No new Spots since 0217 today. Trying to Spot returns an error about summit code being invalid… The summit look up also does not work?
I appreciate that it is early in Europe. Hope the system is fixed soon.
Peter
Yes Peter. I just tried a test spot and you are correct. One cannot spot via the SOTAwatch website the normal way using a PC.
73 Phil
sotadata is also broken. Seems like an outage against the .org.uk tld. Did not dig much other then to notice my dig +trace lookups for a few different .org.uk sotes all timed out or nxdomain’d. Odd tbough that the reflector works and its in the same name space
There is also no access to the database…
73, Sylvia
This would explain a lot, since I am working on the spots page in the new version of the not-yet-published SMP site, and have been wondering when the EU spots would start to appear! Dohh!!
Heh! - I think work is at foot in the MT camp to get ready for a roll-out of something brand new.
And exciting.
With sugar on top 
No, we’re all on low carbohydrate diets!
1 Like
Yes, well that’s nice to know. The sugar is for us hoi polloi shuffling around out here in the cold and wet…
This looks like a consequence of the lame delegation issue for sotadata.org.uk that I pointed out back in January. It has been a failure waiting to happen ever since the database was rehosted.
In brief, there are two nameservers for the domain, intended to provide redundancy. One of them is wrongly configured and does not serve the domain. The other happens to be down at the moment.
Doubtless the failed server will be brought back at some point, but unless they fix the lame delegation it is likely to fail again.
Martyn M1MAJ
Thank’s to the person who fixed things. Now back working FB.
73 Phil
3 Likes
Indeed. But sotadata.org.uk still has a lame delegation.
It turns out that the working nameserver and the host providing the database service are one and the same machine. So the database server probably was down, but the nameserver blunder made it look like a DNS problem.
It is perfectly valid, though slightly unusual, to have a server machine providing DNS service for itself. Normally you expect a hosting provider to keep its hosting servers and DNS infrastructure separate.
It’s not wrong, but certainly far from best practice, to have only one nameserver for a domain.
What is emphatically wrong is to announce the existence of two nameservers for the domain but only configure one of the two to work. The competence of this hosting provider has to be questioned.
Martyn M1MAJ
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I’m sure that you are very knowledgeable about these matters, Martyn - infinitely more so than I am - but talking about it on the Reflector is a rather hit and miss way of rectifying the problem, for the simple reason that those who would be in the position to take action may well not read your opinion. It would be more effective if you were to direct your remarks to the appropriate members of the MT via the facility available on the website.
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I happen to know that the MT are having a tussle with the registrar they are using to manage, amongst other things, the transfer of the sotamaps.org domain to the SOTA MT. This registrar is apparently not doing a good job at all, and has repeatedly failed to do what they have been asked to do, much to the frustration and annoyance of the MT IT dept. There is talk of taking another approach to circumvent these difficulties.
Whether what you mention is at all related, I couldn’t say, but it sounds rather likely to me. No doubt Andrew @VK3ARR, MT IT manager, could provide more information if he is so inclined - he IS rather busy.
This wasn’t us, but we will be moving away (as time permits) from as many dodgy providers as possible. sotadata is on a different registrar again (tied into the DB hosting), which makes our bid to reduce the complexity of the infrastructure harder and slower. We’ll get there.
Database seems to be down again; error 503.
73,
Rod
It is all normal here.
73.
Mirko
The nice thing with failures during normal office hours is the “online chat” support page works well. Application pool resized and restarted.
Thanks Andy.
73,
Rod