LinuxAgora DNS brokenness

[danieldk]

As I said earlier, I think that one of the reasons that so little people visit the forums is that the DNS for linuxagora.com, or at least www.linuxagora.com is broken. A typical host session:


$ host www.linuxagora.com
www.linuxagora.com is an alias for linuxagora.com.
linuxagora.com has address 67.19.28.98
Host www.linuxagora.com not found: 2(SERVFAIL)
Host www.linuxagora.com not found: 2(SERVFAIL)


At least one of the discrepancies is that the NS authority sections is incorrect:


$ host -t NS linuxagora.com
linuxagora.com name server ns1.discoveryunl.net.
linuxagora.com name server ns2.discoveryunl.net.
$ host ns1.discoveryunl.net
Host ns1.discoveryunl.net not found: 3(NXDOMAIN)
$ host ns2.discoveryunl.net
Host ns2.discoveryunl.net not found: 3(NXDOMAIN)


So, the NS entries are wrong, causing delegation to two nameservers that are not resolvable. fos, could you change these records to the correct nameservers? (NS25.WEBSITEWELCOME.COM, NS26.WEBSITEWELCOME.COM)

[danieldk]

A wait, thanks for the access to 'you know', I'll see if it can be fixed there ;).

[danieldk]

Hmmm, no it can't. I guess that we have to file a ticket with $hostingprovider?

[fos]

That is curious. I hve nver set a domain name to the discovery address, all of my domain names are set to websitewelcome. They are serviced by Godaddy. I will go check the settings now. Thanks for the heads up!

fos....

[fos]

I don't know what is causing this problem. The DNS is set correctly.

I did have redirects set in the control panel for debianquestions.com I have removed the redirect and placed a link on the old front page. I always accessed the new site by browsing to debianquestions.com. It always worked for me. It must be gremlins. :smiley15:

[fos]

After going back and forth with the host provider that said nothing was wrong, I received this email in final reply:

==========
We've resolved the issue.
It appears the nameservers for your account were referencing the old ones.

We've removed them from both your reseller account and the domain in question.

Please be aware that this should not have caused any problems when accessing the domain though.
Thank you for your time.
===========

Please let me know if any of you continue to have problems connecting to linuxagora.com

Thanks for your patience, fos....

[fos]

// Please be aware that this should not have caused any problems when accessing the domain though.

If the DNS hadn't caused a problem, how would we have known there was a problem?

Sometimes I wonder......

[danieldk]

$ host -t NS linuxagora.com NS25.WEBSITEWELCOME.COM
Using domain server:
Name: NS25.WEBSITEWELCOME.COM
Address: 67.19.28.98#53
Aliases:

linuxagora.com name server ns2.discoveryunl.net.
linuxagora.com name server ns1.discoveryunl.net.
$ host -t NS linuxagora.com NS26.WEBSITEWELCOME.COM
Using domain server:
Name: NS26.WEBSITEWELCOME.COM
Address: 67.19.28.99#53
Aliases:

linuxagora.com name server ns2.discoveryunl.net.
linuxagora.com name server ns1.discoveryunl.net.


Hmmm, I hope that they have a cron job for reloading zone files, because there is no improvement yet. If not, it will be a hard time explaining some help desk person how DNS works.

They are also wrong about the problems that the erronous records could have caused. They basically say "ns1/2.discoveryunl.net" are authoritive name servers for the *.linuxagora.com namespace, effectively delegating DNS requests.

[danieldk]

BTW: some counterproof to their statement. This is some output from the BIND nameserver, after calling


host -t A www.linuxagora.com 127.0.0.1


On the nameserver machine:


06-Aug-2006 00:39:23.907 createfetch: www.linuxagora.com A
06-Aug-2006 00:39:23.907 createfetch: . NS
06-Aug-2006 00:39:24.233 createfetch: linuxagora.com A
06-Aug-2006 00:39:24.374 createfetch: linuxagora.com AAAA
06-Aug-2006 00:39:24.374 createfetch: ns1.discoveryunl.net A
06-Aug-2006 00:39:24.374 createfetch: ns1.discoveryunl.net AAAA
06-Aug-2006 00:39:24.374 createfetch: ns2.discoveryunl.net A
06-Aug-2006 00:39:24.374 createfetch: ns2.discoveryunl.net AAAA
06-Aug-2006 00:39:29.383 createfetch: linuxagora.com AAAA
06-Aug-2006 00:39:34.393 createfetch: linuxagora.com MX
06-Aug-2006 00:39:36.592 zone localhost/IN: notify to ::1#53: retries exceeded


You can clearly see what happens. BIND looks up the NS record to see what domain servers are authoritive for *.linuxagora.com, finds records for ns1/ns2.discoveryunl.net, and fails contacting these servers.

