URL not responding on OS X, fine on other machine

For some reason I can't access anything on python.org. nslookup resolves the IP address, but no browser or curl command will fetch anything. It works fine on a VMWare Ubuntu virtual machine and on a Windows machine on the same network. I've checked there's nothing funny in /etc/hosts

I don't know where else to go looking for issues, can anyone suggest anything?

Running OS X 10.5 Leopard

Rory Fitzpatrick

Posted 2010-04-22T21:58:34.300

Reputation: 545

Do all other sites work okay, e.g. www.google.com ? – JBRWilkinson – 2010-04-23T11:21:08.653

Have you tried other browsers on OS X? Firefox, Chrome? – Doug Harris – 2010-04-23T13:15:35.487

@Doug "no browser or curl command will fetch anything" - so yes – Rory Fitzpatrick – 2010-04-23T14:14:07.663

@JBRWilkinson yes, everything apart from python.org (and it's subdomains) – Rory Fitzpatrick – 2010-04-23T14:14:28.957

whoops, missed that part. – Doug Harris – 2010-04-23T14:28:51.700

Answers

Do you have IPv6 enabled for your network connection?

This may be related to python.org having an IPv6 address configured:

$ host python.org
python.org has address 82.94.164.162
python.org has IPv6 address 2001:888:2000:d::a2
python.org mail is handled by 50 mail.python.org.

Googling for "ipv6 python.org" brings up some interesting results such as this Chromium bug report. The comments indicate that a bug in OS X has been identified and that the bug still exists in Snow Leopard.

Try disabling IPv6 and see if it helps.

Doug Harris

Posted 2010-04-22T21:58:34.300

Reputation: 23 578

Look if Parental Controls are on for that users' account - it works by proxying via a local daemon which has an heuristics-based filter would could be mistaking 'python' for a censored term.

JBRWilkinson

Posted 2010-04-22T21:58:34.300

Reputation: 142

I enabled Parental Controls for another account on my mac and had no trouble accessing python.org in Safari. – Doug Harris – 2010-04-23T13:41:57.483

What would be behaviour be if this were the case? Currently it just times out trying to connect (after a long period of time for some apps) – Rory Fitzpatrick – 2010-04-23T14:15:16.397