Get into DNS – intodns.com that is

Its been almost a month since I last updated here but the annual holiday and some project work pretty much ate up that time. Getting back into the swing and getting all the plates spinning again has been a challenge and while fixing the variety of problems that clients reported I picked up on a useful tool.

The issue was twofold – a domain had been hijacked or at least the web site related to it had and secondly a related domain was not responding at all.

Once it was confirmed that the first website was intact and that in fact it was a site ranked first on a Google search for the domain name in question was in fact hacked. This then lead to the second problem why was the other domain not resolving to the intact web site as it had been previously.

Identifying the provider responsible for the site lead me to the tool that intodns.com provide and the simple mechanism I could use to get the information required.

The site describes itself as

IntoDNS checks the health and configuration and provides DNS report and mail servers report.

And provides suggestions to fix and improve them, with references to protocols’ official documentation.

As an example using http://www.intodns.com/ibm.com   where ibm.com is the site I’m using to illustrate passing a domain to the tool gives a huge amount of useful info such as

Nameserver records returned by the parent servers are:

internet-server.zurich.ibm.com.   ['195.176.20.204']   [TTL=172800]
ns.almaden.ibm.com.   ['198.4.83.35']   [TTL=172800]
ns.austin.ibm.com.   ['192.35.232.34']   [TTL=172800]
ns.watson.ibm.com.   ['129.34.20.80']   [TTL=172800]

h.gtld-servers.net was kind enough to give us that information.

Using this information I was able to identify the provider who was responsible for the domain (and whom had said that they had transferred the domain some months before in another conversation with them) and get them to reinstate the link between this domain and one hosting a web site with content.

I really liked the means of submitting the domain name in the url and would suggest that this is a good start for your research into DNS and MX issues as they arise for you or your clients.

« Notes client not synchronising and a Vigor 2820 router nat session

Notes client not synchronising and a Vigor 2820 router nat session

Yesterday I attended a VOIP seminar – interesting in some ways especially in a project I’m working on but just a re-iteration of whats been stabilising in the Telcoms and VOIP world over the last few years. More about that again.

On returning to the office I noticed that my main machine was unable to synchronise with my Notes Domino server. Yet I could see other remote connections to the same server were working fine. After consulting a Notes admin specialist and checking connectivity we were left scratching our heads for a few minutes.

The machine in question could see and communicate with the remote server in a number of ways but just not at the notes replication level. The error messages from the Notes client suggested that it could not find or communicate with the server but comms tests showed otherwise.

At this point I remembered a similar issue with another application and a vigor router  where a cached session in the NAT table was preventing the session from establishing again. So a quick reboot of the router – and lo and behold the client was able to connect to the server !!

This router is going to get a backup and a reflash this weekend – but hopefully this will help someone else.

Get into DNS – intodns.com that is »« WordPress is 3 – how you’ve grown

WordPress is 3 – how you’ve grown

I have been waiting for the latest release of wordpress for a few weeks now. I was busier than normal with project work so didn’t get a chance to play with the release candidate. However I got to run through the upgrade procedure yesterday and again it was a pleasure. I think I say it every time that I have need to update plugins or WordPress itself but it really does show how these types of upgrades can be done in a sophisticated but simple way.

This type of robust programming should be a target for all developers web and traditional. The confidence it gives and the professional look of the updating process in WordPress is what we should expect in all apps but sadly its not what we typically get. I hope to influence a project that I’m on to facilitate something similar in an application that we are hosting and developing.

So after all this time WordPress is 3 (in version terms) – I’m hopeful that it will continue to develop and improve the blogging experience. Perhaps yet more people will embrace the product and us it to make their comments and contribution to the Web. Your chance to give something back.

Notes client not synchronising and a Vigor 2820 router nat session »« Project Management – my favourite !