[Solved] Can't Access Heliohost

[federicorussi]

dear, my account epmonitaraggi.heliohost.org was suspended, I think because I had no access to my account for 30 days.

the problem is that I can't access to heliohost.org and I can't renew the account.

the browser tell me about a problem to resolve the name, there is somenthing I don't know?

 

Regards

[Tjoene]

This support request is being escalated to our root admin.

 

 

There is a problem with the DNS records for heliohost.org

They seems to be removed.

[federicorussi]

So ok but in the meantime can you activate my website? I need it.

regards

[Tjoene]

Unfortunately the our tool is currently unavailable. We need to wait for an admin to sort the problem.

[Byron]

Krydos is working on this problem and it should be resolved soon.

[Piotr GRD]

At the beginning that was more than just DNS problem. If you were able to forget the DNS (using the "hosts" file for example) then there was no main page but just error stated about the problem with MySQL and 403 error for various other URLs.

 

At the moment main page seems to work fine again. Except the DNS issue which seems to be the last thing to be fixed.

[JpTiger]

If it's just the nameservers, is there any chance we can connect using an IP address or temporary domain? I'd really like to reactivate my account

[Piotr GRD]

You can use your "hosts" file (where it is depends on what system you use, ie. windows/system32/drivers/etc/) and put in it the following entries:

64.62.211.132 heliohost.org

64.62.211.132 www.heliohost.org

 

 

When you'll find out that everything is back to normal - remove this from "hosts" (do not delete the file itself, just the entries inside).

 

[yashrs]

You can use your "hosts" file (where it is depends on what system you use, ie. windows/system32/drivers/etc/) and put in it the following entries:

64.62.211.132 heliohost.org

64.62.211.132 www.heliohost.org

 

 

When you'll find out that everything is back to normal - remove this from "hosts" (do not delete the file itself, just the entries inside).

Thanks, I needed the IP Address.

 

I am able to access epmonitoraggi.heliohost.org now.

[Krydos]

Maybe someone on here can help us out.

 

We've been waiting for Ashoat to fix the DNS for heliohost.org since he's the one who set it up originally, and he's the one who has fixed similar problems to this one in the past. However, this time he says he is too busy to help, and our main website has already been down a ridiculously long time so I'm desperate for any help getting this thing working again. I confess I'm very unfamiliar how he had this thing set up. Perhaps Piotr can be of assistance since his monitoring tool is familiar with how to responses are supposed to look?

 

When I noticed that heliohost.org was down I realized that the zone file had gone missing from both ns1 and ns2. I rewrote /var/named/heliohost.org.db by hand

; Zone file for heliohost.org
$TTL 14400
heliohost.org.  86400 IN  SOA ns1.heliohost.org.  ashoat.gmail.com. (
           2015071303 ;Serial Number
           43200 ;refresh
           7200 ;retry
           1209600 ;expire
           86400 ;minimum
 )
heliohost.org.  86400 IN  NS  ns1.heliohost.org.
heliohost.org.  86400 IN  NS  ns2.heliohost.org.
heliohost.org.  14400 IN  A 64.62.211.132
localhost 14400 IN  A 127.0.0.1
heliohost.org.  14400 IN  MX  0 heliohost.org.
www 14400 IN  CNAME heliohost.org.
ns2 14400 IN A  64.62.211.133
ns1 14400 IN A  65.19.143.3

and added

zone "heliohost.org" {
 type master;
 file "/var/named/heliohost.org.db";
};

to /etc/named.conf.

 

Is this data correct?

 

ns2 responds

# dig @ns2.heliohost.org heliohost.org

; (1 server found)
;; global options:  printcmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 19515
;; flags: qr aa rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 2, ADDITIONAL: 2

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;heliohost.org.   IN  A

;; ANSWER SECTION:
heliohost.org.   14400  IN  A   64.62.211.132

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
heliohost.org.   86400  IN  NS  ns1.heliohost.org.
heliohost.org.   86400  IN  NS  ns2.heliohost.org.

