Kevin Yeandel’s Random Access Memory

Personal Web Server

I Googled all over the web for an answer to why oh why oh why can’t I see my webserver behind my router.

I port forwarded the web server in the router, nothing special there.
I checked iptables, turned the firewall off completely (madness, you’ll see why).
I changed the port on Apache to various others, taking care to restart.
I rebooted the server and rebooted the router. No joy.

Midnight to 3am – 3 hours. It was already working, the problem was that I could not reach my server by going out and back in via the router. In other words (warning to others who down firewalls as part of testing) just because I couldn’t see it doesn’t mean others can’t! Silly old me.
Once I tried to access my machine from a wireless network from the WAN and not my LAN it became obvious.

Three – Mobile Broadband – warning to Windows and Esp. MAC users

Firstly in order to get up and running, you need a CD – IF you are a MAC user. My sealed box had no CD. After 20 minutes of hunting down drivers from the website of three.co.uk, I downloaded them thanks to a fellow blogger who also had obviously had problems finding them.

Part of the installation involves a password which is sent to you by SMS. i.e. an SMS to your modem! Fine if you are using Windows… NOT so fine on the Mac as Three forgot to finish the software. The SMS Text appears in your inbox – not on the Mac as there is no inbox.  Options are to: take the sim and install it into a three enabled phone and get the password this way. Or take the phone to the shop and install the sim in one of their phones (no, really, I was told this). Last option is to plug the modem into a Windows box where the software magically appears from some sort of internal storage device and you should be good to go. I tried it on a Windows XP on VMWare from my Mac and it did not work so I plugged it into a laptop with XP and it was fine – I could retrieve the password and put it in as required.

No contracts, No Wires, No Worries

Actually BIG problem here…

It says, read this before you do anything… little green CD size brochure. So if you get in a muddle with getting it working on your Mac with it not having the Inbox and that, do not forget under any circumstances to go to their website and using the addon page, convert your credit into  broadband or face getting charged £1 per MB. Do this BEFORE using any credit from vouchers.
The people at Three are very nice, as are the people at Phones4U. Not only this but the system works really well, it did cost me 2 hours to get it all sorted. It would be nice if Hutchingson Telecom FINISHED the software before releasing it.