.org Registry Offline - Not

einer writes "According to the The Register, the registry containing all of the .org tld information has fallen off the planet. The article is light on details, and doesn't list any potential consequences. " It looks like it's the server that maintains the records for who owns what .org domain - and a big "I Told You So" for Verisign. And of course, now it seems to be working just fine. Good work, PIR.

Comments

So what.

[Prince_Ali]

I make it a point to never visit any .org sites at all. Vile things, they are. I haven't visited a single .org website in over 2 years.

Re:So what.

[CustomFort]

*Cough* Slashdot.org *cough*

Re:So what.

[CProgrammer98]

*cough* *cough* humour *cough* *cough*

Re:So what.

[borgdows]

*cough* *cough* I have SARS! *cough* *cough*

Re:So what.

[Anonymous Coward]

C|N>K! :-P

I have no idea why you got modded down...that was funny!

Re:So what.

[matth]

*Me Checks* nope no .org I go to http://www.slashdot.com !!

Re:So what.

[etrnl]

*points to your sig*

Re:So what.

[anonymous cowfart]

Someone said something has happened, but in reality nothing has. Hey, let's put this on the front page!

Slashdot: News for nerds, stuff that matters.

Re:So what.

[Anonymous Coward]

So that means I could freely post my .org url without fear of the /. effect ?

Re:So what.

[Anonymous Coward]

*cough* *cough* dumbarse *cough* *cough*

Re:So what.

[Patrick13]

Someone said something has happened, but in reality nothing has. Hey, let's put this on the front page!

No. The real story is that they recovered the records by using the Google cache. Its saved my ass once or twice. ;)

Re:So what.

[Anonymous Coward]

Dickwads who have to explain jokes are NOT FUNNY! The appropriate moderation is REDUNDANT.

Re:So what.

[Anonymous Coward]

Just feel lucky the .org registry is running. I know people who work at PIR or rather Afilias who handles the registry for .org. Plus I believe even after Afilias there is yet another level of bureacracy and poor management which handles the actual registry under another company name hidden from all of us. It is run by an extremely untrained and weak staff with little or no experience. It will fail eventually and when the RRP/EPP transition happens be prepared for the worst. They are in it purely for the money and nothing else. PIR is a quality organization with good people doing there best to give a good alternative to a VERISIGN monopoly but one bad choice they made was letting Afilias handle the backend for them. Notice the slow resolve times and missing whois information. Yes yes we all know it will be fixed eventually but perhaps instead of pushing the transition so fast they could have prepared and thought things through more before they took over from VERISIGN. Don't hold your breath for a stable .org registry and make sure you call your registrar with any problems so they can be addressed by PIR. If you do not mention it ...it will never be fixed ...again this is all about money for some people and the free society of .org does not equate in that.

Re:So what.

[Anonymous Coward]

*cough* *cough* *fart* *cough*

oops..

.org registry

[Anonymous Coward]

Because you never know where to find a good orgy....

whois still working

[drwtsn32]

I just did a whois query on my org domain. It works fine.

Re:whois still working

[Anonymous Coward]

Um... Yeah.
He said he used whois, which told him who owns his domain name. He performed the proper test, so why are you talking about root servers?

Re:whois still working

[Anonymous Coward]

I knew someone who did a whois query once. He died.

Re:whois still working

[Anonymous Coward]

Shakespeare ate a carrot once.
He died.

Re:whois still working

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea, and now Shakespeare is also dead.

Re:whois still working

[Gortbusters.org]

In other words, this was a horrible article to post.

Re:whois still working

[madprof]

Of course! The article has been pulled from teh front page because the service was NEVER down in the first place.
The whois server that Simon Perry used to check if his domain was up was owned by Verisign. Which doesn't cary any .org information.
Simon, being incredibly stupid, doesn't understand what "The Registry database contains ONLY .COM, .NET, .EDU domains and Registrars" means.
Neither do The Register it seems. More great reporting from that high quality news source....

Re:whois still working

[sporty]

The whois, the public services may not be tied in directly to the interfaces for registration and other operations (NS changes, contact changes).

Two different protocols. If you had some way of triggering an EPP command (registryregistrar protocol) and show both are up, I'd be a bit more at ease. To be truthful, PIR/Afilias are doing a poor job of running .org. Affilias does well with .info etc.. but .org is really bad.

Re:whois still working

[Christopher B. Brown]

Strange...

I never got paged about it, and I certainly would have had things gone down.

It seems more plausible that the problem stems from an out-of-date version of whois.

Version 4.6.2 (released in March) introduced a "patch" redirecting .ORG requests to whois.publicinterestregistry.net ; I'd suggest you check version numbers. Chances are that you're running something reasonably new.

It's plausible that VGRS might have been forwarding requests over to PIR, and shut that capability off this weekend, thereby causing "some inconvenience" to those using out-of-date whois clients.

Taking a look at the posts that led to the Register article, it appears that they headed down a garden path rather like this:

• "We're having a problem; perhaps it's one of several things" to
• "Now, we're publishing an article, with the wildest conspiracy theory we can imagine!", namely

  The registry for all .org domains appears to have collapsed - meaning that all the details of who owns any .org domain are unobtainable.

Alternatively, perhaps CRSNIC, the putative point of failure, is having a problem?

Re:whois still working

[_xeno_]

The Register is not a very trustworthy news source. I used to think they were mostly OK, but then I read Gates: 'Wake up and steal the coffee' , which is seven paragraphs slamming Bill Gates for leaving a coffee shop without paying. Followed by three paragraphs saying effectively "oh, the above is false, but we wanted to report it anyway."

I mean, really. A full-page article alledging that Bill Gates is so full of himself that he forgot that he has to pay for things like the rest of us proles, and then three-paragraph correction reporting that the above story isn't true. It's rediculous! At least Slashdot (usually) posts the update to the top paragraph and highlights it. But reporting something that you know isn't true and then containing the correct right within the story is such bad journalism as to border on the rediculous.

I suppose they've been taking the BOFH over-seriously there. Outright lieing is OK for Simon, since he's a fictional character and expected to be a bastard. But for a supposed news article - one that doesn't even have anything to do with technology, only a press conference gone awry, it is just do dishonest to try and libel someone simply because you disagree with his policies.

I lost a lot of confidence in the Register with that story. I know they have an overly mocking style and that they tend to attack everyone and everything simply as part of their style. But doing so with a story you know if false is unfair and lowers you to the level of mindless zealot. - (X)

* I suppose I'm being overly harsh; the story was originally posted without the correction and the correction was only added later after they found out that the story was false. But I still think they should have included a note at the top. Hardly seems fair to mention it only at the very bottom, does it?

Re:whois still working

[SimonPerry]

That's a bit harsh - but when put like that, it does appear stunning that I missed that the .org details aren't included anymore. On the other hand, given the amount of gumph that is displayed along with a interesting/relavant domain information, it's hardly surprising that I've just tuned out from reading it through thoroughly.

Mental note - I must read to the end of the exam paper before answering any questions.

Re:whois still working

[Sxooter]

What bothers me about the article was that whoever wrote it clearly called into question the quality of service being provided by PIR, but in the correction posted, there is no apology for this insult against the good folks at PIR.

It doesn't matter if they were insulting bill gates or mother theresa, when the truth came to light, the correction should have contained a contrite apology to PIR for the slur. There was none, just a bit of backpedalling about how internic is having issues with .net.

Funny thing, we didn't get a sentence about how sloppy internic is for having problems with .net.

Or even a sentence about how sloppy The Reg is, which could have been used to humorous poke fun at themselves while giving PIR the apology they still deserve.

Re:whois still working

[vigilology]

Of course! The article has been pulled from teh front page because the service was NEVER down in the first place.

Why don't they pull duplicates?

Re:whois still working

[cscx]

Sounds like this guy's got a job waiting for him at the NY Times.

Re:whois still working

[madprof]

Yes that was harsh but I did the same myself once. When it was pointed out that I'd made a mistake I felt very stupid.
However getting in touch with The Register to tell them .org has disappeared is asking for trouble because, as we now know, they don't check the veracity of what they report.
People must get in touch with lots of news outlets every day with 'news' that turns out on closer inspection not to be news at all.
It's up to the news outlets to sift the wheat from the chaff, which The Register appears to fail to do.

Re:whois still working

[lucifuge31337]

We need a "-1 - Can't spell ridiculous"

Re:whois still working

[_xeno_]

It was a spoof on the Register - I think I get creative license there :)

oh no!

[Anonymous Coward]

now I can't lookup slashdot.org anymore.

Re:oh no!

[Webmoth]

If .org was gone, then how could they post the story to.... slashdot.org?

Re:oh no!

