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Entire .SE TLD Drops Off the Internet
Icemaann writes "Pingdom and Network World are reporting that the SE tld dropped off the internet yesterday due to a bug in the script that generates the SE zone file. The SE tld has close to one million domains that all went down due to missing the trailing dot in the SE zone file. Some caching nameservers may still be returning invalid DNS responses for 24 hours."
The downtime lasted 30 minutes, and most domains were probably cached by nameservers anyway.
"Oppression and harassment is a small price to pay to live in the land of the free." -- Montgomery Burns.
Goat.se
I seriously hope someone is fired or loses a contract over this. Where was the validation, change control, etc? I would expect that at the TLD level, a change to a configuration file would have to be inspected by someone AND run through some syntax-checking scripts...
As for the person who was modded up for saying "hey, no big deal, fixed in 30 minutes!", not quite. DNS servers (and individual computers!) cache negative results. Anything anyone did a query on during those 30 minutes will be negatively cached by their system and their local DNS server. Granted, a whole lot of local Swedish ISPs and network providers have probably flushed their DNS server caches, but it's still going to seriously impact traffic to many, many sites, especially for everyone outside Sweden.
Please help metamoderate.
...borked!
Uh, it would make no difference.
DNS is hierarchical, and has teh caching.
2 independent groups running DNS would strive to make sure they sync with each other quickly - thus all failures would sync quickly too.
The difference between
- the delay of a correct change propagating across the two firms running DNS
- the delay of an incorrect change propagating within a single DNS
would essentially be zero.
No good things could come from what you propose unless it was specifically designed to have a 24 hour delay or something.
Can't get to milkmaids.se ? Try milkmaids.se via DNS2 to get a 24-hour old version.
This is something the CURRENT DNS system could support - explicitly calling for older versions.
In fact, it might be worthwhile. Somebody write an RFC.
its "no big deal" until you need to know something off the internet right now, high stakes
I need to know what a fourteen year old thinks about copyright law and I need to know it NOW !
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
The Internet was started as, and always has been, a "best effort" network. If a packet gets through, great. If not, well, it's not the end of the world. People have tried to code more and more resilient protocols on top to be as robust as possible, but in the end it's a very fragile system that can go down quite easily.
Anything sufficiently "high stakes" shouldn't rely on an unreliable medium.
an admin has popped back from lunch and asked, "hey guys did someone turn my computer off while i was gone? there was a file i was working on......"
Good people go to bed earlier.
It still boggles my mind that anyone thought zone files are a good idea. The file format is so damn brittle, that a single byte can spell disaster. On top of that, the hierarchical naming structure presents an inherent systemic risk for all sub-domains as exhibited by this .se fiasco. Nevermind the injection attacks, Pakistan taking out Youtube, and the rest, you have organizations like Verisign which profit immensely off of keeping the system broken. And don't even bother mentioning DNSSEC, as it still doesn't resolve this fundamental issue. The next systemic fuckup will simply be a signed fuckup.
If a packet gets through, great. If not, well, it's not the end of the world.
Sounds like a lot of cities' approaches to freeway systems/traffic control.
This is why MaraDNS (my open-source DNS server) uses a special zone file format.
MaraDNS uses a zone file format that, for the most part, resembles BIND zone files. However, the zone file format has some minor differences so the common "Forgot to put a dot at the end of a hostname" and the "forgot to update the SOA serial number" problems do not happen; a domain name without a dot at the end in a syntax error in MaraDNS' zone file parser; if you want to end a hostname with the name of the zone in question, this has to be explicitly specified with a .% at the end of the hostname.
There is also a mechanism for automatically generating SOA records, or having a SOA record where the serial is automatically updated based on the "last write" timestamp for the zone file.
For people who want to use their BIND zonefiles, there is included a Python script that converts a BIND zonefile in to MaraDNS' similar zone file format.
MaraDNS is an open-source DNS server.
Cache your porn, folks. Just sayin'.
I drank what? -- Socrates
Wi nøt trei a høliday in Sweden this yer?
See the løveli lakes
The wonderful telephøne system
And mani interesting furry animals
#DeleteChrome
Don't worry, there's plenty of mirrors......unfortunately.
Table-ized A.I.
It looks like someone messed up the summary. I'm pretty sure it should be:
Peengdum und Netvurk Vurld ere-a repurteeng thet zee SE tld drupped ooffff zee internet yesterdey dooe-a tu a boog in zee screept thet generetes zee SE zune-a feele-a. Zee SE tld hes cluse-a tu oone-a meelliun dumeeens thet ell vent doon dooe-a tu meessing zee treeeling dut in zee SE zune-a feele-a. Sume-a cecheeng nemeserfers mey steell be-a retoorneeng infeleed DNS respunses fur 24 huoors.