Just to provide some more diagnostic information...

[fos]

I thought the guy sounded like a putz. Back to the emails! :smiley7:

[fos]

iPower is looking better all of the time.

Do you know of a good reference I could start studying to get up to speed on server maintenance? Primarily security issues. HostGator and The Planet are taking care of that under the present set up. :smiley5:

fos...

[deanlinkous]

Whew I made it in... :) I thought the place had disappeared. Yep, it does appear to be dns issues still. My chartercable (now suddenlink) pipes out thru at&t I think it is and I could not get here until I changed dns server over and over until I found one that could get me here finally. It even took a long time to do that.

As far as hosting - I use doteasy extensively as well as midphase. Reasonable cost, great customer service, and quick dns changes. :)

Glad to see this place still exists. :) I thought maybe you'll didn't like me so you ran and hid from me.

[fos]

Hi Dean,

I'm glad you made it! I wasn't aware of the DNS problem until a couple of days ago. I have been going back and forth with HostGator. They are usually pretty good. About two years ago the owner, Brent answered a service call. He is a pretty savy guy and got the problem resolved.

I hope I don't have to go that far up the food chain to get it resolved. If nothing else, I'll change host providers. I'll take a look at your suggestions. A virtual server may fit the bill.

fos....

[danieldk]

iPower is looking better all of the time.

Oh, it is not perfect by the way, just the best I have found. They tend to screw up less than others ;).

Do you know of a good reference I could start studying to get up to speed on server maintenance? Primarily security issues. HostGator and The Planet are taking care of that under the present set up. :smiley5:

It takes some time to *get* UNIX security, and it parly depends on what operating system you want to run on a server/virtual server. If you run FreeBSD, the following guides are great:

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/
http://www.freebsd.org/docs/books.html

At any rate, always choose some system that you know *very well* security or maintainance-wise.

The Gentoo security guide is also great, some parts apply to other distros as well:

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/security/security-handbook.xml

(Though I would not recommend running Gentoo on a server.)

[fos]

This is the latest email from HostGator support:

============
Dear J. Greer,
I believe the issue was that the serial number for the zone file had not been incremented. Upon doing so I receiving the following results from nslookup...

root@cadillac [/var/named]# nslookup
> server ns25.websitewelcome.com
Default server: ns25.websitewelcome.com
Address: 67.19.28.98#53
> set type=ANY
> linuxagora.com
Server: ns25.websitewelcome.com
Address: 67.19.28.98#53

linuxagora.com mail exchanger = 0 linuxagora.com.
linuxagora.com
origin = ns1.discoveryunl.net
mail addr = root.cadillac.websitewelcome.com
serial = 2006080517
refresh = 14400
retry = 7200
expire = 3600000
minimum = 86400
linuxagora.com nameserver = ns25.websitewelcome.com.
linuxagora.com nameserver = ns26.websitewelcome.com.
Name: linuxagora.com
Address: 67.19.28.98


I do believe that this entry is correct. Can you confirm that the DNS is now correctly configured?

If we may be of any further assistance please do not hesitate to contact us.

Best Regards,
Robert Stone

Ticket Details
===================
Ticket ID: WFC-251002
Department: Support
Status: On Hold

==========

Let's hope it is really fixed this time.

fos.....

[fos]

Thanks for the information links, Daniel.

I spent an hour or two on webhostingtalk last night. It is so difficult to choose a host. There are always comments pro and con for every provider.

What about virtual dedicated servers? They sound like a very good option and a little less expensive than an entire machine.

fos....

[danieldk]

Let's hope it is really fixed this time.


Hell yeah :).


$ host -t NS linuxagora.com
linuxagora.com name server ns25.websitewelcome.com.
linuxagora.com name server ns26.websitewelcome.com.
$ host www.linuxagora.com
www.linuxagora.com is an alias for linuxagora.com.
linuxagora.com has address 67.19.28.98
www.linuxagora.com is an alias for linuxagora.com.
www.linuxagora.com is an alias for linuxagora.com.
linuxagora.com mail is handled by 0 linuxagora.com.


No more errors. My browser now happily surfs to http://www.linuxagora.com/ , something that has never happened before.

[danieldk]

What about virtual dedicated servers? They sound like a very good option and a little less expensive than an entire machine.

It kinda depends. Some hosters oversell their server, especially when they are running Virtuozzo/OpenVZ because it allows dynamic RAM limits. (Xen uses allows for changes, but not automatically like OpenVZ, at least, last time I looked.) CPU overselling can be an issue with most VPSes. So, it all depends on from who you buy a VPS.

[deanlinkous]

Now it is working on both my connections, without playing musical dns servers :)

[fos]

// happily surfing...

How sweet it is! Thank goodness it is fixed.

fos....