[V.P.]

I thought by now people would know slashdot's IP by heart.

Re:oh no!

[RAMMS EIN]

I am on a network where the DNS servers go bogus regularly. They will still find addresses for some sites, but the Web will hardly be usable. Because of this, and also to cut down on pointless DNS lookups, I have put the sites I visit most frequently in my /etc/hosts. I have also made a custom resolv.conf that lists some reliable DNS servers, which I copy over my /etc/resolv.conf when it's That Time of the Week Again. So for me, /. still works, whether The Register says .orgs are down or not!

---
"UNIX was not designed to stop you from doing stupid things, because that would also stop you from doing clever things."
--Doug Gwyn

Re:oh no!

[Anonymous Coward]

You could post to slashdot.com instead.

Re:oh no!

[gfreeman]

oh no! now I can't lookup slashdot.org anymore.

That's OK - us real geeks know the IP address off by heart.

Uh oh...

[fredrikj]

...in a few hours, slashdot.org will redirect to microsoft.com or riaa.com...

Re:Uh oh...

[borgdows]

I'd rather bet it will redirect to goatse.cx! ;)

Re:Uh oh...

[atomm1024]

Actually, the RIAA is riaa.org ...

does it matter?

[Anonymous Coward]

as far as i understand, pretty much every ISP has their own dns tables anyway, so does this really matter? i guess it does if it stays this way for few days, but i would guess its just a temporary problem

or, should i start writting down the /. IP?

Re:does it matter?

[REBloomfield]

no, you're confusing the DNS record with who actually owns it, the registrant information. DNS should still work for a good while...

Re:does it matter?

[zdislaw]

DNS is one thing. The records of who owns them is different. If that were to die irretrievably, there would be no way of knowing who owned what, and who could re-register it.

Huh??

[muyuubyou]

And I thought the blender.org era was a good thing... Things like this support the corporate credibility in the IT ages. *sigh*

Yay for redundant root nameservers!

[CoolVibe]

Since I own several .org domains, this concerns me. Good that it's all still working.

One thing puzzles me though, isn't ISOC managing .org nowadays? Or are they still going to? At any rate, I think ISOC will do a better job than Verisign will ever do anyday.

Re:Yay for redundant root nameservers!

[segfault7375]

From the article:

PIR took over the domain on New Year's Day this year after VeriSign was forced to hand over the not-for-profit registry to encourage competition.

In recent news...

[mschoolbus]

Verisign licensed SCO's Unix Source code on Monday...

Re:In recent news...

[SEWilco]

Verisign licensed SCO's Unix Source code on Monday...

Fictional news can't beat real headlines:
Microsoft Buys SCO Group's Unix
I note that the article text immediately does have the correct information that a non-exclusive license is what was purchased, not all the Unix assets.

However, my favorite quote from the SCO news is "teams of lawyers and engineers are scouring the source code"
I think lawyers scouring source code is generally not particularly effective.

(Don't look at me. That "zdnet.com.com" URL is what works. Using just "zdnet.com" fails. CNet runs com.com, and I don't know why the ZDNet site doesn't use the same link structure.)

Patriot Act

[sokkelih]

Terrorist .Org-anizations.

Lol.

[BoomerSooner]

This is why everything should still be IP based! (j/k)

whois slashdot.org

[samhalliday]

whois slashdot.org

Found referral to whois.opensrs.net.

Registrant:

VA Software Corporation (OSDN)

47071 Bayside Parkway

Fremont, CA 94538

US

Domain name: SLASHDOT.ORG

i guess it will take a while for this to filter down the servers... how long does anyone guess it will be before we cant whois .org; and will this affect DNS??? that coudl be a REAL disaster!

I'm gonna...

[Alpha-net]

...Plant a Flag right here and Claim Slashdot as Mine! All Mine! No one can stop me cause I claimed it first! ;-]

.cx

[Arc04]

Just be thankful all .cx domains are still available.

I don't know if I could make it through the day without a trip to a certain site. :P

Re:.cx

[Anonymous Coward]

no, he means all those OTHER .cx sites we visit every day, like www.notagapinganus.cx. Dumbass.

Re:.cx

[Anonymous Coward]

OMFGROFLOLBBQ

OMFG=Oh my fucking god,
ROFL=rolling on the floor laughing,
OLBBQ=outside lighting a barbecue?

I must be getting old, all these acronyms are getting too much for me.

Re:.cx

[palfrey]

Most of them anyways... my personal "must visit daily" .cx site has now gotta be torrentse.cx, which appears to have been hacked. Arseness... and after I'd donated and everything....

Re:.cx

[admin32]

Arc04, Which .CX site are you reffering to mate ?

Re:.cx

[Anonymous Coward]

I was wondering if it had been hacked. The green text asking "what" was IMO rather odd. I thought maybe they had taken down the website due to high load.

Update your whois client.

[jrwilk01]

Responsible servers changed, all is well. Nothing to see here. Move along.

jrw@gerontius:~$ whois slashdot.org
NOTICE: Access to .ORG WHOIS information is provided to assist persons in
determining the contents of a domain name registration record in the PIR
registry database. The data in this record is provided by Public Interest Registry
for informational purposes only, and PIR does not guarantee its
accuracy. This service is intended only for query-based access. You agree
that you will use this data only for lawful purposes and that, under no
circumstances will you use this data to: (a) allow, enable, or otherwise
support the transmission by e-mail, telephone, or facsimile of mass
unsolicited, commercial advertising or solicitations to entities other than
the data recipient's own existing customers; or (b) enable high volume,
automated, electronic processes that send queries or data to the systems of
Registry Operator or any ICANN-Accredited Registrar, except as reasonably
necessary to register domain names or modify existing registrations. All
rights reserved. PIR reserves the right to modify these terms at any
time. By submitting this query, you agree to abide by this policy.

Domain ID:D2289308-LROR
Domain Name:SLASHDOT.ORG
Created On:05-Oct-1997 04:00:00 UTC
Last Updated On:15-Jan-2003 01:48:23 UTC
Expiration Date:04-Oct-2005 04:00:00 UTC
Sponsoring Registrar:R11-LROR
Status:OK
Registrant ID:11-C
Registrant Name:SEE SPONSORING REGISTRAR
Registrant Street1:Whois Server:whois.opensrs.net
Registrant Street2:Referral URL:www.opensrs.org
Registrant City:N/A
Registrant Postal Code:N/A
Registrant Country:CA
Registrant Email:not@available.org
Admin ID:11-C
Admin Name:SEE SPONSORING REGISTRAR
Admin Street1:Whois Server:whois.opensrs.net
Admin Street2:Referral URL:www.opensrs.org
Admin City:N/A
Admin Postal Code:N/A
Admin Country:CA
Admin Email:not@available.org
Billing ID:11-C
Billing Name:SEE SPONSORING REGISTRAR
Billing Street1:Whois Server:whois.opensrs.net
Billing Street2:Referral URL:www.opensrs.org
Billing City:N/A
Billing Postal Code:N/A
Billing Country:CA
Billing Email:not@available.org
Tech ID:11-C
Tech Name:SEE SPONSORING REGISTRAR
Tech Street1:Whois Server:whois.opensrs.net
Tech Street2:Referral URL:www.opensrs.org
Tech City:N/A
Tech Postal Code:N/A
Tech Country:CA
Tech Email:not@available.org
Name Server:NS1.VASOFTWARE.COM
Name Server:NS2.VASOFTWARE.COM
Name Server:NS3.VASOFTWARE.COM

Don't hit OSS

[thosss]

I just hope that MS and others don't hit up OSS for this; the .org registry was the first to run a non Oracle\MS SQL\DB2 database (it runs/ran Postgre). I don't want Postgre to be the underlying problem in this because it could easily destroy their reputation.

Re:Don't hit OSS

[Anonymous Coward]

What you sow you shall reap. If it was running on MS SQL, you'd be tearing it to bits by now.

Re:Don't hit OSS

[mukund]

I think the .org always worked, but the whois software's configuration which theregister.co.uk uses may be outdated and is still asking the Verisign servers for .org information.

With a new whois installation, PIR's servers are contacted instead (whois.publicinterestregistry.net).

With an old configured version of whois, one might try:

whois -h whois.publicinterestregistry.net domain.org

Re:Don't hit OSS

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't want Postgre to be the underlying problem in this because it could easily destroy their reputation.

Why not? If their software's no good and causes major problems whn you try to use it for anything serious, their reputation should be destroyed.

Re:Don't hit OSS

[siphoncolder]

They have a saying in Russian that translates to:

"If shoe fits, wear it."

Re:Don't hit OSS

[Anonymous Coward]

I just hope that MS and others don't hit up OSS for this... because it could easily destroy their reputation.

