DNS lookup is failing - Server 10.3.9

[J-Man]

Hi all... first.. I'm SOO not a server tech. I'm using OS X server just to run Apache web server. I don't even use Mail services.

A few months ago certain web pages started failing to load.

(it used to work fine.. and nothing major had changed)

My best trouble shooting abilities seem to have tracked this down to the fact that DNS servers actual change their IP addresses sometimes and this happens every few years.

By changing some of my links from "kublacon.info" to the direct ip address, the failed pages started working again.

I'm totally open to hearing what else might be causing this, but as I understand it, there's a 'file' somewhere that the server uses to resolve DNS lookups... and that file probably needs to be updated.

Can anyone point me to the 'correct/new file" and how/where it is on the server that I can update it? Or... suggest other reasons this might be happening?

Thank you!

[ElDiabloConCaca]

Who is responsible for your domain name (kublacon.info)? GoDaddy? Register.com?

Whomever is responsible for your domain name is most likely the culprit here. When someone types in "kublacon.info" into their web browser, the name is resolved to your IP address by whomever the registrar of the kublacon.info name is.

If it makes any difference, "kublacon.info" resolves fine on my machine, and I see the default Mac OS X web page.

[J-Man]

Thanks.. yes... links to KublaCon.info resolve fine from other browsers. But the links that get generated 'from' my server using kublacon.info don't resolve correctly.

This could possibly be a 'lasso' issue... but again.. as best I can tell.. the server itself tries to find the page for kublacon.info and fails. Using the IP in those links makes them work.

[ElDiabloConCaca]

Are you referencing the internal IP address (192.168.x.x, 10.x.x.x), or the external IP address?

Why do you have absolute links instead of relative links in the lasso code? Instead of referencing "http://kubacon.info/scripts/somescript.lasso", why not code it to reference "./scripts/somescript.lasso"? Or is this what you're doing?

[J-Man]

Yes.. basically that 'is' what I'm doing with the lasso code.

Before, the links would appear as kublacon.info/kcsearch/lassopage.lasso

Now... many of those links appear as "216.xxx.xxx.xxx/kcsearch/lassopage.lasso"

After writing the above.. I tried something:

I changed the Lasso setting for the host "IP address/Host name" from the static IP to "KublaCon.info". Consequently, the links failed. Setting lasso back to the IP address made those links work again.

Likewise.. I have several links for simple searches that include a hard coded "kublacon.info"... and others that call on the "Server_name" which is now the static IP address. The hard coded search links fail.. and these are pages that are coming from OS X server... the static IP links work.

Sheesh.. on another note... links to other web names coming from the server are working. Ok.. now I'm confused. Is it possible that I've somehow put "kublacon.info' on a banned list.. or.. something else?

and... it could still be a Lasso issue I spose... I'll make sure I've got all the updates. Thanks for your help on this rather elusive issue.

[ElDiabloConCaca]

Yikes... I don't know if you want to mod your code at this point, nor do I know if lasso requires absolute paths, but using relative paths is a much better practice.

As it stands now, if you change domain names from kublacon.info to kublacons.info, you would have to edit your entire site to get it working again. With relative paths, you wouldn't have to edit a damn thing, and the site would be up and running the minute you changed names.

Try changing a few absolute paths to relative paths and see if that helps. If it does, I would recommend going that route in the future.

In a similar fashion, sometimes you can't use absolute paths -- for example, the connections to the mySQL server must be relative (or, more precisely, local) paths -- my work website cannot connect to the mySQL server using the external IP address, nor the domain name -- I have to use the local IP (127.0.0.1, or the local IP for the computer on which the mySQL server is located) or substitute "localhost" for that. Perhaps lasso is similar?

[J-Man]

Hi there.. sorry for the confusion.. but I actually AM using relative paths.

Except.. in a few instances where I want a hard link to use the absolute path.

And .. the relative path is passed to a variable in Lasso called "Server_Name".. which it gets from the Lasso Server setup.

At this point I suspect that Lasso is not resolving correctly. I'll be putting a call into their support tomorrow. After some experimenting based on some of your suggestions, it seems that it's specifically Lasso that isn't resolving links with the domain name correctly.