netsol and host records.

Thu Feb 1 00:30:01 UTC 2001

On Wed, Jan 31, 2001 at 03:59:56PM -0800, Carter, Gregory wrote:
> In your  situation, you should  be able to  delete the nameserver  host if
> it's not  being relied upon by  other domain names.  They  don't remove it
> automatically because they probably don't have any auditing tools coded to
> check  on a  regular basis  whether or  not a  nameserver host  is needed.
> They've always sent  through the host records up to  the root servers when
> you create them whether they are in  use by a domain or not.  Perhaps they
> should give OpenXRS a try.

I just  found out  (with help  from other list  subscribers) and  indeed the
netsol host record  is not being fed  to the root servers  anymore (since no
domain they own relies on it anymore), and that the bad host record had been
automatically moved to opensrs along with the svcs domains I moved.
While I did delete the www.svlug.org NS  record from the two domains as soon
as they were moved, it was still left in opensrs's database as a host record
that I might want to use later.
William  X. Walsh pointed  me to  the "If  you want  to create  or modify  a
nameserver which is based on svlug.org click here" link at the bottom of the
manage name  server page. Sure enough, the  bad record was there,  and I was
able to get rid of it with one mouseclick

Without William, I'd never have realized that the host record had been moved
to opensrs:
magic(@va):~/Mail$ whois "host www.svlug.org" -h whois.opensrs.net
 No match for HOST WWW.SVLUG.ORG
magic(@va):~/Mail$ whois "host 209.81.8.243" -h whois.opensrs.net
 No match for HOST 209.81.8.243

I should have done this instead:
magic(@va):~/Mail$ whois www.svlug.org -h whois.internic.net
(...)
   Server Name: WWW.SVLUG.ORG
   IP Address: 209.81.8.243
   Registrar: TUCOWS.COM, INC.
   Whois Server: whois.opensrs.net
   Referral URL: www.opensrs.org

It's not very obvious, but oh well :-)
(Actually William just told me opensrs is in the process of fixing this)

Thanks to those who mailed me privately to offer several tips and help:
- Kevin Loch
- Scott Francis
- Troy Davis
- William X. Walsh
- Jeff 

BTW,  Troy Davis  showed me  that you  can find  out who's  using your  name
server, but apprently netsol folks don't seem to know about this :-)
magic(@va):~/Mail$ whois "server NS97718-HST" -h whois.networksolutions.com
(...)
Andover.net (FRESHMEAT-DOM)                                      FRESHMEAT.NET
Patrick Lenz (UNKAPUTTBAR-DOM)                                 UNKAPUTTBAR.ORG
Patrick Lenz (POOCS-DOM)                                             POOCS.NET

The good news is that my problem is now fixed without depending on netsol at
all. Too bad I  didn't know this before  spending all the time  on the phone
with them :-)

Thanks to all those who replied
Marc
-- 
Microsoft is to operating systems & security ....
                                      .... what McDonalds is to gourmet cooking

Home page: http://marc.merlins.org/   |   Finger marc_f at merlins.org for PGP key