33 replies to this topic

[Rylia]

Been reading this for awhile now and look forward to new posts! And who knoemws maybe ill ask a question someday worthy of a blight post lol

[DaDutchDude]

*bump* Server not found, blog dead? Edit: Bizarre, doesn't work on one computer, no mater which browser I use, but works on the other, even though they are hooked onto the same internet connection. Anyway, must be a local issue. Edit 2: turned out to be a name server issue where one name server that I had manually set on one computer couldn't find the address, where the automatically assigned one's on the other computer worked flawlessly.

[Silas]

*bump*

Server not found, blog dead?

Works fine on my end...

[ROX Genghis]

The Altruist has just been added to the blog pack! Congrats, Azual. Your blog is well deserving. And so are you, I suppose.

[Azual]

The Altruist has just been added to the blog pack! Congrats, Azual. Your blog is well deserving. And so are you, I suppose.

Thanks!

[Othran]

*bump*

Server not found, blog dead?

Edit: Bizarre, doesn't work on one computer, no mater which browser I use, but works on the other, even though they are hooked onto the same internet connection. Anyway, must be a local issue.

Edit 2: turned out to be a name server issue where one name server that I had manually set on one computer couldn't find the address, where the automatically assigned one's on the other computer worked flawlessly.

<snip previous stuff, its a wierd error>

Azual has setup altruist.azual.co.uk as a CNAME for ghs.google.com

The problem is that ghs.google.com is also a CNAME in google's zonefile which actually resolves to the A record ghs.l.google.com (209.85.169.121)

You should never point a CNAME at another CNAME as its possible to create an unresolvable loop, which is exactly what you've done here, although its a pretty bizarre loop - see Edit2.

I'd advise you point the CNAME at ghs.l.google.com although that runs the risk of google moving your blog at some point in the future. More info including dig outputs in the PM.

Edit - I think the problem may have been caused by his domain nameserver being patched on 19 August 2011, assuming its serial number is right.

Edit2 - it seems to be an issue with CNAMES and Windows 2003/2008 DNS. The interesting part is its only with ghs.google.com - nothing else seems to be affected the same way.

Others are seeing similar - eg http://www.google.co...b1f61f8ed&hl=en and this one which specifically mentions Azual's hosting company (Justhost) http://www.google.co...d6c502678&hl=en

So its bloody wierd, not simple

Edit3 - the quick and dirty fix for Win2k3/2k8 boxes is to add a forwarder for both azual.co.uk and google.com - for primary/secondary DNS then use 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 (google's public DNS). This should be acceptable traffic/security-wise in most companies. If you don't add both azual.co.uk and google.com then you end up with intermittent errors, meaning at least one nameserver has a different zonefile to the rest - and I think its Justhost rather than google. Gods I must be well bored to have bothered with looking at this but I'm not bored enough to do zone transfers from all the nameservers concerned

There appear to be a fair few problems with cnames pointing at ghs.google.com, judging from the search results on google apps forums.

[Othran]

Actually I think I see why its happening. Both altruist.azual.co.uk and www.altruist.azual.co.uk are cnames pointing to ghs.google.com. Now unless I've totally lost the plot you cannot have a subdomain of a cname, so www.altruist.azual.co.uk is (when following RFCs) not permitted as its a subdomain of altruist.azual.co.uk which is a cname, not an A record or dname. You can only have a subdomain on an A record or a DNAME. I suspect that when (if) Azual removes www.altruist.co.uk from the zonefile then windows nameservers (which amazingly ARE RFC-compliant!) will start resolving his blog. Odd how something annoys you enough to spend an hour or so on it. Should have spotted that one faster, been a while for DNS debugging though.

[Azual]

As of today, my blog has a new address - you can now find it at http://www.evealtruist.com

[Othran]

As of today, my blog has a new address - you can now find it at http://www.evealtruist.com

Working nicely Azual - you set an A-record for ghs.l.google.com by the looks of it, rather than a cname? Whatever, its now correctly resolving using Windows Server dns