Kitz Forum
Chat => Tech Chat => Topic started by: Weaver on March 08, 2021, 10:58:03 AM
-
I’m trying to access the web server www2.smo.uhi.ac.uk and it seems to me that its DNS has gone bad in some way. I used an iOS DNS lookup app and I got a ‘timeout error trying to access DNS servers’. Looking up something like www.google.co.uk worked fine so it’s not a problem at my end.
Anyone got any thoughts?
It’s the Gaelic college on Skye, affiliated to the UHI (University of the Highlands and Islands) and I’m surprised if they have managed to break their DNS. Very odd.
-
It's not a DNS problem, the server is down. You can check with https://www.isitdownrightnow.com/ (https://www.isitdownrightnow.com/www2.smo.uhi.ac.uk.html) or https://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/ (https://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/)
-
Ah, many thanks! I forgot about those useful sites. The app I used seems to give out misleading error messages then.
Wow, SMO (the college, www.smo.uhi.ac.uk) has broken their Gaelic dictionary web server. And their main one www.smo.uhi.ac.uk according to that testing tool website. What on earth are they doing?
-
It has been down for days now. How can the entire college www be broken for this long? Any thoughts ?
A traceroute just goes off into oblivion in or after JANET.
-
The main university website is up and there's a contact us on there.
https://www.uhi.ac.uk/en/campuses/sabhal-mor-ostaig-uhi/
-
I see the following --
[bcat ~]$ whois smo.uhi.ac.uk
[Querying whois.ja.net]
[whois.ja.net]
No such domain smo.uhi.ac.uk
[bcat ~]$ whois uhi.ac.uk
[Querying whois.ja.net]
[whois.ja.net]
Domain:
uhi.ac.uk
Registered For:
University of the Highlands and Islands
Domain Owner:
University of the Highlands and Islands
Registered By:
Jisc Services Limited
Servers:
gnasher.uhi.ac.uk 194.35.200.250
dennis.uhi.ac.uk 194.35.192.250
walter.uhi.ac.uk 194.35.192.9
bertie.uhi.ac.uk 54.83.21.223
spotty.uhi.ac.uk 46.137.249.242
Registrant Contact:
Mike MacDonald
Registrant Address:
12b Ness Walk
INVERNESS
IV3 5SQ
United Kingdom
+44 1463 279000 (Phone)
+44 1463 279002 (FAX)
mike.macdonald@uhi.ac.uk
Renewal date:
Sunday 12th Jun 2022
Entry updated:
Thursday 12th March 2020
Entry created:
Monday 10th November 2003
[bcat ~]$
I'm amused that the Japanese database was used for both of the above lookups.
-
@jelv I saw that ‘main university’ site. SMO is a semi-autonomous thing with its own governance and is just affiliated with the UHI. That UHI website is in English whereas SMO’s own website is all bilingual with Gaelic being the default, and also has a separate sub-site containing very useful stuff meant for current students. SMO also had a second domain name www2.smo.uhi.ac.uk which is used by their web-based Gaelic-English dictionary service.
It’s incredible - how they can just let it break? Perhaps their domain registration ran out because someone screwed up?
My neighbour works for the UHI at SMO, so I will put my wife on the case. ;)
-
I don’t think ja.net has anything to do with Japan - it’s the Joint Academic NETwork (JANET), which has been around in the UK for yonks.
-
As above...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/JANET
-
I see the following --
[bcat ~]$ whois smo.uhi.ac.uk
[Querying whois.ja.net]
[whois.ja.net]
No such domain smo.uhi.ac.uk
[bcat ~]$ whois uhi.ac.uk
[Querying whois.ja.net]
[whois.ja.net]
Domain:
uhi.ac.uk
Registered For:
University of the Highlands and Islands
Domain Owner:
University of the Highlands and Islands
Registered By:
Jisc Services Limited
Servers:
gnasher.uhi.ac.uk 194.35.200.250
dennis.uhi.ac.uk 194.35.192.250
walter.uhi.ac.uk 194.35.192.9
bertie.uhi.ac.uk 54.83.21.223
spotty.uhi.ac.uk 46.137.249.242
Registrant Contact:
Mike MacDonald
Registrant Address:
12b Ness Walk
INVERNESS
IV3 5SQ
United Kingdom
+44 1463 279000 (Phone)
+44 1463 279002 (FAX)
mike.macdonald@uhi.ac.uk
Renewal date:
Sunday 12th Jun 2022
Entry updated:
Thursday 12th March 2020
Entry created:
Monday 10th November 2003
[bcat ~]$
I'm amused that the Japanese database was used for both of the above lookups.
i wonder if anyone else sees the Beano references
-
I don’t think ja.net has anything to do with Japan - it’s the Joint Academic NETwork (JANET), which has been around in the UK for yonks.
As above...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/JANET
Thank you, both. :) I'm well aware of JANET, from the 1980s, but wonder why such an obscure reference is used? :-\
-
My wife tells me that UHI as well as Sabhal Mór Ostaig (www.smo.uhi.ac.uk) has been hit by ransomware but I don’t have any details; on Saturday last. She said various other organisations have been hit.
-
I simply can’t understand why the servers have been down for so long. We’re they not backed up? I would just wipe them and restore from a backup. I always used o keep a complete bootable cloned full system on a hard disk in a drawer ready to just drop in, so a restore wasn’t even needed. (I used Acronis full drive cloning s/w back then.)
-
http://www.smo.uhi.ac.uk/ works fine for me.
-
http://www.smo.uhi.ac.uk/ works fine for me.
Having just checked, I can type "likewise".
