MrChrister's questions

Background

We switched shared hosts from a local mom and pop to crystaltech. The site was all copied over and ready for the DNS change. The mom and pop site offered no tools to manage DNS ourselves, so we had to make a phone call and time the final move of the database with their changing of the DNS.

What happened From Oregon on Comcast, and the old host in Oregon on a regional fiber provider. The old host updated their DNS servers to point at our new IP address. They changed it from 207.x.x.x to 67.x.x.x

In Oregon, I flushed my DNS on my windows 7 machine on two computers and in less than 30 seconds the domain name site.com was working as expected. Ping tracert confirmed the domain name was resolving to the new IP at the new host.

In Florida, the client was reporting the domain name was resolving to the old site. (We put up "we're moving" pages on the old host server.) Her mac pinged the domain name and it resolved to the old host. We rebooted, then flushed the DNS in the terminal. 6 hours later her computer still cannot resolved to the new IP address.

One machine in the office in FL can access the new site correctly. Other machines in the South FL area cannot access the site. A call to the AT&T tech confirmed that ping and tracert from his area (same network) were resolving properly.

What the heck is wrong?

Why doesn't my client's mac use the nameservers to get the IP address? The IP address is different and only the nameserver on record knows it.

Is it AT&T? Is it OSX? Is it the old host DNS? Is it the new host DNS? Is it because the old host's TTL on their DNS server was 72 hours?

I have since changed the name servers with the domain registrar, so in a couple of days this will all be over, but I still curious what the heck happened.

related questions

How to change web host and have minimal downtime for email

How to change web host for my small site with minimal downtime

https://superuser.com/questions/96425/convince-my-bosss-mac-the-website-has-moved

In a question related to making a smooth transition to a new shared hosting provider, I want to move the email and web sites as smoothly as possible. I am a developer but have gotten into consulting my friend on what to do.

Company S currently has us using a Google AFYD account for our email. Therefore I can access my email via the web and Google's site. Am I correct in thinking even if the DNS mumbo jumbo that was setup to match mail.DOMAIN.com to the AFYD account goes away, I can still access the account (if it isnt' shut down by the admin)? CrystalTech will be hosting our new email and I have a web interface with them as well that I can get to via a unique URL.

But the customer is adament that her company cannot use webmail for more than a day, and even that day would be painful.

How can I move the email server to the new host with the least amount of downtime?

Clarification - Their office uses entourage, so all email is in their clients. - I have already setup the new hosting with similar accounts to the old - We have instructions on how to setup the email client for the new host - Web mail should be available as a backup in case it all goes to heck.

please see https://superuser.com/questions/93009/how-to-change-web-host-for-my-small-site-with-minimal-downtime for more questions about migrating the website

Company S is a small mom and pop host that can't keep our site running for more than a couple weeks at a time. They have suggested we find a better home. So we are moving our site to CrystalTech for hosting in their shared plans. I have moved the site over and it is working fine on the IP address, but now I need to move the name servers, and how do I minimize downtime

Here is my plan, please point out any errors:

• On Monday, ask Company S to reduce the TTL on our name to something very small, perhaps 1200
• On Friday ask Company S to change their DNS to point our domain to the IP address at CrystalTech. Just the web and not the email.
• At the same time change the ns records with network solutions to CrystalTech's nameservers
• At the same time disable the database on Company S and change the template to read "sorry, site moved blah blah blah"

I hope those four steps make the transition basically buttery smooth for everybody at once and nobody sees the "sorry site moved" for more than a 20 minute window

Will this make the transition as smooth as possible? We don't have anything super time sensitive like a shopping cart, but users do log into the site and update forms dynamicslly, so being in two places at once isn't cool.

Can we do this ONLY for the website? The email is a Google AFYD account, so the email is working fine and the company owner is adament that email can experience zero downtime while the web move over.

please visit my question about how to migrate the email as well https://superuser.com/questions/93012/how-to-change-web-host-and-have-minimal-downtime-for-email

As we are writing our governance plan, I am not find many examples of SOPs for deleting a site.

We are a small operation and will want to review each delete manually, so what are the gotchas to consider before pulling the plug on a site?

My thoughts are:

1. Ensure our criteria for deleting a site are met (business rules like site age, inactivity, lack of purpose, expiration date reach, etc)
2. Contact the site owner and get a response in writing that we will delete their site
3. Backup any data
4. Confirm any groups created in the site aren't being use by another site (learned this the hard way)
5. Check the site usage report (if inactivity is the issue)
6. Confirm any alerts on the site are invalid
7. Confirm no sub sites are available or needed.

MOSS 2007 standard (no forms services)

I want to submit a form to a Form Library so that after the form is submitted, only the owner of the site and library can edit the form. Anybody can add or view, owners can edit or delete.

I have created a customer Permission Level that only allows Add Items and View Items, and trying to submit an InfoPath 2007 form to the library will successfully add a document to the library, but give the following error message to the user:

Error submitting the form. You can save a copy to your machine and process it manually later. details:

InfoPath cannot submit the form.

An error occurred while the form was being submitted.

The form cannot be submitted to the following location: http://space/xx/yyyy/zz/Test/TEST-276-2009-08-17.xml There is a problem with the Web server. Make sure the Web server exists, try again later or contact the Web server administrator.

So the users of course try again and again to submit the file, but it is already there.

If I allow Edit Items into the Permission Level it works as expected, but the business rules don't allow normal users to edit any files including their own.

Can this be accomplished without other intervention such as a custom workflow?

Dreamweaver CS4 uses the subversion 1.4.5 client libraries, and we are wanting to change our source control from some weird proprietary one to subversion. The latest subversion is 1.6.x, will we have any issues doing simple checkin/checkouts and the occassional fork?

Servers are OpenSUSE 10, clients are Dreamweaver CS4 on windows XP

Our devs want to use virtual computers for dev, but the sysadmins can't have server os's on the network. Is there a resource that talks about locking down the Virtual Computers so that they can

• Authenticate against AD
• Not have internet access
• Have settings and configuration be controlled by the sys admins, not the user
• Have intranet access to hit Visual Source Safe

Question #1: Are the requirements possible with a single configuration?

Question #2: What are some search terms to use to find out more?

Question #3: Is there a definitive resource / authority?

More details:

Scenario 1: SharePoint development requires Visual Stuido to be installed on the server directly. From there packages are rolled up and sent to a staging, then production server. The dev needs to be an admin on Win2k3, but no Internet access, but intranet access for the source control / backup solution would be good.

Scenario 2: GIS devs want to replicate bug reports on various workstation OSs (win2k, XP, Vista) and fix those bugs. They require access to Visual Source Safe, but don't need server operating systems. Internet access isn't crucial

Scenario 3: Web devs just want a platform to test the staging and public internet sites with more browsers and OS than are allowed in our baseline. These machines would require Internet access, but not Intranet access.