Thanks to Jim G0CQK for the temporary fix posted on the Yahoo reflector site which has allowed me to gain access to SotaWatch for the first time today.
His message reads:
"Since it has all gone quiet, I am not sure whether everyone is now
working normally but I was still having some problems with a few
sites. For these I was able to find out their TCP/IP addresses. What I
did was to edit my HOSTS file. The HOSTS file is to be found in
C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc in Window XP - it has no extension
just HOSTS. Into my host file near the top I added a line:
saved the file and after that tried my regular bookmark to Sotawatch
and there it was. Went back to the file - commented out that line -
saved - and back in the browser could no longer find sotawatch. Back
to the HOSTS file once more - convert back to not being a comment -
save and I am now seeing Sotawatch in the browser.
Tried exactly the same process with another site I couldn’t get to and
now I can.
Of course when everything is resolved, I will remove this again but at
least it has given me a temporary fix."
If anyone contacts you by phone, Skype, etc., complaining about the lack of access, please pass this information on. BTW it worked for me and I am using Windows 2000 Pro and IE6.
I noticed problems last night as well. As far I can discern, it is a DNS issue with the people we have sotawatch.org registered with. Because, when SW2 is inaccessible, so is their website and other sites with domains registered with them.
Anyway, hopefully the DNS solution will be resolved soon.
Name Server:NS.123-REG.CO.UK
Name Server:NS2.123-REG.CO.UK
123-reg DNS services have been plagued with problems since Friday. All my domains are through them and they’re still offline. This also means a load of my email redirection is failing too.
The 123-reg website comes and goes and the following message is displayed when you check for status issues at http://www.123-reg.co.uk/status.pl
"
Message created:17/11/2007, 09:15 Last update:17/11/2007, 14:31
We are currently aware of a problem regarding 123-reg nameservers which in turn is affecting the visibility of websites and services such as email. At present, we have engineers looking into this as a matter of urgency. Please be assured we are working to rectify this issue as a priority and hope to resume normal service as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience in the mean time. We apologise for any inconvenience caused.
"
It was fine this morning when I checked. Also my various domains provided through 123reg had come back on and were working. During the disruption there were periods when DNS lookups were working and Sotawatch appeared, but it was dodgy how long it would be visible for. Even when the DNS was working, the other services provided by 123reg were not. They’re my registrar for some domains and I use their free redirection services for both web and email for those domains.
I wonder if any info will be forthcoming as to what actually happened?
In reply to MM0FMF:
123-Reg was still showing a problem status on their website early morning but that has now gone. Since late morning all of the other sites where I had had problems were all working normally so I edited my host file and put a hash (#) at the beginning of all the lines I inserted yesterday, to convert them to comments. For any of you who did this temporary fix, it looks safe now to either delete the line that you added or convert it to a comment for safe keeping.
It occurred to me that my original statement of inserting the line near the top of my hosts file may have been a little confusing - “near the top” - that’s because my HOSTS file actually has just over 17,000 lines in it. I use the HOSTS file from Blocking Unwanted Connections with a Hosts File to block trackers. I wouldn’t recommend this to anyone unless you really understand all of the details on that page, but it does get rid of a lot of stuff I don’t want.
73 jim
with trouble on sota site i have been trying all weekend to log some chaser contacts into my log and i get to the select asosiation page and click on the country then after a time it goes off saying web page unavalible + nothing to do with sota i cant get my e-mail to work . anybody out there with same problem or is it just me ??? i am with talktalk as my service provider.
thanks dave
