weird wget/curl problems

Fri Aug 11 20:03:47 PDT 2006

On Fri, 11 Aug 2006, Kurt Wall wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 11, 2006 at 08:36:17PM -0500, Net Llama! wrote:
>> I use freedns.afraid.org for providing a static domain name for the
>> dynamic IP of my home DSL connection.  I've had this bizarre problem for a
>> few weeks now, where hitting the URL which updates the IP assigned to my
>> domain name fails with both wget & curl when run from a cronjob.  Yet, if
>> I run it again manually, it works.
>>
>> When it fails, their server returns this:
>> <HTML><HEAD><META HTTP-EQUIV="Refresh" CONTENT="0.1;
>> URL=/dynamic/update.php?UXdrdUswWlVoierg03jhgw0E=">
>> <META HTTP-EQUIV="Pragma" CONTENT="no cache">
>> <META HTTP-EQUIV="Expires" CONTENT="-1">
>> </HEAD></HTML>
>>
>> However, when it works, I see:
>> Updated 1 host(s) netllama.eth0.ws to 71.131.59.15 in 0.520 seconds
>>
>> I can't figure out why its doing this at all.  Anyone have any ideas why
>> wget & curl wouldn't work via a cronjob?
>
> Bizaare. The "-1" value is invalid for the "Expires" attribute, and
> lots of browsers ignore it. That might not be the issue here. Did
> cron jobs work in the past? If so, what's changed? My only other
> suggestions would be that something changed at freedns or you are
> missing something in your environment when you run the job from
> cron that is present when you run it manually.

The cronjob worked fine for over 6 months, then suddenly started 
exhibiting this problem last month.  I can't think of anything that has 
changed.  I've checked on the freedns website, and there's nothing there 
that would suggest why this is suddenly failing, plus there are no other 
reports on their forums of anyone else having this problem.

One thing that I've noticed is that I was wrong about it working when 
running the script manually.  It seems to fail there too the first time, 
and the works the 2nd.

-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Lonni J Friedman                        netllama at linux-sxs.org
LlamaLand				http://netllama.linux-sxs.org