Country flags not visible in queries with InControl Log Explorer

Last modified on 29 May, 2024. Revision 10
When performing log queries with InControl's Log Explorer feature, public IP addresses should be able to display a flag that indicates which country a particular IP block or range belongs to. In cases where country flags are not appearing, this article will provide some tips on how to troubleshoot the problem.
Up to date for
InControl  3.16.00
Not valid for
InControl 3.18.00 and up
Supported since
InControl 3.00.xx
Status OK
Author
Peter Nilsson

Description

When performing log queries, there may be a problem that there are no country flag indicators in the query result or they are shown for some IP addresses but not all.

Information about which country an IP address belongs to is done by sending a query to the CSPN (Clavister Service Provisioning Network). This is similar functionality as used by the IP reputation feature in cOS Core. InControl then writes this information into a file called “countryCode.xml” in the InControl server’s file storage. Each IP has a TTL (Time-To-Live) on how long it should be stored in this file before a new query is needed, the TTL is one week.

Troubleshooting

In case this functionality is not working as expected, below is a list of some issues that could be the potential cause of the problem.

  • Make sure that the machine that the InControl server is installed on can reach a public DNS server, otherwise it will fail to located any of the CSPN server IP addresses.
  • Make sure that the Windows firewall is not blocking outgoing connections to the CSPN network (these connections use HTTPS and TCP port 443).
  • If the InControl server fails to connect to CSPN to perform country lookup file 5 times for a log query, it will not make more attempts until another log query is performed.
  • Try searching for the file called "countryCode.xml" in the file system of the computer running the InControl server. If this file is missing it could be that either any of the above is the issue or that the InControl server software may be unable to create the file. This might be due to a problem with access/write permissions, lack of disk space, or a disk hardware fault.


Important: In InControl version 3.18.00 and up the country flag information is retrieved from the cOS Core logs. If the logs contain information about which country an IP belongs to, the flag will be displayed. This means that GeoIP must be configured in cOS Core in order to see the country flags in Log Explorer.


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