Browsing, the connection was reset

[socratis]

Edit: Mod edit The following tickets have been created related to this bug: #16084: ssl connection incorrectly reset when using NAT #16095: Quicken web connect feature fails after installing latest virtual box release #16103: Cannot establish stable web connection through NAT, other networking issues #16113: Problems with certain websites after upgrading to latest version 5.0.28 #16126: NAT CHECKSUM RST problem on 5.1.8 r111374 (Qt5.5.1) #16141: Connection resets with NAT networking on 5.028, 5.1.8 and 5.1.9-111655 #16142: For info about last update - Websites now working #16163: Problem connecting to checkpoint secure remote in windows xp guest on OSX on virtual box build 5.0.28 #16210: ssl reset seen on browser for specific websites on virtual box 5.1.8, no issues seen on 5.1.6 so please check to see if you have any of the symptoms described in those tickets. The strikeout ones are closed as duplicates of #16084. From the same ticket: Fixed with 5.1.10

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Hi,

With the last update (5.1.8 including the guest tools), _some_ web sites are not reachable anymore.
The browser (Firefox & Chrome) report was "The connection was reset".
That didn't happen the previous version of VBox.
On the host side everything works as before.

The Network settings for this VM (Windows 7) is "Attached to NAT".

Any ideas?

Thank you

[socratis]

• Give it some time. Things might be not working correctly at the time. There was an attack a couple of days ago that caused really big problems globally.
• Reboot you guest, host, router.
• Do you these sites work from your host?
• Do you have a couple of links to _these_ sites?

[CodeVisio]

• Give it some time. Things might be not working correctly at the time. There was an attack a couple of days ago that caused really big problems globally.

I knew about that attack. The attack doesn't explain why I can browse those web sites from the host while not from the guest.

• Reboot you guest, host, router.

Done. Still have the problem.

• Do you these sites work from your host?

Yes.

• Do you have a couple of links to _these_ sites?

http://www.photo.net, http://www.autoschmitt.com.

Thank you for your help.

Any other ideas?

[socratis]

Maybe they don't like Firefox? Or Windows? Or the combination? And this is not a joke. I did five tests in parallel:

• Windows 7 with Firefox 47,
• Windows 7 with IE 11 (the same VM),
• Mint 17 with Firefox 48,
• OSX 10.6 with Safari, and
• Windows XP with IE6 (OK, that poor guy was failing to render, but the connection was not reset).

Guess which one was the only one getting a "The connection was reset"? For both websites that you gave me the link to? To be more accurate, the page seemed to be loading at first, and then it was getting an error. Both sites seem to do a constant refresh of sorts. I will not get in the trouble of analyzing their code.

There's no apparent reason for some sites to fail, unless the site wants (or doesn't know how to avoid) to fail. VirtualBox doesn't play nice with some OSes and some applications, while not others. Websites on the other hand, have been notorious about such foul behavior.

[CodeVisio]

Thanks socratis for the tests.

That doesn't explain why it worked before upgrading to the last VBox.
Before, everything worked as expected, without problems.

[socratis]

That's easy enough to test. Downgrade VirtualBox. On the other hand, do you know if these sites updated to a new jQuery framework or something similar? Or if Firefox got updated?

Again, it doesn't make sense. Open up Firefox and IE in the same VM. In parallel. If one fails and the other succeeds, it's not VirtualBox.

[CodeVisio]

I'm not going to downgrade because some web sites are not accessible from here.
It's OK as far as I can browse in general.
I thought mistakenly it was VBox and its settings from the last upgrade.

"Again, it doesn't make sense. Open up Firefox and IE in the same VM. In parallel. If one fails and the other succeeds, it's not VirtualBox."

Those two web sites don't work on IE (from the VM) as well.

Thanks anyway.

[socratis]

I'm not going to downgrade because some web sites are not accessible from here.

If you downgrade VirtualBox some sites become inaccessible? How's that possible?

Those two web sites don't work on IE (from the VM) as well.

I don't know what your VM settings, or your Windows settings look like. For all I know, it could be non-up-to-date certificates, or a gazillion of other reasons.

I could take a look at your .vbox file for the VM and the VirtualBox.xml, just to be 110% sure, if you want.

[CodeVisio]

Oh, sorry. I forgot 'of'. So the sentence should be read as "...downgrade because of some web sites...". Or better, "downgrade because of inaccessibility of some web sites...."

I'ts OK. It's not a big issue. I can work around with the host for those inaccessible web site from the guest.

Thank you socratis.

[socratis]

You're welcome, but still downgrading VirtualBox from 5.1.8 to 5.1.6 will do NOTHING to your VMs. Or the way that you access your websites. It is the same virtual OS after all. Except for the guest additions, the virtual OS won't have a clue.

[helloworld111]

I experienced the same issue as the OP, connection resetting on some sites, even though I can connect on the host.
As I needed to access the websites on the VM, I did downgrade (5.0.28 -> 5.0.26), and the problem magically fixed itself.
I ran Fiddler on a broken site, and Fiddler says that it isn't getting a complete response from the server. I think the network driver for the latest version is cutting off the connection too soon.

[socratis]

OK, this is getting more serious then, mainly because it's a second report that transcends major versions. Let's recap:

• Upgrading from 5.1.6 to 5.1.8, the connection is reset in some sites.
• Upgrading from 5.0.26 to 5.0.28, same problem. @helloworld111: guest OS, network mode (NAT?) and browser details please.
• Observed so far with Win7 and Firefox/Chrome. Reprodusable in two sites (so far); photo.net and autoschmitt.com. Don't know what distinguishes them from others.

Release dates:

• 2016-07-18 : 5.0.26
• 2016-09-12 : 5.1.6
• 2016-10-28 : 5.1.8, 5.0.28

So, in between 12/Sep and 28/Oct, something must have changed? Only in the NAT code? According to the changelogs, the common things that are there (which might be responsible), are:

• NAT: don’t exceed the maximum number of “search” suffixes. Patch from bug #15948.
• NAT: fixed parsing of port-forwarding rules with a name which contains a slash (bug #16002)
• NAT Network: when the host has only loopback nameserver that cannot be mapped to the guests (e.g. dnsmasq running on 127.0.1.1), make DHCP supply NAT Network DNS proxy as nameserver.

So far, we have CodeVisio, socratis and helloworld111 reporting this. I've been watching the bug reports lately and I don't remember seeing anything similar being reported so far. I'd say one more confirmation and it's a bug report.

[ghp]

I'm glad I'm not alone with this problem.

Running up-to-date Debian, Firefox & Chrome exhibit the problem on a Windows 7 host, visiting pages on in house servers, but only when the connection passes through a firewall. I never had this until I switched to 5.0.28 last week. I'll have to revert to the previous release, can't do my job properly, eg. a SOLR dashboard is unusable.

Perhaps I'll try to get a tcpdump to see what goes wrong.

[ghp]

Naughty Virtualbox.

According to tcpdump in the client, the server is sending a reset halfway the page. According to wireshark on the host, the client is sending a reset after having received the complete page. Both programmes never lied to me before, so it looks as if Virtualbox is the culprit.

I'm using NAT, and reverting to 5.0.26 did indeed help.

[helloworld111]

For debugging purposes:
On all tests I did the problem websites did not load. However it rarely will load the problem sites, but the images/css does not render most of the time. However, it does not load often enough to make it extremely unreliable (it loads ~15% of the time)
I tested on Windows 7 Chrome (latest), IE11, and Windows XP Chrome 49.
Yes, I'm using NAT.