Now why would it do that? MS has produced the world's crappiest database server, SQLServer, with vulnerabilities and an even crappier patching system that gave birth to SQL Slammer. My firewall still reports at least 10 to 12 Slammer attempts every day.

I don't see their reputation suffering, do you?

Re:Don't hit OSS

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't want Postgre to be the underlying problem in this because it could easily destroy their reputation.

You mean their reputation as having the ugliest-sounding name ever?

Re:Don't hit OSS

[Anonymous Coward]

similar to the english proverb

"If it doesn't fit, you must equit."

Flame if you will.

[FreeLinux]

But, this was a concern when the whole TLD split-up was initially suggested. I'm no fan of Verisign but, Network Solutions and Verisign ran a tight ship. This type of thing just didn't happen. ICANN made a big mistake with their breakup of the registrars and this is likely to become a frequent problem.

The worst part is, with the way the resgistrars are distributed now, the blame game is going to be rediculous with everyone pointing at the other guy. In the past there was no question as to who was responsible for any issues.

Re:Flame if you will.

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm, with all due respect, VeriSign isn't bad, but Network Solutions ain't exactly what I or anyone I know would call a "tight ship"....

Re:Flame if you will.

[rwiedower]

Hear Hear. Network Solutions routinely "loses" information. That said, it never "lost" an entire domain, but still, screwing thousands of little guys isn't the best service either. I can't speak for Verisign.

Re:Flame if you will.

[Stripes007]

You are correct about Verisign as a registry. They use RRP for all registrar/registry communication, more efficient, less bloated than other EPP implementations (e.g. .biz, .info). PIR uses a totally new & different implementation of EPP, making all registrars who want to service .org domains patch or rewrite entire systems so it can fit this new implementation. .org has been nothing but pathetic since PIR took over.

Gotta love the current screwed up state of whois data for .org also: Whois output for slashdot.org

Is there a better way?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do we have to have a system that relies on single points of failure for each of the main TLDs? Each "maintainer" of the TLD is subject to problems - both mechanical (system failures, congestion, etc.) and human (stupidity, politics, luck).

I don't think the founding fathers of the Internet thought it of it being like this.

Re:Is there a better way?

[gh5046]

> I don't think the founding fathers of the Internet thought it of it being like this.

Well, according to Al Gore he invented the internet. He probably never thought that far ahead.

Re:Is there a better way?

[pizzaman100]

I don't think the founding fathers of the Internet thought it of it being like this.

You politically incorrect slob. Let's try again.

I don't think the the founding framers of the Internet thought it of it being like this.

Re:Is there a better way?

[McWilde]

and human (stupidity, politics, luck).

I like the way luck is a human factor. I don't believe in luck, it's just human perception.
Yeah, I know, off-topic.

Re:Is there a better way?

[Anonymous Coward]

Since they were all men, " founding fathers " is factually correct. Ergo, the PC cleansed phrasing is factually incorrect.

I'll take Boardwalk....

[sweeney37]

looks like monopolies aren't fun for just microsoft. now we all feel the brunt.

Mike

whats wrong?

[Anonymous Coward]

And not long ago I read the .org was switching to PostgreSQL from DB2 for keeping zone info.. might be a corrupt postgresql database ?

Re:whats wrong?

[Anonymous Coward]

Score 1 informative?

Bullshit.

the Postgresql database runs in the background, like all good whois / TLD databases, and gets "pumped" into a berkely style db database for serving on the internet. A corrupt Postgresql database (something I've not see in 4 years of VERY heavy postgresql use by the way) couldn't cause this problem. It could cause a problem for the data entry folks, and eventually, the records would be out of date, but not this.

Leave it to MySQL sycophant to mod up the parent to this as informative.

Re:whats wrong?

[axxackall]

I got it. If you would do whoising them for mysql.org domain then the system will choke :)

... just kidding. I think nothing wrong neither with PostgreSQL nor with .ORG registrar. What's wrong is what's with /. editors letting through such crazy "news".

Bigger problem than you think!

[japhar81]

> now I can't lookup slashdot.org anymore.

Which isn't that big a deal, till you realize that the alternative to /. is doing real work...

Oh the humanity!

Re:Bigger problem than you think!

[golan]

> Which isn't that big a deal, till you realize that the alternative to /. is doing real work...

Do you mean ./?

www.flat-earth.org

[crazyprogrammer]

the .org tld information has fallen off the planet.


I knew the earth was flat but nobody believed me.

Re:www.flat-earth.org

[madmancarman]

I knew the earth was flat but nobody believed me.

I went to this site, and I wondered - what in the world does Florence Henderson have to do with the earth being flat? The mystery is almost too much to bear.

More information on the Flat Earth Society is available here, at a .org address no less.

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Gandhi

Re:www.flat-earth.org

[crazyprogrammer]

the .org registry fell off the planet, so that's why flat-earth.org didn't take you to the Flat Earth Soceity's website. I didn't think I had to explain that part of the joke.

well if it does go down

[TheStruuus]

Well if this does halt DSN, we may have slashdotted, slashdot..

Here's mine

[flacco]

[root@weaselfarm] whois slashdot.org
[whois.crsnic.net]

Whois Server Version 1.3

Domain names in the .com and .net domains can now be registered
with many different competing registrars. Go to http://www.internic.net
for detailed information.

No match for "SLASHDOT.ORG".

>>> Last update of whois database: Mon, 19 May 2003 06:05:55 EDT <<<

Re:Here's mine

[drwtsn32]

You're probably just using an ancient whois that doesn't query the right server for ORG domains. Hell, the whois in Debian Woody is like that. Quite annoying.

Re:Here's mine

[geirt]

Use the right whois server:

whois -h whois.pir.org slashdot.org

[whois.pir.org]
NOTICE: Access to .ORG WHOIS information is provided to assist persons in
determining the contents of a domain name registration record in the PIR
registry database. The data in this record is provided by Public Interest Registry
for informational purposes only, and PIR does not guarantee its
accuracy. This service is intended only for query-based access. You agree
that you will use this data only for lawful purposes and that, under no
circumstances will you use this data to: (a) allow, enable, or otherwise
support the transmission by e-mail, telephone, or facsimile of mass
unsolicited, commercial advertising or solicitations to entities other than
the data recipient's own existing customers; or (b) enable high volume,
automated, electronic processes that send queries or data to the systems of
Registry Operator or any ICANN-Accredited Registrar, except as reasonably
necessary to register domain names or modify existing registrations. All
rights reserved. PIR reserves the right to modify these terms at any
time. By submitting this query, you agree to abide by this policy.

Domain ID:D2289308-LROR
Domain Name:SLASHDOT.ORG
Created On:05-Oct-1997 04:00:00 UTC
Last Updated On:15-Jan-2003 01:48:23 UTC
Expiration Date:04-Oct-2005 04:00:00 UTC
Sponsoring Registrar:R11-LROR
Status:OK
Registrant ID:11-C
Registrant Name:SEE SPONSORING REGISTRAR
Registrant Street1:Whois Server:whois.opensrs.net
Registrant Street2:Referral URL:www.opensrs.org
Registrant City:N/A
Registrant Postal Code:N/A
Registrant Country:CA
Registrant Email:not@available.org
Admin ID:11-C
Admin Name:SEE SPONSORING REGISTRAR
Admin Street1:Whois Server:whois.opensrs.net
Admin Street2:Referral URL:www.opensrs.org
Admin City:N/A
Admin Postal Code:N/A
Admin Country:CA
Admin Email:not@available.org
Billing ID:11-C
Billing Name:SEE SPONSORING REGISTRAR
Billing Street1:Whois Server:whois.opensrs.net
Billing Street2:Referral URL:www.opensrs.org
Billing City:N/A
Billing Postal Code:N/A
Billing Country:CA
Billing Email:not@available.org
Tech ID:11-C
Tech Name:SEE SPONSORING REGISTRAR
Tech Street1:Whois Server:whois.opensrs.net
Tech Street2:Referral URL:www.opensrs.org
Tech City:N/A
Tech Postal Code:N/A
Tech Country:CA
Tech Email:not@available.org
Name Server:NS1.VASOFTWARE.COM
Name Server:NS2.VASOFTWARE.COM
Name Server:NS3.VASOFTWARE.COM

Re:Here's mine

[AVee]

Hell, the whois in Debian Woody is like that. Quite annoying.

Annoying ideed, but easily fixed. Just create /etc/whois.conf and place the following line there:

.org whois.pir.org

That should do the job, at least is works for me...

Re:Here's mine

[Anonymous Coward]

So how the heck did you get here to post?

