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31 August 2010

There is nothing more LAFN is able to do about the DNS system. We have told it to make the change, and it taking its own time doing so. However, there is one thing you can do to bypass DNS for the interim. Please note you have to follow the instructions correctly. Things just won't work right otherwise.

For Windows:

Go to Start and find and start Notepad.
Select the File menu and pull down to Open
Click on the Look in entry area and then search for your disk. In there will be the WINDOWS directory. Follow that down to System32 (or System64) then drivers then etc.
Change file type to all files.
In that directory will be a file named hosts. Select it to edit it.

Add into the hosts file at the end the following lines:

75.101.116.66 www.lafn.org
75.101.116.66 smtp.lafn.org
75.101.116.65 mail.lafn.org
75.101.116.65 admin.lafn.org
75.101.116.67 news.lafn.org

Then save the file. You can quit Notepad at this point. Now you should be able to access all the services.

For Macintosh

Start Terminal (found in Utilities)
Enter: sudo vi /etc/hosts
It will ask for your password - enter it.
It will then display the contents of the hosts file.
Use the down arrow to move to the end of the file.
Enter: Cntl-A return
They type the listing above for the addresses.
Enter: ":w!" (without the quotes)
Enter: ZZ
Now you can quit terminal. The file is saved and you should be able to access all the services.

posted by Doug # 19:48

Comments:

Good news and bad news:

Good: This mostly works. In Windows Notepad, be sure to save the file without the .txt extension (which is what Notepad will try to sneak past you).

Not so good:
1. It doesn't work to go directly to User Services (nor can I get to User Services from the Homepage>Current Users).
2. I'm still not able to send mail, although I can now receive with the URL settings re-inserted.

But hey, this is moving us back into functionality! Thanks, Doug! (I hope you haven't torn out all your hair yet.)

(rickvandusen)

# posted by

Anonymous : 21:10

It works. However, um, the directions leave a lot to be desired. I just did a search for my "hosts" file, used the one in the path you describe, opened it in Notepad, pasted in what you said to paste in and saved the file and closed it. Voila! Mail. However, the directions you gave are very confusing.

# posted by

Anonymous : 21:19

Check the admin entry. That should permit User Services to work.

# posted by

Doug : 21:21

Yes, thank you Doug! I can't even begin to imagine how frustrated you must be.

I think the user services issue may be due to the server designation (there is a port callout as well as the main url needed to access that page).

I'm running Thunderbird for our mail program and it's not picking up the new host designations at all so I can't send or receive mail there, but I can at least get to the remote mail ... we're good with that but I thought you might want to know (if you haven't already thrown your hands up and run off!).

I did try to get to the remote mail from work a couple of times this afternoon and had no problems ... not sure if that helps or adds any confusion but it's more data.

Again, thank you for all your hard work, persistence, and the work around ... it's much appreciated. :-)

Diane (as730)

# posted by

Anonymous : 21:40

Hey Doug,
I'm using Google Public DNS and everything seems to be back now. Thanks for all you do.
JohnH

# posted by

Anonymous : 22:18

Doug, I copied/pasted from your post here directly into the hosts file, and neither the admin nor the smtp appear to work.

I'd like to get the smtp working, but as I have it now, I can survive.

(rickvandusen)

P.S. re "confusing directions": The only problem I had is that in reading too fast, I didn't see all of the path. Once I saw that, I was in.

# posted by

Anonymous : 23:22

Hi and thanks, Doug.

I have a Macintosh and the arrow key won't go to the end of terminal (after a bunch of tildes it says "etc/hosts 10L, 23C)

The arrow key stops on the line that says
"fe81::1%lo0 local host" and I cannot control A enter or anything else (I am supposed to hold down the control A - and it's control A, not command A, right?

Thanks

# posted by

Anonymous : 06:47

Um - now when I go to close terminal, which I wasn't able to do anything with after seeing the host database, it says "closing this window will terminate the running processes: login, bash, and vim."

Should I close anyway?

# posted by

Anonymous : 07:03

When I did the dig www.lafn.org on Terminal, this is what I got::

; <<>> DiG 9.4.3-P3 <<>> www.lafn.org
;; global options: printcmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: SERVFAIL, id: 53522
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;www.lafn.org. IN A

;; Query time: 1086 msec
;; SERVER: 10.0.1.1#53(10.0.1.1)
;; WHEN: Wed Sep 1 09:22:49 2010
;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 30

Katy-323-344-1948:~ katy$
----------
my email is katy@lafn.org, but of course that isn't helping things on account of mail being down.
Any further advice? Thanks!!!

# posted by

Anonymous : 09:26

For the Mac user - try Shift-A. Although I suspect your DNS is now updated and you should not need the hosts entries anymore.

# posted by

Doug : 16:43

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