.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

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]

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.

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 <<<

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

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.

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!

Boston data line cut

[vasqzr]

Related?

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?