Re:Here's mine

[drwtsn32]

Kick ass! Thanks for such a simple solution. And shame on me for not Googling for the solution myself. :)

Re:Here's mine

[xanadu-xtroot.com]

Whois Server Version 1.3

And on my machine:

$ whois --version
Version 4.6.3.

Am I missing something here? Is your version HORIDLY out of date?

Re:Here's mine

[flink]

Yeah, you're looking at the version of your client. The post above is showing the version of the server.

Re:Here's mine

[xanadu-xtroot.com]

D'OH!

(sorry...)

The day .org died - or anyone want slashdot.org?

[sparkes]

bags I get to name to problem;-)

not quite as bad as the day the internet died as all it means in real terms is a few people will try to buy domain names that arn't available.

anyone want to buy slashdot.org?

http://www.domaincity.co.uk/cgi-bin/whois.pl?typ e= org&command=slashdot

it seems to be for sale, or maybe not

sparkes

Mine wont whois!

[PoesRaven]

whois slashdot.org
[whois.crsnic.net]

Whois Server Version 1.3

Domain names in the .com and .net domains can now be registered
with many different competing registrars. Go to http://www.internic.net
for detailed information.

No match for "SLASHDOT.ORG".

>>> Last update of whois database: Mon, 19 May 2003 06:05:55 EDT

Re:Mine wont whois!

[roka]

ok, let's read the output again, shall we? :)

$ whois -h whois.crsnic.net slashdot.org

[foobar]

No match for "SLASHDOT.ORG".

[bazqux]

The Registry database contains ONLY .COM, .NET, .EDU domains and Registrars.

hard code this into your hosts file

[anticypher]

66.35.250.150 slashdot.org
198.186.202.135 NS1.VASOFTWARE.COM
198.186.202.136 NS2.VASOFTWARE.COM
66.35.250.12 NS3.VASOFTWARE.COM

Then your life can continue as normal, despite verisign's fuckup.

the AC

Re:hard code this into your hosts file

[samhalliday]

if you want to use NS1.VASOFTWARE.COM as a nameserver, should you not enter this as

nameserver 198.186.202.135

in /etc/resolv.conf?? and it wasnt verisign's fuckup anyway.. if you read the article you would have seen it was PIR's fault. in fact; they didnt even notice the servers had fallen... verisign gave up the control on new years day.

Re:hard code this into your hosts file

[segfault7375]

Then your life can continue as normal, despite verisign's fuckup.

Verisign doesn't control .org anymore. It was handed over to Public Interest Registry on Jan 1, 2003, as stated in the article.

Re:hard code this into your hosts file

[Lazaru5]

If you were going to use it as your nameserver then yes, you would. But that's not what the parent was saying.

As it happens, you shouldn't be doing this at all. It's unecessary traffic. Your DNS server should always be close. In fact some authoritative name servers don't even do recursive lookups to prevent the sort of (ab)use that you suggested.

But it's moot really. This doesn't affect DNS.

People: If this is an issue at all (I see nothing wrong anywhere [maybe PIR got them back up?] and I don't exactly trust The Register's clue level anyway) then the only issue is WHOIS related. There's no problem with any root servers, thus this isn't a DNS problem.

Oracle

[flacco]

I think I can hear the strangled, ecstatic shriek of Larry Ellison cumming in his pants all the way over here on the east coast.

.org Theft

[bhtooefr]

If this happens again, what could happen? Could Joe Blow steal slashdot.org for his own use? If it happens to .cx, could slashdot steal goatse.cx (I want that to happen)?

Re:.org Theft

[Anonymous Coward]

gostse.cx IS owned by OSDN.... didn't you notice the sourceforge banner ads?

Re:.org Theft

[Anonymous Coward]

You need to take a healthy dose of 'Shut the hell up' you pear-shaped, no-life loser nerd

you should take a break from your boring geeky life and try to get some contact with some females, although that looks like a pretty hard task for you.

Re:.org Theft

[bhtooefr]

Could there be a reason that I never go to goatse.cx? That must be it...

My .org just fell off the planet!

[rcs1000]

Hello all,

Please don't slashdot my little Linux box, but amoral.org (my website, not I promise, a pornsite) just fell off the planet. A WhoIs still shows it as mine, but when I go to it, it shows up with a screen from new.net. (The Quick! "Search service" comes up, and I suddenly seem to have gotten TopText installed, hmmmm.) Also, the IP it points to has now (miraculously) changed to 217.155.19.97. Hmmmm.

How do I get my domian back?

Thanks,

Robert

Re:My .org just fell off the planet!

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi,

Just took a look and its seems to come up fine here. All whois records seem ok (whois -h whois.register.com). www.amoral.org resolves to the IP you stated but it seems like thats the IP for www.amoral.org so i'm not sure exactly what your problem is. I can bring up your site without a problem. (btw what your Tivo password?)

Oh yeah, and i'd take a look at anonymising your whois records. People are starting to scrape whois registers for both spam and real world direct marketing purposes. I certainly would'nt be putting my full name and real world address anywhere on the net these days. But thats just my opinion.

Ciao.

Re:My .org just fell off the planet!

[rcs1000]

Glad you can see me, at least. I'm still having problems, but I suspect they'll work themselves out.

Oh - I'm not going to tell you my TiVo password, I'm afraid. I don't want you to see how sad and derivative my choie in TV programmes is.

Re:My .org just fell off the planet!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not going to tell you my TiVo password, I'm afraid...

Twas a joke, but given all the personal info on your page, I could have a crack at figuring it out. Seriously, i'd passord protect my trading diary, clear up my whois data and generally try to make it a little more anonymous if I was you. I just managed to get the last page that lists my name while Googling changed so that now I am about as anonymous as you can be on the net (if I can be assed with the proxy chain that is)

Privacy laws globally are a joke and guaranteed you'll see them worsen. The current trend is for what appears to be improvements, but in reality its just a facia; tell the people what they want to hear and keep on doing what you do. The unfortunate problem is that the people who have any say in it (ie politicians and business) want to see e-commerce thriving and putting restraints on businesses, like respecting privacy, just isn't in the plan. Data collection and matching is not slowing in any way shape or form.

Thats all I have to say.

(oh btw, can't seem to access it anymore, but i'm guessing you've taken it down temporarily to avoid a potential /.ing?)

Re:My .org just fell off the planet!

[Phroggy]

If that's not the right IP, talk to Register.com.

Re:My .org just fell off the planet!

[Anonymous Coward]

(oh btw, can't seem to access it anymore, but i'm guessing you've taken it down temporarily to avoid a potential /.ing?)

Never mind, seems to be responding again.

Re:My .org just fell off the planet!

[mOdQuArK!]

The unfortunate problem is that the people who have any say in it (ie politicians and business) want to see e-commerce thriving and putting restraints on businesses, like respecting privacy, just isn't in the plan.

Well, not completely - they (politicians & businesses) don't like it when you collect & organize information about THEM (history, legal records, voting records, financial records, advertising records, etc), although they're quite happy to be able to collect such information about you.

Re:The day .org died - or anyone want slashdot.org

[an_mo]

yes, I get the same for my org domain but it has to do with the way *.org domains are handled. I hope somebody can explain this as I'm not sure exactly why this happens.

Chicken Little

[jmb-d]

And of course, now it seems to be working just fine.

The sky is falling! The sky is falling!

Oh, wait...

Re:Chicken Little

[SEWilco]

The sky is falling! The sky is falling!

Wait a little longer and the sky will fall.

Show Me The Money!

[SEWilco]

Nope, you didn't claim it. It's not registered, so I got Slashdot.Org!

Seriously... Are registry services going to see fallout due to having to reverse and refund erroneous .org registrations that their servers processed during the outage? This might also depend upon whether their scripts depend upon the PIR servers, and whether the scripts distinguish between "error" and "domain not registered" conditions.

Re:Show Me The Money!

[sporty]

Seriously... Are registry services going to see fallout due to having to reverse and refund erroneous .org registrations that their servers processed during the outage? This might also depend upon whether their scripts depend upon the PIR servers, and whether the scripts distinguish between "error" and "domain not registered" conditions.

THe backend protocol and the servers for PIR, totally seperate from whois, needs to be online to do registrations, dns changes etc.

It's up to the registrar to tell its customers. "ok, we'll process this asap" or "sorry, come back later."

No Surprise

[kellan1]

Anyone who followed the .Org bidding process knew this day was coming. ICANN's summary dismissal of the IMS/ISC bid as being too technical ("Internet is hard", says ICANN) in favor of 2-bit registrars who "white washed" their record by getting a major NGO to sit on the board made it inevitable.

