MSU Listserv


MSUNAG Archives

MSUNAG Archives


MSUNAG@LIST.MSU.EDU


View:

Message:

[

First

|

Previous

|

Next

|

Last

]

By Topic:

[

First

|

Previous

|

Next

|

Last

]

By Author:

[

First

|

Previous

|

Next

|

Last

]

Font:

Monospaced Font

LISTSERV at MSU

LISTSERV at MSU

MSUNAG Home

MSUNAG Home

MSUNAG  April 2010

MSUNAG April 2010

Subject:

Re: DNS guru-level help needed

From:

Alec Warner <[log in to unmask]>

Reply-To:

[log in to unmask]

Date:

Wed, 21 Apr 2010 00:54:06 -0700

Content-Type:

text/plain

Parts/Attachments:

Parts/Attachments

text/plain (187 lines)

On Tue, Apr 20, 2010 at 4:17 PM, Carl Raymond <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>  I've been having a strange problem with an external domain name registered
> at GoDaddy, and it keeps getting stranger.  About a month ago, we (my
> department) took over management of the domain outreachscholarship.org from
> Penn State.  My boss logged into GoDaddy and updated the administrative,
> technical, and billing contacts with his info.  We built a fancy new web
> site, and last Monday I logged into GD's DNS management system to update the
> IP address to our web server here at MSU.  I was still getting the old IP
> address long after it should have propagated around.  As was my boss, and
> his boss.  Not good.  Several calls into GD show that for them, they see the
> new IP address, but I see the old one.

How long was 'should have propagated around?' What nameservers did
you use? Did you query the authoritative nameserver for your domain?
Did you use dig +trace or a similar tracing command to make sure that
the correct authoritative nameservers for your domain are listed?
Part of the problem with these sorts of problems is that many of them
work themselves out in a number of hours (see results below; which
look fairly normal)

>
>  Here's the first weird thing: the tech suggested using a proxy,
> www.megaproxy.com, to bring up the site.  When they do that, they see the
> new site.  When I do that, I see the old site.  How can we both go to the
> same proxy and see something different?

That would depend on how the proxy is configured. Does it use a CDN
to determine where to route your request? All kinds of complications.
 But ignore the proxy (and ignore whois for the time being; it is not
relevant.)
PS: I have no idea how much you actually know about DNS, so pardon if
I keep it quite high-level; not trying to insult anyone.

First we need to determine what DNS in general thinks your
authoritative nameservers are. If these are wrong it is likely the
cause of all your problems. DNS is a tree hierarchy, so what we do is
start at the top (the . domain) and ask it "hey where can I find
outreachscholarship.org?" and it will tell us "I dunno, ask .org.,
here is their address" and then we go ask .org. "hey where can I find
outreachscholarship.org" and they say "ns08.domaincontrol.com." Then
we ask "ns08.domaincontrol.com." "hey what is the IP of
"outreachscholarship.org" and they tell us "64.202.189.170".

All that crap is basically covered by the command below. Note that
@8.8.8.8 is Google DNS, which I am using because its a handy IP and I
know it is not totally mis-configured.

antarus@kyoto ~$ dig +trace @8.8.8.8 outreachscholarship.org

; <<>> DiG 9.4.3-P4 <<>> +trace @8.8.8.8 outreachscholarship.org
; (1 server found)
;; global options: printcmd
. 35860 IN NS a.root-servers.net.
. 35860 IN NS b.root-servers.net.
. 35860 IN NS c.root-servers.net.
. 35860 IN NS d.root-servers.net.
. 35860 IN NS e.root-servers.net.
. 35860 IN NS f.root-servers.net.
. 35860 IN NS g.root-servers.net.
. 35860 IN NS h.root-servers.net.
. 35860 IN NS i.root-servers.net.
. 35860 IN NS j.root-servers.net.
. 35860 IN NS k.root-servers.net.
. 35860 IN NS l.root-servers.net.
. 35860 IN NS m.root-servers.net.
;; Received 228 bytes from 8.8.8.8#53(8.8.8.8) in 58 ms
;; Us asking @8.8.8.8 for for the . server addresses.

