octave.org down?

[John W. Eaton]

On 23-Sep-2008, Carlo de Falco wrote:

| http://www.octave.org just redirects to a place-holder page
| with various ads today...

It appears to be a DNS server problem.  See below for a copy of my
inquiry to the people who run the server that handles www.octave.org.

You can still reach the site using the address

  http://www.gnu.org/software/octave

jwe


  Subject: www.octave.org redirect problem
  From: "John W. Eaton" <address@hidden>
  To: [...]
  Cc: "John W. Eaton" <address@hidden>
  Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2008 10:03:26 -0400

  This morning I am seeing some strange things with www.octave.org.

  Looking at http://www.octave.org sometimes redirects to a page with
  advertisements instead of redirecting to the actual Octave web pages
  at http://www.gnu.org/software/octave (I just have a simple .htaccess
  file on vhost that handles the redirect).

  When I try looking up www.octave.org, I sometimes see things like this:

    $ host www.octave.org
    www.octave.org has address 74.126.19.162
    www.octave.org has address 74.126.19.160
    www.octave.org is an alias for vhost.cae.wisc.edu.
    www.octave.org is an alias for vhost.cae.wisc.edu.
    vhost.cae.wisc.edu mail is handled by 0 mail.cae.wisc.edu.

  or:

    $ host www.octave.org
    www.octave.org has address 74.126.19.162
    www.octave.org has address 74.126.19.160

    $ host www.octave.org
    www.octave.org is an alias for vhost.cae.wisc.edu.
    vhost.cae.wisc.edu has address 144.92.13.94
    vhost.cae.wisc.edu mail is handled by 0 mail.cae.wisc.edu.

    $ host www.octave.org
    www.octave.org is an alias for vhost.cae.wisc.edu.
    vhost.cae.wisc.edu has address 144.92.13.94
    vhost.cae.wisc.edu mail is handled by 0 mail.cae.wisc.edu.

  I don't know where these numeric addresses are coming from.  I am
  performing this lookup from outside the UW domain.  My nameservers are

    nameserver 65.24.7.10
    nameserver 65.24.7.11

  Pinging www.octave.org returned this:

    $ ping www.octave.org
    PING www.octave.org (74.126.19.160) 56(84) bytes of data.
    64 bytes from 74.126.19.160.static.a2webhosting.com (74.126.19.160): 
icmp_seq=1 ttl=46 time=42.9 ms
    64 bytes from 74.126.19.160.static.a2webhosting.com (74.126.19.160): 
icmp_seq=2 ttl=46 time=38.5 ms
    64 bytes from 74.126.19.160.static.a2webhosting.com (74.126.19.160): 
icmp_seq=3 ttl=46 time=40.4 ms
    64 bytes from 74.126.19.160.static.a2webhosting.com (74.126.19.160): 
icmp_seq=4 ttl=46 time=38.0 ms

  I am apparently not the only one seeing this problem, as I was first
  alerted to it by an Octave user in Italy.

  Ah, here is some additional DNS information:

    $ host -a www.octave.org
    Trying "www.octave.org"
    ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 5914
    ;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 2, AUTHORITY: 4, ADDITIONAL: 4

    ;; QUESTION SECTION:
    ;www.octave.org.                        IN      ANY

    ;; ANSWER SECTION:
    www.octave.org.         14343   IN      A       74.126.19.160
    www.octave.org.         14343   IN      A       74.126.19.162

    ;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
    octave.org.             85612   IN      NS      dns1.cae.wisc.edu.
    octave.org.             85612   IN      NS      ns03.sbusiness.net.
    octave.org.             85612   IN      NS      ns04.sbusiness.net.
    octave.org.             85612   IN      NS      dns2.cae.wisc.edu.

    ;; ADDITIONAL SECTION:
    ns04.sbusiness.net.     13612   IN      A       74.126.19.162
    ns04.sbusiness.net.     13612   IN      A       207.189.119.29
    dns2.cae.wisc.edu.      11394   IN      A       128.104.201.24
    dns1.cae.wisc.edu.      14226   IN      A       144.92.12.24

    Received 229 bytes from 65.24.7.10#53 in 21 ms

  and

    $ host www.octave.org ns03.sbusiness.net
    Using domain server:
    Name: ns03.sbusiness.net
    Address: 74.126.19.162#53
    Aliases: 

    www.octave.org has address 74.126.19.162
    www.octave.org has address 74.126.19.160

  This result is repeatable, while the wisc.edu nameservers are
  consistently returning the correct vhost.cae.wisc.edu result.

  So it looks like the sbusiness.net nameservers are causing the
  trouble.  I don't think they should even be in there.

  Do you know why this is happening?  How to go about fixing it?

  Thanks,

  jwe