-
Works for me as well and I couldn't access the other day. I suspect you are looking at some sort of cached result (either DNS or the failed web page itself).
-
Weird, I just tried pinging it and no responses! :no:
-
Weird, I just tried pinging it and no responses! :no:
It doesn't respond to pings but loads fine.
-
doesn’t load for me, so I tried pinging it
-
I’ve just realised that I get nothing if I try connecting to that server on port 443, but on port 80, I get the usual response. This is the port 80 response:
Response Time: 988 ms
Status Code: 200 OK
HTTP Response:
Date: Sat, 27 Mar 2021 17:35:04 GMT
Server: Apache
X-Frame-Options: SAMEORIGIN
X-Frame-Options: SAMEORIGIN
Expires: Sat, 26 Jul 1997 05:00:00 GMT
Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0
Pragma: no-cache
Last-Modified: Sat, 27 Mar 2021 17:35:05 GMT
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
Content-Language: gd
Set-Cookie: PHPSESSID=uipg08q34q51rhtpr94r0e7qsi59lojst8rfbd7t5futn6e729l0; HttpOnly
Set-Cookie: PHPSESSID=uipg08q34q51rhtpr94r0e7qsi59lojst8rfbd7t5futn6e729l0; HttpOnly
Set-Cookie: eenew_last_visit=1301506504; expires=Sun, 27-Mar-2022 17:35:04 GMT; Max-Age=31535999; path=/; httponly
Set-Cookie: eenew_last_activity=1616866504; expires=Sun, 27-Mar-2022 17:35:04 GMT; Max-Age=31535999; path=/; httponly
Set-Cookie: eenew_tracker=%5B%22index%22%5D; path=/; httponly
Set-Cookie: eenew_csrf_token=deleted; expires=Thu, 01-Jan-1970 00:00:01 GMT; Max-Age=0; path=/; httponly
Set-Cookie: eenew_csrf_token=f33d97ad04ff10e13662ec3543fc9cdbb2a30de5; expires=Sat, 27-Mar-2021 19:35:04 GMT; Max-Age=7199; path=/; httponly
Keep-Alive: timeout=15, max=100
Connection: Keep-Alive
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
-
[bcat ~]$ dig www.smo.uhi.ac.uk
; <<>> DiG 9.8.2rc1-RedHat-9.8.2-0.68.rc1.el6_10.8 <<>> www.smo.uhi.ac.uk
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 49451
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 3, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;www.smo.uhi.ac.uk. IN A
;; ANSWER SECTION:
www.smo.uhi.ac.uk. 7200 IN CNAME damh.smo.uhi.ac.uk.
damh.smo.uhi.ac.uk. 7200 IN A 194.35.194.232
damh.smo.uhi.ac.uk. 7200 IN A 194.35.194.231
;; Query time: 84 msec
;; SERVER: 1.1.1.1#53(1.1.1.1)
;; WHEN: Sat Mar 27 17:54:52 2021
;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 86
[bcat ~]$
So you are now able to see the web-site? :-\
-
I guess they figure there is no need for https, a little odd by todays standards as its meant to be a faster protocol these days.
-
No, I still can’t see the site. Safari insists on going to https even though I manually correct the URL to http://. It was working with TLS only a month or so back. Very odd.
-
Obvious question: have you tried a different browser?
-
It's working fine here on Chrome (via Win10) and Firefox (via Linux).
As others have said it doesn't respond to pings.
-
Working here with Safari on both iPad and Mac.
-
Chrome and Firefox, there is no https redirect thus it loads fine. Although it may be some browser versions are enforcing https anywhere in some form which would obviously be a problem.
-
I tried the iCab browser on the iPad instead of Chrome, and this works. I’m wondering if there might be something unhelpful in there.
-
I tried Chrome and Firefox on the iPad. Not sure how similar the code is in these iOS/iPadOS builds to that that we are used to on a Mac or Windows box. Got the page at www.smo.ac.uk to open, but one of my favourite URLs (Scottish Gaelic dictionary) is at:
https://www2.smo.uhi.ac.uk/gaidhlig/faclair/sbg/lorg.php
and that just hangs, still, even in these other browsers just like Safari/iOS. So all iis far from well.
-
I tried Chrome and Firefox on the iPad. Not sure how similar the code is in these iOS/iPadOS builds to that that we are used to on a Mac or Windows box. Got the page at www.smo.ac.uk to open, but one of my favourite URLs (Scottish Gaelic dictionary) is at:
https://www2.smo.uhi.ac.uk/gaidhlig/faclair/sbg/lorg.php
and that just hangs, still, even in these other browsers just like Safari/iOS. So all iis far from well.
That page does appear to hang at present. There's another online dictionary at http://www.dwelly.info/ (link taken from http://www.smo.uhi.ac.uk/en/colaiste/gaidhlig/ceanglaichean-feumail/)
:)
-
That DOES seem to try to redirect to https which is why its not working. They really need to fix their server configuration.
-
Thanks tubaman; I always use both as the set of english words is better in the Stòr-Dàta, but the dwelly.info dictionary is the stunning reference, the bible, if you like, best for detail. And of course, I can’t follow that link (http://www.smo.uhi.ac.uk/en/colaiste/gaidhlig/ceanglaichean-feumail/) in Safari, but it doesn’t matter as I know the dwelly.info website well already.
I’ll ask my neighbour, who works for the UHI and let him know what’s going on.
I only managed to regain my sanity when I used the NET-Toolbox app for the iPad with its HTTP-Head analysis tool which shows you the straight payload of response packets when making requests to either port 443 or port 80.
-
Thank god, they’ve finally fixed the web server configuration. My complaint got passed through to the right people, it seems.