org. 172800 IN NS a2.org.afilias-nst.info.
org. 172800 IN NS b2.org.afilias-nst.org.
org. 172800 IN NS a0.org.afilias-nst.info.
org. 172800 IN NS b0.org.afilias-nst.org.
org. 172800 IN NS c0.org.afilias-nst.info.
org. 172800 IN NS d0.org.afilias-nst.org.
;; Received 443 bytes from 192.203.230.10#53(e.root-servers.net) in 40 ms
;; Us asking @e.root-servers.net for .org. server addresses

outreachscholarship.org. 86400 IN NS ns07.domaincontrol.com.
outreachscholarship.org. 86400 IN NS ns08.domaincontrol.com.
;; Received 96 bytes from 199.19.53.1#53(c0.org.afilias-nst.info) in 171 ms
;; Us asking @c0.org.afilias-nst.info for outreachscholarship.org. addresses

outreachscholarship.org. 3600 IN A 64.202.189.170
outreachscholarship.org. 3600 IN NS ns07.domaincontrol.com.
outreachscholarship.org. 3600 IN NS ns08.domaincontrol.com.
;; Received 112 bytes from 216.69.185.4#53(ns07.domaincontrol.com) in 66 ms
;; Us asking @ns07.domaincontrol.com. for the IP address for
outreachscholarship.org. and getting a reply.

We can double check whether ns07.domaincontrol.com thinks it is
Authoritative for outreachscholarship.org by asking it a brief
question.

antarus@kyoto ~$ dig @ns07.domaincontrol.com. outreachscholarship.org a

; <<>> DiG 9.4.3-P4 <<>> @ns07.domaincontrol.com. outreachscholarship.org a
; (1 server found)
;; global options: printcmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 18761
;; flags: qr aa rd; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 2, ADDITIONAL: 0
;; WARNING: recursion requested but not available

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;outreachscholarship.org. IN A

;; ANSWER SECTION:
outreachscholarship.org. 3600 IN A 64.202.189.170

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
outreachscholarship.org. 3600 IN NS ns07.domaincontrol.com.
outreachscholarship.org. 3600 IN NS ns08.domaincontrol.com.

They think they are authoritative for that domain (See the Authority:2
above). If they were serving replies for your domain that were not
marked as Authoritative that would be bad; so we can eliminate that as
a problem.

The TTL for outreachscholariship.org is only 3600 seconds (one hour)
so properly behaved caching DNS nameservers should probably have
purged the old records by now (Servers can basically return existing
records up to TTL seconds, so if you change the record it should take
no longer than TTL seconds to propagate out in a world where all DNS
servers were configured ideally (they are not FYI)). I can't say that
all caching DNS servers are 'properly behaved' and many ignore the TTL
and cache for some random time (24 hours is pretty common.) DNS is a
distributed system which means that there is no 'master database'
where we can just make a DNS change and expect it to show up
everywhere; sometimes it just takes time. There may be third party
services that attempt to track 'how far' a given DNS change has made
it around the internet; however I've never used such a service
(although intriguing in principle.)

In short; these problems are hard to track after the fact precisely
because we do not have heavy introspection into such a distributed
service.

>
>  After several calls to GD getting nowhere, we decided to transfer the
> registration to Network Solutions, where we have several other domains
> registered.  So we go through the steps to transfer.  My boss ends up
> getting a message that says a request for transfer confirmation was sent to
> the administrative contact, which it shows as the old contact at Penn State.
> I did a whois lookup, and see the old Penn State contacts.  Aha!  The GD
> contact info didn't propagate to the underlying registry back when he
> updated it in March.  So I call GD again to ask what to do about that.  The
> tech says that for him, whois shows the MSU contact info.  He told me to go
> to http://who.is and see what it says.  When he goes there, he sees the
> updated MSU contacts.  When I go there, I see the old Penn State contacts.
> Strange.  Then he says he'll get up and go to an external computer and see
> what comes up.  He puts me on hold for a few minutes and comes back saying
> that from outside GD, he saw the old info, too.  Good!  So now at least GD
> understands that something really is wrong.  But how can we both go to the
> same external site and get two different results?

http://who.is is powered by amazon EC2 (if you trust the WHOIS results
for 184.73.233.186 anyway...). This may mean it is possible for your
request to be serviced by a different machine in possibly a different
datacenter than the GoDaddy fellow. It is also possible that one or
both of you are using a caching proxy that cached old results. It is
also possible that even if you were served by EC2 in the same
datacenter; they could be doing a data refresh where the machine that
served you and the machine the served the GoDaddy fellow just had
different copies of data; typically this works itself out over
relatively short periods of time (minutes.)

