Smoothwall Cloud Filter Blocking SIMS Prints

[DeGrimmy]

Hi all,

 

We're getting a brand new issue we've never had before where Smoothwall Cloud Filter is giving us this message when users are trying to print from SIMS:

 

I've had two reports of this so far this morning from staff - One from our Cover Manager, who is trying to print the Notice Board Summary in the Cover Arrangements tab. We've discovered that SIMS exports this as a HTML file in temporary files and then tries to open it in the default app for HTML files, which is Google Chrome. Even though this particular file is all text and no photos, Smoothwall Cloud Filter then blocks it with the above message.

 

A workaround is to set the default app for HTML files as Microsoft Word so that SIMS opens the file in Word instead, but this obviously isn't the most ideal solution. It looks like Smoothwall Cloud Filter is having some issues this morning, according to the Smoothwall Status page, and I can't access the Cloud Filter settings right now. I just wanted to check if anyone else currently has, or has ever had this issue and what you did to fix it please?

 

Thanks in advance!

[Sylv3r]

This links to this thread - https://www.edugeek.net/forums/internet-related-filtering-firewall/241086-smoothwall-cloud-filter-blocking-pdfs.html

 

Smoothwall are apparently aware and are looking at resolving it ASAP.

[tom_newton]

This is a known issue - we should have a fix in the blocklist in the next few minutes

[DeGrimmy]

Apologies, I had a look for an existing thread before posting but I missed that one. Thank you for the update!

[tom_newton]

No worries - the more we hear about things the better, as it helps us respond more quickly. In this case, I had an email from a couple of our customers - thanks guys, you know who you are - and marketing had a few contact forms, and we had some tickets, and it did not take too long to triangulate the issue. Luckily we're all early birds here at Qoria because of the AU contingent, so we were able to do all this before 9am.

[DeGrimmy]

Hi Tom, unfortunately we're still having the same issue and for some reason, I can't view the diagnostics page on the Cloud Filter panel to check if the blocklist has been updated.

[tom_newton]

How come you can't view the diag page?

[DeGrimmy]

I'm on the Realtime Log Viewer page and the "View Diagnostic Information" button is at the bottom, but it's not clickable:

 

Is this because it is tied to our on-premises device?

[tom_newton]

if you do Smoothwall:// Diag in a browser it should show the diag page with the blocklist version

 

https://kb.smoothwall.com/hc/en-us/articles/360016413920-Run-Diagnostics-to-troubleshoot-issues-with-Cloud-Filter

[DeGrimmy]

if you do Smoothwall:// Diag in a browser it should show the diag page with the blocklist version

 

https://kb.smoothwall.com/hc/en-us/articles/360016413920-Run-Diagnostics-to-troubleshoot-issues-with-Cloud-Filter

 

Thanks for this - It looks like our Cloud Filter extensions are disconnected for some reason:

 

"copiedAt": "Fri Jan 10 2025 10:20:29 GMT+0000 (Greenwich Mean Time)", "username": "", "ipAddressPublic": [], "ipAddressPrivate": [], "mappedGroups": [], "directoryGroups": [], "license": [], "connection": "disconnected", "filterMode": "", "policyName": "", "lastSentLogs": "Never", "lastSecretKnockDetails": "Not yet knocked", "tenant": "", "outsidePremises": "Unsure", "provisioningMessage": "Provisioning failed: No response from native client.", "generatedEpoch": "0", "generatedDatetime": "Thu Jan 01 1970 01:00:00 GMT+0100 (Greenwich Mean Time)", "blocklistVersionEpoch": "0", "blocklistVersionDate": "Thu Jan 01 1970 01:00:00 GMT+0100 (Greenwich Mean Time)"

 

I'll see about getting things reconnected and I'll let you know.

[tom_newton]

Thanks, useful intel. You might have given us a new idea there!

[DeGrimmy]

Thanks, useful intel. You might have given us a new idea there!

Now I think this is disconnected because I'm on a wired desktop that would be filtered by our on-premises device. The Chromebooks are reading as connected, and these should be filtered by Cloud Filter.

 

That begs the question, if Cloud Filter is not meant to be active on our desktops, why is it flagging those files?

[tom_newton]

Perhaps it is misconfigured - if you have the "forceos=chrome" mode on, it will try and run on windows even if the agent is not there (which will lead to it being disconnected).

Would suggest raising a ticket

[DrCheese]

Perhaps it is misconfigured - if you have the "forceos=chrome" mode on, it will try and run on Windows even if the agent is not there (which will lead to it being disconnected).

Would suggest raising a ticket

 

Think we have same here - We deploy the extension out to all staff users, but don't have the native client on on prem only machines - Only devices that go offsite. This prevents double filtering from on our prem only devices. (yes yes I need to setup secret knocking...)

 

We're finding this affects SIMS reports that dump to HTML also (Not PDF) - eg "Reports > Lesson Monitor > Whole Group School reports > Today's register report"

 

Is there a fix coming for the extension directly?

[tom_newton]

Yes - chances are your extensions are in mode1, so we cant do a blocklist fix. The extension fix should be done today - it's in QA now, but we are always at the mercy of how fast or slow it goes through Google/Microsoft's store review. *Usually* this is quick, but when we are in a hurry...!

[DeGrimmy]

Yes - chances are your extensions are in mode1, so we cant do a blocklist fix. The extension fix should be done today - it's in QA now, but we are always at the mercy of how fast or slow it goes through Google/Microsoft's store review. *Usually* this is quick, but when we are in a hurry...!

Just to say that the new Chrome extension update fixed it for us as of 4pm on Friday - I was desperate to leave for the day so I didn't think to update the thread! Thanks for all your help.

[tom_newton]

Thanks for the update, and thank you for your patience while we fixed this snafu!