[sf-lug] sf-lug website?

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Christian Einfeldt (einfeldt at gmail.com):

> I noticed that the sf lug website is down.  I went to sf-lug.com and .org.
> Any thoughts?

Micro-tutorial follows that may facilitate deeper analysis than 'The Web
site is down'.  


For any Web site to function and be reachable at a fully-qualified [DNS]
domain name (aka 'FQDN') URL, the following constituent parts must all be
working, and can be checked in order.

1.  Domain must be registered.  Check using 'whois'.*
2.  Authoritative nameservers must exist.  Check using 'whois'.
3.  Authoritative nameservers must resolve the domain, and in
    particular the Web server's FQDN.  Check using 'dig'.
4.  Routing to the server must exist.  Check using 'ping', 'traceroute',
    'tcptraceroute'.  (Each gives slightly different information.)
5.  Connectivity to the target server's TCP port 80**, the standard 
    server for HTTP, must work.  Check using dig or curl.
6.  If connected to validly and asked for the Web page, the Web
    server must return the site HTML (as opposed to, say, a 404
    Not Found response, 302 Permanently Moved response, etc.).
    Check using - obviously - a Web browser, or a variety of other
    things that can act like an HTTP client, including /usr/bin/telnet.

If any of those items doesn't work, then the ones that follow don't
matter because of fundamental failure at a lower level.


Let's apply that list to sf-lug.com, then to sf-lug.org:


sf-lug.org:
-----------
1.  Registration.

rmoen at borgia:~$ whois sf-lug.com 
[...]
Domain Status: clientTransferProhibited
   Updated Date: 04-jul-2014
   Creation Date: 02-jul-2004
   Expiration Date: 02-jul-2015

In recent years registrars have been playing games with the vital
'Updated Date', 'Domain Status', and 'Expiration Date' field - among
others.  Reading the rest of the whois entry attentively, it's obvious
what happened.  July 2, 2014 was the expiration date - and the owner did
_not_ renew.

On July 2nd, the domain expired, and registrar Network Solutions
promptly added a (bogus) additional year.  They also changed the
displayed Registrant (owner) to omit the erstwhile owner - Jim
Stockford, if memory serves - and show themselves in that role, and they
changed the authoritatives nameservers from those of the erstwhile owner
to their 'domain parking' nameservers at NS1.PENDINGRENEWALDELETION.COM
and NS2.PENDINGRENEWALDELETION.COM.

So:  Domain is currently 12 days past expiration.  Recovery prospects?
See footnote http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/preventing-expiration.html#1
Quoting:

  In the first 40 days, the domain can still be renewed by just paying
  the normal renewal. Some registrars will accept renewal money from
  anyone; others won't. 

As noted, steps 2-6 are academic at present, since the domain's in
limbo.  But y'all have until Monday, August 11, 2014 to recover at no
more than the cost of regular renewal.  (That's 40 days from expiration.)



sf-lug.org:

1.  Registration.

rmoen at borgia:~$ whois sf-lug.org
[...]
Creation Date: 2004-07-02T21:17:47Z
Updated Date: 2014-07-04T10:15:26Z
Registry Expiry Date: 2015-07-02T21:17:47Z
Domain Status: clientTransferProhibited
Domain Status: autoRenewPeriod


Gosh, same story.  Steps 2-6 omitted, ditto.



Ancillary comment:  Network Solutions sucks.  (GoDaddy blows.)
Lots of reasons, omitted here.



* MS-Windows lacks this tool along with the equally essential DNS tools 
host and dig.  There's an open-source set of the three from Cygwin.
MS-Windows people really ought to routinely install and use those
instead of using Web-based whois and using the extremely buggy and
antique nslookup tool instead of dig/host.

8* Rarely, a Web server may be configured to be reachable on a different
port, most often 8080, thus the URL pattern http://www.example.com:8080/ .

-- 
Cheers,                           "So, a Degas painting walks into a barre...."
Rick Moen                                                 @behindyourback
rick at linuxmafia.com                                    
McQ! (4x80)