Post by thread:PicList - Whats wrong [OT]

Its been a bad few days for the piclist.com address. There is apparently a continuing DNS problem. I first noticed it yesterday (DNS problems don't always show up the same way to everyone, it can be fine in one area for a quite a while after the problem actually occurs) and notified the DNS provider, domain name owner (Jory) and the other admins (Mark). The DNS provider restarted a server (which solved the problem at least for me and at least until yesterday evening) and suggested some changes. Today, the address is again not resolving to an IP address. The site itself is not busy or overloaded. The DNS server is apparently what is giving you the "too many people" message. The DNS provider is very helpful and I'm sure that he and Jory will be able to get it solved. I'll do anything I can as well. In the mean time, you can access the server directly and the piclist.com site via the techref at: http://204.210.50.240/techref/default.asp?url=piclist Also, the search engine for the PICList is not at the piclist.com site. There is a link from piclist.com but the site is http://www.iversoft.com/piclist/ And on top of that... The site server had a bad night last night from about 2200 to 0630 but was up yesterday and is up today. The damn thing screwed itself good.... Second time since we started. No idea why. Had a VDX page fault message this time. Nothing in the M$ knowledge base. Blue screen by this morning and a lot of people said they couldn't get in. Sorry about the hassle. Its up again now. The good news is PacBell finally got our 384kbps DSL connection up at a location where the server can be monitored 24/7. The current server only has human companionship <GRIN> 06:30 to 15:30 daily. We are testing the connection for reliability and setting up a new server machine. Then we will register a nicer domain name for the techref and move the techref and PICList sites. The old server will continue for other things and refer techref and PICList people to the new address. I'm also experimenting with Linux (Red Hat 6.1) as a router and backup web server. I've seen some interesting things done where an NT box and a Linux box ping each other (actually they hit each others web pages) and if one dies, the other takes over. The idea is that even if something external (hacker, virus, anything that triggers an OS flaw, etc...) kills one, its very unlikely to kill the other. Since I use a lot of ASP and 32-bit machine language MASM code, in my case the Linux box will only have a "We are experiencing technical difficulties" web page and it will spend its time screaming (pager, audio alarm, phone calls, etc...) for help and maybe rebooting the NT server. So far the Red Hat installer has some kind of security problem with the partition table, but I've not had time to really trouble shoot it. Any Linux guru's in the San Diego north county area? --- James Newton spam_OUTjamesnewtonTakeThisOuTgeocities.com 1-619-652-0593 http://techref.homepage.com The Technical Details Site. Members can add private/public comments/pages ($0 TANSTAAFL web hosting) {Original Message removed}