Re:No Surprise

[Burb]

To say nothing of the way that the joint Poptel/Ausregistry bid was handled.... as someone who was working for Poptel at the time I was just a little bit hacked off by the process.

Nothing broken. Upgrade your "whois" client.

[Anonymous Coward]

Or do:

whois -h org.whois-servers.net slashdot.org

Should work.

Re:Nothing broken. Upgrade your "whois" client.

[LiquidCoooled]

Surely people shouldnt have to specify a domain to use to locate info?
this is like having to go into each site and do a local search.
Yes I know you CAN do a specific branch search, but the main story is correct that there is SOME kind of problem with the org registry. If people are using default parameters and not getting the results they could obtain a week ago? THis comment isnt directed solely at the parent, and i appologise if it seems that way - this is just the 3rd or 4th person I've seen suggest the same solution.

PostgreSQL

[Anonymous Coward]

It's premature to speculate on the cause of the outage, but since PostgreSQL was taking responsibility for the system running smoothly, they should also share the blame in the system failing. Is PostgreSQL only fair weather friend that will disappear at the first hint of trouble? If they had gone with MySQL we wouldn't be having this problem!

Re:PostgreSQL

[Anonymous Coward]

Ummm. There was no problem AT ALL, and postgresq can kick the crap out of MySQL in any real life heavy lifting situation. I hate this kinda back stabbing crap outta the MySQL supporters.

Postgresql can continue to operate under loads that kill MySQL dead, I've watched it happen. So stop being such a whiny little bitch because you got beat in a real world contest so handily by such a superior database.

Pussy.

Re:PostgreSQL

[brlewis]

Yeah, that code in MySQL that makes sure users use updated whois clients is really cool. PostgreSQL might get a similar feature soon, but by then MySQL will have an even better feature that prevents The Register from publishing bogus articles about servers being down when they're up. MySQL rocks! Go MySQL!

It's premature to speculate on the cause of the outage

On a more serious note, it's premature to even say there was an outage.

Isn't That Amusing

[Jerk City Troll]

Here's journalistic integrity for you: a story that reports you cannot reach .org sites posted on and read from a .org site. That's like posting: "you are unable to read this message." Way to go guys.

Re:Isn't That Amusing

[bilbobuggins]

speaking of journalistic integrity, did you see the article title?
reading it, i couldn't help but imagine the discovery of this news at /. went something like this:

h: 'oh man, .org is down'
t: 'no way'
h: 'way'
t: 'no way'
h: 'way'
t: 'duuuuude. like, slashdot is totally a .org site. bogus!'
h: 'like for real brah. and i was completely about to make some righteous nachos before this happened!'
t: 'oh wait it's back! tubular!'
h: 'schweet. check me out while i post this totally rad story on our site!'

It's too late!!

[borgdows]

All our bases belong to them!!

Check by yourself :

$ whois slashdot.org

Found referral to whois.opensrs.net.

Registrant:
Microsoft Corporation
One Microsoft Way
Redmond, WA 98052
US

Domain name: SLASHDOT.ORG

(...)

Information Still Somewhere ???

[jojoeskimo]

http://www.pir.org/whois/ I ran a few whois queries straight off of pir's site, so the information is still floating around somewhere.....

Boston data line cut

[vasqzr]

Related?

Already done

[Anonymous Coward]

could slashdot steal goatse.cx

Mr. "hello.jpg" is Malda, so in a sense, slashdot already owns goatse.cx

Easy explanation

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot moderators don't like original humor.

He should've made a 'joke' about slashdotting or bluescreens. That's a sure +5.

Re:Easy explanation

[mlush]

Slashdot moderators don't like original humor.
He should've made a 'joke' about slashdotting or bluescreens. That's a sure +5.

You forgot Simpsons Quotes

Re:Easy explanation

[Anonymous Coward]

D'OH!

Interesting way....

[JaJ_D]

...of trying to knock out the "First Posts" trolls.

Brutal but effective!

Re:Verisign?

[JeffSh]

i didn't need to read the article since i know that the .org TLD is not run by verisign anymore, and the news poster said "i told you so, verisign" when verisign has nothing to do with the .org tld anymore.

think before you flame

Well....

[phillk6751]

I guess Im gunna have to buy my linux upgrades from Best Buy now instead of downloading them.

Results depend on the whois server used

[SimonPerry]

I was the source for the story on The Register. You'll see in the detail that it depends on which whois server you use. Crsnic is the one that's misreporting and it's supposed to be provide united results. Looks like PIR isn't talking to Crsnic properly.

Re:Results depend on the whois server used

[Zocalo]

Looks like PIR isn't talking to Crsnic properly.

As you state in your linked page, CRSNIC is run by Verisign. The same Verisign that handed .org prior to PIR and agreed to a three month handoff period from the start of the year. That would make the cut off March 31st or April 1st depending on your sense of humour. Which, it should come as no suprise, was the date that CRSNIC also stopped providing WHOIS info for .org domains.

I also notice that the Register story has been removed from the frontpage, although the direct link is still available. I think we can safely file this under "Death of .org predicted. Film at eleven."

Re:Results depend on the whois server used

[Christopher B. Brown]

Looks like PIR isn't talking to Crsnic properly.

Apparently you can't imagine it being the other way around?

Have they really lost it????

[jojoeskimo]

Try this:
whois -h whois.publicinterestregistry.net yourhost.org
The information still seems to be there, or is it only still there because it has not propagated a new, empty list????

Hoorray!!!

[borgdows]

Slashdot.org is not accessible any more!
The productivity of my IT company will rise rise riiiise!!

Re:Verisign?

[Neophytus]

I don't think Verisign runs the .org TLD anymore, does it? ....

Why was this modded down? Its true. Perhaps the oppertunity to flame verisign was too tempting.

Irony:

[Illserve]

A news site posting a story that it's gone down.

Re:Verisign?

[jojoeskimo]

Verisign has a history of being difficult to deal with, naturally people like to flame them when they can. This is all just probably some sort of communications problem somewhere. Someplace someone used a 1 where it should have been a 0 or something. It'll be ironed out before the afternoon is over.

It's been this way for weeks

[cloudscout]

This problem has been around for months... In order to look up WHOIS information on .ORG domains, you have to point your WHOIS client at whois.pir.org. For some reason, whois.internic.net isn't redirecting the appropriate information. I first noticed the problem back in early March.

Re:It's been this way for weeks

[jhunsake]

This isn't the problem described, nor is it a problem at all. And this is how it will remain, until someone other than PIR takes over .org.

Re:It's been this way for weeks

[Anonymous Coward]

It's simply amazing how blatently incorrect and irrelevent information gets modded up here. I'm going to start purposely writing factually incorrect comments that sound good, just to get karma from now on.

Never down?

[Dasigner]

I don't think the .org registry ever went down. The only Informative message here (IMHO) was from jrwilk01: "Responsible servers changed, all is well. Nothing to see here. Move along." It was marked Redundant and scored 0, just because the moderators only saw the whois record!

Those of you with obsolete whois clients can do something like this:

$ whois slashdot.org@whois.publicinterestregistry.org
...
Billing Street1:Whois Server:whois.opensrs.net
...
$ whois slashdot.org@whois.opensrs.net

Or just go to whois.bw.org.

Re:Never down?

[Dasigner]

Just use whois.pir.org instead of whois.publicinterestregistry.org, as per cloudscout's note. Thanks, didn't know about that.

Re:Never down?

[AVee]

I am afraid you're right on spot. The only ones reporting about it seem to be slashdot and the register. Check Google news. It seems a completely bogus story to me.

It's the evil Debian people !

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

I wanted to check it out, but to be extra sure, I went to org.org.org.org (better four .orgs than one to be extra sure) : what do I find ? A DEBIAN BOX ! That computer has been taken over by Debian ! It's Stallman's evil plot to take over .org !!

Re:whois still working (as well as DNS)

[Anonymous Coward]

And how is that relevant either way? Whois is completely independent of DNS service. If you have access to a 'unix' system, you may have the 'dig' command. Dig actually does DNS lookups directly. When I first saw this article, I did some digs and as far as I can see .ORG is working just fine...

Annymous Cowards

[schnits0r]

I did a who is and I got this:

Domain ID:D2289308-LROR
Domain Name:SLASHDOT.ORG
Created On:05-Oct-1997 04:00:00 UTC
Last Updated On:15-Jan-2003 01:48:23 UTC
Expiration Date:04-Oct-2005 04:00:00 UTC
Sponsoring Registrar:R11-LROR
Status:OK
Registrant ID:11-C
Registrant Name:SEE SPONSORING REGISTRAR
Registrant Street1:Whois Server:whois.opensrs.net
Registrant Street2:Referral URL:www.opensrs.org
Registrant City:N/A
Registrant Postal Code:N/A
Registrant Country:CA
Registrant Email:not@available.org

It looks like someone is a annymous coward.