>  At this point he's going to escalate the issue, and goes back to the
> external computer to get a screenshot to staple to the screenshot from his
> workstation.  But this time it shows the MSU info, not the Penn State info.
> So I emailed him a screenshot from my computer, where at least it's
> consistently wrong.
>
>  So what the heck is going on?  I am flummoxed.  At least I got an incident
> number out of it.  Previously I think GD just thought I was crazy.
>
> --
> Carl Raymond
> Software Developer
> University Outreach & Engagement
> Michigan State University
> Kellogg Center, Garden Level
> East Lansing, MI 48824-1022
>
> [log in to unmask]
> (517) 353-8977
> http://outreach.msu.edu/
>

Top of Message | Previous Page | Permalink

Advanced Options


Options

Log In

Log In

Get Password

Get Password


Search Archives

Search Archives


Subscribe or Unsubscribe

Subscribe or Unsubscribe


Archives

December 2023
June 2023
May 2022
April 2022
March 2022
February 2022
December 2021
January 2019
August 2018
June 2018
May 2018
March 2018
February 2018
January 2018
December 2017
November 2017
October 2017
September 2017
August 2017
July 2017
June 2017
May 2017
April 2017
March 2017
February 2017
January 2017
December 2016
November 2016
October 2016
September 2016
August 2016
July 2016
June 2016
May 2016
April 2016
March 2016
February 2016
January 2016
December 2015
November 2015
October 2015
September 2015
August 2015
July 2015
June 2015
May 2015
April 2015
March 2015
February 2015
January 2015
December 2014
November 2014
October 2014
September 2014
August 2014
July 2014
June 2014
May 2014
April 2014
March 2014
February 2014
January 2014
December 2013
November 2013
October 2013
September 2013
August 2013
July 2013
June 2013
May 2013
April 2013
March 2013
February 2013
January 2013
December 2012
November 2012
October 2012
September 2012
August 2012
July 2012
June 2012
May 2012
April 2012
March 2012
February 2012
January 2012
December 2011
November 2011
October 2011
September 2011
August 2011
July 2011
June 2011
May 2011
April 2011
March 2011
February 2011
January 2011
December 2010
November 2010
October 2010
September 2010
August 2010
July 2010
June 2010
May 2010
April 2010
March 2010
February 2010
January 2010
December 2009
November 2009
October 2009
September 2009
August 2009
July 2009
June 2009
May 2009
April 2009
March 2009
February 2009
January 2009
December 2008
November 2008
October 2008
September 2008
August 2008
July 2008
June 2008
May 2008
April 2008
March 2008
February 2008
January 2008
December 2007
November 2007
October 2007
September 2007
August 2007
July 2007
June 2007
May 2007
April 2007
March 2007
February 2007
January 2007
December 2006
November 2006
October 2006
September 2006
August 2006
July 2006
June 2006
May 2006
April 2006
March 2006
February 2006
January 2006
December 2005
November 2005
October 2005
September 2005
August 2005
July 2005
June 2005
May 2005
April 2005
March 2005
February 2005
January 2005
December 2004
November 2004
October 2004
September 2004
August 2004
July 2004
June 2004
May 2004
April 2004
March 2004
February 2004
January 2004
December 2003
November 2003
October 2003
September 2003
August 2003
July 2003
June 2003
May 2003
April 2003
March 2003
February 2003
January 2003
December 2002
November 2002
September 2002
August 2002
July 2002
June 2002
May 2002
April 2002
March 2002
February 2002
January 2002
December 2001
November 2001
October 2001

ATOM RSS1 RSS2



LIST.MSU.EDU

CataList Email List Search Powered by the LISTSERV Email List Manager