Hmmm. Today, I'm not getting a 403.9 - getting DNS failure here, on piclist.com, now. The WhoIs still works fine from here, but no IP address at ns.houseofdomains.com or ns2.houseofdomains.com, I guess - This time, no IP block info, no TraceRoute. That's different. Part of the complication is: EACH ISP has their own local DNS server that handles some IP address requests, if I'm understanding this correctly - changes propogate from the source of the "disturbance", outwards. Read the "readers' digest" version a while ago, quickly, with imperfect retention <G> so I don't remember it all, need to bookmark that site next time I hunt it down, browser crash ate the URL. And, my brain's full <G> When I look up a DNS name from here, for example, I'm accessing FoxInternet.Net's DNS servers - and if they don't see it they somehow ask some other "more senior" DNS server etc. Right now, http://www.piclist.com/techref/default.asp?url=piclist doesn't work from here (DNS fail), OTOH http://204.210.50.240/techref/default.asp?url=piclist works fine. Mark James Newton wrote: {Quote hidden}> > Its been a bad few days for the piclist.com address. There is apparently a > continuing DNS problem. I first noticed it yesterday (DNS problems don't > always show up the same way to everyone, it can be fine in one area for a > quite a while after the problem actually occurs) and notified the DNS > provider, domain name owner (Jory) and the other admins (Mark). The DNS > provider restarted a server (which solved the problem at least for me and at > least until yesterday evening) and suggested some changes. > > Today, the address is again not resolving to an IP address. The site itself > is not busy or overloaded. The DNS server is apparently what is giving you > the "too many people" message. > > The DNS provider is very helpful and I'm sure that he and Jory will be able > to get it solved. I'll do anything I can as well. > > In the mean time, you can access the server directly and the piclist.com > site via the techref at: > http://204.210.50.240/techref/default.asp?url=piclist > > Also, the search engine for the PICList is not at the piclist.com site. > There is a link from piclist.com but the site is > http://www.iversoft.com/piclist/ > > And on top of that... The site server had a bad night last night from about > 2200 to 0630 but was up yesterday and is up today. The damn thing screwed > itself good.... Second time since we started. No idea why. Had a VDX page > fault message this time. Nothing in the M$ knowledge base. Blue screen by > this morning and a lot of people said they couldn't get in. Sorry about the > hassle. Its up again now. > > The good news is PacBell finally got our 384kbps DSL connection up at a > location where the server can be monitored 24/7. The current server only has > human companionship <GRIN> 06:30 to 15:30 daily. We are testing the > connection for reliability and setting up a new server machine. Then we will > register a nicer domain name for the techref and move the techref and > PICList sites. The old server will continue for other things and refer > techref and PICList people to the new address. > > I'm also experimenting with Linux (Red Hat 6.1) as a router and backup web > server. I've seen some interesting things done where an NT box and a Linux > box ping each other (actually they hit each others web pages) and if one > dies, the other takes over. The idea is that even if something external > (hacker, virus, anything that triggers an OS flaw, etc...) kills one, its > very unlikely to kill the other. Since I use a lot of ASP and 32-bit machine > language MASM code, in my case the Linux box will only have a "We are > experiencing technical difficulties" web page and it will spend its time > screaming (pager, audio alarm, phone calls, etc...) for help and maybe > rebooting the NT server. So far the Red Hat installer has some kind of > security problem with the partition table, but I've not had time to really > trouble shoot it. Any Linux guru's in the San Diego north county area? > > --- > James Newton .....jamesnewtonKILLspam@spam@geocities.com 1-619-652-0593 > http://techref.homepage.com The Technical Details Site. > Members can add private/public comments/pages ($0 TANSTAAFL web hosting) > > {Original Message removed}

Just a sad update on your premier PICList information web site: Nightmare 1: The piclist.com address will be out for a short time. There is an admin problem that can't be immediately corrected. To work around this and to provide some additional reliability for the future, I've scrapped together the $35 and registered piclist.org (out of my own very empty pocket, damn it, send donations to .....goodcauseKILLspam.....pisspoor.net <GRIN>) and pointed it at the server. Give it a day to propagate, its working now in my area (San Diego) on Road Runner cable and Pacbell DSL DNS servers. One or the other of http://www.piclist.com (down now) or http://www.piclist.org or at least http://204.210.50.240/piclist should always work. There is a lot of excellent content and links at this site. I'm proud of it and you should be too as 99% of the PIC related info comes directly from you via the PICList or from thoughs of you who have signed up and added notes directly. With a smarter webmaster (that's me) and better luck than we've had this past week, it acts as an excellent adjunct to the list. For now, the <admin persons name>@piclist.com or piclist.org email addresses will not work. I'm still EraseMEjamesnewtonspam_OUTTakeThisOuTgeocities.com (as always) and jnewtonspam_OUTsan.rr.com. If anyone sent email to a piclist.com address, we probably didn't get it. The listserver is of course completely separate (and much more reliable) and unaffected so admin requests or listserv commands are not in any way related to what I'm talking about here. Nightmare 2: The new DSL connection was nicely dropping carrier and then getting it again all last night. Long hours ahead on the phone to Pacbell tech support and I will probably have to replace the (strange looking) phone cables to the server closet in case that is the problem. It screams when it works though. 1.5Mbps out and 384kbps in <GRIN> Nightmare 3: And then we starting thinking (first mistake <GRIN>) about reliability on the current server and realized that we hadn't updated the Virus software in a while. So we spent some company money on the best available and... Last night, at about 1900, the brand new Norton package decided that a maintenance daemon was exhibiting "virus like" activity and BROUGHT THE ENTIRE SERVER TO A HALT so that it could ask an operator what to do.... It couldn't just stop that one service, no... it stopped the entire machine... who writes this shit? I will hooked up the cables for the monitor switch so I could start working on the backup Linux box again. Hang in there, --- James Newton @spam@jamesnewtonKILLspamgeocities.com 1-619-652-0593 {Original Message removed}