Hi,

I've got a Sun Blade 100 in work and we're trying to set it up to connect to the internet through our proxy server. The Sun has a SunPCI PC card installed and we can connect fine with that, but using Netscape from Solaris (solaris 8 by the way) just doesn't want to know.

As far as we can see, the only configuration needed is the IP address and port of the proxy server. The first time we attempt to access a web page it asks for a password and username - now this is where we could be failing - we're trying to use our standard Windows/network logon username and password (including domain). After a short time, it fails with the message 'Proxy authentication failed'.

As far as we can see, we're doing everything OK; but I thought I might ask the greater knowledge that is this BBS for any suggestions/hints! Should this be working? Should it accept the logon or is there a different way of doing it?

Cheers,

Pretty Frustrated.

Do you have to enter a username and password when accessing the proxy via Windows? If not, are you sure there's any authentication going on with the proxy at all? I don't see anywhere to enter a username and password in my Netscape preferences, so I assume it's just popping up on you when you try to go somewhere, so I guess your proxy is requesting it.

Hmmm.

How is the SunPCI card networking set up? Do you have a network cable attached to the back of the card, or is it getting network access via the Sun workstation? If the latter, you should be able to run ``snoop -x54 -s10000 port <proxyport>'' (where ``<proxyport>'' is the numeric port number of the proxy server you're trying to use) from a shell on the Sun as root (use ``su''), then connect to the internet using the proxy from your SunPCI card and you should be able to see it authenticating itself.

I suppose that the real crux of the matter is what sort of proxy server you're using and what it's trying to use for authentication. Maybe it distinguishes between Windows and other OS clients somehow.

I'm pretty sure there's authentication going on with the proxy - but I reckon it does it automatically with windows using the logon parameters.
The SunPCI card has its own network socket, so it is connected independantly. I'll try that snoop command when using netscape though - see if it can shed any light on the matter.

Maybe it distinguishes between Windows and other OS clients somehow.
This is what I was afraid of - do proxys do this? I suppose it's totally up to the proxy.

Thanks.

Sorted!
The proxy we are using would appear to have several different authentication methods available - those enabled were Windows Logon and Anonymous authentication. As soon as we turned basic authentication on it works!

Thanks a lot for your time Bitt.

Cheers.

No problem. My interest was piqued somewhat when I saw a system description strikingly similar to my own.

I'm on a SunBlade 2000 (sorry) with a SunPCI card and am also going through a proxy (albeit one of my own devising, and not a company-wide one).

Have you ever used Solaris' Flash archive utility? I'm trying to get to grips with it for a disaster recovery project here. I wanted to use CDs as the backup media but I don't think it'll all fit on, and I don't think I can span disks with the Flash utility? Any ideas - do I need to invest in a tape drive!

Cheers.

I have used flar, but only a few times. It's quite neat, I think. To be honest, I only ever used it with tapes, but I'm sure that there's a splitting facility.

While I look to see if it's obvious, I have to point out that I encountered a few bugs with it that prevented me from restoring from it. Unfortunately, the only one I can remember right now is one where if /var/yp doesn't exist on your master machine, then restores will completely hang, so the flar is unusable.

You can try using flar -s after you've created it to split it, but it doesn't seem to have an option to set the size, so it may not be what you're looking for. As per usual, Sun's documentation is not exactly the best.

Sun's documentation is not exactly the best
Yeah - I know what you mean! I spotted that split command too. I think either way I'm gonna have to use some temporary storage between flar-ing it, splitting it and putting it on CD. Hmmm, where's that purchase order request form!

Cheers.