website preview not working

[surendar]

Hi,
I am very new to alfresco.
I recently installed Alfresco 3 stable version.
I created a webproject and imported C:\Alfresco\extras\wcm\alfresco-sample-website.war file.
when I try to click on preview website link from MySandbox, I am getting an error 404 the webpage cannot be found.

I have started Alfresco server and Virtualization server. Both are running properly.
I have gone through some posts in this forum and checked all the virtualization configurations as per posts.
I think all my configurations are correct.

But don't know how to solve this issue. please let me know if someone faced the same problem in the past.

Thanks

[surendar]

Hi Ben,
Yes I am connecting to internet on the same server.
when I ping alfrescodemo.net, I am not able to connect.

[damonsmith]

Are you looking at the preview from the same box you're running alfresco from?

[surendar]

Yes, I am previewing from the same box where alfresco, virtualization servers were installed.

[pmonks]

when I ping alfrescodemo.net, I am not able to connect.

This is likely to be your problem - alfrescodemo.net is the DNS server for "virtualised" preview URLs (you can see this in the preview URLs themselves - by default they're all in the "alfrescodemo.net" domain - http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/Virtualization_Server_FAQ goes into a fair degree of detail about the why's and wherefore's of this technique).

The upshot is that if you can't ping alfrescodemo.net, then none of the preview URLs will be resolving to your local IP address and hence preview won't work.

Can you post the output of the following commands:

ping alfrescodemo.net
nslookup alfrescodemo.net
ping 64.251.22.145
‍‍‍‍‍

64.251.22.145 is the IP address of alfrescodemo.net, so if you're unable to ping it then it's more than just a DNS problem.

Cheers,
Peter

[vilaskokate]

I was also facing the same problem  but i have just added  the website url into the  host file and the website is displayed into the browser.
  host file is situated into the  <install dir>:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc
  so add this line
127.0.0.1        admin.alfrescosimple.www–sandbox.127-0-0-1.ip.alfrescodemo.net

I am not confirm in your case but it is working for me.

[pmonks]

While that approach is ok for "kicking the tyres", it's not appropriate for most Alfresco installations because it has some pretty basic scaling problems.  More specifically:

1. The list of sandboxes (hence virtual hostnames, hence entries in the hosts file) in a given Web Project changes all the time; eg.
   • Whenever a new user is invited to the Web Project
   
   
   • Whenever a user is ejected from a Web Project
   
   
   • Whenever a change set is submitted to workflow (the change set gets stored in a temporary "workflow sandbox" for the duration of the workflow - this sandbox is given a system generated name and while not normally visible via the UI, it is visible via workflow tasks and can be previewed just like any other sandbox)
2. Changes to the hosts file have to be rolled out to each and every content contributor / reviewer who's using Alfresco - if that's anything more than a small number of people this can become a time consuming process.

So while I'd be all for this as a short term workaround, for anything beyond that we need to try to figure out why surendar is unable to resolve alfrescodemo.net.

Cheers,
Peter

[surendar]

Hi,
This isthe output.

C:\>ping alfrescodemo.net

Pinging alfrescodemo.net [64.251.22.145] with 32 bytes of data:

Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.

Ping statistics for 64.251.22.145:
    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 0, Lost = 4 (100% loss),

C:\>nslookup alfrescodemo.net
Server:  <domain name>
Address:  <ip address>

Non-authoritative answer:
Name:    alfrescodemo.net
Address:  64.251.22.145


C:\>ping 64.251.22.145

Pinging 64.251.22.145 with 32 bytes of data:

Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.

Ping statistics for 64.251.22.145:
    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 0, Lost = 4 (100% loss),‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍

[pmonks]

From that we can see it's not a DNS issue, since you're able to resolve "alfrescodemo.net" to the correct IP address.  However it is some other kind of connectivity issue since you're unable to ping alfrescodemo.net via either its hostname or IP address.  What happens if you run:

tracert alfrescodemo.net‍

?

Cheers,
Peter

[maha]

Hi,

I am also facing the same issue. Please help me.

[pmonks]

Did you follow all of the troubleshooting steps listed above?  If so, what were the outcomes?

Cheers,
Peter