I'm skeptical of the news.

[transiit]

Because whois queries for .org's dropped off months ago for me.

transiit@machine$: whois slashdot.org
.
.
. (big versign legal statement)
The Registry database contains ONLY .COM, .NET, .EDU domains and Registrars.

oops. No .ORG there. I can't help but think the Reg happened to try a whois and not getting an answer freaked out. Note the total lack of explanatory detail.

I wouldn't go villifying anyone just yet.

-transiit

Re:I'm skeptical of the news.

[Anonymous Coward]

How about vilifying the Register for yet another inaccurate report? Can we do that? ;)

Ooops...

[MattRog]

Maybe they should've picked a DBMS with replication (no, not MySQL).

Re:Ooops...

[Sxooter]

You mean like THESE replicators???

Astroturfer.

PostgresSQL Replicator - http://pgreplicator.sourceforge.net/
An asynchronous replica engine that provides some data ownership models and many conflict resolution algorithms. [open source, GNU License]
Rserv - http://techdocs.postgresql.org/installguides.php#r serv
Installation guide for triggers to provide Master/Slave replication.
Usogres - http://usogres.good-day.net/
Real time backup utility.
eRServer - http://www.erserver.com/
Enterprise replication server. Currently in Beta.
DBBalancer - http://sourceforge.net/projects/dbbalancer/
Load balancing multithreaded PostgreSQL connection pool that has a replication mode to keep load balanced backend servers in sync. Currently in Alpha.

Depends on when the whois server updated

[snakelass]

I searched several whois services for my own .org domain. The servers which gave an update date of 5/15 had the right data. A couple which gave the most recent update of 5/19 said it was for sale. Several sites didn't give a last update time, and the results varied.

Re:Depends on when the whois server updated

[Anonymous Coward]

Watch out SNAKES ass or is it SsNORKEL ASS?

First Peter, now Jason

[rjamestaylor]

Looks like Jason Blair got picked up by The Register for this story. First Peter Arnett gets picked up by a UK Tabloid, now this. Those wacky Britts!

I just found an URL that Ballmer would like

[GQuon]

Microsoft hates "ORGs", so I dug out an URL for slashdot.org without the .org part:
http://developers.developers.developers.developers .slashdot.com (Don't include the space, press the link instead.)

BOGUS REPORT

[Medievalist]

My .org domain ran fine all weekend. I do not believe there is any issue of real importance behind all this fooferaw.

You can't "whois" a .org domain without specifying a valid .org whois server. THE SKY IS FALLING! Guess what, you can't whois a .mil domain without specifying a valid .mil whois server. Nothing to report here, system works as advertised.

The important function of a registrar is to feed names into the root nameservers. I don't see any indication of any flaws in that process. All the .org names seem to resolve fine, and I got a total of ZERO problem reports over the weekend from our 24x7 .org site. Did anyone else have a real DNS problem, or is this all a case of the Register placing too much value on the compiled-in defaults for the whois client?

Anyone?

Re:BOGUS REPORT

[zdislaw]

DNS is fine. The servers holding the registry of name ownership are what the article claimings fell over. The article doesn't mention anything about DNS problems or people being unable to browse to .org sites. I'm certainly not saying the report is true, but if what they say happened did indeed happen, DNS would not necessarily be affected.

Re:BOGUS REPORT

[Medievalist]

Right, what we have is an unsupported report that a trivial database, loosely linked to the registry, was down for some period.

See the PIR FAQ, "What is a domain name registry".

If a registry (meaning: the actual database, used by the registrar to generate name/number correspondences that are loaded into the root DNS) is down there is a problem... if users don't find whois information where they expect it, that is not necessarily a problem and certainly does not warrant major concern.

You understand, clearly, but the majority of people posting to this /. story have fallen completely off the cluetrain.

Re:BOGUS REPORT

[tcopeland]

I had a problem last weekend with CougaarForge - for some reason the parent domain got redirected to a placeholder page. After a bunch of phone calls they switched it back, but it was most definitely hosed up for most of the weekend...

Yours,

Tom

Still Down kids

[broohd]

If you run a whois at internic, or even at pir.org itself you get "See Sponsoring Registrar" for the contact info on a domain. If you go to the linked "sponsoring registrar" you will get the info. Isn't this kind of dumb?

c

Retraction is in order

[Sxooter]

No matter how long it was on the front page, this article sullied the reputation of the .org folks, and they deserve an apology and a retraction.

Unless, of course, the Reg doesn't take responsibility for what it publishes. Like a lot of so called "news" sites out there. Heck, even slashdot posts retractions once in a blue moon or two.

Re:Verisign?

[zdislaw]

The poster said it was an "I told you so" for Verisign. Meaning that Verisign can now say "I told you so" to the folks they gave up .org regs to. The article covers this.

Pushing the legal envelope?

[bbc22405]

"By submitting this query, you agree to abide by this policy."

Re:Pushing the legal envelope?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not going to hold in in court.

hwaaaaah?

[Thud457]

Interestingly enough, although http://www.microsoft.org doesn't resolve to anything, http://microsoft.slashdot.org/ does.

Re:hwaaaaah?

[Anonymous Coward]

so does
http://aswipe.slashdot.org

http://vaginal.yeast.infection.slashdot.org

http://slashdot.sux.my.balls.slashdot.org

its called "enable wildcards"

but but but

[Anonymous Coward]

I've submitted this several times before. Typical!

WARNING : GOATSE linkse!

[Anonymous Coward]

n/tse

mmmmmmm, BBQ!

[Thud457]

As any Texan will tell you, BBQ != barbecue. They're two totally different things!

Re:mmmmmmm, BBQ!

[sk8king]

I'm not Texan...please explain the difference between Barbecue and BBQ. I realize BBQ is really just wrong, but I always thought it was the accepted short form for barbecue.

Re:mmmmmmm, BBQ!

[Thud457]

Crap if I know, I'm not a Texan. Just some jingoism spouted off by Joe Bob Briggs.

My best guess is that barbacue is slow cooked and smoked, while BBQ is all about the sauce.

New article the Reg should post.

[Sxooter]

Apparently, we're all dumb as lamp posts and can't bother to read the part of the whois query on our boxes that says this whois server only handles .net and .com

We're going to go back to school, we should be ready to post articles worth reading in a few short years, til then, there's always the BBC, eh?

Re:New article the Reg should post.

[Loosewire]

the story was from IT analysis not the register - the register was just publishing IT analysis content as they do content swaps occasionaly.

Re:New article the Reg should post.

[Sxooter]

Then, of course, the article I suggested should be published by IT Analysis, and then blindly published by TheReg. Seems fitting. :-)

bad rumor but why was slashdot down yesterday morn

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot was down yesturday at aprox 12-1am midnight where I am (central?)yesterday. I have slashdot as my home page and thought it was my net connection for a few min. I tried to figure out what was going on again after half an hour. Google only found some news group site saying freshmeat was down also(I apologise I did not check the date of the post).
I will tell you what it is tho. In Englang thats during the day so they would notice a disruption when most of us didn't. So it just old news? Lets hear the story and not 'the rumor of my death is exagerated' bull shit

disappearing stories about disappearing tlds

[FlukeMeister]

It would appear that, although the original story is still available at the full URL, the Register has taken down all links to it from other areas of the site.

This would be the same site whose journalists often raise an almighty fuss when other publications do exactly the same thing.

I guess they're not double standards when they're your double standards.

Mod..

[Natchswing]

Now, how can we mod down the original article and get it off the main page? :)

A more pertinant question

[Anonymous Coward]

What happens when one of these registeries, wich in holds about 90% of a particular fields of interests *.x web presenece does crash?

hmmm

[ApheX]

Is this why when I tried to move one of my .org domains from Dotster to Godaddy that it didnt go through? I moved a .net domain and the .org at the same time. The .net went through this morning.. :(

In Online Gaming News

[OgGreeb]

Epic Games and Sony Corp have released a new Unreal Tournament 2003 MMORPG version of Capture-The-Flag called DOMAIN WARS... Beta tests were completed over the weekend.

I think it really may have been 'broken'

[@madeus]

Actually I belive their was a real 'issue' (I hesitate to use the word 'problem') this afernoon (at least at around 12:47 BST), and it was fixed at that time.

It seems there is disagreement and confusion around what the problem was, but there was one, and something was done to aleviate it not much more than a minute after this article was posted. I think a lot of people where confused as to what was, but I think I might be able to shed a rather dim light on it. Unhelpfully, I can't tell you what the issue was but I can give you the symptoms..