;; ADDITIONAL SECTION:
ns1.heliohost.org.    14400 IN  A      65.19.143.3
ns2.heliohost.org.    14400 IN  A      64.62.211.133

;; Query time: 122 msec
;; SERVER: 64.62.211.133#53(64.62.211.133)
;; WHEN: Wed Jul 15 07:51:55 2015
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 115

but your server monitor still shows ns2 as being broken. What response is your monitor expecting to see?

 

Using the dig tool on google toolbox https://toolbox.googleapps.com/apps/dig/#A/heliohost.org@ns2.heliohost.org it shows ns2.heliohost.org responds with

id 40180
opcode QUERY
rcode REFUSED
flags QR RD
;QUESTION
heliohost.org. IN A
;ANSWER
;AUTHORITY
;ADDITIONAL

 

but if I check another domain like krydos.heliohost.org https://toolbox.googleapps.com/apps/dig/#A/krydos.heliohost.org@ns2.heliohost.org it works

id 28333
opcode QUERY
rcode NOERROR
flags QR AA RD
;QUESTION
krydos.heliohost.org. IN A
;ANSWER
krydos.heliohost.org. 14400 IN A 216.218.192.172
;AUTHORITY
krydos.heliohost.org. 86400 IN NS ns2.heliohost.org.
krydos.heliohost.org. 86400 IN NS ns1.heliohost.org.
;ADDITIONAL

[Piotr GRD]

"REFUSED" is what I and anyone have from ns2 when asking for heliohost.org or www.heliohost.org - just like for any UNexisting domain/subdomain. And from ns1 there is simply no any records returned except "NS" (no A, MX etc.)

 

Oh! And while there are no records for ns1 and ns2, either (except of the "glue records" on root DNS servers) then sometimes even ns1./ns2.heliohost.org can not be found and some tools/browsers don't know where to send the DNS query. For now I've "hard-coded" the IPs of ns1/ns2 in my "DNS Checker" tool and I've added the "rcode" in the reply.

 

 

I didn't ever play with BIND so I won't help you much, unfortunatelly. Zone file looks OK for me, but I can't help with entries in the configuration files.

If you think you've done everything correctly... did you restart BIND after doing all these changes? (Sometimes most obvious thing is forgotten.)

[Krydos]

Yeah, I've restarted it like 50 times, and tried everything I can think of to clear the cache too. It just boggles my mind that both servers respond correctly when dig is used on the same server that named is running on, but not when queried remotely.

 

I guess we just do the same thing we did years and years ago when I first discovered Heliohost as a user and something broke: Cross our fingers and hope Ashoat will come fix it for us. I do my best to keep Heliohost going, but this particular problem seems to be outside of my grasp. If anyone has any ideas of something to try, no matter how silly it may seem to you, I'm listening and willing to try it. Keep the suggestions coming.

[yashrs]

What I can suggest is a very silly and temporary solution and would only work if you have access to heliohost.org website on the registrar:

 

1. We can use cloudflare's nameservers temporary and point them to 64.62.211.132.

 

2. Instead of ns1.heliohost.org and ns2.heliohost.org on heliohost.org we can point a direct 'A' record to 64.62.211.132 in the domain registrar.

 

I don't know if they would work out but these may be only temporary solution unless we get the problem solved of the DNS in our nameservers.

[nyten]

Perhaps more files have been damaged, deleted or reset in relation to the name servers.

Your zone file looks good, but I still remember that Bind was pretty picky about the formatting of the configuration files. For me it usually worked when I copied an existing (working) zone file.

[Krydos]

Awesome! I got it.

 

If anyone is curious I just started over completely from scratch. I went nuts and deleted everything I could find in the DNS system regarding heliohost.org and built the whole damn thing back up from nothing. There must have been some conflicting data or something before. I have no idea but it seems to work for me.