Really really really annoying network issue...

B

butlermh01

Registered
Hello all,

Mac newbie (come from Linux, Solaris and Windows...) here... I am having a really annoying and odd network issue. Basically it goes like this:

I'm working away and checking mail, surfing the web, iTunes, etc and all of a sudden I can no longer connect to any network resources (even by IP). If I fire up a terminal I can nslookup, ping, SSH, telnet port 80, etc. I can also connect to network resources through some Java apps (such as Gallery Remote - as in gallery.sourceforge.net). The ONLY way I can find to fix it is a reboot. Anyone seen this problem? I saw a fix in 10.3.7 that sorted DNS issues but this doesn't seem to be the problem. It seems to be a dodgy network layer library in the GUI that causes the problem. It is totally random but for some reason I always get cut off when going to www.myfonts.com... Any ideas? I see nothing strange in the system logs (but maybe I am looking in the wrong place).

My setup: G5 2GHz DP PM, 10.3.7, wired network

Thanks,

Mike

p.s I am using Firefox, IE, Safari and Thunderbird for my Internet connectivity if that helps!
 
Hmm, that's odd, usually if you have network problems, it'll stall in the terminal too. You can try kill -HUP pid_of_lookupd - that might fix your problems.

lookupd is OSX's name resolver - it does a bit more than just DNS lookups. SIGHUPing it will actually kill it, but it'll be restarted next time the OS wants to use it. A lot of times doing this will fix issues, though I'm not sure about your particular case.

I went to the myfonts site, and nothing happened with my setup, so there's nothing in particular about that site messing things up (as far as I can see, anyway).
 
That didn't do it, but I must have been looking at the wrong log because I tailed system.log 'again' while going to the myfonts site and got this:

Jan 2 21:38:24 localhost crashdump: Unable to determine CPSProcessSerNum pid: 270 name: NortonPrivacyControl
Jan 2 21:38:24 localhost crashdump: Started writing crash report to: /Library/Logs/CrashReporter/NortonPrivacyControl.crash.log
Jan 2 21:38:24 localhost kernel: NPC (kext): Daemon shut down (32).
Jan 2 21:38:25 localhost kernel: NPC (kext): Daemon shut down (32).
Jan 2 21:38:25 localhost crashdump: Finished writing crash report to: /Library/Logs/CrashReporter/NortonPrivacyControl.crash.log

Pretty suspect... I googled it and went to the Symantec site but nothing so I simply uninstalled Norton Privacy Control and bingo - myfonts works now... Hopefully this is the end of this extremely frustrating and costly (swear jar) issue....

Thanks for you help and time!

Cheers,

Mike
 
Norton programs are notoriously bad on Mac and most have been discontinued. Personally, I'd stay away from them, myself and many others have found that they are more trouble then they are worth on Mac.
 
I would recommend Virex, however, i don't run any AV software since there still has yet to be one reported virus/worm for OS X. Running AV software on a Mac is done mainly to protect your PC using friends from virii that you may mistakenly pass on to a friend of yours who is not as fortunate to use something other than Windows :p

And the chance that any AV software for Mac will protect you from the first OS X virus seems very small since it would most likely require an update to your virus definitions first.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top