I tried the following series of lookups from FreeBSD (using the default FreeBSD whois) all in the space of a minute:

whois slashdot.org - Returned Broken Entry
whois slashdot.com - Worked
whois slashdot.org - Returned Broken Entry
whois slashdot.com - Worked
whois slashdot.org - Worked

All further lookups for *.org using the default whois server on FreeBSD's whois return fine. I didn't retype these commands (used the UP arrow to cyle through the previous command in my history) so it's not as if I made a spelling mistake.

The 'Broken Entries' had the domain but did not return any contact information, and instead stopped short and returned what looked like an error code at the end.

As I've said this appeared to be fixed just after this article was posted (almost immediately so), so it's evident to me that the status of something was changed (and someone is not owning up to it).

Sadly, you'll have to take my word on this, my scroll buffer in gnome-terminal was too short (due to it eating up memory and processor speed for reasons I'm too lazy to investigate) and the buffer is gone for ever (thanks the the overly long disclamiers present on whois lookups).

My 2c.

Re:I think it really may have been 'broken'

[Christopher B. Brown]

Interesting.

That seems a separate problem that would point to Tucows as the "nexus" of the problem.

If you're running a recent whois, it should hit whois.publicinterestregistry.net looking for slashdot.org. That whois server will "fess up" to part of the info, but fundamentally forward you to whois.opensrs.net , which is where the authoritative whois info resides.

The question is, what was the "broken" entry? If it said "NONAUTHORITATIVE," which I'd expect, then that indicates that you got valid (albeit intentionally incomplete) data out of the PIR whois, but then couldn't go to OpenSRS to get the real data.

That either leads to:

• There being a problem at Tucows (who run OpenSRS), where they weren't responding to your requests, or
• There being a connectivity problem somewhere between your location and whois.opensrs.net .

  The latter strikes me as being more likely; apparently there was a bad outage around Boston due to a cable being cut, and that might have temporarily broken all sorts of routing.

Note that none of these scenarios actually point to there being a problem at PIR. From what I have seen, so far, I haven't seen any evidence suggestive of there being problems there. (Aside from wild stories in The Registry, of course!)

Re:I think it really may have been 'broken'

[@madeus]

Interesting.

FWIW the 'broken' entry wasn't NONAUTHORITATIVE, it was something (and I use the term loosely) like:

>whois slashdot.org

usual discalimer was here...

Domain: slashdot.org
???: ????
???: CX=0
???: ????

I can't remember what the CX=0 error was exactly, or what the '???'s were (hindsight being 20/20 I wish I had been paying more attention). I was a distinctly odd error though, and it did happen identically, twice, between valid returns of a .com.

I totally agree that it doesn't seem to have ever been a problem at PIR.

A transiant problem, such as a network outage might be a good explanation and something I did speculate to myself (if the origional whois server (or even client) wasn't able to get/return valid data, and it wasn't trapping errors correctly, the output might be munged).

I see The Register have now said there definately was a problem with .net domains - has anyone else substantiated that..?

Howsa Bout Dis Link?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.geektools.com/cgi-bin/proxy.cgi

Checking server [whois.publicinterestregistry.net]
Checking server [whois.opensrs.net]
Results:
Registrant:
VA Software Corporation (OSDN)
47071 Bayside Parkway
Fremont, CA 94538
US

Domain name: SLASHDOT.ORG

Administrative Contact:
Administration, DNS dns-admin@osdn.com
47071 Bayside Parkway
Fremont, CA 94538
US
(510)687-7000 Fax: (510)226-8833

Technical Contact:
Technical, DNS dns-tech@osdn.com
47071 Bayside Parkway
Fremont, CA 94538
US
(510)687-7000 Fax: (510)226-8833

Registration Service Provider:
VA Software Corporation, dns-tech@vasoftware.com
(510)687-7000
This company may be contacted for domain login/passwords,
DNS/Nameserver changes, and general domain support questions.

Registrar of Record: TUCOWS, INC.
Record last updated on 15-Feb-2003.
Record expires on 04-Oct-2005.
Record Created on 05-Oct-1997.

Domain servers in listed order:
NS1.VASOFTWARE.COM
NS2.VASOFTWARE.COM
NS 3.VASOFTWARE.COM

The Data in the Tucows Registrar WHOIS database is provided to you by Tucows
for information purposes only, and may be used to assist you in obtaining
information about or related to a domain name's registration record.

Tucows makes this information available "as is," and does not guarantee its
accuracy.

By submitting a WHOIS query, you agree that you will use this data only for
lawful purposes and that, under no circumstances will you use this data to:
a) allow, enable, or otherwise support the transmission by e-mail,
telephone, or facsimile of mass, unsolicited, commercial advertising or
solicitations to entities other than the data recipient's own existing
customers; or (b) enable high volume, automated, electronic processes that
send queries or data to the systems of any Registry Operator or
ICANN-Accredited registrar, except as reasonably necessary to register
domain names or modify existing registrations.

The compilation, repackaging, dissemination or other use of this Data is
expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Tucows.

Tucows reserves the right to terminate your access to the Tucows WHOIS
database in its sole discretion, including without limitation, for excessive
querying of the WHOIS database or for failure to otherwise abide by this
policy.

Tucows reserves the right to modify these terms at any time.

By submitting this query, you agree to abide by these terms.

NOTE: THE WHOIS DATABASE IS A CONTACT DATABASE ONLY. LACK OF A DOMAIN
RECORD DOES NOT SIGNIFY DOMAIN AVAILABILITY.

Sure you can.

[Anonymous Coward]

Guess what, you can't whois a .mil domain without specifying a valid .mil whois server

Sure you can. Just use SunOS 4.1.x. Its whois defaulted to the .mil whois server, IIRC. You had to specify the whois server (-h) for other gTLDs.

Re:Sure you can.

[Anonymous Coward]

A valid .mil whois server was specified at compile time when your SunOS executable was built (unless Sun is so lame they hardcoded the defaults).

Duh.

Whoa that's near here

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe I should take a trip there on BART. Haha.

whois microsoft.com

[Anonymous Coward]

It didn't make it past the lameness filter. I'm serious.

Bad solution

[kju]

As you should have noticed, the output from whois.pir.org isn't really helpful, because currently it is just a hacked reference to other whois-servers. So you won't see real useful data.

Try gwhois (apt-get install gwhois). Not only will gwhois query whois.pir.org as well after that the appropiate (referenced) whois server and give you real usable results, gwhois also strives to know about most other TLDs, and will query automatically the right whois-servers and can even query web forms for those broken TLDs, who do not provide a usable whois-server. Also it knows most IP blocks and the appropiate whois-server.

Unbalanced reporting.

[Sxooter]

When they thought the problem was .org, before checkig any actual facts, they said this about them:

"Which it is all very sloppy and doesn't exactly encourage confidence in the company that now runs the .org domain - Public Interest Registry."

when they published their "correction" http://theregister.co.uk/content/6/30764.html they said this about verisign / NSI:

"VeriSign's crsnic Whois servers are having trouble. There was some problem with .net addresses at the weekend. It has therefore concentrated on getting them up and running first rather than .org since it runs .net domains and not .org domains."

First of all they didn't mention how "sloppy" this was of verisign, and how this incident should "shake our faith" in their ability to administer domain names.

Second off, they're still wrong. Verisign doesn't RUN the whois servers for .org, .org does.

I do believe there are at least as many errors in the correction as in the original article, which is to say, a lot.

Apologies owed.

[Sxooter]

TheReg owes you and PIR a personal apology for saying you guys were "sloppy." The fact that the article went ahead full speed isn't so bothersome, it was the aspersions cast by TheReg, then not recalled that seems to be truly unprofessional here. Their correction is still incorrect, just less insultingly so.

slashdot.org?

[drl0gic]

I always access slashdot using telnet 0x4223FA97 80...

Problems resolving cougaar.org

[Anonymous Coward]

Your problems are most likely not from the .org registry, but rather with the b0rked nameservers you have authorized to resolve for your domain.

Cougaar.org is supposedly served by NS14.WorldNIC.Net at 216.168.225.144, but!

DPS6> nslookup -type=ANY -sil cougaar.org 216.168.225.144
Server: 216.168.225.144
Address: 216.168.225.144#53

Non-authoritative answer:
*** Can't find cougaar.org: No answer

WorldNIC sez they don't know y'all. Doing a more generic lookup from the trusty DPS6:

DPS6> nslookup -type=ANY -sil cougaar.org
Server: 127.0.0.1
Address: 127.0.0.1#53

Non-authoritative answer:
cougaar.org nameserver = alp-61.alp.isotic.org.
cougaar.org nameserver = alp-5.alp.isotic.org.

