UtterlyBoring.com: DNS Troubles

site links

:: home
:: archive
:: donate
:: rss feed
:: about site
:: bend forums
:: bend blogs
:: sh.orty
:: welcome to bend

DNS Troubles

I'm having some issues right now with my server that's hosting this site (and many others). It's affecting domain resolution on the machine. I've posted a support query over here (also copied in the extended entry for this entry in case people don't want to register) that's much too geeky for much of this site's audience. But if you're getting bounces when using my e-mail form on the left, this is probably causing it.

If I don't get an answer soon, I'm probably going to have to reboot my server, which I never like to do as a server should never have to be fully rebooted (usually services can be restarted to fix most problems).

Update on 10/7: It actually ended up being a host problem. They changed some things on their routers and/or firewalls that required more declarations in our resolv.conf file. So after lecturing the host about notifying me about those minor little changes, things are up and running again. I'm changing the post time on this post so it goes below my videos post on the front page until I can get up more entries.

---------------
Message Posted:
IP Resolving, Domains Aren't
OK, unfortunately, I'm not a whiz at DNS stuff, so I don't know where to look. But here's the deal: Any request from my server that goes to a DOMAIN doesn't resolve (wget, smtp, curl, php includes, cron jobs, whatever). But if I change it to request the IP address, things work fine. Obviously, that's not ideal, and this just started happening today.

Based on a couple other threads, I looked into the /etc/resolv.conf file, and pinged everything:

search 63.21.72.reverse.layeredtech.com
nameserver 216.234.234.30
nameserver 207.218.192.38
nameserver 72.21.63.154

I could not, however, get a ping reply on "63.21.72.reverse.layeredtech.com". Don't know if that matters.

But when I try to wget a site, I get this error:

root@harborside [/etc]# wget sunrayinc.com

--23:15:33-- http://sunrayinc.com/ => `index.html'
Resolving sunrayinc.com... failed: Host not found.

And that domain's on the same server, even.

Naturally, the person who's actually the billing contact on this server isn't available to submit a ticket with layeredtech (I basically handle the server when she's not available), so does anybody have any ideas what's going on? Her clients are harrassing me, so I'd like to get them off my back ;-)

I did restart bind via WHM, and that didn't help things. I also restarted the "Named" service with no luck.

Posted by Jake on 10/06/05 @ 08:23 AM
Posted in Geekdom, Jake, Site Info | 5 Comments | Permalink
Submit to digg, del.icio.us, reddit, or stumbleupon

5 Comments

Lisa Williams said on 10/07/05 @ 09:42 AM:
Have you heard about the dispute between Level 3 and Cogent? Level 3 isn't allowing people who buy bulk bandwith from Cogent to send traffic across their network. Since there are only 7 or so top level backbone providers like these, it affects a lot of internet users across a multitude of ISPs. If your ISP buys from Level 3, you might not be able to see servers who are connected to the Cogent backbone.

They're being total asshats and breaking the net.

Lisa Williams said on 10/07/05 @ 09:43 AM:
here's an article about it: http://www.internetnews.com/infra/article.php/3554476

Patrick said on 10/07/05 @ 07:44 PM:
Jake,
I put the actual IP of the machine in the /etc/resolv.conf file. If the machine is doing lookups and local caching, then running Bind or DNS makes sense (I'm sure you have already determined that you *need* DNS).
The /etc/named.conf file that I use has the following section:
options {
directory "/var/named";
forward first;
forwarders { dotted.quad ; dotted.quad; };
};
I am running BIND.

Nameless One said on 10/10/05 @ 12:55 PM:
Hey all, I am so sorry for the trouble that you & Jake experienced. :( Talk about a long day!!!! It was NOT related to Cogent/L3/whatever. The data center's resolver requirements changed. At 11:03 AM they changed their resolver system without telling anybody. >:( Mail broke.

Opened a ticket w/ the data center and their response was basically "that's weird, let us know if you see any other symptoms." Nice!!! (NOT!) We figured the resolver issue out on our own, made the needed modifications, and everything is fixed.

Anyway. Thanks for the updates and great suggestions, all. Again I am really sorry for the trouble. I am so glad last week is gone. :-P

Karin said on 10/10/05 @ 12:56 PM:
Oops, that was me, above, the nameless poster. :) LOL

Post a comment

Name:

E-mail (Won't Be Displayed):

URL:

Comments:

HTML Allowed: a href, b, br, p, strong, em, ul, li, blockquote
Remember info?
Subscribe to Entry's Comments

Note: There is currently a problem with special characters causing errors when you try to comment, so if you're copying information from another Web site that has smart quotes or em dashes or ellipses or similar, please remove them and manually type them out.

Comment Policy: Comments on older entries or comments containing a bunch of links are moderated automatically on this site to help fight comment spam. If you don't see your comment after submitting, it will appear on the site after it has been approved. We also reserve the right to remove your comment for any reason we see fit, but if you keep it remotely on topic, it'll stay.

What are you doing down here? Don't you have something better to do? Like Go Back To The Top of the page, or even see who created this site? This site is © 2001 - 2008 by the Utterly Boring folks at UtterlyBoring.com. Steal my content, as I probably did, too, just link to my site or the original site. Batteries not included. One size fits all. Not for off-road use. Not for internal use. Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball. Technorati Profile.