I can't go to a single website in Firefox

[Red Squirrel]

For whatever reason I have one website that won't load anymore. I can access sites that are hosted on the same server, and the site in question works on other machines.

If curious the site is http://www.uovalor.com

I can get to other sites on the same server but that site just won't load on this particular machine/profile. I just see the dot going back and forth non stop forever. If I use wget I can download it right away so it's not network/firewall related. It seems to be limited to Firefox. What would cause this?

 

[sandorski]

Loaded for me on FF.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Yeah it's weird it's only doing it to this one machine. I don't get it. Something is somehow corrupt in my Firefox but only for that site.

 

[Steltek]

Are you using encrypted DNS? If so, try to switch to unencrypted as I on occasion have weird things to happen with the cloudflare DNS. Also, does it do the same thing in a private window with extensions disabled?

 

[VirtualLarry]

Yeah, if that site is hosted on your local LAN, and you have IP loopback enabled on your local router, but allowed Firefox to enable their own DNS-over-HTTPS feature, the DNS lookup of Firefox is going straight to cloudflare, and not to your local router, and thus loopback will have no effect, and thus you won't be able to access your site.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Nope it's hosted on same server as http://www.uogateway.com which works. This is the weirdest thing. But yeah I forgot about that new DNS feature, I figured it would break all my local stuff but it seems to have not, maybe it's smart enough to try local DNS if external fails.

Just checked and looks like it's already turned off though. Oh and if I open a private window, it opens. So there seems to be something weird with my regular profile but it's affecting only that one site.

As a side note... using Wireshark on a 4k monitor is pretty awesome. It's my first time using it on this setup.

 

[Steltek]

Are you running any extensions in Firefox?

If doesn't load in a regular session but does load in a private browsing session (which disables all extensions by default unless you instruct otherwise), that could indicate an extension problem is causing the issue.

I guess you've already tried to clear the browser cache and have deleted any cookies for that site from the browser?

 

[mikeymikec]

Just try creating a second Firefox profile with firefox -p and see if that makes any difference. If it doesn't, then your first profile is still intact and undamaged.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Yeah that's the thing it does work on another profile, so it could be something with an extension I just don't know what. It's not like it's being blocked, because it just acts like it's trying to load but just stays stuck that way forever. So it never even reaches the point where the extensions would get a chance to block anything as no data gets transfered. (verified with Wireshark). Also just realized my title is missleading, it's literally that one single site that does not work, any other site works ok. It's like if something is corrupted somewhere.

I will give it more time to see if it clears on it's own. Maybe next reboot it will.

 

[mikeymikec]

Firefox safe mode?

 

[Red Squirrel]

Yeah it works in all those modes it's strictly on the normal mode that it does not work. Not at home now to test further though but pretty sure it works in any special mode like safe mode or using another profile or private mode etc. It's in normal mode it seems to not work. It just spins forever and never tries to load. (no traffic gets generated not even a get request)

 

[Red Squirrel]

So this just randomly started working on it's own now. No idea what that was about really.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Ok so it's doing this again. Now I can't get to a certain local host which is a local website used for checking environmental alarms. It keeps insisting that it's https when it's not, then redirects to a security camera system I don't even use anymore.

Also can't get to https://www.duckduckgo.com. It does not even try to load, just goes straight to "we can't get to" error.

Other sites I can load, so far.

 

[mxnerd]

Clear cache, cookies & history. Or re-installation.

Also launch Firefox developer tools to see what could be happening while loading pages.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Yeah tried that it did nothing. But waiting a couple hours fixed it. This is annoying though because it will probably do it again. If I load another profile it also works as a workaround.

 

[mxnerd]

I just visit the website you own. Fire up Firefox and it's web developer tools and found this. Firefox sometimes identifies files transmitted from www.uogateway.com with http and https at the same time when loading pages!

It does not always happen, but sometimes! (well, seems most of the times.)

So maybe it's the web site www.uogateway.com was causing the problem? (Which does have SSL certificate installed)

 

[Red Squirrel]

Oh that could just be something I forgot to change when I switched over my stuff to Let's Encrypt. I can't see why that would cause it to randomly stop working though? It's either it works or it doesn't. Why would it just choose to randomly not work? And I'm sure duckduckgo.com does not have any HTTPS issues. And the local sites that were having issues are not even HTTPS period. I don't see a reason to since it's local anyway.

There is going to be lot of non https links on uogateway.com as well since the site allows people to put a link to a banner. Though I guess I should just implement an upload feature for that so it's not hitting up so many external servers when loading the page.

 

[mxnerd]

No idea. Web tech is really very complex. I can only do some basic debugging.

I had no problem loading duckduckgo.com

Also use dev tools' Network tab to see what element takes most time to load. (turn on disable cache option to force Firefox to redownload page elements everytime you refresh the page )

 

[Red Squirrel]

That's the thing when it does not work there is no traffic so the dev tools don't do much. I even tried wireshark. Though I guess I could try it when it was trying to redirect when it should not. But now everything works again, this problem comes, hits up a few random sites, then goes after a few hours.

 

[mxnerd]

Maybe you should turn on Apache server's logging capability and check it out?

 

[mikeymikec]

If FF works consistently with a fresh profile, you could back up your old profile then in about:support tell Firefox to refresh itself. I believe that option keeps the necessary bits (saved logins, bookmarks etc) while clearing everything else out.

 

[mxnerd]

Red Squirrel has installed SSL certificate for uovalor.com and I don't get mixed http & https warning anymore when visiting the website.

The weird thing is that I sometimes will get favicon.ico not found (error 404)

 

[Red Squirrel]

I fixed that. But I doubt that was the cause, otherwise it would have just never worked at all. This problem comes and goes. When I first made this post it was that site that ceased to work, then after a few hours it started working, and then the other day it was other sites that stopped working. Only on Firefox on this one machine. Phone, lynx etc worked ok for those specific sites.

Seems firefox is doing some weird stuff internally or something and sometimes something gets corrupted internally. Some kind of cache maybe. Though there are 2 problems at play here, the first one is where a site just flat out won't load. The second is where it keeps trying to redirect to https when it's not https (ex: the local stuff). Next time it happens I'll check apache logs if by chance it's apache doing something weird but I can't see that as it would affect all browsers/computers.

 

[mxnerd]

Sometimes it's really hard to find the culprit.

==

When I use Chrome, the dev tools shows the following warning.

A cookie associated with a cross-site resource at http://uogateway.com/ was set without the `SameSite` attribute. A future release of Chrome will only deliver cookies with cross-site requests if they are set with `SameSite=None` and `Secure`.

 

[Red Squirrel]

So this started happening again, this time it's my home environmental control web page I can't access. I can telnet into it (it's just regular http) and I can ping it, but from Firefox, it just acts like it's loading but never loads. There is not even an attempt to connect as I opened Wireshark and there is nothing. I don't even see a DNS query go out.... actually, as I typed this I just thought of trying to connect to it by IP, and it works by IP. So it's like if Firefox for whatever reason is not sending out the DNS query for this one site, but it happens randomly. Like it worked last night and now it does not. If I use a different profile it will work but under my main it won't. If I let this sit for a couple hours it will eventually work again.

What is causing this?