Authoritative answers can be found from:
cougaar.org nameserver = alp-61.alp.isotic.org.
cougaar.org nameserver = alp-5.alp.isotic.org.

Hmm, OK, we have something - but no MX records so you won't be getting any Email... checking further we see

DPS6> nslookup -type=ANY -sil cougaar.org alp-61.alp.isotic.org.
nslookup: Couldn't find server 'alp-61.alp.isotic.org.': Name or service not known

and then

nslookup -type=ANY -sil cougaar.org alp-5.alp.isotic.org. ;; connection timed out; no servers could be reached

So, in essence, it looks like whoever is supposed to be running DNS for cougaar.org is asleep at the switch.
You need to get this handled before spammers start use your name and address space for zombie purposes.
Find someone who is actually competent and move on, this is extremelyunlikely to be PIR or Verisign's fault.

Hope this helped!

Re:Problems resolving cougaar.org

[tcopeland]

Hey, that's an awesome post, dude! Thanks much!

Nonetheless... fortunately, the alp-5.ul.isotic.org DNS server seems to have things under control:

> nslookup -type=ANY cougaar.org 4.22.165.5
Server: alp-5.ul.isotic.org
Address: 4.22.165.5

cougaar.org
origin = alp-5.ul.isotic.org
mail addr = alpine-sysadmin.bbn.com
serial = 2002020441
refresh = 14400 (4H)
retry = 3600 (1H)
expire = 604800 (1W)
minimum ttl = 86400 (1D)
cougaar.org nameserver = alp-5.alp.isotic.org
cougaar.org nameserver = alp-61.alp.isotic.org
cougaar.org preference = 10, mail exchanger = www.cougaar.org
cougaar.org internet address = 4.22.165.3
alp-5.alp.isotic.org internet address = 4.22.165.5
alp-61.alp.isotic.org internet address = 4.22.165.3
>

MX records and all, yay!

For a while - about a month ago - our DNS records were out of our control since our ISP had set themselves up as the master and our DNS server as the slave - doh! At least that's been fixed now.

Thanks,

Tom

Re:Problems resolving cougaar.org

[Medievalist]

Hey, that's an awesome post, dude! Thanks much!

No prob. Glad to hear you're back online.

Lucky it's up at all

[Anonymous Coward]

Just feel lucky that the .org registry is running. I know people who work at PIR or rather Afilias who handles the registry for .org. Plus I believe even after Afilias there is yet another level of bureacracy and poor management which handles the actual registry under another company name hidden from all of us. It is run by an extremely untrained and weak staff with little or no experience. It will fail eventually and when the RRP/EPP transition happens be prepared for the worst. They are in it purely for the money and nothing else. PIR is a quality organization with good people doing there best to give a good alternative to a VERISIGN monopoly but one bad choice they made was letting Afilias handle the backend for them. Notice the slow resolve times and missing whois information. Yes yes we all know it will be fixed eventually but perhaps instead of pushing the transition so fast they could have prepared and thought things through more before they took over from VERISIGN. Don't hold your breath for a stable .org registry and make sure you call your registrar with any problems so they can be addressed by PIR. If you do not mention it ...it will never be fixed ...again this is all about money for some people and the free society of .org does not equate in that.

Re:Here's mine - whois-servers.net

[dk379]

there is also a `meta-registry' of whois servers - whois-servers.net. For each top-level domain tld, tld.whois-servers.net is a CNAME reference to appropriate whois server.

I think that a version of whois which ships with FreeBSD uses that service by default.

In this particular case,

org.whois-servers.net is a nickname for whois.publicinterestregistry.net

whois text (relevant stuff)

[Anonymous Coward]

First Text:

Whois Server Version 1.3 Domain names in the .com and .net domains can now be registered with many different competing registrars. Go to http://www.internic.net for detailed information. Aborting search 20 records found ..... Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.OHMYGODITBURNS.COM IP Address: 216.158.63.6 Registrar: DOTSTER, INC. Whois Server: whois.dotster.com Referral URL: http://www.dotster.com/help/whois Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.LOVES.JU1C3.COM IP Address: 65.214.160.14 Registrar: GANDI Whois Server: whois.gandi.net Referral URL: http://www.gandi.net Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.LIVES.AT.SHAUNEWING.COM IP Address: 216.40.250.172 Registrar: DOTSTER, INC. Whois Server: whois.dotster.com Referral URL: http://www.dotster.com/help/whois Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.IS.SOON.GOING.TO.THE.DEATHCORPORATIO N.COM IP Address: 62.92.244.245 Registrar: GKG.NET, INC. Whois Server: whois.gkg.net Referral URL: http://www.gkg.net Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.IS.NOT.SEXYCOOL.ORG Registrar: VERISIGN GRS (ORG) Whois Server: whois.verisign-grs.com Referral URL: http://www.verisign-grs.com Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.IS.NOT.AS.COOL.AS.SIMPLECODES.COM IP Address: 24.185.198.244 Registrar: DOMAINDISCOVER Whois Server: whois.domaindiscover.com Referral URL: http://www.domaindiscover.com Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.IS.GOD.BECOUSE.UNIXSUCKS.COM IP Address: 161.16.56.24 Registrar: ENOM, INC. Whois Server: whois.enom.com Referral URL: http://www.enom.com Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.IS.A.STEAMING.HEAP.OF.FUCKING-BULLSH IT.NET IP Address: 63.99.165.11 Registrar: THE NAME IT CORPORATION DBA AITDOMAINS.COM Whois Server: whois.aitdomains.com Referral URL: http://www.aitdomains.com Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.HAS.TEH.GAY.OMFGLOL.COM IP Address: 130.94.123.8 Registrar: ABACUS AMERICA, INC. DBA NAMES4EVER Whois Server: whois.names4ever.com Referral URL: http://www.names4ever.com Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.HAS.ITS.OWN.CRACKLAB.COM IP Address: 209.26.95.44 Registrar: DOTSTER, INC. Whois Server: whois.dotster.com Referral URL: http://www.dotster.com/help/whois Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.HAS.A.PRESENT.COMING.FROM.HUGHESMISS ILES.COM IP Address: 66.154.11.27 Registrar: TUCOWS, INC. Whois Server: whois.opensrs.net Referral URL: http://www.opensrs.org Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.FILLS.ME.WITH.BELLIGERENCE.NET IP Address: 130.58.82.232 Registrar: CRONON AG BERLIN, NIEDERLASSUNG REGENSBURG Whois Server: whois.tmagnic.net Referral URL: http://nsi-robo.tmag.de Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.CUZ.I.WANNA.BE.COOL.TOO.TRUEDESIGN.C OM IP Address: 65.206.132.248 Registrar: INTERCOSMOS MEDIA GROUP, INC. D/B/A DIRECTNIC.COM Whois Server: whois.directnic.com Referral URL: http://www.directnic.com Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.CAN.SUCK.MY.SERVEREXTREME.ORG Registrar: VERISIGN GRS (ORG) Whois Server: whois.verisign-grs.com Referral URL: http://www.verisign-grs.com Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.CAN.GO.FUCK.ITSELF.AT.SECZY.COM IP Address: 209.187.114.147 Registrar: INNERWISE, INC. D/B/A ITSYOURDOMAIN.COM Whois Server: whois.itsyourdomain.com Referral URL: http://www.itsyourdomain.com Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.CAN.BLOWME.ORG Registrar: VERISIGN GRS (ORG) Whois Server: whois.verisign-grs.com Referral URL: http://www.verisign-grs.com Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.ARE.GODDAMN.PIGFUCKERS.NET IP Address: 216.127.80.46 Registrar: TUCOWS, INC. Whois Server: whois.opensrs.net Referral URL: http://www.opensrs.org Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.AND.MINDSUCK.BOTH.SUCK.HUGE.ONES.AT. EXEGETE.NET IP Address: 63.241.136.53 Registrar: DOTSTER, INC. Whois Server: whois.dotster.com Referral URL: http://www.dotster.com/help/whois Server Name:

.org was never down

[ssk3]

The article in the Registrar was not a thoughtful and thorough. PIR has issued re-buttle. Please read the PIR comments and other blogss in: 1. We also wrote to the author of the article for The Register, and he has updated the original article http://theregister.co.uk/content/6/30760.html 2. As you've seen from ICANNWatch (http://www.icannwatch.org/article.pl?sid=03/05/19 /1422220&mode=thread), we also posted there and have had some additional positive notes posted by others in the community. 3. In addition, we reached out to the industry press, including Bret Fausett (ICANN Blog at http://icann.blog.us/2003/05/19.html#a1356), and explained the mis-information that was propagated by The Register. S. S. Kshatriy Member, .ORG Advisory Council.