I'll try to post back here if I find out how to fix this.

Note that creating a new account did work. I just don't view that as a fix (it's more of a workaround).
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ibook_steve
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Apr 1, 2011, 04:41 PM
 
Originally Posted by Zoom View Post
I opened a thread on Apple's support forums for this. There's more info there if you care to read it.

Apple - Support - Discussions - Parental Controls now blocking all HTTP ...

I'll try to post back here if I find out how to fix this.

Note that creating a new account did work. I just don't view that as a fix (it's more of a workaround).
I disagree as I'm sure others here would as well. Creating a new account is a legitimate troubleshooting technique, not a workaround. The fact that a new account works indicates that something is corrupted or messed up in the original account(s). Moving to a new account is not that big of a deal. Why waste time trying to fix something if you can just use the new accounts that work?

Steve
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Apr 1, 2011, 05:44 PM
 
I'm not saying it's not a legitimate troubleshooting technique - it gives you a clue as to what might be wrong, but it doesn't tell you exactly what's wrong. So, if you don't know what's really wrong, then you can't fix the problem. Creating new accounts just avoids the problem, it doesn't fix the problem.

And yes, it is a pain to reproduce two entirely new accounts. If their accounts are corrupt, then I can't export and import settings for fear that it'll just corrupt the new accounts. They have contact lists, web site lists, email settings, iChat settings... it's not trivial to reproduce them. If I thought it would be a one-time thing, sure, I could do that. But I don't know what caused this in the first place so I have no assurance that I won't be in the same boat in a few weeks with the new accounts. Therefore, my strong desire is to figure out what's actually messed up and fix it. But yes, failing that, I won't have much other choice than to create totally new accounts and hand-copy all the config.

All that said... please don't mistake my disagreement with lack of appreciation. I do appreciate the suggestion and the offer of help. You've suggested a legitimate solution (workaround, whatever). I'm just saying that I'm hoping to actually understand what caused this in the first place so I can fix it or avoid it next time. I don't want to have to periodically create new accounts to address this.
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AKcrab
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Apr 1, 2011, 06:40 PM
 
If new users fix an issue, usually the problem is in ~/Library.

Does that help much? Maybe not, but the problem and the solution should be somewhere in there.
     
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Apr 8, 2011, 08:20 AM
 
Quick update... I've gotten no reply on the Apple forum. So at this point I'm probably just going to have to create new accounts for them and hope this doesn't happen again. If it does... I may need to do a clean re-install of the OS. Luckily, there's not that much on this machine that I can't replace.
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