Can't access web interface anymore

Hi all,

The computer I use to control my Ormerod 2 has suddenly lost the capability to connect to the web interface! What did I break and how can I unbreak it? More detail below.

Very occasionally during a print, the web interface would lose its connection to the printer and the only way to restore it was to wait until the print completed or power cycle the printer, which would obviously interrupt the print (tried different browsers, rebooting computer, rebooting network switch, rebooting router). I put this down to the Duet being busy doing far more important things than talking to a browser, and whilst very annoying, this would happen only rarely so I learnt to live with it.

The other day, it did it again: the web interface stopped talking to the printer while a print job was in progress. The difference this time was that I have been unable to access the printer's web interface from that particular computer ever since: when I type the printer's address into the browser address bar, the title bar displays the "Duet web interface" title, the RepRap drop icon, and a blank page. And that's it. There is no indication that it is still waiting for data from the Duet (the spinning arrow icon on some browsers), it looks as if it had happily downloaded and displayed all content there was to download and display. Very occasionally (after "refreshing" a zillion times) it manages to load up a few of the elements of the web interface, however these are non- or only semi-functional (e.g. "home X" works but "home Z" doesn't).

The browser is Opera on Windows Vista, and WiFi connection to the LAN. I tried rebooting the PC, the printer, all bits between them, and using a different browser. Internet and LAN are accessible as normal from this computer.

I can access the web interface without any issues from other computers on the same LAN: Firefox on another Vista PC wired to the network, Opera on a Windows 10 laptop using Wifi and Opera on a Windows 10 PC wired to the network. So the fault seems to be with the first control PC. It's a bit annoying as this is the PC which was dedicated to doing pretty much nothing else but slicing and controlling the printer and it's been doing it fairly successfully for some 10 months. The way things stand at the moment, it's lost its reason to exist...

The printer runs dc42's 1.09k firmware and web interface.

Anyone have any ideas what I broke and how to unbreak it?

Cheers,
Bart

[edit: fixed grammar]

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/10/2016 10:24AM by bartdietrich.

Could be a caching issue or the cookie string being too long. Try clearing your browser cache and upgrading to firmware 1.09r and DuetWebControl 1.08

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Large delta printer [miscsolutions.wordpress.com], E3D tool changer, Robotdigg SCARA printer, Crane Quad and Ormerod

Disclosure: I design Duet electronics and work on RepRapFirmware, [duet3d.com].

I agree that something is amiss with your first control PC if it can still get out on Internet but not to your printer.

If you open a command prompt, (Click the Start button, in the "search" box at the bottom, type cmd) and ping the IP address of the printer by typing "ping 192.168.1.xx"( enter the ip address of your printer) do you get a response? If not, then it may be that your DNS settings have been hard coded by an unwanted program to use an Internet DNS server instead of using your local router for its DNS server. Verify what DNS server this PC is using by typing "ipconfig /all" into the command prompt.

Quote
dc42
Could be a caching issue or the cookie string being too long. Try clearing your browser cache and upgrading to firmware 1.09r and DuetWebControl 1.08

Thanks, I'll have a look at the cache situation when I get home.

Quote
ayudtee
I agree that something is amiss with your first control PC if it can still get out on Internet but not to your printer.

If you open a command prompt, (Click the Start button, in the "search" box at the bottom, type cmd) and ping the IP address of the printer by typing "ping 192.168.1.xx"( enter the ip address of your printer) do you get a response? If not, then it may be that your DNS settings have been hard coded by an unwanted program to use an Internet DNS server instead of using your local router for its DNS server. Verify what DNS server this PC is using by typing "ipconfig /all" into the command prompt.

Thanks, yes, I can ping the printer. I'll see if clearing the browser cache as dc42 suggested helps.

Bart

Quote
dc42
Could be a caching issue or the cookie string being too long. Try clearing your browser cache and upgrading to firmware 1.09r and DuetWebControl 1.08

Yep, clearing the cache seems to have sorted it. Doesn't really explain why a different browser on the same computer showed a similar behaviour but don't look a gift horse in the mouth eh? Thanks dc42!

Bart