Hi,
A friend has a strange problem that I have been unable to solve, so I thought I'd canvas for suggestions here.
Since the last week or so, he has been unable to log in to Facebook or Hotmail from Ubuntu. He has a dual-boot machine with Ubuntu 8.04 and Windows XP. He is connected via a MTNL Triband connection. Both sites still work fine in XP. Other sites work fine in Ubuntu. He's tried several alternate browsers besides Firefox, including Opera, SeaMonkey, etc. but has the same problem there. Sometimes the login page on Hotmail loads up, but logging in doesn't produce any response. In Facebook again, sometimes the login page loads, but doesn't work. In SeaMonkey, sometimes logging in to Facebook does proceed to the home page, but then no other links work.
I have tried googling, but no satisfactory solution showed up. Suggestions included clearing the cache/cookies (no effect & in any case multiple browsers makes this unlikely), changing DNS servers (tried both MTNL & OpenDNS, and in any case they're the same servers as set under Windows), and even checking the Java install (I really doubt MS uses Java on the Hotmail page, but I tried it anyway).
Ping times of both sites seem normal.
Any further lines of inquiry would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Chirag Wazir http://chirag.freeshell.org